The Sheik (1921)
Plays here · source: Internet Archive
Headstrong English aristocrat Lady Diana Mayo, determined to travel the Algerian desert unescorted, is abducted by the imperious sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, and her resistance to his captivity slowly, scandalously, turns to desire.
The Sheik turned Rudolph Valentino into American cinema’s first matinee-idol sex symbol overnight, its once-scandalous captivity romance drawing lines around the block in 1921 even as it set a template — the brooding foreign abductor, the initially resistant heroine — that romance fiction and film would recycle for a century after.
Advertisement
