The Married Virgin (1918)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Charming and brutal

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

"The Married Virgin" is a bad movie by the standards of any era or genre. The only reason it has received a DVD release from a top company is that it features Rudolph Valentino—before he was a star. In it, he plays a swindler who has an affair with a married woman, and they try to blackmail her husband and his daughter. The film doesn't get much from the otherwise promising concept of an actor playing a character pretending to be another character. In one scene, Valentino's intertitles state, "You pay me a great compliment. I had no idea my acting was so convincing - - - but surely you know it is a performance." Unfortunately, not Valentino or anyone else in this film gives a convincing performance. At least, he and Vera Sisson (who is probably the actual lead here) are tolerable, which is more than can be said about the awful acting of those playing the stepmother and father.The melodrama is overwrought and boring. By the end, it doesn't even make much sense. The marriage part of the blackmail is unnecessary. Why would the father be more willing to pay off a blackmailer through the marriage of his daughter and subsequent "settlement" rather than just giving him the money and not dragging his daughter through such an ordeal? Additionally, in a large offense of telling instead of showing and manufacturing a happy ending out of nowhere, a single title card exonerates the father of his crimes; a man, who throughout the film, we had been told was guilty of murder and graft. The title claims, "Actually innocent, McMillan knows he must flee the state to escape a political frame-up."There is also some jarring continuity editing—throughout the film, cuts just seem to be a bit off. I doubt that has much to do with the restoration of this film given the professionals who did it. "The Married Virgin" was a B-picture of its day, made by a production company that I hadn't heard of. Somewhat interesting in the film is the employment of a flashback inside a flashback in one sequence, and there's a through the mirror shot of a character in another scene.

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.

A typical pre-twenties silent melodrama centered around a main character who must sacrifice her own happiness for Duty. Here we have Mary (Vera Sisson), an ingénue who, to save her father from disgrace, gives up the man she loves to marry a blackmailing gigolo, Count Roberto (Rudolph Valentino, playing a more developed version of the "cabaret parasite" from "The Eyes of Youth"). As often happens with this sort of movie, the wicked supporting characters of the gigolo and the sly, sexy stepmother (Kathleen Kirkham)—with whom he is in cahoots and having an affair—are far more interesting than the virtuous leads. Perhaps Lillian Gish could have made prissy Mary's dilemma affecting , but as played by Sisson she comes off as a gormless twit who cannot even wade into ankle deep seawater to retrieve a rambunctious toddler. As the teaser title implies, the marriage between the gigolo and the prig stays unconsummated, everything leading up to the moment when a frustrated Roberto breaks down Mary's bedroom door (surely what the original audience went in hopes of seeing rather than Mary's noble sacrifices). She doesn't seem worth the effort, but this scene is excitingly filmed and is an interesting precursor to a similar event in "The Son of the Sheik." Valentino and Kirhham make this film worthwhile (there's a real spark between them), but try to find the restored DVD version, rather than sloppily made video production.

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.