The first feature-length film to be accompanied by a synchronized music score and sound effects using the Vitaphone system. (It was produced as a silent; the score and sound effects of swords clashing were added later.) "Don Juan is, in its own way, quite wonderful stuff-expertly staged and directed, lush, elegantly mounted, and done with just the right tongue-in-cheek approach. John Barrymore's performance is superbly sardonic, quite one of the best of his career...This is an eye-popper of a production and the original score (performed) by the New York Philharmonic lovely, full and sweeping. Its duel scene is still the best of its kind and, despite the later forays by Fairbanks and Flynn, Barrymore is still the `definitive' Don. Don Juan is usually thought of just as the film that was used to introduce Vitaphone-just as The Jazz Singer is too often dismissed as a sentimental piece of corn that gained fame only because it ushered in talkies. Thus have two of Alan Crosland's best works been almost eradicated as films; small wonder that this vigorous and stylish director is almost unknown today." --William K. Everson