'A Riot of Arabian Color': Rudolph Valentino's The Sheik in Australia and New Zealand

Description

Hated by the critics but loved by audiences, the adaptation of EM Hull's novel The Sheik for the screen was a cinema phenomenon. It propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom as a romantic hero, and entered Australasian language and culture in a surprising number of enduring ways. Despite the film's enormous popularity, studies of cinema in Australia and New Zealand have rarely focused on films not produced here, and so we know little of audience response to The Sheik. In an attempt to understand how a film such as The Sheik played to Australasian audiences and why it had such an enduring impact I spent some of my recent Research and Study Leave following The Sheik's distribution through cinemas across New Zealand and Australia. What I found was a burgeoning entrepreneurial industry, rising consumer power of women, and the enduring rhetorical power of Arabian romance.