Mr. Sleeman Is Coming

     Valentino Smoking a Cigarette

     George Melford's The Sheik, from 1921, is still famous because of its star's breakout eponymous role.  Rudolph Valentino, then twenty-six years old, appeared in twenty-six feature films prior to The Sheik under variations of the name he finally became known by.  His original name, Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filbert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella, suggests the combination of maternal French and paternal Italian parentage hinted at in The Sheik, when it's revealed that his character, Ahmed Ben Hassan, is actually half-English, half-Spanish, raised by an Arab nobleman.

     I've known of Valentino most of my life; he's one of those film performers whose fame radiates from his work, to the extent that one can know a story or two about them without ever having seen their movies.  Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Grace Kelly and Elvis Presley fit this tiny category of actors and actresses who become legends.

     It's important, though, to look past the legend at what such performers have done on screen.  What's the big deal, one might ask, about James Dean?  He was only in three movies.  Could he have been everything he's supposed to be, considering his great influence on actors of his generation and the one following?  I've seen Dean's three films, East of Eden just once, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant several times each.  I admire Giant (mostly for Rock Hudson's performance), I like aspects of Rebel Without a Cause, and didn't like East of Eden (except for the amazing scene when Dean's character meets his mother).  I find Dean's acting style irritating and self-conscious, even while I appreciate what he contributed to thespian art.  Dennis Hopper, who worked with Dean in two of the latter's films, said that James Dean's advice on acting included the idea that if you're smoking a cigarette in a scene or tying your shoes in a scene, smoke the cigarette, tie your shoes--do it naturally as if there isn't a camera crew present.  It's a simple idea that's made an impact on how I direct actors when I make my own movies (as Rhombus, viewable on Youtube channel John Berner).

     Valentino, of course, had a radically different acting style in keeping with the time (1910s and 1920s) and place (Hollywood) where he worked until, at thirty-one, he died from a perforated ulcer with peritonitis following surgery.  

     For contemporary viewers, silent film acting can look ridiculous, the eyes widening too much, the physical expressions seeming overdone.  Lack of sound may have caused directors to think too much in terms of overcompensation, letting body and facial expressions do all the work, since voices were unavailable.  

     Even so, once this reticence on the viewer's part is overcome, silent films can reveal their power derived from telling stories using just images, with some title cards to convey a little dialogue now and then.  

     The Sheik is about an Englishwoman (Agnes Ayres) seeking an adventure traveling for a month in a caravan in the Sahara.  Abducted by the Sheik (Valentino) and his men, she spends the film in a captivity that gives way to voluntary guest status, becoming increasingly close to her captor due to outside threats from a different tribe.  The Sheik turns out to be well-educated, having gone to university in Paris.

     A white man in Arab's robes, taking charge in the desert, is the basic plot of Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean's epic shot four decades after The Sheik.  Lawrence wants to unify Arabs so that they can form their own nation apart from the ambitions of imperial Europe.  The Sheik is a fun-loving desert man, fighting, loving, lacking any apparent political ambitions.  There's an implication that once Agnes Ayres finds out that her abductor is really a European, he's okay to be with, someone with whom she can share a special location in his tent.  Arabs and their religion aren't disrespected in the film, but the typical Hollywood practice of casting European-American actors in ethnic roles is at play here. 

     Upon this simple plot, however, is a beautifully photographed movie.  George Melford, the director, used his stand-in locations in California desertscapes with a successful sense of conveying to the viewer the Sahara's vastness, its mysterious beauty and danger.  Some sequences are mesmerizing.  Images of horsemen thundering across the sand, sometimes riding in the far distance, almost blending with the horizon, look as exquisite as the best outdoor film imagery.  

     Agnes Ayres, like so many silent film actresses of the period, receives worshipful treatment from the camera lens.  From her first moment in the film onward, her beauty glows, matching the handsomeness of the superstar, Valentino.  

     We'll never know if he would've survived the studio's devastating (for some performers) transition to sound, which began just a year after he died.  His passing occurred during the silent film era's apex.  His legend, marked with the waning time of silent cinema, makes him seem connected to an irrecoverable world, which it is, but his image and performances live.  A careful study will reveal he was one of the great film actors; The Sheik is a good place to start if he's unknown to you, or if he seems just a legend without relatable human form.

                                                                            Vic Neptune