Star Gazing: Rudolph Valentino’s Place in American Cinema

Rudolph Valentino was a star phenomenon of the silent film era, driving women mad with desire and men mad with insecure anger. The persona he created and the gazes it drew caused major unsettlement in the post-WWI American culture and society, reshaping and influencing conversations that were already taking place in discomfort. The most important among them were gender roles, sexuality, ethnicity and racial difference, and, on the cinematic side, the role of a Hollywood star and their function in developing film style. Miriam Hansen defines Valentino as the site of these contradictions (1986, p.6), and he certainly was a lightning rod of their controversies and discourses. This essay will discuss these issues in relation to Valentino’s hysteria-causing film “The Sheik” (George Melford, 1921); and define his rebellions against traditional masculinity and racism in building his star image, one inextricably linked to the style and awe of cinema of attraction.

Valentino functioned as an anomaly in the film industry; as a man being subjected to the sexualisation of a female gaze. The late 1910s were the first time films were explicitly designed for female audience appeal (Hansen, 186, p.6), and by 1921’s “The Sheik”, the potential of exploiting a connection to women had been fully realized. The story itself is adapted from a book in the infamously female-centric genre: a romance novel. The physical blocking and edited eyeline matches also hand the autonomy to Lady Diana over Sheik Ahmed; she looks at him first, and their gazes are often reciprocated rather than predatory on his part. Even just after he has kidnapped her and brought her to his tent, she is staring back as he stares, determined not to be intimidated. The intertitles even call him “under the lure of the defiant English girl”, spelling out the attraction of her independence. Women in the midst of an ‘upheaval of gender relations’ (Hansen, 1986, p.7) and the resulting redefinition of their role could not hide their engagement with this. With the role of the spectator already masculinized by patriarchy and its impact on Hollywood, as defined by Mulvey (Hansen, 1986, p.7), women seeing a true outreach to themselves as an audience would have been revolutionary, making their approval of Valentino – a man reaching out – entirely natural as he assumed the role of one who could respect their new freedoms; a star who could reciprocate their admiration. Indeed, Ahmed asks Diana, “Do you know how beautiful you are?” This attitude and the gaze between the lovers is reciprocal and ambivalent, not objectifying or aggressive (Hansen, 1986, p.15). While Valentino’s physical sex appeal certainly didn’t hurt, it is his compliance in this process of women’s appropriation of the gaze (Hansen, 1986, p.10) that cemented his star persona. It’s a fantasy among women of recognition of their desires and needs, both sexual and in terms of escaping misogyny and suffocating patriarchy. (Hansen, 1986, p.7) So, a man who actually respected them as human beings prompted such hysterical adoration. The fantasy of a ‘Latin Lover’ and all his erotic aura collided with the fantasy of safety and esteem that, of course, should not have been just a fantasy. Sex and autonomy collided, and a star was born.

While the gaze against and presentation of Valentino questioned femininity in the universal ‘spectators’ of both Lady Diana and the actual audience in these ways; Valentino was equally subversive of male gender roles and expectations. The act of granting women power as they openly look (and like) threatens the power-seeking of masculinity already; as it acknowledges an actively desiring female gaze (Hansen, 1986, p.17), and thus a psychological and sexual depth in women that patriarchy dislikes recognizing. The ingénues or fallen women of other tropes are nowhere to be seen. Beyond that, Valentino outside of the female gaze threatens American masculinity in the 1910s-20s in his own ways. As Studlar (1996) articulates, the trope of American masculinity at that time recalls phrases like “patrician peppiness and red-blooded manliness”, and images of boyish wilderness adventure and refined urban elegance. Valentino destabilizes classical cinema’s focus on this kind of convention (deCordova, 1987, p.5); and an image early in The “Sheik” makes a perfect symbol of that. As Sheik Ahmed enters the casino, a white man stands at left and smokes in his tuxedo, embodying traditional masculinity; alongside Valentino in the flowing fabric of his Arab costume, unmistakably ‘other’. To put an emotional presence alongside this image, Diana remarks that most men “do not know the meaning of tenderness,” aligning Valentino’s brand of Latin Lover with a greater mental depth. Ahmed even shows vulnerability, reconsidering his aggression during the dust storm at the sight of Diana’s tears. His walk becomes defeated and his clap for servants is limp-wristed. He also displays considerable sorrow after she is kidnapped by the bandit. Valentino allowing this vulnerability into his performance (so also his star persona) was thus a slight to traditional masculinity (Hansen, 1986, p.21) and as such an approval of feminine behavior and women. What better for a romantic lead?

Besides these differences in character, the main element of Valentino as the ‘other’ is certainly his race. As a sexualized man of colour on both personal and character levels, his agenda of subversion extends to ethnicity in a white-centric world. His credited name changed from the unmistakably Italian Rudolpho Alfonzo de Valentina to the eventual famous name that is rather more Anglicized. (Schleier, 2010) His exotic roles and stories engaged with discourses on that racial otherness (Hansen, 1986, p.24) like “The Sheik” with a “blessed oasis of the sands” in which his Arabian-robed people live in “happy ignorance that the world has passed them by.” Ahmed drips with sexual energy, announcing “When an Arab sees a woman that he wants, he takes her!” There are epic poem and fairy tale allusions in Ahmed’s presence, from climbing the vines of Diana’s balcony to the surtitles announcing the situation as “like a page from the Arabian nights.” In this othered world, American women exploring their new standards of sexuality can feel safer in their open desires and breaking rules, indulging in the fantasy safely (Hansen, 1986, p.24) and living in their own kind of ‘happy ignorance.’ Thus, Valentino was viewed as a ‘darkly foreign’ danger who could live off these ‘restless desires’ (Studlar, 1996, p.151) of women. Altogether, as a man of colour who defines his own type of masculinity while cooperating under a female gaze, Valentino is a unique kind of star.

