Vilma Bánky

Directed by Victor Sjöström and based on Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play *They Knew What They Wanted*, this pre-Code MGM drama stars Vilma Bánky as Lena, a San Francisco waitress who answers a marriage advertisement from a middle-aged Napa Valley grape-grower named Tony. Tony has sent her a photograph of his handsome younger hired man, Buck, instead of himself. When Lena arrives and discovers the deception, she goes through with the marriage anyway, drawn by the promise of a home and her growing attraction to Buck. Edward G. Robinson, still early in his screen career, plays the lonely Italian farmer with a tenderness far removed from the gangster roles that would soon make him famous. Bánky, the silent-era star opposite Valentino, made one of her last screen appearances here before her Hungarian accent ended her career in talkies. The film's copyright was not renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Drama · Romance

A loose adaptation of Pushkin's novel Dubrovsky, with Valentino as a Cossack lieutenant who catches the eye of Catherine the Great, rejects her, and goes on the run. When a corrupt nobleman seizes his father's lands and kills the old man, Vladimir dons a black mask and becomes the Black Eagle, a Robin Hood figure, then infiltrates the nobleman's household as a French tutor and falls for his daughter. Clarence Brown directs with a light, fleet touch, and George Barnes's cinematography includes a celebrated extended tracking shot across a banquet table. Vilma Banky is the love interest and Louise Dresser a memorably imperious Czarina. Valentino, in his first United Artists picture, gets to swashbuckle in the Fairbanks mode and romance in his own, and the balance suits him. Published in 1925, the film 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