Rodolfo Valentino (1895-1926)

Italian actor and dancer.

He was one of the greatest silent movie stars of his time, also known for being the sex symbol of those years, so much so that he was given the nickname of “Latin Lover”.
Valentino recited and dictated fashion (the Valentino dresses, the Valentino hair, the Valentino boots and, above all, the Valentino look). He was the first male “star” of the cinema of the dawn.
Rodolfo Valentino is an icon of the star system, a common asset, of a beauty considered extraordinary; he was endowed with a magnetic and ambiguous charm that made him a very modern Latin lover and different from the models of a Casanova or a Don Giovanni; a real object of desire, destined for mass worship.
This charm of his will turn him over to legend.
He brought with him a world of new and unsettling signs. Signs that arrive to our present thanks to fashion images and aesthetic styles cyclically revived.
Rodolfo Valentino was also a poet and his works are collected in the book “Day Dreams”, which allowed to resize the beauty, leaving more room for the mystery of his inner perceptions.
He himself admits that he is not “neither poet nor lover of knowledge”, preferring to abandon himself to nature and dreams, which appeased the torment and unhappiness he felt within him.
His poems are imbued with romance, a touch of philosophy and esotericism; they created an ideal bridge between Italy and America, so much so that he could easily pass by imagination, as and when he wanted, from one continent to another.
His compositions are by an author-actor who read D’Annunzio; in fact there appear the theme of sensuality, the fusion with nature, love, the woman and a remarkable propensity towards the speech of the dream.
At the time, the Dannuntian authors sought elements towards that dreamlike perspective.
It was not a real alternative to reality, but it was a matter of fashion and at the time the dream was in fashion and in the case of Valentino is expressed in a romantic way.
Dreaming, for Valentino, means pretending to believe in a world in which he himself is already immersed.