The Private Life of Don Juan

Merle Oberon was TCM's Star of the Month late last year, and that gave me the opportunity to record a movie or two that I hadn't seen before. This time out, the movie is one she made over in the UK: The Private Life of Don Juan.

Now, as you might guess, Merle Oberon is not playing Don Juan; that honor goes to Douglas Fairbanks (Sr.) in his final film role. And, as you might also guess considering this is a movie about Don Juan, there are a bunch of actresses in the movie with a fairly similar role, that being a woman who might want Don Juan.

Fairbanks was 51 when he made The Private Life of Don Juan, and that's part of the conceit of the movie. As they say in sports, "Father Time is unbeaten", and time is catching up to Don Juan too. He and his friend/assistant Leporello (Melville Cooper) have returned to Sevilla in part to get medical advice because Don Juan is at the age where he's not as spry as he used to be. However, Sevilla is also the home of Don Juan's wife Doña Dolores (Benita Hume), who basically has a warrant for Don Juan's arrest.

Complicating things is the fact that word of Don Juan's return has reached the city, so there are young men who idolized Don Juan. One of them, Rodrigo (Barry MacKay) is even imitating Don Juan by climbing up to women's balconies to try to seduce them, a fact that needless to say gets the women's husbands irritated.

And then, something happens that may or may not solve Don Juan's problems. Rodrigo goes after the wrong man's wife, resulting in the angry husband killing Rodrigo. Except that everybody thinks this is Don Juan, which at least in theory solves Don Juan's legal issues as well as any financial issues he might have. Don Juan and Leporello go off to a small village where nobody will recognize them. But then he realizes that women are no longer interested in some random middle-aged guy who isn't known to have the reputation that preceded Don Juan wherever he went. But how can Don Juan convince people that he's still alive, and that this claimant really is Don Juan? Never mind the fact that if his real identity were to come to light, he'd still face criminal proceedings.

In any case, Don Juan does try to tell everyone that no, he's not really dead. Some writers tried to cash in on Don Juan's death by writing a pulp fiction pamphlet about the exploits of Don Juan, a book that got turned into a play. Don Juan goes to a performance of that play and tries to tell everyone that hey, he's still alive, but unsurprisingly he's just laughed out of the theater. Perhaps Doña Dolores can vouch for Don Juan....

I really like the premise of The Private Life of Don Juan, which made me think of a movie like From Noon Till Three. Douglas Fairbanks does well as an aging Don Juan, and since he's the focus of the movie, that's important. However, there's something in the movie that's a bit off. I think the story is a bit too slow, or maybe barebones, for the movie. Despite the obvious charm, there's not a lot of there there.