Valentino became a star dancing the tango with Beatrice Dominguez.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the movie that turned 25 year old Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla into Rudolph Valentino, the greatest love god the movies would ever know. His star would burn brighter than any other romantic leading man’s of the silent era before its supernova a mere 5 years after lighting up the celluloid firmament.

Four Horsemen is the story of a wealthy family living in Argentina, led by a Spanish immigrant and cattle rancher. He has two daughters. One marries a German and has three sons. The younger daughter marries a Frenchman and has a son and a daughter. The patriarch favors the younger daughter and spoils his half French grandson over his three male cousins.

Valentino plays the favorite grandson. He makes his entrance in a smoke filled bar and performs the most famous tango in the history of movies. This is the scene that made him a star and it is easily the most famous moment in an otherwise mostly forgotten film.

After the patriarch’s death the two son-in-laws move their families back to their respective homelands right before the First World War begins. Predictably the cousins wind up on opposite sides of the war. Valentino has an affair with a married woman. Her husband goes blind in the war, blah, blah, blah. The melodrama is all very over-the-top but the cinematography is good and there are some decent action sequences, especially when the French castle gets bombed.

There is also a prophet like figure that predicts the coming of the Four Horsemen. In a surreal bit of imagery we see “The Beast” and the grotesque quartet of Conquest, War, Pestilence and Death come issuing forth from its mouth. Movie buffs will spot both Alan Hale and Wallace Beery early in their careers but make no mistake, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is remembered as the vehicle that made Valentino a star for the ages.
 

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