I picked up The Married Virgin just to check out Valentino in one of his pre-star roles and I was pleasantly surprised by the film -- it's a light but very skillful piece of entertainment.
The DVD looks great, despite the fact that this version was cobbled together from a few different prints. Missing title cards were judiciously recreated for the restoration.
The DVD liner notes say that this was the director's first film, but that's hard to credit, since the storytelling is so assured, brisk and energetic. There are some delightful bits of plastic invention, among them a fine shot of Valentino and the heroine swimming in the ocean, framed from above, so you can't tell how far out to sea they are, until a wave suddenly rises beneath them and sweeps them towards shore . . . and an equally satisfying sequence with the Valentino character and his stepmother-in-law/lover (yes, it's that kind of melodrama) driving wildly along a hillside road.
The brisk pace of the film is fortunate, since little in the narrative bears serious reflection. ("Why," you keep asking yourself, "did McMillan keep that gun, instead of dropping it down a well?" The answer is as old as filmmaking itself -- "Because then there would have been no story.")
Valentino is an absolute hoot to watch. Even though he's playing the sophisticated and cunning Count Roberto, he looks more like a kid playing dress-up -- a little wet behind the ears, but all the more adorable for that. And wide-eyed as he is, he cuts a sensational figure in his well-tailored wardrobe . . . in a male-model sort of way. But he has a dancer's capacity for absolute stillness, and a dancer's knowledge of how to use this to draw attention to himself.
And then there are a few moments when his sexuality becomes lethal -- as in his first close-up, when he kisses Mrs. McMillan's hand. There's an assurance in the act, and a hint of delicious legato, which promise much. He has at all times a distinctive way of touching women, placing his hand just so, holding it still, as though it couldn't be anywhere else, and never will be. Finally, there is a startling shot of him as he's interrupted in the process of trying to rape his virgin bride. He has an almost bestial look -- as though drugged senseless by lust.
This film, tied up in court for a couple of years by unpaid crew members, was released after Four Horsemen Of the Apocalypse and must have been terribly frustrating to Valentino's new fans. He plays a cad, and the heroine, forced to marry him to keep her father from prison, resists his advances with epic fortitude -- thus eventually saving herself for her distinctly charmless leading man. But what advances they are! One simply cannot sympathize with a heroine who is immune to them -- and in that utterly amoral but undeniable fact lies the inevitability of Valentino's stardom.