74% (2)  The Son of the Sheik  68 min,  PASSED,  [Adventure, Drama, Romance]  [George Fitzmaurice]  [05 Sep 1926]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 74%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 75%,   External Reviews
Awards:  1 win.
Actors:  George Fawcett, Montagu Love, Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Bánky
Writer:  Edith Maude Hull (based on the novel by), Frances Marion (screen adaptation), Fred De Gresac (screen adaptation), George Marion Jr. (titles)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Men and women, fathers and children. Ahmed, son of Diana and Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, falls in love with Yasmin, a dancing girl who fronts her father's gang of mountebanks. Among the cutthroats is Ghobah, a villainous Moor to whom Yasmin is promised. In ruins near Touggourt, the city where Yasmin dances, she and Ahmed meet secretly until one night when her father and the gang capture the son of the sheik, torture him, and hold him for ransom. Will Ahmed believe that Yasmin set him up for capture? Even if true love finds a way through webs of deceit, what will the vigorous and imposing sheik say about his son consorting with a dancing girl?
Rotten Tomatoes:   The Son of the Sheik, Rudolph Valentino's last film, may well be his best. A sequel to (and vast improvement upon) Valentino's 1922 blockbuster The Sheik, the 1926 film casts the legendary Latin Lover in the dual role of the now-older Sheik and his son Ahmed. The latter falls in love with bejeweled dancing girl Yasmin (Vilma Banky), the daughter of a scurrilous thief, who in turn is in cahoots with Ghabah (Montagu Love), "whose crimes outnumber the desert sands." Captured, held for ransom and tortured by Ghabah, Ahmed escapes, seething with revenge. Believing that Yasmin has betrayed him, he kidnaps the girl, spirits her away to his desert tent, and rapes her (not shown, of course, but brilliantly suggested by a series of wide-eyed, soft-focus close ups). Bitterly chastised by his father, Ahmed begins feeling pangs of remorse for his treatment of Yasmin, even more so when he learns that she is innocent of all wrongdoing. He follows Yasmin to her father's den of thieves, where he vanquishes all the bad guys, saving the unspeakable Ghabah for last. Son of the Sheik was partially filmed on location in the deserts of Yuma, Arizona, under intolerable conditions that caused virtually the entire cast and crew to fall seriously ill. The finished film manages to convey a tongue-in-cheek, larger-than-life approach to its melodramatic material without ever actually making fun of that material or condescending to Valentino's legions of fans. Rudolph Valentino had made Son of the Sheik in hopes of boosting his slightly flagging career; while it succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams, Valentino, alas, had died just before the film was released. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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87% (1)  The Dark Angel  80 min,  [Drama]  [George Fitzmaurice]  [27 Sep 1925]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 87%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Frank Elliott, Ronald Colman, Vilma Bánky, Wyndham Standing
Writer:  Guy Bolton (play), Frances Marion
External Links:  Wikipedia  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Alan Trent (Ronald Colman), his cousin Gerald Shannon (Wyndham Standing) and neighbor Kitty Vane (Vilma Bánky) have grown up together...
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75% (1)  The Winning of Barbara Worth  89 min,  [Drama, Romance, Western]  [Henry King]  [14 Oct 1926]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 75%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Charles Lane, Gary Cooper, Ronald Colman, Vilma Bánky
Writer:  Rupert Hughes (titles), Frances Marion (adaptation), Harold Bell Wright (novel)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, Spanish    Country:  USA
Plot:  Jefferson Worth finds an orphaned child in the desert and raises her as his daughter, Barbara. When grown, Barbara is beloved by Abe Lee, the foreman of her father's ranch and company. When a rich land developer arrives with plans to irrigate the desert, Worth joins forces with him. The developer's foster son, Willard, falls for Barbara and a rivalry develops between him and Abe. The river is dammed, but the developer swindles the ranchers and refuses to reinforce the weakening dam, as he no longer needs it. An angry mob turns on Worth, Willard and Abe come near confrontation over Barbara, and all the time, that dam is getting weaker....
Rotten Tomatoes:   A very popular silent western, this film features two engineers vying for the affections of the adoptive daughter of a landowner. Barbara Worth (Vilma Banky) wants to help her father, Jefferson Worth (Charles Lane), build a dam on the Colorado River to help irrigate the desert land he owns. The elder Worth gets a loan from a New York banker, who brings with him his stepson, Willard Holmes (Ronald Colman), an engineer. Local engineer Abe Lee (Gary Cooper, in one of his first big roles) and Holmes both fall in love with Barbara. The banker cheats on materials for the dam as part of a shady deal. Jefferson Worth discovers the ruse and tries to finish the project himself, but he runs short of money to pay his hired hands. With the dam in jeopardy, the two rival engineers bury their differences and ride off on horses to get money to salvage the dam and save Worth, who is at the mercy of a lynch mob.
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73% (1)  The Eagle  73 min,  UNRATED,  [Action, Comedy, Drama, History, Romance]  [Clarence Brown]  [08 Nov 1925]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 73%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Albert Conti, Louise Dresser, Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Bánky
Writer:  Alexander Pushkin (novel), George Marion Jr. (titles)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Vladimir Dubrouvsky, a lieutenant in the Russian army, catches the eye of Czarina Catherine II. He spurns her advances and flees, and she puts out a warrant for his arrest, dead or alive. Vladimir learns that his father's lands have been taken by the evil Kyrilla Troekouroff, and his father dies. He dons a black mask, and becomes the outlaw The Black Eagle. He enters the Troekouroff household disguised as a French instructor for Kyrilla's daughter Mascha. He is after vengeance, but instead falls in love with Mascha.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Having side-stepped the advances of Catherine the Great herself, a wronged Russian Cossack becomes a masked avenger of the people until meeting ultimate justice at the hand of his adoring Catherine. This regally mounted Rudolph Valentino costume drama is from a novel by Aleksandr Pushkin. Gary Cooper has a brief bit.
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72% (1)  The Awakening  90 min,  [Drama, Romance]  [Victor Fleming]  [17 Nov 1928]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 72%,   External Reviews
Actors:  George Davis, Louis Wolheim, Vilma Bánky, Walter Byron
Writer:  H.H. Caldwell, Katherine Hilliker, Frances Marion (story), Carey Wilson
External Links:  Wikipedia  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  The Awakening (1928) is a feature film directed by Victor Fleming.
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