Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2006 Sommario / Contents

When the throne of Maharajah Sidir Singh of Dagmahar is overthrown, and
the Maharajah himself is mortally wounded, his trusted military chief
General Gadi rushes to the aid of Sidir’s only son, the Young Rajah.Through
the efforts of General Gadi and Singh’s closest friend Morton Judd, Judd
makes arrangements to see the Young Rajah safely transported to the
United States under the protection and care of his brother Joshua. Joshua
Judd raises the boy as his own, adopted under the new identity of Amos
Judd. As the years roll on, Amos leads a life far removed from his cultural
roots in India, and largely unaware of his royal lineage. One day the usurper,
Ali Kahn, is informed that the son of the Maharajah still lives. He exhorts
his military leader to assemble trusted men to locate Amos and eliminate
him.Those devoted to the slain Maharajah are able to thwart the attack,
and bring the Young Rajah home to restore peace to his oppressed citizens.
The interweaving of modern Americana with exotic Hindu culture, touched
with mystical inclinations, recommended the story to writer June Mathis,
who had been instrumental in securing for Valentino the leading role in The
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which had made him a star. Implicitly
trusting Mathis, Valentino determined to make The Young Rajah, despite
the reservations of Famous Players.The subject had the added appeal that
Valentino’s wife, Natacha Rambova, could design appropriately exotic
costumes for her husband. However, once the picture was completed, and
released to a lukewarm reception, Valentino retracted much of his initial
enthusiasm, and ultimately placed some of the responsibility in the lap of
Famous Players, citing inadequate production facilities.
The digital reconstruction of what remains of this long-lost 1922 feature
was supervised by producer Jeffery Jon Masino of Flicker Alley, a company
which produces new digital editions of silent films, in association with Turner
Classic Movies. In 1998 the Library of the Moving Image in Los Angeles
purchased what is believed to be the only surviving copy, non-sequential
fragments totalling 26 minutes, at a Sotheby’s auction of the Leslie Flint
Collection. Leslie Flint, president of the Valentino Memorial Guild in London,
and a professional medium claiming regular spiritualist contact with
Valentino, came into possession of a 16mm print that was allegedly
discovered in an Italian chicken coop in the 1960s. Alas, too much time
passed before enough funding was acquired to transfer the complete film,
ultimately proving detrimental to its survival. To provide a more fluid
narrative, Flicker Alley has augmented it using two promotional trailers and
production stills culled from private collections and the Paramount Special
Collections at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Alongside the
original intertitles, continuity titles derived from original Paramount editing
scripts help bridge the gaps in the plot. Storyboards were also developed to
see how these sequences would be laid out.The restored intertitles and “still
photo” sequences were worked on separately, and then combined in an offline
edit. The poor image quality of the 16mm print was considerably
enhanced during transfer by Advanced Digital Services of Hollywood, who
devised a process of down-converting a 1080 x 1920 pixel HD image into
four 540 x 960 pixel PAL quadrants.The four separate images were then
“cleaned” by a digital filtering system and “stitched” back into an HD
image, which was in turn down-converted into a final uncompressed NTSC
Quicktime file to run at approximately 21 frames per second.
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Now, with new and existing intertitles, photographic stills in place of missing
live-action segments, and corrected speed, the reconstructed version runs 52
minutes. Not nearly as long at the original 1922 version’s c.88-100
minutes, but enough to offer today’s audiences a unique opportunity to view
a mythical lost production, and reach their own conclusions as to the quality
of piece. – BRANDEE BRANNIGAN COX
GOOD NIGHT VALENTINO (Mineralava Productions, US 2003)
Regia/dir: Edoardo Ballerini; prod: Edoardo Ballerini, John Rothman,
Jean-Philippe Girod, Adam Cohen; scen: Edoardo Ballerini, John
Rothman; f./ph: Igor [Khoroshev]; mo./ed: Paul Ohnersorgen; scg./des:
Jeffrey MacIntyre; cast: Edoardo Ballerini (Rudolph Valentino), John
Rothman (H.L. Mencken), Blaire Chandler (la cameriera/the maid);
35mm, c.1350 ft., 15’ (24 fps), sonoro/sound, Mineralava Productions,
Beverly Hills, CA. Versione inglese / English dialogue.
Drammatica ricostruzione di un episodio degli ultimi giorni della vita
di Valentino, quando concesse un’intervista al grande giornalista
americano H.L. Mencken. In quell’occasione Mencken scoprì –
riferendone con commozione – un giovane affascinante, intelligente
ma tormentato, profondamente ferito dagli ostili commenti della
stampa che lo accusava di sovvertire gli ideali americani di virilità.
Edoardo Ballerini ha una carriera più che decennale di attore
cinematografico e televisivo ed è di recente apparso nei panni di
Corky Caporale nella serie The Sopranos. In Good Night Valentino, egli fa
rivivere miracolosamente le movenze e la personalità di Valentino e ha
continuato il suo lavoro sull’idolo cinematografico scrivendo la
sceneggiatura di un lungometraggio incentrato sul rapporto tra
Valentino e Natacha Rambova. Emily Leider ha scritto in Dark Lover:
The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino (New York, Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 2003): “Finora, la più convincente rappresentazione
cinematografica che io abbia visto è quella di Good Night Valentino …
Ballerini, un giovane italo-americano dalla doppia cittadinanza, fa la
parte di Valentino … In un’interpretazione sensibile e partecipata,
l’attore pervade il suo personaggio (presentato secondo la
descrizione data da Mencken) del giusto mix di orgoglio, eleganza,
grazia e tormento. Sullo schermo la somiglianza di Ballerini con
Valentino è straordinaria.” – DAVID ROBINSON
A dramatic recreation of an incident in the last days of Valentino’s life, when
he gave an interview to the great American journalist H.L. Mencken.
Mencken discovered – and feelingly recorded – a charming, intelligent, but
troubled young man, deeply hurt by hostile press comments which charged
him with subverting American ideals of virility.
Edoardo Ballerini has been a professional actor in film and television for
over a decade, most recently featured as Corky Caporale in The Sopranos.
In Good Night Valentino he miraculously embodies Valentino in movement
and personality, and in his continuing work on the screen idol, Ballerini has
written a feature film about the relationship between Valentino and
Natacha Rambova.
STELLE / STARS