ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS

Not so Silent: Women in Cinema before Sound
Stockholm Studies in Film History
1Not so Silent
Women in Cinema before Sound

Edited by
Sofia Bull and Astrid Söderbergh Widding©Sofia Bull, Astrid Söderbergh Widding and
Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm 2010
Cover page design by Bart van der Gaag.
Original photograph of Alice Terry.
ISBN 978-91-86071-40-0
Printed in Sweden by US-AB, Stockholm 2010.
Distributor eddy.se ab, Visby, Sweden.

Acknowledgements
Producing a proceedings volume is always a collective enterprise. First andforemost, we wish to thank all the contributors to the fifth Women and the
Silent Screen conference in Stockholm 2008, who have taken the trouble toturn their papers into articles and submitted them to review for this proceedings volume.
Margareta Fathli, secretary of the Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, deserves a particular mention for her engagement in establishing the new series
Stockholm Studies in Film History; an ideal framework for this publication.
A particular thanks goes to Lawrence Webb, who has copy–edited the bookwith a seemingly never–ending patience.
We also owe many thanks to Bart van der Gaag for making the cover as well
as for invaluable assistance in the production process.
Finally, we are most grateful to the Holger and Thyra Lauritzen Foundation
for a generous grant, as well as to the Department of Cinema Studies which
has also contributed generously to funding this volume.

Stockholm 30 April 2010
Sofia Bull & Astrid Söderbergh Widding

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Contributors
Marcela de Souza Amaral is Professor at UFF (Universidade Federal Fluminense––UFF) in
Brazil since 2006. Her main field of study is film directing and mise–en–scène. For her experience in the practical field, where she works as Assistant Director and Film Editor, she has
also developed research projects at the university evolving those two main areas (film directing and film editing), creating research groups with the students. Her research on Alice Guy–
Blaché is one of the first studies she has written within this project. She is currently editing
her documentary about the UFF Film School, for its 40th anniversary.
Kristen Anderson Wagner received her Ph.D. in Critical Studies from the University ofSouthern California School of Cinematic Arts. Her dissertation, “Comic Venus: Women and
Comedy in American Silent Film” explores the often–overlooked work of silent–era comediennes. Her current project is a study of how the mythology of Los Angeles was shaped by theearly film industry.
Therése Andersson, PhD Cinema Studies, currently at the Department of History, Stockholm
University. Andersson, born in 1974, defended her thesis in 2006 with the dissertation“Beauty Box: Film Stars and Beauty Culture in Early 20th Century Sweden”. She has recently
finished a post–doctoral project on Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, funded by the Anna
Ahlström and Ellen Terserus Foundation. In 2010, together with fellow researchers Eva Knuts
and Viveka Berggren Torell, she will begin a new research project called “Velcro, Button, andZip: Power and Materiality during Styling and Dressing”, funded by the Bank of Sweden
Tercentenary Foundation.
Muriel Andrin teaches at the University of Brussels and lectures at the Belgian Royal Archives. She is responsible for the new Gender Unit Research of the ULB (SAGES). Her PhD
thesis was published in 2005 at the P.I.E. Peter Lang under the title Maléfiques. Le Mélodrame filmique américain et ses héroïnes (1940–1953). She is the author of articles on
women’s representation in melodramas, ’cyber films’, women directors and new forms ofinteractions between cinema and contemporary art. She is currently co–publishing with Dominique Nasta the proceedings of the first international conference "Melodrama Revisited"organized at the ULB in 2009.
Luigia Annunziata received her PhD in Visual Representation: History, Theory and Production of Arts and Images from University of Siena, Italy in 2010. Her work focuses on Italiansilent cinema and the relationship between cinema and the other arts. Her research interests
include also African cinema and studies on Race, Ethnicity and Identity. She has authored
several publications on women and cinema, including a recent article in Cinemascope about
Orientalism and women in Italian silent cinema.

