The Sheik (1921)
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.
Background
The Sheik turned Rudolph Valentino into American cinema’s first major matinee idol, playing an imperious desert sheik who abducts an English aristocrat and whose captivity of her slowly turns to mutual attraction. The film was considered scandalous on release for its romantic and sexual frankness, and it drew large crowds specifically because of that reputation. George Melford directed from a novel that had already been a bestseller.
What to watch for
Watch for how the film establishes a template, the brooding foreign abductor and the initially resistant heroine, that romance fiction and film would return to repeatedly for decades afterward, for better and for worse by modern standards. Valentino’s performance and the film’s success helped define the “Latin lover” screen archetype that shaped how Hollywood cast and marketed him for the rest of his brief career. It is worth watching with an awareness of how its central romance would read very differently today.
