Rudolph Valentino

THE EAGLE

United Artists, 1925.  Directed by Clarence Brown.  Camera:  George Barnes.  With Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, Louise Dresser, Albert Conti.

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Vladimir Dubrovsky, a young and inexperienced Cossack lieutenant, spurns the amorous advances of the Czarina, Katherine II, and flees to his barracks.  There he finds a letter from his father asking him to plead with the Czarina to intercede on his behalf lest a neighbor, Kyrilla Troekouroff, seize his estate and castle.

Returning to the imperial castle, he discovers that there is a price on his head.  Dubrovsky returns home to find his father dying in a peasant's hut; he swears vengeance against Kyrilla and becomes The Eagle—leader of a bandit gang which befriends the poor and oppressed.  He enters Kyrilla's home in the guise of his daughter's French tutor.  Dubrovsky falls in love with the daughter (Mascha) and drops his plans for revenge.

He is arrested by the czarina's troops and sentenced to be executed.  Mascha marries him in prison, but the Czarina relents, stages a fake execution, and allows the newlyweds to leave the country.

Notes
The film was based on the short story "Dubrovsky" by Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin in Prose Tales of Alexander Pushkin (translated from the Russian by T. Keane; London, 1894).

The working title of this film was The Lone Eagle.

American Film Institute Catalog