Russian American Vlad Kozlov made a film about the tragic fate of Rudolph Valentino

His first short film about a Hollywood star, The Dreams of Rudolfo Valentino, premiered in 2006 at Hollywood Cemetery. The screen then served as the wall of the Cathedral Mausoleum, where the actor is buried.

On the basis of a small film, the full-length “Silent Life: The Story of a Woman in Black” was born. Work on it lasted almost 15 years. An intermediate one-hour version of “Death of the Sheikh” was shown at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2017, and it was presented by the Italian-American actor Franco Nero, who then gave an interview to MK. The premiere was attended by Vlad’s parents. He himself had not been in Russia for many years. It was the father who instilled in his son a love for cinema, introduced him to the work of Rudolfo Valentino, giving him a collection of silent films. He was the first to draw attention to the portrait resemblance of Vlad and Valentino. As a child, Kozlov tied a towel around his head, much like it was in films about the Sheikh with Valentino.

“I could not even imagine that in a few decades I would not only play Rudolfo in Hollywood, but also try on his costume from the movie “Son of the Sheik,” says Vlad. He dreamed of going to Hollywood, becoming a star, which amused his classmates. How could one believe that a stuttering boy is capable of becoming an actor … And Vlad reached the specialist of the Institute of the Brain in order to cure his illness with non-standard methods. At the age of 25, he went to Hollywood with no money, no connections, no knowledge of English. He washed dishes, worked as a plumber, acted in extras and somehow convinced Robert De Niro to give him a small role in the movie The Good Shepherd. De Niro, according to Vlad, also noticed his resemblance to Valentino, advised not to wait for a miracle and make the film himself. All this looks incredible.

Franco Nero in our interview told how he met Vlad in 2013, when he presented Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained to Hollywood. Vlad showed him the materials of his film, offered to play the spirit of Valentino. This was due to the fact that Nero in 1975 played Rudolfo in an Italian TV movie.

From the very beginning of the work, mystical things began to happen. In addition to the portrait resemblance to his own hero, it was important for Vlad that both of them were immigrants and went to conquer Hollywood. A nondescript guy, what was the future Valentino, arrived from Italy. This is exactly how we see him in the Silent Life. He declares that he is cramped in his homeland. “I am a simple Italian peasant from the countryside,” he tells his wife. Another coincidence is the name of the beloved, For both it was Natasha. When Vlad played Valentino’s illness, he himself fell seriously ill, found himself on the verge of life and death.

“The film became a reflection of my real life,” says Vlad Kozlov. – Two weeks after filming the scene in the operating room, I myself ended up in the hospital and was near death. My recovery took almost five years. The Silent Life was in production for almost 15 years. Due to two operations, I gained a lot of weight and could no longer play Valentino. There was an idea to divide the life of the hero into several stages, where different actors played. First the 10 year old boy (Dunham Stewart) in the opening scene with Isabella Rossellini, then the 18 year old Rudolfo (Dalton Cyr). Valentino, who went through fire and water, was already played by me. I investigated the early death of Rudolph Valentino, found unique materials that allowed me to tell a story that no one knew.

Valentino had a stormy youth. He transferred his experience of seduction to the screen and became the world’s first male sex symbol, but retribution came for this. The great lover on the screen in life could not satisfy his beloved Natasha Rambova. When the studio forbade her to interfere with her husband’s career, she left him. Valentino desperately drank pills to beat the disease, but the use of drugs led to an ulcer and an early death. This project is a kind of hybrid that combines silent and sound, black and white and color, feature and documentary films.”

Valentino’s mother was played by Italian star Isabella Rossellini, daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian film director Roberto Rossellini. She has several beautiful passages along the sea. She is like a mirage – appears for a moment and disappears. “The appearance of Isabella Rossellini as Valentino’s mother was also a reflection of my mother, whom I had not seen for almost 20 years,” explains Vlad.

The Silent Life was filmed not only at the Hollywood Cemetery, but also at the legendary Chinese Cinema, where in 1926 Valentino presented his last film, The Sheik’s Son. The orchestra pit in Kozlov’s film seems to separate two realities. The spirit of Valentino lives in the stalls, and on the screen the whole life of the actor scrolls like in a movie.

The script was written by Vlad Kozlov together with Natalia Dar and Ksenia Zharova, who worked with him on other films as well. Natalya also became the production designer for Silent Life, and Ksenia played Valentino’s wife, the ballerina Natasha Rambova. Actor Yegor Pazenko also appears among the producers of the project.

Initially, the British actress and wife of Franco Nero Vanessa Redgrave was invited to the role of the woman in black, but for some reason she could not take part in the project. The mysterious heroine was eventually played by Terry Moore, a Hollywood star of the 1940s and 50s, an Oscar nominee, in whose honor a nominal star was opened on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. At 92, she had to learn almost 60 pages of text.

The face of the mysterious lady is hidden by a veil. For more than 70 years in a row, she comes with a red rose on the day of Valentino’s death at Hollywood Cemetery. And now the 73rd anniversary of his passing is like a ghost. No one dares to approach her, except for the young man Paul, who, as part of the film crew, is working on a documentary about the stars of old Hollywood. And the stranger will suddenly speak, tell about how in 1926 she worked as a cleaner in a New York hospital, where the almost lifeless Valentino was taken. She will tell what was not. Sheer imagination.

Thousands of fans went crazy for Valentino. In Kozlov’s painting, they, looking at the screen, shout: “Sheikh, take me with you.” And he could not achieve the reciprocity of his own wife. Due to the then incurable syphilis, intimacy with a woman was impossible.

After conducting research, Vlad found out that Valentino was a gigolo, met with different women, served old women. One of his clients was Stanislavsky’s student Alla Nazimova, who later determined his acting fate. She was played by Sherilyn Fenn, known from the TV series Twin Peaks. A funny phrase will sound from the lips of her heroine: “As my teacher Stanislavsky said …”. Young Rudolfo will ask in response: “Who is Stanislavsky?”

Nazimova owns the words explaining the demand for Valentino: “White men have already forgotten how to care for women. And women want romance.” Italians did not then belong to the category of white men. “He is dark, Italian. How do you imagine him next to a white woman, ”says one of Nazimova’s producers in Silent Life.

Valentino died of peritonitis on August 23, 1926. His early death shocked America. Some fans killed themselves. The film included a chronicle of the funeral, accompanied by a stampede and injuries. Valentino was only 31 years old. The doctors mistook the attack of the ulcer for appendicitis. There were no antibiotics yet. And the new pills against syphilis, as they say in the film, gave a side effect.

Now Vlad Kozlov is working on an autobiographical film and a mini-series “Lekha” about a young guy who left in the 90s to work in Argentina. His hero crossed the South American continent on foot in order to get to the USA.