The Eagle (1925)

Set in 18th century Russia, a lieutenant (Rudolph Valentino) in the Imperial Guard becomes a fugitive after he rejects the sexual advances of Catherine The Great (Louise Dresser). Returning to the village of his youth, he becomes a masked defender of justice known as The Black Eagle. Loosely based on the novel DUBROVSKY by Alexander Pushkin and directed by Clarence Brown (FLESH AND THE DEVIL). This romantic adventure allows Valentino to take a reprieve from playing Latin lovers and sheiks and play a relatively ordinary man with a restrained libido. I mean he flees when the Czarina insists he bed her (an early form of sexual harassment?). It's a piffle of a movie really but moderately entertaining with a minor amount of plagiarizing from THE MARK OF ZORRO which had been a major success five years earlier. The movie was a big hit with 1925 audiences. I was disappointed that the act of vengeance (an evil nobleman usurps his father's lands causing his father to die in poverty) which caused the lieutenant to become The Eagle was never carried out. Louise Dresser who plays Catherine II played the Empress Elizabeth of Russia in THE SCARLET EMPRESS where Marlene Dietrich played Catherine in 1934. With Vilma Banky, Albert Conti, James A. Marcus and Carrie Clark Ward.