Valentino, Desert Romance, and The Sheik

Perhaps one of the best known silent film's and the film that started the idea of the male sex symbol way back in the 1920s, George Melford and William Marshall's 1921 film The Sheik might be one of the best romance films ever made. The film plays out like a harlequin romance novel with the dashing Rudolph Valentino as the male lead at the height of his film career. After this film was released, flappers had tons of Valentino posters hanging up in their rooms and caused a cultural craze for everything Arabian. If you want, you can watch the film yourself here.

Valentino plays Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, a French educated Arab Sheik who has his every wish commanded, fights fierce in battle and even fiercer in love. Lady Diana Mayo (Agnes Ayers) is a British expatriate, staying with her brother Sir Aubrey (Frank Butler) in the Algerian town of Biskra. The Sheik catches her trying to sneak into the all-Arabian casino and finds something attractive in her fire and spunk. He sings outside her window that night and when she goes off into the desert on a guided tour with Mustapha Ali (Charles Brinley), he captures her and brings her back to his camp to be his wife. Diana is sullen in the desert and does not instantly fall in love with the Sheik, as he had planned. After raping her, the Sheik feels guilty and gives everything to her that she asks for, except her freedom. The Sheik's old friend, French writer Raoul de Saint Hubert (Adolphe Menjou) tells him this is a foolish way to win Diana's heart and the Sheik agrees to let her go. Before this can happen, Diana is captured by the desert bandits let by the Sheik's enemy Omair (Walter Long) and it is up to the Sheik to save her.

A lot has been written dissecting this film within modern social, political, sexual, and racial contexts. For an article that discuses The Sheik and sexuality in films, you can read here.This article deals with the social mores that surrounded the making and aftermath of The Sheik's release. This article deals with racial profiling in movies such as in The Sheik and this article specifically deals with the treatment of Arabs in Hollywood cinema. All of these are good background readings for the film, if you want to see how it is currently intrepreted by several groups.

For reviews on the film, you can read this article from the Film Reel blogspot that gives some history of Valentino and the film. This review from the Media Center discusses the context of the film and interpretations of it, as do the articles in the paragraph above. Phoenix Cinema does a review of this film and its sequel Son of the Sheik, which was released in 1926 and also stared Valentino.