Agnes Ayres

Based on E.M. Hull's bestselling 1919 novel, The Sheik made Rudolph Valentino a star almost overnight. Agnes Ayres plays Lady Diana Mayo, a headstrong Englishwoman who insists on traveling alone into the Algerian desert, only to be abducted by Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, a desert chief who falls in love with his captive. The film is a silent romantic adventure of the desert-romance school, all tents and horses and yearning close-ups, and it struck a nerve with 1921 audiences that few films before or since have matched. Valentino's dark, smoldering presence became a cultural phenomenon. The portrayal has not aged well in every respect, but the film's place in cinema history is secure as the picture that defined a new kind of leading man. It was published in 1921 and is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

Valentino's final film, released two weeks after his death from peritonitis at thirty-one. He plays a double role: the aging Sheik Ahmed and his hot-blooded son, who falls for Yasmin, a dancing girl, and is tricked by a band of outlaws into believing she betrayed him. The younger Ahmed abducts her in revenge, and the story plays out as a compressed echo of the first film, sharper and a little harder. Vilma Banky is a strong match for Valentino, and the desert photography has a clean, harsh beauty. The film was selected for the National Film Registry in 2003. Long held under copyright by the Copyright Term Extension Act, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2022, and is now freely watchable.

Romance · Adventure · Silent