changed markedly. He left behind costumbrismo and Naturalism and began to set his novels in more cosmopolitan locations than the huerta of Valencia. His plots became more sensational and melodramatic. Academic criticism of him in the English-speaking world has largely ignored those works, but they form by far the majority of his published output: some 30 works. Some of these works attracted the attention of Hollywood studios and became the basis of celebrated films. Prominently, (Blood and Sand, 1908), which follows the career of Juan Gallardo from his poor beginnings as a child in Seville to his rise to celebrity as a matador in Madrid, where he falls under the spell of the seductive Doña Sol, which leads to his downfall. Ibáñez directed a 65 min film version in 1916. There were three remakes in 1922, 1941 and 1989. His greatest personal success probably came from the novel Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) (1916), which tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian landowner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides during the First World War. When it was filmed by Rex Ingram in 1921, it became the vehicle that propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom. Rex Ingram also filmed Mare Nostrum, a spy story from 1918 that was filmed in 1926 as a vehicle for his wife Alice Terry at his MGM studio in Nice. Michael Powell claimed in his memoirs that he had his first experience of working in films on that production. A further two Hollywood films can be singled out, as they were the first films that were made by Greta Garbo following her arrival at MGM in Hollywood: The Torrent (based on Entre naranjos from 1900) and The Temptress (derived from La Tierra de Todos from 1922). Works A los pies de Venus Argentina y sus grandezas (1894) Cañas y barro, about life among the fishermen-peasants of the Albufera marshes in Valencia. Also a Spanish TV series. Cuentos valencianos El caballero de la virgen El establo de Eva, short story (1902) El intruso, about immigration to the Basque Country El oriente El papa del mar, about the antipope Benedict XIII, who established his court at Peñíscola. El parásito del tren, short story (1902) En busca del Gran Khan Entre naranjos, another Valencian piece. Also a Spanish TV series. Fantasma de las alas de oro Flor