སསྤ་ས

Nureyev stoops to play Valentino

und dins

Iċ bstin

200

By Wilma Salisbury

Nureyev as Valentino. The world's greatest dancer as the screen's greatest lover. Rudi as Rudy. What clever casting! What a waste of talent!

Nureyev, playing the title role in Ken Russell's provocative film "Valentino,” has something superficial in common with his nicknamesake. Like the legendary star of the silent movies, he was a foreigner who came to these shores and captured the imagination of the masses with his uniqueness and charisma.

Valentino, however, was not a great artist, driven by energy and talent. According to Russell's half-serious, half-satiric view, he was just a simple Italian immigrant who had only two goals in life to bring his mother to America and to own an orange grove in California. In his tragically short-life he died of peritonitis at the age of 31 he accomplished neither goal.

Jan

Russell depicts Valentino as a sweet, innocent soul who was victimized by forces of evil around him. The evils — notably women, Hollywood and the press are shown as bizarre symbols of 1920s decadence.

The press is made up of crass idiots who will go to any ridiculous lengths to get (or to create) a sensational story about their favorite "powder puff." He, in turn, will go to equally ridiculous lengths to defend his noble Italian manhood.

Hollywood is tinsel town, a plastic place populated by kooky characters who treat every occasion like a costume party and greedy directors who care more for their chimpanzees than for their stars.

Women are brainless creatures who swoon at the sight of Valentino and hold cultist rallies outside his mansion at midnight.

Shot in a visually opulent style, Russell's richly textured film satirizes the making of "The Sheik," "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," "Blood and Sand" and other Valentino vehicles.

Though most of the handsome hero's lovemaking is limited to long, sensuous kisses, he is seen nude in two love scenes. In one, Valentino's bride-to-be strips from her seven veils, Salomestyle, and lures the Sheik into a billowing tent. In the other, a voluptuous leading lady plays out her sex fantasies while her disinterested partner lies in bed laughing.

THE PLAIN DEALER, MONDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1977

The most debasing scene takes place in a filthy California jail where the star, arrested on his wedding night, is filled with drugged coffee, denied bathroom privileges and smeared with human excrement.

Identifying itself immediately as a parody, Russell's movie begins with the news of Valentino's death splashed across the screen in bold newspaper headlines.

Soon, a mob of screaming fans crashes into the huge funeral parlor where Valentino's corpse, horribly rouged and powdered, is placed on vulgar display. As the women in Rudy's life come to mourn, each one is attacked by vultures from the press and forced to tell her story.

Leslie Caron, draped in an enormous shroud of flowers and followed by a parade of purplegowned female acolytes, is the melodramatic Russian Lesbian who chooses Valentino for her screen partner.

Michelle Phillips is his beautiful wife, an ambitious, dominating egomaniac who follows the weird dictates of a mysterious ancient religion.

Carol Kane is a fuzzy-haired, empty-headed starlet, who made the leap from waiting tables in Dallas to living high in Hollywood by looking sincere.

Nureyev as Valentino does a bit of dancing: hoofing in a tavern, putting on a corny adagio at a cosmetics, exhibition, escorting elderly ladies at a dollar-a-dance tearoom, practicing a cheek-tocheek tango with British ballet dancer Anthony Dowell, who plays Nijinsky..

Nureyev, who always remains himself, seems sometimes amused and sometimes embarrassed as he romps through his role with grace, style and a delicious sense of the ludicrousness of it all. At times, he even seems to be asking himself (as balletomanes are bound to ask) what on earth he is doing in this extravagant travesty.

Entertainment

Nureyev stares down a raging bull as he plays Valentino playing a bullfighter.