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- Monsieur Beaucaire
-
-
- (AUGUST 18, 1924)
-
- Monsieur Beaucaire. There has been a general proposition
- floating around for a long time that you cannot argue with a
- woman. There is a fact quite absolute that you cannot argue with
- a woman about Rudolph Valentino. He is beautiful, and he harrows
- the heart. Since women compose the vast majority of cinema
- customers, criticism of Rudolph seems futile business.
-
- Rudolph returns to the screen in a generally excellent
- version of Booth Tarkington's romantic tale of France and
- England in the days of Louis XV. How he impersonated the
- ambassador's barber; was thrown out of polite society; regained
- his introduction by detecting an English duke with an ace in his
- sleeve; was betrayed, and won the great duel, is familiar
- fiction.
-
- It seems the producers were worried lest the public might
- think Rudolph's vitality had been vitiated by his having been
- so long buried in beauty clay. Therefore they stripped him to
- the waist for several minutes and let him play Lionel
- Strongfort. Also, they let him go on talking out of the side of
- his mouth for masculine effect. Otherwise he was sane, suave,
- and at moments scintillating.
-
-