The Married Virgin (1918)

Rare, earlier Rudy Valentino film from 1918, and one where Rudy gets to play a truly evil character. As the Count Roberto Di Fraccini, he is a fortune hunting gigolo, who uses his sex appeal to seduce a young virgin into becoming his wife. He cares nothing for the innocent girl, but has an eye on her vast inheritance. When blackmailing her father doesn't work, the Count and his lover, (the young girl's mother-in law no less!) devise an evil plan.High drama, broken hearted damsels, and villains; it's what the Great Era of Silent Cinema was all about. Valentino might have shown more brightly in later, more high profile films like "Four Horsemen of the Apocalaypse" and "Blood & Sand," but here is a chance to see him in a more stark, and edgy performance. It's wonderful that this early film has survived through the years, and has even had a DVD release. "The Married Virgin" is absolute essential viewing For Valentino fans. Another reviewer commented on the 'choppy script' and inconsistencies, but I saw none. Maybe this person saw a different, or incomplete cut of the film. I thought this was near perfect..and it took years for me to acquire this title, but it was worth the effort.

I saw this on a DVD that was part of a collection of Valentino films. Valentino does not appear for the first ten minutes, so I jumped to the conclusion that he played a bit part and the video makers were just adding it as fuller. When Valentino did come on, I found that I was wrong. He does have a substantial part and gives a very strong performance.One thing that is really weird about the film is that Kathleen Kirkham plays the mother-in-law to Vera Sisson. Yet Kathleen was 23 years old and Sisson was 27 years old when the film was made. Kathleen is quite good in the movie. She shows a great deal of passion for Valentino.The film is nicely shot and edited with a good and effective use of close-ups to emphasize details. Especially noteworthy is a flashback within a flashback, something I have rarely seen in a film before. Kathleen tells Valentino about a time when she overhead a blackmailer talking to her husband. We flashback to the scene with the blackmailer. The blackmailer tells the husband (Edward Jobson) that he saw the husband murder a man. We then flashback to the murder of the man. We then return to the blackmailer and the husband, followed by a return to the present time and the wife talking to Valentino. It reminded me of the nesting structure of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Nearly every scene reveals great details about the time period, the cars, the mansion with the diverging staircase, a game of tennis with small rackets, even the clothes worn to the beach are fascinating to watch and capture the time period wonderfully. It gives us a nice idea how the upper class lived at this time.The plot is not outstanding, but I think it represents a well done period melodrama involving a European Count who ruins a rich man by first seducing his young wife, then blackmailing him and finally forcing his daughter into marriage. The Count proves that he is a gentleman after all by not forcing his new bride to have sex with him, but saying that he will wait until she wants to. Thus she remains a "married virgin".If it did not contain Valentino, the film would be merely interesting, but Valentino's assured and well acted performance makes it quite enjoyable.

This is the sort of over-done melodrama that must have played well at the time, but is like a hunk of cheese--over time is just starts to stink. That's because the plot, by modern standards, is just archaic--archaic and filled with way too many story elements. The only reason to see it today is if you are a fan of Rudolph Valentino, as he co-stars in it. Just don't expect a lot of magic. The plot is a twisted soap opera that includes adultery, murder, blackmail and people falling to their deaths! In addition, the plot is very, very complicated--overly complicated if you ask me.The film concerns a rather sick family. The rich father has remarried and his new wife is a slut who runs around on the side with a boy-toy (Valentino). The adult daughter is sweet and a bit boring by comparison and she's in love with a good, solid man. You find out that the wife is cheating, but is planning on fleecing her husband before ultimately running off to South America with her lover. But, in the meantime she has proof the husband committed a murder and convinces her boyfriend to blackmail the husband with it. Oddly, the older man doesn't seem to care about the attempted blackmail, so Valentino plans to marry the sweet young daughter in order to force the father to pay him off to get rid of him. Isn't this way overly complicated?! Why marry the girl? Don't you think the wife would be a bit upset if Valentino married her step-daughter?! And why would the young girl agree to marry him--as she ultimately does? None of this makes much sense--and yet there are many, many story gimmicks that enter the film until its conclusion.Overall, the film is hardly believable and too jam-packed full of silly story elements to be taken seriously. The acting is generally okay--but no better. I've seen a ton of silents--possibly more than anyone on IMDb, and this one is at best a mediocre film...and that's being a bit generous.

This is a really creaky film that will be of interest only to hardcore Rudolph Valentino fans. The plotline is so full of inconsistencies that keeping track of them ceases to amuse after a while. Valentino is the only point of interest in an this primitive film with a maddeningly inconsistent plot. The irony of Valentino's casting in this film as a man who never gets to consummate his marriage with his virgin wife is heavy in view of his unconsummated marriage to Jean Acker in real life.