The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925)

Vilma Banky and Rudolph Valentino in The Eagle

Cast: Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, Louise Dresser, Albert Conti, James A. Marcus, George Nichols, Carrie Clark Ward. Screenplay: Hanns Kräly, based on a novel by Alexander Pushkin; titles: George Marion Jr. Cinematography: George Barnes. Production design: William Cameron Menzies. Film editing: Hal C. Kern. 

It's easy to overlook the absurdities of the story of The Eagle because the filmmakers embrace them, and everyone seems to be having so much fun. Rudolph Valentino is Vladimir Dubrovsky, a dashing (what else?) lieutenant in the Russian Imperial Guard, who catches the eye of Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser) when he rescues a pretty young woman (Vilma Banky) and her aunt (Carrie Clark Ward) from a carriage pulled by a runaway horse. Catherine wants him for herself, of course, but Vladimir is shocked by her advances and flees. Meanwhile, he learns that his father has been victimized by a wicked aristocrat, Kyrilla Troekouroff (James A. Marcus), who has confiscated his lands. When his father dies, Vladimir vows vengeance against Kyrilla, and assumes the identity of the Black Eagle, a Zorro-like figure who wears a mask and rights the wrongs of Kyrilla against the peasantry. (In fact, the Black Eagle wasn't in the Pushkin story on which the movie is based; he was inspired by the success of the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler The Mark of Zorro directed by Fred Niblo.) And wouldn't you know it, Kyrilla's daughter, Mascha, turns out to be the pretty young woman he rescued in the runaway carriage. Disguising himself as a French teacher, he works his way into Kyrilla's household and woos Mascha. Meanwhile, the empress has put a price on Vladimir's head for desertion, so when he manages to win Masca and defeat her father, he still faces a firing squad. This is probably Valentino's most light-hearted performance, and he gets fine support from Banky and especially Dresser as the randy czarina.  

The Sheik (George Melford, 1921)

Ahmed Ben Hassan: Rudolph Valentino
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.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ingram, 1921)

Alice Terry and Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Julio Desnoyers: Rudolph Valentino
Marguerite Laurier: Alice Terry
Madariaga: Pomeroy Cannon
Marcelo Desnoyers: Josef Swickard
Etienne Laurier: John St. Polis
Karl von Hartrott: Alan Hale
Doña Luisa: Bridgetta Clark
Chichí: Virginia Warren
Otto von Hartrott: Stuart Holmes
Tchernoff: Nigel De Brulier
Lt. Col. von Richthosen: Wallace Beery

Director: Rex Ingram
Screenplay: June Mathis
Based on a novel by Vicente Blasco Ibañez
Cinematography: John F. Seitz
Art direction: Joseph Calder, Amos Myers
Film editing: Grant Whytock

Nobody reads that whopping bestseller of 1919, Vicente Blasco Ibañez's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, anymore, but Rex Ingram's film version, adapted from the novel and shepherded through production by June Mathis, has helped keep it in print for a century. It's an impassioned reaction to the horror of World War I as well as the film that helped establish Rudolph Valentino -- who was discovered by Mathis -- as a superstar the moment he stepped onto the dance floor with Beatrice Dominguez for a sizzling tango. Granted, some aspects of Valentino's appeal have gone out of style: the flared nostrils and lowered eyelids and the oil-slicked hair that glistens like an LP record. But late in the film, when he appears with a few days' growth of beard, he could vie with any contemporary stubble-enhanced leading man. And he was not an inconsiderable actor, more than holding his own in a company of scenery-chewers. Just standing there, he had the quiet self-assurance of someone like Gary Cooper, an actor who draws the eye without begging for it. There is much that's preposterous about Ibañez's story, especially the mysterious Tchernoff, who lives in the attic above Julio Desnoyer's studio and descends at the start of the war to deliver a sermon about the four horsemen in the book of Revelation, illustrating it with Dürer's woodcuts. There are some characters and incidents brought over from the novel that could have been cut, like Julio's sister, Chichí, and the married couple across the way from Julio's studio, a Frenchman and a German woman. The latter falls to her death from her window after her husband marches off to war, a blatant symbolic moment. But Mathis's adaptation is on the whole solid, and John F. Seitz's cinematography makes the most of the expensive sets. 

Camille (Ray C. Smallwood, 1921)

Alla Nazimova in Camille

Marguerite Gautier: Alla Nazimova
Armand Duval: Rudolph Valentino
Gaston Rieux: Rex Cherryman
Count de Varville: Arthur Hoyt
Prudence: Zeffie Tilbury
Nichette: Patsy Ruth Miller
Nanine: Elinor Oliver
Armand's Father: William Orlamond
Olympe: Consuelo Flowerton

Director: Ray C. Smallwood
Screenplay: June Mathis
Based on the novel and play by Alexandre Dumas fils
Cinematography: Rudolph J. Bergquist
Art direction: Natacha Rambova
Costume design: Natacha Rambova

It's hard to judge from her performance in this silent version of Camille why Alla Nazimova (billed in the film, which she produced, as just "Nazimova") was so celebrated an actress, especially if you've seen Greta Garbo's performance in George Cukor's 1936 version of the Dumas fils story. To us, Nazimova's Marguerite Gautier is camp: a series of pouts and poses, with lots of swooning backbends, and an unfortunate hairdo that looks like a cross between an afro and an explosion in a wig factory. But it's very much Nazimova's movie: Her Armand is Rudolph Valentino, but she constantly upstages him, even to the extent of cutting the usual ending of Camille, in which Marguerite and Armand are reunited for her great resurgence of life just before she expires. In this Camille Marguerite dies unreconciled, with just the faithful Nanine and the just-married Gaston and Nichette as witnesses to her last swoon. It's as if she foresaw Garbo's grand demise and knew she couldn't compete. What the film mostly has going for it are the set and costume designs of Natacha Rambova (who may have been Nazimova's lover and who did marry Valentino). At some point, a decision was made to update the story from the 1840s to the 1920s, so Rambova's designs for Marguerite's Paris haunts are a fascinating version of Art Deco with touches of Art Nouveau and some hints of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings. Marguerite breathes her last in a round bed under a rounded arch in her Paris bedroom, which has a round window outside of which snow is falling. But Rambova seems less interested in Marguerite and Armand's country idyll, and the cottage is a rather drab affair, very obviously a three-walled stage set, and one that the director, Ray C. Smallwood, unimaginatively treats as such. As for Valentino, he's his usual handsome and dashing presence, but deprived of his final scene he makes less impact on the film than usual. In short, this Camille is a briefly tantalizing glimpse at some legendary figures, but not much of a drama.