Cobra is Rudolph Valentino in a modern drama, as an Italian count who comes to New York and must choose between love and honour.
Cobra (1925), directed by Joseph Henabery and based on a play by Martin Brown, stars Valentino as Count Rodrigo Torriani, an Italian nobleman who, after a scandal, moves to New York, where he works as an antiques expert and becomes involved with a married woman and a young secretary.
Valentino’s Rodrigo is elegant, restrained and melancholic, and the film’s modern setting, unlike his exotic roles, shows him in contemporary clothes and manners. His performance is quieter than in The Sheik, and it was praised for its maturity.
It is a signature role because it is Valentino’s most modern, adult drama of the mid-1920s, and because it shows that his appeal did not depend on costume or desert.