Monsieur Beaucaire is Rudolph Valentino in costume comedy, as a French duke in disguise who must navigate love, intrigue and a duel in eighteenth-century France.
Monsieur Beaucaire (1924), directed by Sidney Olcott and based on Booth Tarkington’s novel, stars Valentino as the Duke of Chartres, who, after a quarrel with King Louis XV, flees to England disguised as a barber named Beaucaire. There he becomes involved with a lady, a rival and a plot that returns him to France.
Valentino’s Beaucaire is elegant, witty and romantic, and the film’s costumes and settings give him a lighter, more playful stage than his desert roles. His fencing and comedy, especially in disguise, show a Valentino who could laugh at his own image.
It is a signature role because it is Valentino’s most successful costume comedy, and because it proved he could carry a period romance without relying on the Latin Lover alone.