After years of melodramas, light comedies and musicals, Minnelli was eager to direct an epic at a time when the genre had found a new popularity within the Hollywood studios. He settled upon remaking an early Rudolph Valentino star vehicle, updating the story of a rakish Argentine playboy forced to face the catastrophe of World War I to Argentina and Paris on the cusp of World War II.  Minnelli’s casting choices reveal his awareness of contemporary European cinema, with Bergman actress Ingrid Thulin playing the female lead.  The director originally hoped to cast either Dirk Bogarde or Horst Buchholz as the protagonist, until Luchino Visconti introduced Minnelli to his then-protégé Alain Delon. However MGM vetoed the choice on the grounds that Delon was an untested commodity and the role instead went to Glenn Ford, even though he was by then scarcely credible as a young playboy. Like Glenn Ford, Yvette Mimieux, in an important supporting role, is miscast, and MGM also saw fit to have Angela Lansbury’s voice dubbed over Thulin’s. The film was a resounding failure, causing irreparable damage to Minnelli’s reputation and his self-confidence. Nevertheless, The Four Horsemen reveals Minnelli at the height of his expressive powers, and the film builds to a truly shattering—and aptly apocalyptic—climax.  In its juxtaposition of sumptuous mise-en-scène, overripe melodrama and historical crisis, the film prefigures Visconti’s The Damned and Fassbinder’s Lili Marleen.