wardengrill
171 page(s) of Posts tagged cinema

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Gallardo's struggle, between devotion to the self-sacrificing wife he cherishes and lust for an aristocratic femme fatale, mirrors similar tension in his portrayer's psyche. Valentino's private, off-screen conflicts can't be split into neat polarities — good and bad, virtuous and sinful — like Gallardo's opposing lady loves in Blood and Sand. But Valentino, with one foot in nineteenth-century Italy and the other 1920s Hollywood, did grapple with contradictory impulses and values, did seek a mate who managed to unite the Madonna and the vamp in one body. In real life he sought both an old-fashioned stay at home wife like Carmen and an aggressive, exotic siren like Doña Sol.

[...] As a type, Natacha tilted more in the direction of the voluptuous, sexually liberated woman of the world than the Madonna, but Rudy had to turn her into the embodiment of everything good, selfless, and noble, too. Natacha always spoke of her maternal feelings toward Rudy, "the eternal boy," and in a letter to her he dubbed himself "your baby." — Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino by Emily W. Leider

currently
Modern Family
Melody Gardot
The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors
old holywood