In 1929, as the silent cinema succumbed to the rise of sound technology, Douglas Fairbanks bade farewell to his swashbuckling persona with this lavish adventure film, the glorious last hurrah of big screen chivalry. In a return to Fairbanks’s favorite literary character — Dumas’s heroic D’Artagnan, whom he portrayed in 1921’s The Three Musketeers — The Iron Mask finds Dartagnan’s romance with Constance (Marguerite De La Motte) and his brotherhood with the Musketeers threatened by the sinister Cardinal Richelieu (Nigel De Brulier) and Count De Rochefort (Ulrich Haupt).

This new restoration is based on the 1999 photochemical restoration done by Photoplay Productions, using Fairbanks’s original nitrate print in association with the Museum of Modern Art.  Additional digital restoration was done by Cohen Film Collection at Roundabout Entertainment (Burbank).