6Ansje van Beusekom studied Art History at the Free University in Amsterdam and wrote her
dissertation on the reception of film as a new medium in The Netherlands (1998). As Assistant Professor she teaches film studies at Utrecht University. Her publications include: “Earlyand silent cinema and movie going: the lecturer and inter titles”, “Cinema and the other artsand media: the other arts in films and film represented in the other arts and media” and “Thehistory of ideas on film as art beyond the Dutch Film Liga.” Her research interests also include classical film theory.
Anke Brouwers is a doctoral researcher employed by the Flemish Research Fund and is
attached to the University of Antwerp. Her academic work concentrates on American silent
film, film and the emotions, and melodrama and the woman’s film of the thirties and forties.
She is currently finishing her doctoral thesis entitled “Making a Scene: Sentimentalism in the
Silent Cinema of Mary Pickford and Frances Marion.” She has contributed an article on the
comedy of Mary Pickford’s features for the forthcoming AFI Reader on Slapstick Comedy(2010) and has written articles for Film International and Quarterly Review of Film andVideo.
Sofia Bull is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Cinema, Stockholm University. Her thesis
project is on the representation of the body in forensic crime dramas on television, but she
also nurtures a soft spot for doing research on women in silent cinema. She was the coordinator of the Fifth International Women and the Silent Screen Conference and is part of The
Women Film Pioneers Project and The Women’s Film History Network––UK/Ireland. She isa contributor to the forthcoming Women Film Pioneers Sourcebook: Volume II.
Nina Cartier is a Doctoral Candidate at Northwestern University. She studies the representations of blackness in film and changes in narration, particularly in blaxploitation, early cinema, and race films. Her most recent research projects include “Reel Niggas: Examining
White Constructions of Urban Blackness in Blaxploitation Films” and “Do the Robot: Black
Modernity, the Spectacle of Dancing, and Early Cinema.” She is currently working on her
dissertation, which explores the changes blaxploitation wrought upon the representations of
the black body in time and space and the narrational strategies the genre utilized.
Yuan Chen has an MA in Film Studies from Columbia University. She is part of the Women
Film Pioneers Project.
Monica Dall’Asta is an Associate Professor of Film and Television at the University of Bologna. She has published extensively on the origins of serial cinema, the history of film theories, and women in silent cinema. She is the editor of a recent Italian reissue of Alice Guy’s
memoirs. She is working with Jane Gaines on completing Volume II of the Women Film
Pioneers Sourcebook.

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Mary Desjardins is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College in
Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. She is co–editor of Dietrich Icon, a collection of essays
about Marlene Dietrich, author of the forthcoming Recycled Stars: Female Stardom in theAge of Television and Video and of many articles in book collections and journals.
Victoria Duckett received her Ph. D. from UCLA and has taught Screen Studies in the University of Manchester, UK, and in the Department of Media and Performing Arts at the Università Cattolica, Milan. She is currently a Fellow in Cinema Studies in the School of Culture
and Communication, University of Melbourne. A specialist in early film, she has publishedwidely on the intersection between film and the other arts. She was curator of the series ’Performing Passions: Sarah Bernhardt and the Silent Screen’ for Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna
2006, and is currently completing a book about early film and disciplinary exchange (’A Little
Too Much is Enough for Me’: Sarah Bernhardt and Silent Cinema).
Hélène Fleckinger is a PhD Candidate at University of Paris I Panthéon–Sorbonne, under thesupervision of Nicole Brenez. She is Associate Lecturer (ATER) at University of Paris–Est
Marne–la–Vallée, Department of Film and Audiovisual Studies. Her research interests concern French cinema, especially women’s, feminist and political cinema. She is also interested
in issues of video history and social uses. Together with David Faroult she has recently editeda journal issue on the cinema of May 68 (Documentaires, no 22, 2010).
Annette Förster (Dr.) is an independent scholar and film curator from the Netherlands, specialized in histories of women’s filmmaking, in silent cinema and the popular stage, and infeminist film criticism. She received her PhD from Utrecht University in 2005. She organized(together with Eva Warth) the international workshop “Gender and Silent Cinema” at Utrecht
University in 1999, which initiated the series of Women and the Silent Screen Conferences.
Her current research topic concerns the stage career of Asta Nielsen in Germany in the 1920s.
Jane Gaines is Professor of Film, School of the Arts, Columbia University, New York. She is
the award–winning author of Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era and Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law. With Monica Dall’Asta and Radha Vatsal
she edits the Women Film Pioneers Project online resource. Fictioning Histories: Women
Film Pioneers and The Documentary Destiny of Cinema are forthcoming.
Mila Ganeva (PhD 2000, Chicago, German Studies) is Associate Professor of German at
Miami University of Ohio in the USA. Her research and teaching interests include the literature and culture of the Weimar Republic, film history, and contemporary German film.
Ganeva has published numerous articles on fashion journalism, fashion photography, andmannequins, early German film comedies, and Berlin in film. Her book Women in Weimar
Fashion: Discourses and Displays in German Culture, 1918–1933 came out in 2008 with
Camden House.

