Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Fun Lilliy YouTube Wed Night Selection The Silent Classic Movie " The Sheik " (1921)


This was the first time I ever seen a complete silent movie.. but I had heard so much about Rudolph Valentino These paragraphs are from Wikipedia:
Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was an Italian actor. He was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi in Castellaneta, Italy, to a middle-class family. In the 1920s, Valentino was known as a Latin sex symbol......
As a child, Valentino was spoiled and troublesome. He did poorly in school and constantly had to transfer to avoid being failed. He mainly did poorly because he would skip class or not pay attention....
In 1912, he left for Paris where he spent less than a year before losing his money and asking his mother to send him funds to return to Italy. When he returned to Italy he was unable to secure employment and everyone was sure he would never succeed in life. His uncles decided he should be sent to the United States where they felt he could learn to be a man.....
he changed his name from Rodolfo Guglielmi to several variations of 'Rudolph Valentino', partly to avoid association with the earlier scandal and partly because Americans had trouble pronouncing Guglielm...
Valentino ( casted) as a male lead in her next film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Released in 1921, the film was a commercial and critical...It also led to his iconic role in The Sheik and The Son of the Sheik...
Women loved him and thought him the epitome of romance. However, American men were very threatened and would walk out of his movies in disgust.
On August 15, 1926, Valentino collapsed at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City. He was hospitalized at the Polyclinic in New York and underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer.The surgery went well and he seemed to be recovering when peritonitis set in and spread throughout his body. He died eight days later, at the age of 31. An estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of New York City to pay their respects at his funeral

I had seen once a movie mad about him and his life which was very interesting and sad at the same time.. This Movie " The Sheik " was the movie that made him a timeless silent movie legend.. I thought it was entertaining especially the way they portrait The Arab Man, The Arabs, and their culture in those times .. like most legends he had died young at the age of 31.. there is a clip at the end of the movie about his death..
I hope you too find my selection intresting too..
But please answer me this question.. Have you ever seen a silent movie before? What was its name? Did you like it?

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2 comments:

rosh said...

It is quite entertaining and sort of amusing, watching a movie minus all sorts of sound effects. Thanks for the videos - I liked the first 5 minutes the most - got to watch a lot of the true desert and trees, something we rarely see these days.

Anonymous said...

Rosh.. yes I thought it was amusing as well I actually had always wanted to see this Movie because its Valintino most famous one.. I was glad to have stumbled upon it on YouTube while I was browsing classic movies.. and I thought it would be interesting to share.. I am sure a lot of our generation haven't seen a silent movie before think at least not a complete one.. and yes it was nice to see those scenes too.. I am actually going to look up where it was made it would be nice to know..