The Conquering Power [DVD] [1921]

Director Rex Ingram's The Conquering Power served as the much-anticipated reteaming of Ingram's stars from Blood and Sand, Alice Terry (aka Mrs. Rex Ingram) and Rudolph Valentino. The latter plays an impoverished French aristocrat who falls in love with Alice, the stepdaughter of his wicked uncle Eric Mayne. Uncle is dead set against this romance, and to that end place insurmountable roadblocks in the lovers' path. But Valentino, who has proven that he can make his own way in the world, eventually wins Alice away from Mayne-but not before the old man has suffered a suitably gruesome demise. The Conquering Power is a prettied-up adaptation of Honore de Balzac's Eugenie Grandet.~Hal Erickson