8Andrea Haller is Curator at the Deutsche Filmmuseum in Frankfurt /Main. She studied
German literature, social anthropology, sociology and film studies at the University of Trier
She was awarded her PhD in 2009 for her dissertation on early cinema’s programming strategies and the female audience. She has published on local film history, programming practicesof early cinema, female moviegoing and fandom. Her most recent publication is “Seenthrough the eyes of Simmel: The Cinema Program as a ’modern’ experience” in Film 1900:
Technology, Perception, Culture, edited by Annemone Ligensa and Klaus Kreimeier, (Eastleigh: John Libbey, 2009).
Laura Horak is a PhD student in Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, witha designated emphasis in Gender and Women’s Studies. She is currently writing a dissertation
entitled “Girls Will Be Boys: Cross–dressed Women on the American Silent Screen”. Her
writings have appeared in Camera Obscura, The Moving Image, and the forthcoming Women
Film Pioneers Sourcebook. She also writes for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
Charlie Keil is Director of the Cinema Studies Institute and an Associate Professor in the
History Department at the University of Toronto. He has published extensively on the topic ofearly cinema, especially the pivotal ’transitional era’ of the early 1910s, in such publications
as Early American Cinema in Transition; American Cinema’s Transitional Era (co–editedwith Shelley Stamp); and American Cinema of the 1910s (co–edited with Ben Singer). He has
also published on documentary, contemporary cinema, and stardom. His next projects are ananthology examining the relationship between humour and animation, co–edited with DanielGoldmark, and a history of the origins of Hollywood.
Sarah Keller is Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at Colby College. Her mostrecent research focuses on intersections between poetry and cinema, especially in Frenchcinema of the 1920s and in the films and writings of Maya Deren.
Erin Kelley is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a bachelors degree in East Asian Studies from Brown University. Her
dissertation research explores the relationship between art and media in early 20th century
Japan.
Rosanna Maule (Dr.) is associate professor of Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim Schoolof cinema, Concordia University, Montréal. Dr. Maule’s is the author of Beyond Auteurism:
New Directions in Authorial Film Practices in France, Italy, and Spain since the 1980s(Forthcoming, Intellect Press, 2007) and the co–editor of In the Dark Room: Marguerite
Duras and Cinema (Forthcoming, Peter Lang, 2007) She is on the Board of Directors of
Women and the Silent Screen International Association and together with Catherine Russell
she co–organized the third edition of the Women and the Silent Screen conference.

9

Elena Mosconi is Assistant Professor at the Catholic University of Milan, where she teaches
Film History and Criticism. Her broader research addresses the institutionalisation of film andthe historical relationship between film and the other arts. She has written L’impressione delfilm (The impression of film. Essays on Italian film history 1895–1945, Milano 2006), andrecently edited Nero su bianco (Black on white. The politics for cinema in eighty years of’Rivista del cinematografo’, Roma 2008) and co–edited Spettatori italiani (Italian Audiences.
Rites and Places of Film Consumption 1900–1950, Roma 2006). She is also a contributor to
Italian and International reviews.
Dominique Nasta is Chair of the Film Studies Department and teaches Film History, Aesthetics and Analysis at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is the author of Meaning in
Film: Relevant structures in Soundtrack and Narrative (1992) and the co–author of New
Perspectives in Sound Studies (2004) as well as of essays and book chapters on early European Melodrama, East European cinemas and emotions and music in film. She is currently
completing a book on contemporary Romanian cinema and is the editor of a bilingual series
on Film Studies, "Rethinking cinema/Repenser le cinema", published by Peter Lang.
Phil Powrie is Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Sheffield. He has publishedwidely in French cinema studies, including French Cinema in the 1980s: Nostalgia and the
Crisis of Masculinity (Oxford University Press, 1997), Jean–Jacques Beineix (Manchester
University Press, 2001), French Cinema: An Introduction (co–authored with Keith Reader,
Arnold, 2002), Carmen on Film: A Cultural History (co–author, Indiana University Press,
2007) and Pierre Batcheff and Stardom in the 1920s (with Éric Rebillard, Edinburgh University Press, 2009). He has also edited and co–edited numerous anthologies, including one on
masculinities and two on the intersection between music and the cinema.
Éric Rebillard is a member of the Association Française de Recherche sur l’Histoire duCinéma. He has published work on Pierre Batcheff with Phil Powrie in Buñuel, Siglo XXI(Institución Fernando el Católico/Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2004), Marcel
L’Herbier: l’Art du Cinéma (Association Française de Recherche sur l’Histoire du Cinéma,2008), and Studies in French Cinema (2008).
Jaakko Seppälä (MA) is a postgraduate researcher in University of Helsinki. His major
research interests lie in the field of silent cinema, with a particular focus on Finnish film
culture. His current work explores the reception of Hollywood films in Finland in the 1920s.
Domenico Spinosa is Professor of Aesthetics and History of Cinema and Video at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sassari, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the “Federico II”
University of Naples in 2007. He was visiting PhD student at Harvard University in 2005. He
has authored Verso un’estetica del cinema. Filosofia, psicologia e teoria del cinema in Hugo
Münsterberg (Editori Riuniti, Roma 2008) and numerous papers in Philosophy and Film
Studies.

