Ayres, Agnes

The Sheik / The Son of the Sheik (Special Edition)

If you have the slightest interest in the phenomenon called Rudolph Valentino, this terrific disc is absolutely the place to start. The screen's great male sex god of the 1920s had a mammoth success with The Sheik, a slice of desert romance both exciting and completely absurd. Valentino plays a dashing "sheik of Araby" who rather forcefully romances an adventure-minded English lady (Agnes Ayres); if the story creaks with Victorian storytelling conventions, it also works. Five years later Valentino returned to the sands with his final film, The Son of the Sheik, playing both his original role and the sheik's impetuous boy. More madness here, and a wild saber duel on horseback at night reminds us they don't make movies like this any more. Valentino's faux-exotic allure may seem curious to modern viewers, but squint hard and you can imagine the frenzy caused by the sultry eyes and rapacious grin. --Robert Horton

The great silent screen lover Rudolph Valentino is captured in his most famous role in this special double feature. Women fainted in the aisles when "The Sheik" (1921, 86 min.) was released, as Lady Diana Mayo (Agnes Ayres) is carried into the desert by an Arab chieftain (Valentino) who takes one look at her and wants her, right then and there. Nobody had seen anything like Valentino's natural sex appeal on the screen before, and the sequel "The Son of the Sheik" (1926, 69 min.) was designed to revive Valentino's flagging career. In the sequel, Young Ahmed (Valentino) falls in love with Yasmin, a dancing girl (Vilma Banky), but he is captured and tortured by bandits. Believing Yasmin to be responsible, he escapes and plans his own form of revenge, although true love, of course, finally prevails. In New York for the premiere of "The Son of the Sheik," Valentino collapsed and died eight days later at the age of 31. The public hysteria surrounding his funeral is documented in the original Pathe newsreel which rounds out this extraordinary DVD.

The Affairs of Anatol

The Master of Spectacle, Cecil B. De Mille, directed this risque all-star revue of decadence which must have been jaw-dropping in 1921 and remains astonishing today. Anatol de Witt Spencer (Wallace Reid), as incredibly wealthy as he is naive, and his child-like bride Vivian (Gloria Swanson) are on their honeymoon. At a posh speakeasy he spies his high school sweetheart, who is obviously the sex toy of flamboyant old Gordon Bronson . To Vivian's dismay, idealistic Anatol decides to rescue the seductive Emilie, but soon she goes back to Bronson. The cycle begins again when Anatol tries to save another wayward woman from her life of sin before finally succumbing himself to the ways of the flesh. In "The Affairs of Anatol," not only does DeMille show women smoking, drinking (during Prohibition), exposing body parts seldom before seen on a movie screen, and frankly pursuing men who attract them; he also presents this debauchery with amazing visual flair. With film design by Erte, De Mille clearly meant "The Affairs of Anatol" to be as much a decorative as a dramatic feast. The film is digitally mastered from an elaborate original print featuring hand coloring, stencil coloring, and dozens of changes in color tint and tone, in itself a striking work of art.

Son of the Sheik

Chaplin's Essanay Comedies, Vol. 01

In Chaplin's Essanay Comedies, made in 1915, cinema's greatest comedian was first able to build his screen work around his performance style rather than forcing himself, as before, into Mack Sennett's frenzied Keystone comedy matrix. With this freedom Chaplin evolved in a year from the gag comedian of "His New Job" to the brilliant pantomimist of "A Night Out," "The Champion," "The Tramp" and "Shanghaied" to the profound satirist of "Police." Volume 1 includes: "His New Job," "A Night Out," "The Champion," "In the Park," "A Jitney Elopement" (all 1915).