Word: valentinos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...VALENTINO. Directed by Ken Russell. Screenplay by Russell and Martin...
...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...
...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 only...
This leaves only one species for whom Russell can produce a kind word-and we are to understand that homosexuality is the sole source of Valentino's saintly patience and stoic courage. To illustrate this, the director concocts a sequence in which the star challenges one of his macho journalistic tormentors to a boxing match, takes a vicious beating but finally kayoes the nasty man, in the style of a gay Rocky...
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...