CONQUERING POWER, THE
(director: Rex Ingram; screenwriters: June Mathis/based on the novel Eugenie
Grandet by Honore de Balzac; cinematographer: John F. Seitz; cast: Alice
Terry (Eugenie Grandet), Rudolph Valentino (Charles Grandet), Ralph Lewis
(Pere Grandet), Edna Demaurey (Mrs. Grandet), Edward Connelly (Notary Cruchot),
Eric Mayne (Victor Grandet), Bridgetta Clark (Lucienna des Grassins), George
Atkinson (Cruchot's son Bonface), Guide Fenton (Monsieur des Grassins);
Runtime: 89; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Rex Ingram; UnknownVideo/MGM; 1921-silent)

"The melodrama is outdated,
the romance is corny and the acting is ham-fisted, but it's Valentino."

After the smash hit of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse the previous
year, the now superstar Rudolph Valentino reunites with the same team of
skipper Rex Ingram, screenwriter June Mathis (credited with discovering
Valentino) and actress Alice Terry (Ingram's wife). Valentino hush didn't
get star salary (earned $350 a week) even all the same he without delay was one and when
he asked MGM for a raise of $100, he was given only $50. Account it
a slight, he left the studio repayment for Paramount. MGM realized they made a big
mistake, as his Paramount films of The Sheik and Blood and Sand were huge
hits. The look for speaks their lines in French, I think, to sustenance in the
mood of the testimony. It's based on the 1883 novel Eugenie Grandet by Honore
de Balzac, but the story is ruined by the crass commercially intended rewriting
by Mathis who built up Valentino's part while Ingram fought to built up
his wife's part. The melodrama is outdated, the romance is corny and the
acting is ham-fisted, but it's Valentino
.
The conquering power is, off course, love.

Charles Grandet (Rudolph Valentino) is the pampered son of a Paris
millionaire banker Victor Grandet (Eric Mayne), living a decadent life
as a playboy. On Charles' twenty-seventh birthday celebration his despondent
father sends his son to the Noyant countryside to live with estranged brother
Pere Grandet (Ralph Lewis)–the wealthiest man in the country. Charles
immediately falls in love with his angelic cousin Eugenie (Alice Terry)
but the mean-spirited and miserly Pere Grandet, who lives on the cheap
as if he were a poor man, is determined to keep them apart. The next day
Charles learns in the newspapers that his father committed suicide and
lost his entire fortune in speculation, which leaves him penniless. Victor
sent the following letter to his brother Pere: "My dear brother, After
twenty years, I am sending my son to you. By the time this letter reached
you, I shall be no more. My entire fortune has been swept away by speculation
on the stock market. I owe millions. In three days all Paris will say I
was a rogue and I shall be wrapped in a winding sheet of infamy. My dying
prayer is that you will be a father to my boy and may God bless you as
you fulfill this trust. Your despairing brother, Victor Grandet."

Pere Grandet schemes to cheat the youth out of his legitimate inheritance
and dispatches him to Martinique, not realizing that Eugenie gave him her
gold to pay for the voyage. When Charles writes that he invested the gold
and is able to pay her back, the father intercepts his letters and writes
that she married. While she's being pursued by two greedy families, the
Cruchots and the Grassins, with oafish sons, the skin-flint Pere plays
them off against one another as he milks the gold diggers for as much money
as he can while they pant at the possibility of marrying into such wealth.
Years later, Eugenie accidently discovers the letters of Charles's in Pere's
desk. She goes out to the garden to read them, where the two exchanged
vows of love, while the enraged Pere accidently locks himself in his room
and gets crushed to death when a chest of gold falls on him. Charles will
soon appear just before Eugenie was to marry the doddering son of the notary's,
Bonface Cruchot, and love will win out.

REVIEWED ON 6/7/2006        GRADE:
B-

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

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