Lady Diana Mayo: Agnes Ayres
Dr. Raoul de St. Hubert: Adolphe Menjou
Omair: Walter Long
Gaston: Lucien Littlefield
Mustapha Ali: Charles Brinley
Sir Aubrey Mayo: Frank Butler
Zilah: Ruth Miller
Yousaef: George Waggner
Director: George Melford
Screenplay: Monte M. Katterjohn
Based on a novel by Edith Maude Hull
Cinematography: William Marshall
Today The Sheik looks more like a classic demonstration of the kind of colonialist condescension toward non-European cultures described in Edward W. Said's book Orientalism than like the campy bodice-ripping romance that both titillated audiences and inspired parodies. It's likely that nobody ever took it seriously until critics like Said made us realize how much its imperialist attitudes had infected our social and political discourse. The key moment comes when St. Hubert reveals to Lady Diana that the man who had abducted her was not an Arab but the son of an Englishman and a Frenchwoman -- thereby making his otherness safe. It provides a kind of wish-fulfillment: kicking off the traces of civilization (as defined by the West) and going "primitive." Setting all that aside (as if we could or should), The Sheik is a still-potent demonstration of the star appeal of Rudolph Valentino, whose eye-popping, teeth-baring, and nostril-flaring have gone out of style, but not his brand of boyish sex appeal. Agnes Ayres, on the other hand, is a rather dowdy heroine.