The greatest male attraction in exotic, adventurous romantic pictures was handsome, hot-blooded Italian-born import Rudolph Valentino, after his breakthrough appearance in the famous tango scene in director Rex Ingram's spectacle The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Dubbed the "Latin Lover," the matinee idol symbolized the forbidden and mysterious eroticism denied to American women in the 1920s in such films as The Sheik (1921), Camille (1921), the successful Blood and Sand (1922), The Eagle (1925), and The Sheik's popular sequel The Son of the Sheik (1926). The Son of the Sheik was a tremendous hit, released at the time of Valentino's funeral.

In 1926, his death came at the untimely age of 31, due to a perforated ulcer and peritonitis. Crowds in New York, mostly female mourners, verged on mass hysteria as they tried to view his body. [One of Valentino's legacies was that a brand of popular condoms was named after his role in one of his most famous films.] Native-born director Clarence Brown, who had directed Valentino in The Eagle (1925) also directed imported actress Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1927), Woman of Affairs (1928), and turn-of-the-decade Anna Christie (1930).

German Expressionism and Its Influence:

Later in Germany, Fritz Lang's last major silent film was H. G. Wells' fantasy Metropolis (1927) - the expensive film enriched cinema in years to come with its innovative techniques, futuristic sets and Expressionistic production design, and allegorical study of the class system. Murnau's notable silent film weepie classic The Last Laugh (1924) told its entire story about a proud but demoted hotel doorman (Emil Jannings) through visualization, innovative camera movements (with only one inter-title), stylized mis-en-scene, a subjective point-of-view, and optical effects. Both Lang's Metropolis and Murnau's The Last Laugh were filmed by the pioneering German cameraman Karl Freund.

Murnau also filmed Moliere's 17th century satire Tartuffe (1925) as a movie within a movie, and Goethe's tragedy Faust (1926) with stunning chiaroscuro, images of medieval castles, huge mountains and Faust (Gosta Ekman) flying with Mephisto (Emil Jannings). Faust was the film that gave Murnau a contract with Hollywood's Fox Studios. The dark films of Josef von Sternberg in the late 1920s ushered in the gangster film: Underworld (1927), The Drag Net (1929), and The Docks of New York (1929).

Austrian-born director Erich von Stroheim's style was more harsh and European than the works of other imported directors. He had begun as an assistant director to D. W. Griffith. His specialty was the melodramatic portrayal of a decadent Europe with audacious scenes of sexuality. His brooding and expensive Foolish Wives (1921) was the longest commercially-made American film to be released uncut at 6 hours and 24 minutes in Latin America, but it was severely edited to a 10-reel version for general release. Von Stroheim's admired nine-hour, 42-reel silent masterpiece Greed (1924) (a detailed adaptation of Frank Norris' novel McTeague) was screened only once in its original form for newly-formed MGM executives including Irving Thalberg, and then severely cut down to its current length of 133 minutes (about 10 reels). Reportedly, the 32 reels of edited negatives were melted down by MGM to extract the valuable silver nitrate from the film stock. The same difficulties of extravagant over-spending and interminable length also plagued his film The Wedding March (1928).

Legendary Russian auteur director Sergei Eisenstein's classic landmark and visionary film, Battleship Potemkin (1925) was released in the US in 1926, advancing the art of cinematic storytelling with the technique of montage (or film editing). Its most celebrated film scene, with superb editing combining wide, newsreel-like sequences inter-cut with close-ups of harrowing details - to increase tension, was the Odessa Steps episode. It was based upon the incident in 1905 when civilians and rioters were ruthlessly massacred. In the scene (with 155 separate shots in less than five minutes), the Czarist soldiers fired on the crowds thronging on the Odessa steps with the indelible, kinetic image of a baby carriage careening down the marble steps leading to the harbor, and the symbolism of a stone lion coming awake. [The scene was parodied in a number of films, including Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) and Brian DePalma's The Untouchables (1987).]

Another technological cinematic achievement was attained by experimental French filmmaker Abel Gance in his film Napoleon (1927), a visually revolutionary picture originally six hours long and partially filmed with panoramic, "triptych" Polyvision (three-screens side-by-side to create a wide-screen effect, later known by future generations as Cinerama) at its climax. This meant that the film had to be shot with three synchronized cameras, and then projected on a gigantic, 3-part screens. [Within a few years, Fox's Grandeur wide-screen system was an early attempt at 70 mm. film gauge.]

And at the end of the decade, the influential and creative film The Man with the Movie Camera (1929) from experimental cameraman/director Dziga Vertov, employed some of the first uses of the split screen, montage editing, and rapidly-filmed scenes in its view of Moscow.

Comedy Flourished:

Chaplin also appeared in The Pilgrim (1923) - in which he mimed the David and Goliath story, and in the classic The Gold Rush (1925), a story with pathos and wild comedy about a Lone Prospector in Alaska. Chaplin was presented with a special Academy Award "for versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing, and producing" for The Circus (1928). Chaplin's comedies were matched by the acrobatics and dare-devil antics of silent comic Harold Lloyd, who appeared as a gallant, 'never-say-die' All-American "Boy" (with glasses) in Safety Last (1923) - famous for his harrowing climb up the side of a tall building, Girl Shy (1924), The Freshman (1925), and The Kid Brother (1927).

There was also the inspired comedic work of passively-unsmiling, sardonic Buster Keaton (The Great Stone Face) in Sherlock, Jr. (1924) (Keaton's first solo directorial work), The Navigator (1924), the Civil War epic The General (1927) (Keaton co-directed with Clyde Bruckman) about a runaway train with spectacular sight gags, Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) - his last independent film, and The Cameraman (1928), Keaton's first film for MGM that also marked the beginning of his decline.

And bulbous-nosed master comic W. C. Fields first juggled in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway in New York City from 1915-1921. In the mid-20s, he moved to Hollywood and wrote, directed, and starred in films. His first film was the one-reel Pool Sharks (1915). After appearing in the Broadway musical Poppy, he starred in D.W. Griffith's screen version of the circus film, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925). (It was later remade as Poppy (1936), with Fields in the same role.)