Posts Tagged With: Adolphe Menjou

“The Sheik” a 1925 Rudolph Valentino romance, was revived yesterday at the Brooklyn Strand Theater as the first attraction on a double bill. This reviewer wasn’t movie-conscious in 1925. We can’t say how the average audience in those days received Mr. Valentino – whether they wept hot tears over the fate of the hard-put heroine at the hands of the threatening sheik, or whether they chuckled quietly at the ridiculous antics taking place on the screen. They didn’t have the opportunity to know now valuable good direction could be in bringing realism to the portrayals of the actors. But anyone who had previously watched a legitimate stage production, or who had looked about him in his everyday life, should have realized the gross exaggerations of Valentino’s passion and Agnes Ayres overwhelming self-pity. Whatever their reactions might have been, today you will either accept “The Sheik” with a smile and the appropriate hoots and boos and thereby have an enjoyable time or you will be thoroughly bored to tears. Adolphe Menjou, considerably thinner plays a featured role and even he expresses his emotions with quick, stiff actions and alarming shiftiness of eye, although he indicates through it all that he is actually a better lover than Valentino himself. To the somewhat fuzzy photography and soundless mouthing’s of the actors, a piano sound track has been synchronized. It replaces the pit pianist and carries through the atmosphere of the old-time flickers that will be an amusing revelation to the uninitiated and a nostalgic occasion for those who have mastered with the screen.