The Eagle (Rudolph Valentino - 1925) Complete (HD)

“The Eagle” was one of Rudolph Valentino’s last films before his death in 1926 at the age of 31.

I previously released this movie on YouTube in 4 parts (in standard definition, this is the complete film in high definition.

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 when he infiltrates Kyrilla’s castle only to fall in love with his daughter, Mascha (Vilma Blanky)

Although they are often referred to as “silent” movies, films from the 1920’s were never really silent. They didn’t featured dialog, but they were always shown with live musical accompaniment, provide by a pianist, organist or an orchestra ranging from a few musicians to over 30 players.

To provide the required music, generic musical themes were printed literally by the thousands by virtually every music publishing firm in the United States and Europe. Cue sheets were also created by several different companies to aid the theater’s music director piece these themes together into a coherent score suitable for each specific film. A cue sheet 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.

This score for “The Eagle” is based on the original cue sheet prepared by James Bradford and features a mix of classical music (many by Russian composers) as well as extracts from operas and generic photoplay musical themes. In addition, I made substitutions 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. There were only two character themes specified in the original cue sheet – “The Eagle Theme” is “Le Seigneur de Kermor” (loosely translated “The Lord of Terror”) by Gabriel-Marie and “Love Theme” - “Russian Folk Song” or “Romance” by Otto Klemm. I decide to add a theme for the character of Kyrilla and used “Cossack Revels” by Ivan Tschakoff which was originally used only once on the original cue sheet. A lot of the music I inserted is some of my favorites from the “A.B.C. Dramatic Sets” published by Photoplay Music Company and composed by Ernst Luz. Although virtually unknown today, Ernst Luz was the music director for the “Lowes” chain of theatres and was at one time responsible for over 1600 musicians and 50 organists.

My original score was arranged and performed on a theatre pipe organ but for this video it has been arranged for a medium to large theatre size orchestra typical of what someone might have heard and experienced if they saw this movie in a large movie theater in 1925.

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!