Review
According to legend, Rudolph Valentino's final film was tongue-in-cheek. It may have been considered so at the time, but to a modern audience, Son of the Sheik is full-blooded, romantic, silent melodrama at its very best and played with complete sincerity by everyone involved, with the exception of a couple of minor characters provided for comic relief. More than anything that would follow in the fast-approaching sound era, this desert romance relied thoroughly on sex appeal. Valentino's own, of course, bordered on mythical proportions, but Vilma Banky was awarded just as many loving close-ups and she photographed luminously. The culmination of all this cinematic lust remains Valentino, on his indigo horse, kidnapping dancing girl Banky, whom he mistakenly accuses of having betrayed him. "I may not be your first victim," he hisses to a prostrate Vilma (via a title, of course), "but, by Allah, I shall be the one you remember!" And like Agnes Ayres before her, and despite her ferocious "I hate you! I hate you!" -- Banky falls just that much more in love. Ayres herself, looking rather dowdy less than five years after her triumph in the original The Sheik (1921), plays young Ahmed's doting mother, and a title grandly informs the audience that she had "courteously consented to resume her role -- as a favor to Mr. Valentino and this picture." Valentino himself consented to play both the young hothead and his father, the original Sheik, and he does it flawlessly. The five years between the two productions changed silent screen acting for the better, and Valentino chose to portray the son more subtly than he did the father, who remained very much as he was in 1921. Had Valentino lived, Son of the Sheik would undoubtedly have put him back on top. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Synopsis
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, All Movie Guide
