While less putrid than the Ken Russell debacle released a few years later, this TV biopic of Rudolph Valentino is about as truthful. At the very least, the subtitle of THE LEGEND OF VALENTINO is "A romantic fiction." It admits upfront that this script is BS.
Being a 70s TV movie, it's shot in the pedestrian fashion you'd expect and the cheese is laid on thick. There is a certain pleasure to corny TV movies very much present here, though it's soured by the film's gross sexual politics, particularly regarding the controversial Natacha Ramobva, Valentino's second wife. Rambova has been pilloried for decades as a controlling pest and heartless harpy, micromanaging Valentino's career to further her own and refusing to give him the children he so wanted. This ignores two things: 1) Rambova had a successful career as an art director and designer before Valentino entered her life; her desire to collaborate on films with him came from wanting them to be creative as well as romantic partners, and 2) Rambova was upfront about not wanting children before the two were married. I'm not arguing Rambova was an angel, but from what I've read, I have no doubt the Valentino/Ramobva marriage was initially founded on mutual affection before it all fell apart.
This movie doesn't bother with such nuance. Rambova is a monster who emasculates her husband constantly, withholding sex on their wedding night before a frustrated Valentino drags her to bed and rapes her in a scene of catastrophic bad taste. Shot in slow motion and accompanied by "The Sheik of Araby" in minor key, I'm not even sure what the filmmakers want the audience to feel watching it: Horror? Sorrow? Titillation? Satisfaction that this "evil woman" is getting subdued and humiliated? The blocking of the sequence is meant to suggest the famous ravishment scene in THE SON OF THE SHEIK, but that film is meant to be sadomasochistic fantasy divorced from reality, not a depiction of the marriage of two actual, complicated, flesh and blood human beings.
The great ironic thing about Valentino was that in real life he was not the dashing bad boy or romantic icon he played in so many movies. He was a mild-mannered guy who liked tinkering with cars and making spaghetti, and he had horrible luck in his romantic relationships. Onscreen, he took charge of swooning women, but in reality, he could barely take charge of his own life.
Both this movie and the Russell film give shallow nods to that irony but they're too obsessed with lurid sex or the question of Valentino being gay or bisexual to bother fleshing him out as a person or properly engaging with the tragedy of his celebrity. Sadly, as in Valentino's own life, the fantasy of his screen image obscures the far more fascinating reality.
Being a 70s TV movie, it's shot in the pedestrian fashion you'd expect and the cheese is laid on thick. There is a certain pleasure to corny TV movies very much present here, though it's soured by the film's gross sexual politics, particularly regarding the controversial Natacha Ramobva, Valentino's second wife. Rambova has been pilloried for decades as a controlling pest and heartless harpy, micromanaging Valentino's career to further her own and refusing to give him the children he so wanted. This ignores two things: 1) Rambova had a successful career as an art director and designer before Valentino entered her life; her desire to collaborate on films with him came from wanting them to be creative as well as romantic partners, and 2) Rambova was upfront about not wanting children before the two were married. I'm not arguing Rambova was an angel, but from what I've read, I have no doubt the Valentino/Ramobva marriage was initially founded on mutual affection before it all fell apart.
This movie doesn't bother with such nuance. Rambova is a monster who emasculates her husband constantly, withholding sex on their wedding night before a frustrated Valentino drags her to bed and rapes her in a scene of catastrophic bad taste. Shot in slow motion and accompanied by "The Sheik of Araby" in minor key, I'm not even sure what the filmmakers want the audience to feel watching it: Horror? Sorrow? Titillation? Satisfaction that this "evil woman" is getting subdued and humiliated? The blocking of the sequence is meant to suggest the famous ravishment scene in THE SON OF THE SHEIK, but that film is meant to be sadomasochistic fantasy divorced from reality, not a depiction of the marriage of two actual, complicated, flesh and blood human beings.
The great ironic thing about Valentino was that in real life he was not the dashing bad boy or romantic icon he played in so many movies. He was a mild-mannered guy who liked tinkering with cars and making spaghetti, and he had horrible luck in his romantic relationships. Onscreen, he took charge of swooning women, but in reality, he could barely take charge of his own life.
Both this movie and the Russell film give shallow nods to that irony but they're too obsessed with lurid sex or the question of Valentino being gay or bisexual to bother fleshing him out as a person or properly engaging with the tragedy of his celebrity. Sadly, as in Valentino's own life, the fantasy of his screen image obscures the far more fascinating reality.