“The whole comedy, where once again each narrative progression is entrusted to the elementary production and the elementary resolution of a misunderstanding, seems to want to adapt to the mimic hyperactivity of Mae Murray. In this sense, Valentino’s immobility, his suspended passivity is a rather strange accompaniment. […] In this attitude of disorientated inertia, in this difficulty in moving between the complex fascination of the femminine, […] it is the first clear apparition of the man possessed, kidnapped, vaguely terrorised by women which will have its dramatic apotheosis in Cobra (‘women lured him like the cobra lures its victims’).

Paola Cristalli, Rodolfo Valentino: lo schermo della passione, Ancona, Transeuropa, 1996