Valentino

First saw it on HBO (many times) about 1980. Just love the Ken Russell 'exaggerated' feel and look. Made me look into the life of Valentino, where I was disappointed to find that Ken Russell had really 'exaggerated' Rudy's life. I didn't see it again until 1998 on a trip to Canada, in a somewhat edited version. I just watched it on the True Stories channel, I fell in love with it again. Ken Russell's version of the cause of Rudy's death is much more interesting than the actual cause of Valentino's death. I taped it and expect to watch it a few more times.

In Australia in 1977 we were in the boom years and love affair with colour TV. Most cinema releases movies at the box office dropped dead.. and most were very good... or at least interesting.... VALENTINO was one of them. A wildly ambitious and quite well imagined 1920s fiction on Valentino's career and loves, this Ken Russell pic has spectacular imagery and hilarious casting (Huntz Hall as the head of Paramount) but as usual in a Russell film was seriously derailed by grotesque sexual moments. The film has a great sense of time and place and with great female casting, spectacular dance scenes and breathtaking art direction VALENTNO gives the viewer 2 hours of lavish early 20s Hollywood life. Any film with both Carol Kane and Leslie Caron with Nureyev must be seen to be believed anyway. Some cinemas of the time (well, mine anyway) ran it as a double feature with NEW YORK NEW YORK and found the same audience enjoyed both... even if they needed a meal break and a walk around the block to get through this 5 hour musical fruit salad. In the same week we also ran THE WORLD'S GREATEST LOVER which, also with Carol Kane and equally gorgeous 20s visuals missed its mark because of the insufferable antics of Gene Wilder over-eating the whole production. Yes, over-eating. Nobody survived.

Even if you know very little about Rudolph Valentino (like myself), it's obvious after just a couple of minutes that this "autobiography" doesn't have to be taken all too seriously. The dark humor and colorful, operatic way in which director Ken Russell tells his story, make this film interesting to watch, although some parts were just a little over the top to my taste (like Leslie Caron's excessive entrance at the funeral home, the cult of fans gathering outside Valentino's mansion and the scene in which Valentino and his co-star "practise" their love scene).

Although the choice of Rudolf Nureyev to play Valentino was a gamble, I think he is surprisingly well-cast in the title role. In my opinion, the whole essence of the movie was to make it look like a silent movie, whether in grotesqueness of the scenes or in the overly dramatic dialogs. In that light, Nureyev's performance should not be judged as "bad acting". His exaggerated accent and equally strong body language are part of his performance, which is supported by the fact that Nureyev in real life didn't had that much of an Russian accent (anymore) by 1977. Whether his acting style - or for that matter the style of the entire movie - appeals to you, is therefore merely an issue of personal taste than of professional capability of the filmmakers.

As a homosexual (or more accurately bisexual), Nureyev certainly would have related to the hate directed at Valentino and as a world-famous ballet dancer, he would also have been able to relate to Valentino's fame, outrageous lifestyle, the parasitic way in which some people surrounded him and the pressure of being an idol. He created an impression that I found believable and endearing.

Someone in another IMDb user review stated that Nureyev is "not handsome", "short" and "not muscular at all". Of course personal opinions about beauty may differ, but REALLY... if Nureyev is not considered the embodiment of physical perfection, than who is? This man has been a sex icon from the moment he became famous and was adored worldwide not only for his wonderful dancing, but also for his beautiful sculpted body and astonishing charisma. He definitely shows these trademarks in this movie. All his love scenes (even with Michelle Phillips, who he apparently disliked) ooze an erotic feeling. But above all, he shows that his dancing skills exceed the classical ballet. The most captivating moments for anyone with a warm place in his heart for dance, are certainly the spectacular ballroom scenes: from the passionate tango with Vaslav Nijinsky (one of several comical references to ballet) to the stunning duets with his two on-screen wives.

There are chances that you have mixed feelings after having watched this film, but in my case this is mainly due to the script. The main characters stay a little flat in the narrative and the big leaps in between the events leading to Valentino's death sometimes make it hard for people not familiar with the historical background of Valentino to truly understand the implications of the story. The "why" behind the larger-than-life popularity of this iconic cinematic person thus stays a little obscure. However, the sadness over a talented life cut off too early, is a similarity between Valentino and Nureyev (who died in 1993 as a result of AIDS) which gives the entire film a melancholic shine.

While I'm not a Ken Russell expert or afficionado, I have come to expect certain things when viewing one of his films. One is the almost obsessive attention to period detail, which is refreshing in this day and age. I mean, when Carol Kane comes out with a soup tureen full of french fries and a bottle of ketchup, you can bet your Aunt Myrtle's girdle that that bottle is period correct for the 1920s. Another thing is that Russell usually drops some sort of fever dream-styled scene into the proceedings that usually results in a form of tonal whiplash from the rest of the movie. This happens with the jail scene of Valentino and his wife. Sweet Mary, I almost had flashbacks to the torture scenes in THE DEVILS with that one. Russel definitely marches to his own beat; if the mythology behind Valentino doesn't suit his purposes, Russell simply barges ahead and creates his own. Valentino historians and fans (are there any still living?) may take issue with accuracy and sequence, but Rudolf Valentino is no sacred icon to me, so the film is a nice palate cleanser from all the corporate, comic book sausage product we've been fed of late. It's nice to see this ragtag bunch of players, from Nureyev and Mama Michelle to Leslie Caron and Carol Kane to players like John Ratzenberger in an early role. Part fever dream, part movie mag ballyhoo, the film drags during its middle/third act, but ultimately goes down easy . . . Well, as easy as a Ken Russell movie can.

As in all of his biography films Ken Russell takes no prisoners. A series of warped biographies on composers (Mahler, Tchaikovsky, List)incensed more than entertained audiences and critics. Laced with dark humor, vibrant costuming and Russell's sardonic use of the composers works in conjunction with his colorful and outlandish compositions the films were visual feasts that bordered on character assassination.

In Valentino, Russell comes to America to offer his take on silent Hollywood and its biggest star of the era, Rudolph Valentino. Russell is relentless in his depiction of the exploitative and greedy nature of producers who in the opening scene stand over Valentino's body lamenting financial loss. Russell also works over newspaper reporters, actresses, Valentino's ex-wives and a comedian known as Fatty (Arbuckle?). Dancer, Rudolph Nureyev is no actor but as Valentino his poorly pronounced flatly emoted English fits and contributes to his sympathetic character.

As in all Russell films there are scenes that are lush and grandly staged (ably assisted by ex-wife, Shirley Russell's original and over the top costuming) such as Leslie Caron's entrance at the funeral home, the fight sequence where ball room dancing takes place in between rounds, the producer with the pet gorilla in his living room, and a cult fan gathering outside Valentino's mansion.

This film quickly sank from sight when it was released and thirty years later consensus remains the same. I personally believe however that Valentino is a sharply drawn dark humored satire that spits cynicism at two institutions (Hollywood and the media) that it depended heavily on for its success. Valentino succeeds on every level and that was probably its problem.