Valentino (1977)

Simply A Masterpiece

Nice effects though.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Spoilers. Observations. Opinions.Spectacular.Spectacular costuming. Exotic furnishings.I thought Nureyev could only dance ballet. Here, he also tap dances. He does the tango. I am amazed. Rudolf and Rudolph. Both were dancers. Their names were almost alike.Leslie Caron did a great job. I enjoyed seeing her. Her character was campy and over the top. This was historically the early Roaring 20s, a post-World War One flashy era of excess and stereotypical abandonment of traditional moral values. There was a hedonism that was expressed on the silent screen. People were tired about hearing about the fighting and killing of the wartime battlefields. There were film stars, fan clubs and exotic mansions. There were scandals and movie deals. There was heartbreak. There were competition and jealousy. There were short, abbreviated film careers. Not a lot of actors lived to what we would call retirement age. Many characters in this film were based on real people. Many scenes were vignettes taken from Valentino's real life. Would these have had sound film careers? Would Valentino? Maybe their squeaky voices would never have made it. Why was it that the 1927 sound film debut occurred only two years before the 1929 Stock Market Crash and ensuing Great Depression, sending film studios and actors almost to the proverbial bread lines? Early 1920s actors' excesses could no longer be economically feasible. Weren't a lot of them broke, by that time? I am a degreed historian, actress, singer, dancer, film critic and movie reviewer.

Nureyev as Valentino. Leslie Caron in a nice role. and spirit of period. basic ingredients of a film. not astonishing. but almost seductive. new exercise of Ken Russell to present his world in usual colors and fragile shadows. a homage-film who desire give not exactly fragments of a life but skin of a myth. and the work is reasonable. this is the point to begin to discover the movie. sure, Nureyev was not the best option. but it is far to be a error his performance. only perfect example for good intentions and art to use his rare gift to cover the not inspired acting. a Russell film. this is the definition for this exotic, strange and nice movie.

I saw this movie at home more than thirty years after it was first made, and without the background to appreciate the director and his style of directing, which frankly got on my nerves. I also dislike "biographies" which take wild liberties with the actual facts of their subject's lives.But oh, the sets! Oh, the wardrobe! And most especially, oh, Nureyev!! Now lost to us due to AIDS, international ballet star Nureyev did well in this movie, over-acting and under-acting apparently per the director's instructions. Of course, every dance scene is exquisite. (I flinched at the reviewer here who burbled that golly, he's a better dancer than Al Pacino! Yes, dear; a moment on Wikipedia would tell you why.) And, given who and what Nureyev was, the nude scenes are exquisite, too, and plainly show a great deal of acting ability (neither over- nor under- ) on his part. Alas, the beautiful seduction scene in the tent has *talking*. Ah, had they only shut up! The grumpy, intrusive dialog is acidic enough to stifle the eroticism of the encounter. For that scene, one could wish this movie about the silent-film era were silent itself.Trivia: compare his nude photo shoot scene with the two women to the costuming by Bakst for Nijinsky in "Afternoon of a Faun." (Google all that to see pics.) I felt terrible when I missed the revival of the Bakst costumes and Nijinsky's choreography when "AoaF" came to my area in the early 1990s; the photo session scenes in this movie made me feel that at least, I have seen the Faun. This means that the director did the work to reproduce the 1912 original wardrobe over a decade *before* the same exhausting work was done for the 1990's revival.The rest of the movie was essentially one long jangle and blare, with artsy flashbacks and an early stab at what I guess might be magical realism, or something else disjointed, recursive, and melodramatic. In any case, it was enough to alienate me and I never did get fully into the narrative thread (narrative snarl?) of the film. So, five stars - raves for the settings and wardrobe and Nureyev, and just "eh" for everything else.

Good looking, charming, attractive, all good traits for a man to be loved by women, a real handsome, good dancer that was Valentino, but nothing else. As an actor he was a nonentity, and this is was the director Ken Russell wanted to reflect. However, the film goes as a comedy rather than a drama, difficult to follow it properly because it does not go chronologically. From this film I learned that the famous Alla Nazimova was a kind of a lesbian, and that she had bad relationships with Valentino. Too many men in US were really jealous of Valentino, this was evident from the boxing fight of an old heavyweight champ from the marine with Valentino, where the first one was defeated. In general, I was curious to see the film but it does not mean that I really liked it. A much better story should have been made if the plot were treated as a drama with more information about the lives of those directors/actors/actresses who had something to do with Valentino.