Le fils du Cheik

I recently saw the Son of the Sheik at an old movie house in Los Angeles. It was complete with the Wurlitzer theater pipe organ -- live accompaniment for this rare gem! I was in awe at how sophisticated and enchanting this movie was. I remarked to my husband that it reminded me of one of my trashy love novels. It was so perfect. I remember reading somewhere that Rudolph Valentino's fame came from the fact that he was so dark and handsome and muscular as opposed to the little pasty boys that had existed before him in the cinema. The scene where he exacts his revenge on Yasmin and ravishes her....was wonderful. His dark eyes as he looked at her in the close-ups.......ahhhhh. This movie truly was a treat. The desert scenes, the lush scenery and sumptuous costumes create a wonderful lavish movie. Valentino was taken from the cinema world far too early....but at least we have these lavish movies to remember him by.

This was Valentino's last film, and he is excellent in it, but it is far from being his best film (as many critics claim). Certainly "Camille", "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", "The Eagle" and "The Conquering Power" are much better films. This was designed as a rollicking and sexy adventure film, with large doses of cheap slapstick humour, and on that level succeeds admirably. That famous scene where Valentino ravishes Vilma Banky is extraordinary, and Valentino shows real talent in portraying both the son and the father (he is almost unrecognisable in the latter role). Great split screen work allows the two Valentinos to inter-relate well too.

The film makes you wonder what this talented and beautiful man may have achieved had he lived. Would he have made it in talkies? It's hard to believe such charisma would ever fail.

In the south of Algiers, in a camp of outcasts, the Frenchman André (George Fawcett) leads a troupe of mountebanks and thieves. His daughter Yasmin (Vilma Banky) is the dancer of the group and is promised to the cutthroat Moor Ghobah (Montague Love). However, Yasmin meets Ahmed (Rudolph Valentino), who is the Sheik's son but she does not know, and they fall in love for each other. When the young couple secretly dates in the ruins of Touggourt, where Yasmin dances, the criminals attack Ahmed, beat up and capture him, expecting to ask for a ransom. Ghobah poisons Ahmed, telling that Yasmin is a bait to lure victims for them. Ahmed escapes, and he abducts Yasmin and despises her. When he knows the truth, he fights against the gang of criminals trying to rescue her from Ghobah.

"The Son of the Sheik" is the last movie of Rudolph Valentino and a delightful adventure with romance, action and drama. The cinematography is impressive, and I particularly liked very much the sequences when Vilma Banky dances in Touggourt beginning with a close and opening to the whole place, and when Ahmed chases Ghobah and Yasmin in the desert. Considering the equipment available in 1926, big, heavy and with serious limitations, it is amazing how these scenes were shot. Rudolph Valentino is fantastic in the role of the son of the Sheik, and his agility recalled me Errol Flynn, when he fights in the bar of Touggourt, jumping on the chandelier. The beautiful Vilma Banky dances magnificently well, shows a great chemistry with Rudolph Valentino and has also a great interpretation. The intense music of Arthur Gutmann gives a perfect dynamic to this wonderful underrated film. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "O Filho do Sheik" ("The Son of the Sheik")

It is sadly appropriate that in his final movie Valentino plays a stronger and more nuanced version of his signature character: Sheik Ahmed, the impassioned lover who is initially impetuous, self centred and brutal, but who gradually matures into an admirable man. In this case, the male lead is actually the son of the original sheik, but Valentino also plays, just as engagingly, the father who is now middle aged, wiser (this is essentially the adviser role Adolphe Menjou had in the original movie) but still commanding and able to wield a sword.

As wasn't the case with "The Sheik," the script acknowledges the luridness of its material in a tongue-in-cheek manner (one memorable title card reads "The night was young at the Café Maure. Not a knife had been thrown—so far") while not mocking it to the point at the movie would lapse into parody and lose its pulpy charms. For example, in one of the most famous scenes the sheik tries to put his rebellious son in his place by bending an iron bar; the son replies by straightening it out. This is deliberate camp that nonetheless clearly establishes the strength of character and body of both men. The film also departs from the original in the frank comic relief it provides in the form of a nasty but amusing little mountebank who seems to get on the good and bad characters' nerves in equal measure.

For those expecting titillation, the film does not disappoint. Valentino and the leading lady Vilma Banky, were involved in real life and it shows in the spooning scenes. The film also has plenty of the rougher, even perverse sexuality that in one form or another is present in nearly all of Valentino's films (even "The Eagle," the closest to a family picture Valentino ever made, has that brief scene with the hero flourishing a whip before the frightened female lead). Here we have Ahmed's rape of Yasmine which is far racier than the merely hinted at ravishment of Lady Diana in "The Sheik," and a striking (and homoerotic) sequence in which Valentino, tied up, his tailored white shirt torn to shreds, is subject to a prolonged whipping by a gang of thieves, the most sadistic of whom addresses him as "My young lion."

To me, this is the quintessential Valentino film and the one to show people who are curious about this actor's enduring mystique.

I only just watched 'Son of the Sheik' on dvd last night and was amazed at the textures of cinematography and the natural un-histrionic flow of the performances. While it may not be very profound or innovative, it never set out to be, and it is a far better flick than I expected, very rounded and organic and effortless. Vilma Banky is lovely and appropriately lowkey, and Valentino is every bit as exciting to watch as his celebrity maintained. Ahmed is NOT a character performance, Oscar material or anything, but Valentino instills this cardboard figure with the warmth of life, a quickening of the pulse, all very controlled and tasteful and humanly affecting rather than superhumanly virile. Of course he looks gorgeous, but so does the film itself. Some of the slapstick may seem dated by now, but then what about 'American Pie'.