Word: rudolph
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Rudolph Valentino was among the most put-upon of movie stars. Forced to live in-and with-a screen persona that could not have been at wider variance from his true spirit; bearing the crushing load of fame in an era unfamiliar with violations of privacy; bewildered by two absurd marriages and harassed by studio bosses intent on protecting their "property" at the expense of the man, he provides the stuff of primal screen drama...
...moguls. As usual, Russell hammers one over the head with gaudy and excessive cliches of a bygone era's decor. They have a certain visual excitement, but they say more about his own feverish temperament than about the spirit of the age. The use of Rudolf Nureyev for Rudolph Valentino was canny in conception-both men display an animal magnetism that audiences have found irresistible. But Rudy I had a very different appeal from Rudy II; the Valentino swagger was manifestly a device to hide his vulnerability and naiveté. Nureyev is an athlete, a sophisticated stage performer bewildered...
...Rudolph Valentino can justly lay claim to a certain degree of historical importance in the evolution of American cinema. During his extraordinary success in the '20s he revolutionized the prevailing conception of how a leading man should look and act. And his rise to the top of the silent film industry, the nation's newest rage, represented a sociological phenomenon in itself, given Valentino's immigrant background and the xenophobic America of the '20s. Russell's film never pauses to reflect on the significance of Valentino's legacy, however. The director seems too obsessed with the glory and worship heaped...
Perhaps the single most important quality that sold America on Rudolph Valentino was the romantic figure he cut during his short-lived heyday. He challenged the power wielded by Hollywood's biggest moguls over scripts and salaries, always standing by an almost quixotic sense of honor in an epoch sorely lacking men of principle. Although his career suffered accordingly, the legend that lingers only profits from this irrepressible streak. But in the film this trait is largely neglected until the concluding portion, when Russell decides to end the film with a famous boxing exhibition between a tubercular Valentino...
...rating could fall even further. Only a few weeks ago, Congressmen visiting their districts were hearing almost nothing about Lance from constituents. Now some of them are hearing almost nothing else. Reports from TIME's U.S. bureaus confirm this concern. Atlanta Bureau Chief Rudolph Rauch noted that Carter's support of Lance?"Bert, I'm proud of you"?is proving costly: "With that declaration Carter managed to obliterate the one element that made him different?the innocence of the outsider, the incorruptibility of the unentrenched. That difference was his major hold on the American people." Other bureaus saw that...