Starting Thursday, the new film “Silent Life” opens in Russian cinemas about another legend: a mysterious woman dressed in black who, covering her face with a thick veil, goes to his tombstone every anniversary of the death of her beloved artist. to deposit a red rose. Beautiful, mysterious, sad, as it should be in a movie. The film was directed by Vlad Kozlov, a Muscovite who went to Los Angeles to fulfill his dream of personally playing Rudolph Valentino, whom they said he resembled. The story of the creation of this unusual film is worthy of joining the ranks of cinema legends; It is also beautiful and almost unbelievable.
Kozlov suffers from stuttering and shooting a film seemed impossible. But the stubborn man went to Hollywood without knowing the language and without money; he now he is a film festival laureate and author of several films. He also shot a biographical film about Valentino: the work lasted 15 years. And he even played Rudy when he was an adult.
To solve the problem of stuttering, I came up with a combination: I combined color sound films with black and white silent films and a game story with documentary inserts. The role of Rudy was played by three actors: the boy Dunham Stewart, 18-year-old Dalton Cyr, and Vlad Kozlov himself, stylizing this part of the film as a silent film; It is not necessary to say anything about it. The story is told on behalf of the Woman in Black, who at Valentino’s tomb in the Cathedral Mausoleum agrees to give an interview for a film about Hollywood legends. And, in parallel, at the initiative of Valentino himself, who in an empty cinema reproduces the past on the screen of his memory, the room becomes a time machine (the voice-over in the original was provided by Franco Nero ). And key fragments of this destiny emerge: from his youth, when a handsome Italian was taught the art of seducing women and became a gigolo, to a happy accident in Hollywood, when an unknown but incredibly sexy young man they offered the lead role; from health problems and divorce from his wife to a hospital bed and death.
It is interesting to follow this: it is always interesting to delve into the world of legends and myths, revealing their ins and outs. Even despite the film’s stylistic flaws and uneven quality. All this is inevitable if the work lasted a decade and a half and the director lacks experience. But the film is worth seeing not only for the attempt to look beyond the legend, but, first of all, for the participation in it of another living Hollywood legend – 94-year-old actress Terry Moore, who received a Oscar nomination. for the film “Come Back, Little Sheba” (1959). As the Woman in Black, a loyal follower of Valentino, she brought to the screen a dignity and acting sophistication that, unfortunately, has long since fallen into disuse in cinema. She still dazzles today: for the brilliance of her eyes, for the expressiveness of her facial expressions and the impeccability of her movements. As a result, the film’s genre was not simply another biopic about a movie star, but the drama of a woman who spent her life in the illusion of love, in worshiping a long-gone idol, and in old age. he found nothing.
“The Silent Life” is an example of a rare professional solidarity: the film was shot with almost no budget by an unknown rookie director, but they believed in him, he had the help of people like Robert De Niro, who gave an extra to shoot the movie. idea, like Isabella Rossellini, who played the mother heroine, like Franco Nero and Sherilyn Fenn, who starred in the film (she plays silent film actress and producer Alla Nazimova). Sponsors, major studios and studios came to the rescue, providing free props, equipment and costumes used in the filming of Titanic.
Kozlov’s directing and acting style is characterized by exaggerated emotionality, as in silent films, and some pretentious gestures; All this fits harmoniously into the exquisite black and white retro of the cinematic capital of the world in the 1920s. The soundtrack intersperses jazz hits of those years with sensual classics, from Giordani’s Caro mio ben to Adagietto from the Fifth Mahler’s Symphony, the leitmotif of the film that evokes parallels with Visconti’s “Death in Venice.”
Perhaps the desire to return to the style of the Great Mute explains both the naivety of some decisions and their simple illustrative nature (voyeuristic pleasures, scenes of consolation in the bathroom, plastic representation of despair). The film ends with a dialogue between the Woman in Black and another reincarnation of Rudy, the young documentary director Paul, where she admits that the entire story that tormented her soul was made up. Paul is not discouraged: after all, the story came from her heart! The dialogue is similar to an apology from the author of the image: there are miscalculations and harshness in it, but there is also the most important and captivating thing: the sincerity of the feeling. This film is the lifelong dream of a person who became a director especially for her. She is the fruit of love, and it is always captivating.
Starting March 21 in theaters nationwide.
