Rudolph
Valentino and Other
Exotic Lovers
June 15 - 30, 2002
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Program Introduction
Saturday, June 15
1:00 p.m.
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
Metro, 1921, 122 mins. Directed by Rex Ingram. With Rudolph Valentino,
Alice Terry. In the film that made him an instant celebrity, Valentino
tangos through Paris while the Great War rocks the foundations of western
civilization.
4:30 p.m.
BLOOD AND SAND
Paramount, 1922, 113 mins. Directed by Fred Niblo. With Rudolph Valentino,
Nita Naldi. Playing another doomed Ibanez hero, Valentino triumphs as
a celebrated matador whose most dangerous encounters occur outside the
bull ring.
Sunday, June 16
2:00 p.m.
THE TORRENT
MGM, 1926, 75 mins. Directed by Monta Bell. With Greta Garbo, Ricardo
Cortez. Greta Gustaffson (Garbo, in her first American film) and Jacob
Krantz (who had taken the screen name Cortez) put their own spin on Latin
lovemaking in yet another Ibanez adaptation.
4:00 p.m.
THE TEMPTRESS
MGM, 1926, 93 mins. Directed by Fred Niblo and Mauritz Stiller. With Greta
Garbo, Antonio Moreno. Garbo plays a female Valentino who goes to pieces
when she falls for Spanish-born heartthrob Antonio Moreno.
Saturday, June 22
2:00 p.m.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ARCHIVAL PRINT
THE SHEIK
Paramount, 1921, 85 mins. Directed by George Melford. With Rudolph Valentino,
Agnes Ayres. Based on the once notorious novel by E.M. Hull, this cultural
milestone dared to push the notion of exotic love toward the racial divide.
4:00 p.m.
SON OF THE SHEIK
United Artists, 1926, 74 mins. Directed by George Fitzmaurice. With Rudolph
Valentino, Vilma Banky. In his farewell to the screen, Valentino manages
to parody his own image without losing the passion that made it so compelling.
Sunday, June 23
2:00 p.m.
LOVES OF CARMEN
Fox, 1927, 90 mins. Directed by Raoul Walsh. With Dolores Del Rio, Don
Alvarado. Was Mérimée’s gypsy the first Latin Lover?
Directing the fabulous Mexican star Dolores del Rio, Raoul Walsh turns
up the heat on an old favorite.
4:00 p.m.
UCLA FILM AND TELEVISION ARCHIVE RESTORED PRINT
THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN
Paramount, 1935, 83 mins. Directed by Josef von Sternberg. With Marlene
Dietrich, Lionel Atwill, Cesar Romero. Von Sternberg’s baroque vision
of the battle of the sexes, with his Berlin nightingale as the ultimate
Spanish cigarette worker, Concha Perez.
Saturday, June 29
2:00 p.m.
CAMILLE
Metro, 1921, 65 mins. Directed by Ray Smallwood. With Alla Nazimova, Rudolph
Valentino. Nazimova’s modernistic version of the tale of the tubercular
courtesan featured not only Valentino as Armand, but eye-popping sets
by his future wife, Natacha Rambova.
4:00 p.m.
CAMILLE
First National, 1927, 54 mins. Directed by Fred Niblo. With Norma Talmadge,
Gilbert Roland. Like Nazimova, Norma Talmadge played Camille in modern
dress, and cast an upcoming Latin lover as her Armand (Mexican Gilbert
Roland, better known later as The Cisco Kid). A rare screening of the
only surviving print of this version.
Sunday, June 30
2:00
p.m.
LIVE MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT BY JOHN SPURNEY
IN GAY MADRID
MGM, 1930, 85 mins. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard. With Ramon Novarro,
Dorothy Jordan. A rare showing of the silent version of this charming
romantic comedy, with a rare Latin role for Valentino’s nearest rival,
Mexican idol Ramon Novarro.
New 35mm print
4:00 p.m.
UCLA FILM & TELEVISION ARCHIVE RESTORED PRINT
UNDER A TEXAS MOON
Warner Bros., 1930, 80 mins. Directed by Michael Curtiz. With Frank Fay,
Raquel Torres. Mexican adventurer Don Carlos (Frank Fay—don’t
ask) captures cattle rustlers and toys with Latin lovelies Raquel Torres,
Armida, and Myrna Loy. The first musical western produced in Technicolor.
Rudolph
Valentino and Other
Exotic Lovers on Film
June 15 - 30, 2002
Program Introduction
Rudolph
Valentino arrived at Ellis Island in December 1913,
an eighteen-year-old Italian immigrant from Castelleneta. His career might
have developed similarly to that of Robert De Niro’s Vito Corleone
(his name does appear on the city police blotter), but Valentino found
other ways out of New York’s ghettos. Within a few years he had moved
up from taxi-dancing to bit parts in early feature films shot in New York
and New Jersey, then to larger roles in Hollywood. But “Signor Rodolfo”
soon hit a glass ceiling, his Mediterranean complexion typing him as what
was then called a “greaser.”
The year Valentino made his first films, American studios were still producing
pictures with titles like THE GREASER’S REVENGE. These were often
westerns, whose “greasers” were Mexican villains bested by upstanding
American heroes of northern European ancestry. But in a 1918 trade ad,
“Rodolfo Di Valentina” offered himself as “a new style
heavy,” a different sort of villain whose threatening sexuality held
the promise of forbidden passions. Three years later, in the spectacular
adaptation of Vicente Blasco-Ibanez’s THE FOUR HORSEMAN OF THE APOCALYPSE,
the “new style heavy” had become a new-style hero.
Of course, Valentino was in the right place at the right time. A moral
earthquake was bound to happen in the years following the Great War, and
Valentino was at its epicenter. The Hispanic or Mediterranean “greaser”
suddenly vanished, and in the wake of Valentino there was a new stereotype:
the Latin Lover. Films of the 1920s reversed both male and female sexual
stereotypes. Women were free to be flappers, while the wholesome heroes
of the late teens, great stars like Wallace Reid and Francis X. Bushman,
were suddenly on the defensive. The flappers wanted some-thing more exotic,
something outside conventional cultural norms—but not too far outside,
of course.
The Latin Lovers provided a new model for relations between the sexes.
They did not promise comfort and stability. Loving them might even be
dangerous. But the payoff was worth the risk, and for a decade or more
their blatantly sensual style of lovemaking brought European sexual mores
to American screens. Because even Valentino could not fulfill every woman’s
fantasy, the role was taken on by a host of eager Latin hopefuls: Ramon
Novarro, Gilbert Roland, Ricardo Cortez, Don Alvarado, Antonio Moreno,
Cesar Romero. Most were the genuine article, born and bred in Spain or
Mexico (except for Cortez, who was really a Viennese actor named Jacob
Krantz).
There were women, too, like Dolores del Rio and Raquel Torres, who provided
a heavy-breathing model of female sexuality far removed from all-American
ideals. When playing especially liberated characters, even Nordics like
Garbo or Dietrich had to sling a mantilla over their shoulders and be
Latin for the duration. This sexual costume party didn’t last long,
of course, once the Depression began to burst all such fantasy bubbles.