It is already visible how Rudolph Valentino stretched far beyond mere performance; becoming an integral part of conversations and images about gender, race and sexuality alongside anything cinematic. It is this ability to transcend roles and become a dynamic persona that defines him as a Hollywood star, as he created such ‘auxiliary drama’ (Bordwell et al, 1985, p.87) and formed identities across films as well as press and promotional identities (Studlar, 1996, p.2), all of which were exploited to make his legend (Hansen, 1986, p.6). This meant that the discourses and conversations he represented were promoted and discussed even further under the influence of his manufactured fame. Aside from the aforementioned qualities that differentiated him from any other man at the time (including other male stars), Valentino’s star image is notable for being so sexualized; he was objectified in a way that usually happened to the ingénues and vamps of female stardom under a male gaze. A man as an erotic object unearthed implications of sexual obsession, and unmistakably made Valentino feminized as he occupied the space so usually reserved for a woman (Hansen, 1986, p.10). For example, the Bandit Omair’s costume is plain and realistic compared to the layers and patterns of Ahmed’s in “The Sheik”. Valentino was prettified like a peacock and commanded the centre of attention at all times. It was this commanding presence that combined with sexualisation under the female gaze that gave him a unique star persona, combining ‘masculine control of the look with the feminine quality of ‘to-be-looked-at-ness” (Hansen, 1986, p.12). This meant that his male star status become uniquely susceptible to desires that could risk losing its dignity and dominance (Hansen, 1986, p.15), the same qualities shaping roles for men anywhere. Valentino is a particular embodiment of the star being at odds with continuity; wherein the gaze diverts from the story to the star persona as an acute and commercially successful interest (Studlar, 1996, p.2), including their life and controversies. “The Sheik” displays an awareness of this effect through numerous allusions between character and star. Ahmed is European-educated with a mysterious past, like the Italian Valentino. He remarks “With your permission, the savage will escort you to the door” with all the civility and sarcasm of a gentlemen and leading man. He is blocked as the centre of attention, plays unforgettable expressions with his eyes, making himself a sight. He stands with a single raised eyebrow and cigarette, watching the man from ‘Diana’s world’, every inch as suave as he can be. Recognising the star became almost another feature, another pretty sight among the cultivated aesthetics of cinema; the novelty of identifying a persona to attach to the sexual object (Hansen, 1986, p.17). As well as seeing a film for a story and characters, the audience can engage with this persona and image; and, to use a frivolous term, star-gaze.

In this sense, a star’s presence could be termed a human-central version of the cinema of attraction, wherein cinema presents a series of views with imaginative power and exoticism (Gunning, 1990, p.57); actively showing and displaying with exhibitionism. Valentino in particular, with all of his aforementioned appeals and levels of persona; functioned successfully under this attraction gaze. Melford took advantage of the exoticism of Valentino and the story’s setting itself in “The Sheik”, and puts the audience under that power with images of hypnotizing grace and foreign beauty.

Ahmed wears the sweeping capes and robes of any king; he holds Diana in his arms on horseback (the animal being a well-known symbol of virility) and recites poetry and song in her garden, as a perfect excuse for a close-up. This female gaze on a male star focuses women’s spectatorial pleasure on him (Hansen, 1986, p.10), fitting perfectly alongside the showy style of attraction cinema. The charismatic Valentino is surrounded by it; with theatrical rounded filters, a melodramatic score, and baroque mise-en-scene in the ornate tents with fringed lamps and cushions. A perfect example is the way Ahmed’s patterned costume fits pleasingly alongside the patterned tent fabric during the dust storm sequence – literally not even a natural disaster (a conventional narrative event) will stop the show for visual pleasure (Hansen, 1986, p.11), acknowledging the spectator as there to be wowed by the display (Hansen, 1986, p.17). It could almost be called a cinema of distraction, with Valentino taking centre stage as a star among attraction cinema’s aesthetic theatricality to appeal to the spectator or even voyeur (Hansen, 1986, p.25). This contradiction of the attraction gaze is to halt the narrative of a star vehicle film to make way for another narrative – that of the star themselves.

Rudolph Valentino was a revolutionary presence in the film world; as a man redefining manhood under a female gaze, a person of colour redefining race relations, a masculine sex object, a Hollywood star who took these identities into his persona and star story, and the centre of cinema learning to incorporate narrative into a beauty-obsessed gaze. Stars don’t always turn into legends, but when they do, all that they represented becomes attached to their visual appeal and charisma, making issues synonymous with a face or manner. For Valentino, it was those societal discourses over gender, sexuality and race, all triggered by his visual presence and erotic appeal. All he had to do was appear and satisfy the audience’s star-gazing; and, as Hansen said, his body became the site of a galaxy of ideas, roles, controversies and contradictions.

 References

 Bordwell, D; Staiger, J; Thompson, K; The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 New York: Columbia University Press, 1985

deCordova, R; 1987; “Richard deCordova responds to Miriam Hansen’s ‘Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship,” Cinema Journal 26.3

Gunning, T; 2008; ‘The Cinema of attractions: early film, its spectator and the avant garde’, in T Elsaesser and a Barker (eds) Early cinema : space frame narrative; BFI Publishing; London pg. 56-62

Hansen, M; “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship,” Cinema Journal 25.4 (1986).

Studlar, G, This mad masquerade : stardom and masculinity in the Jazz Age; 1996, New York: Columbia University Press

Schleier, C. 2010, “Rudolph Valentino Had A Big-Screen Gift Look Up: The Italian immigrant rode his positive demeanor all the way to romantic movie stardom,” Investor’s Business Daily, Los Angeles.