The Eagle (1925) - Excerpt 1

Released in 1925, "The Eagle" was one of Rudolph Valentino’s last films before his death in 1926 at the age of 31. Based loosely on the novel “Dubrovsky” by Alexander Pushkin, Valentino plays Vladimir Dubrovsky, a Lieutenant serving in the Imperial Guard of the Russian Army. After rejecting advances by the Czarina and receiving news that his father’s lands have been seized by Kyrilla Troekouroff, a corrupt neighbor who is terrorizing the countryside, he deserts the Army and departs for home. Arriving only to find his father has died, he adopts the persona of The Black Eagle, vowing vengeance and promising to help the peasants who are also being terrorized by Kyrilla. Complications arise, however, when he infiltrates Kyrilla’s castle only to fall in love with his daughter, Mascha (Vilma Blanky).

Although they are referred to as “silent” movies, movies in the ‘20s were always shown with live musical accompaniment. Cue sheets were produced by several companies to aid musicians prepare a score for the film. A cue sheets is simply a list of the scenes in the movie referenced to a visual cue, and listed by scene length and a suggested piece of music that would fit the action on the screen. It was then up to the organist or music director to obtain the suggested piece of music (usually from the theatre’s music library) and use it for the film.

Cue sheets can range from terrible to very good but they often miss important cues or use music that doesn’t really fit the action on the screen. The original cue sheet for "The Eagle" was prepared by James Bradford and featured classical music by several Russian composers as well as extracts from operas and generic photoplay musical themes.

The following excerpt from "The Eagle" uses about half of the original cues from the 1925 cue sheet along with other pieces that I substituted when I either couldn’t locate a copy of the suggested piece or I thought it didn’t fit the scene as well as it should. I performed my original score in concert on a theatre pipe organ but I have arrange this score for this excerpt for large orchestra.

Turning on the closed captioning as you play this video will let you see the titles of each piece of music when they start during the movie.

Enjoy!