Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (April 17, 2025)
If one wanted to choose the first-ever Hollywood romantic idol, Rudolph Valentino feels like a good choice. Valentino leapt to stardom via 1921’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
When wealthy Argentinian landowner Don Julio Madariaga (Pomeroy Cannon) dies, his two daughters move to the homelands of their husbands. This sends Elena (Mabel Van Buren) and Karl von Hartrott (Alan Hale) to Germany and Luisa (Bridgetta Clark) and Marcelo Desnoyers (Josef Swickard) to France.
Now located in Paris, Marcelo’s son Julio (Valentino) woos the ladies and eventually runs into trouble when he leads an affair with married Marguerite Laurier (Alice Terry). Eventually the outbreak of World War I interferes, and that leads the two sides of the clan into conflict.
Prior to my April 2025 screening of Apocalypse, I’d seen precisely one Valentino flick: The Sheik, an effort that came out later in 1921. I described it as “over-ripe cheese” and thought Valentino came across as a leering weirdo.
In other words, I didn’t like it. Would Apocalypse offer a superior Valentino offering?
Totally. While I can’t call this a great film, it nonetheless fares substantially better than The Sheik does.
Admittedly, I still don’t get why ladies in the Roaring Twenties became so enamored of Valentino. As I mentioned in my earlier review, he was a good-looking guy but I continue to feel befuddled why female moviegoers 104 years ago swooned for him so heavily.
That said, Valentino created a much more appealing presence via Apocalypse than he did with Sheik. He really does come across like a creep in Sheik.
Here Valentino tones down his act substantially and he avoids the extreme overacting he demonstrated in Sheik. Indeed, though silent film performances tended to lean broad, the entire cast largely stays relatively restrained during Apocalypse, so we rarely fin the kind of acting that looks silly to modern eyes.
Admittedly, I wouldn’t call the actors’ work natural, but I also find it hard to locate anyone who goes over the top here. The castmembers keep things about as close to realistic as I can expect from a silent film.
Apocalypse also simply provides a more compelling story than Sheik, albeit one that meanders. Much of the movie’s first half comes across as a mix of family drama and romantic melodrama.
Those elements work fine, I guess. While I can’t say the dynamics of the extended Madariaga clan become especially interesting, the movie develops the roles in a moderately compelling manner.
Most of the flick’s second half deals with World War I, and those elements bring their own sense of intrigue, though they can lack much focus. Essentially the last hour of Apocalypse concentrates more on a “war is hell” theme than real character or narrative development.
And this also seems fine, though it does come across as a bit odd that many of the primary roles from the first half tend to fade into the background. While we still encounter some of those folks, the narrative weaves around a bit too much to create a consistent character through-line for us to follow.
This feels especially true because Apocalypse sets up Julio as its primary focus but it loses him for extended periods. While he comes back into play eventually, the decision to sideline Julio for a big chunk of the movie’s second half leads to some lackluster development.
Still, Apocalypse comes with reasonable drama and keeps us with it. As mentioned, I also think it presents a more natural and less overcooked experience than I expect from this era.
While I can’t claim I think Apocalypse offers a great movie, it does create a largely interesting one, partly because it offers insight into the perspective of the world only a few years after the conclusion of World War I. These factors make it a fairly interesting experience.