10Claus Tieber (Privatdozent Mag. Dr.) studied theatre studies, philosophy, communication
studies and political studies at the University of Vienna. He has worked as commissioning
editor for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), and as the leader of research projects
at the University of Vienna. Publications include: Schreiben für Hollywood. Das Drehbuch imamerikanischen Stummfilm (Münster: Lit Verlag 2008), Passages to Bollywood. Einführung
in den Hindifilm. (Münster: Lit Verlag 2006).
Miya Tokumitsu is a PhD candidate in the History of Art Department at the University ofPennsylvania. She holds a bachelors degree in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. Her research interests include Renaissance and Baroque art in Northern Europe in addition to early German cinema.
Selin Tüzün Gül is a research assistant at the University of Marmara in Istanbul, Faculty ofCommunications, Department of Radio–TV and Cinema. She is a graduate of the same department. She completed her master thesis at the Communication Faculty of Galatasaray
University in 2005. She was a former student of Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle and she is currently following the doctorate programme of Radio and Television at the Faculty of Communications at Marmara University.
Micaela Veronesi is a cinema historian and critic, author of the monograph Le soglie del film
(2005) and of several critical essays published in revues and in miscellany works. At thepresent time she is collaborating with the cinema review Segnocinema and is a member of the
Women Film Pioneers Project. She is also a teacher in Secondary school (Italian grammar andliterature).
Tricia Welsch is Associate Professor and Chair of Film Studies at Bowdoin College in
Maine. Her work has appeared in numerous film journals, including Film Quarterly, Griffithiana, Film Criticism, and Cinema Journal, as well as in anthologies on the history of film. She
has done extensive research on Fox Films before the company’s merger with Twentieth Century in 1935. She is a passionate devotee of the silent cinema and is currently preparing a
biography of Gloria Swanson, famous for her work in film and other media for seven decades,
to be called Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close–Up.
Astrid Söderbergh Widding is Professor of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University. She is
the editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture (an open access journal). Her most recent
publication, with Lars Gustaf Andersson and John Sundholm, is A History of Swedish Experimental Film Culture––From Early Animation to Video Art (2010).

11

Contents

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... 5
Contributors ..................................................................................................................... 6Contents ........................................................................................................................ 12
Studying Women and the Silent Screen ....................................................................... 15
Astrid Söderbergh Widding & Sofia Bull .................................................................. 15

Framing Feminist Film History ......................................................................19
Women and the Cinematification of the World.............................................................. 20
Jane M. Gaines ........................................................................................................ 20
What It Means to Be a Woman: Theorizing Feminist Film History Beyond the
Essentialism/Constructionism Divide ............................................................................ 39
Monica Dall’Asta ...................................................................................................... 39
Feminist Film History and the (Un)problematic Treatment of Transnationalism in Early
Cinema .......................................................................................................................... 48
Rosanna Maule ........................................................................................................ 48

Pioneering Authorships .................................................................................59
Alice Guy and the Narrative Cinema: Narrativity and Pioneering in the Early Cinema 60
Marcela Amaral ........................................................................................................ 60
A Woman Wishes to “Make a New World”. Umanità by Elvira Giallanella ................... 67
Micaela Veronesi...................................................................................................... 67
The Didactic–Instructive Task of Cinema (1907–1918) in Italian Women’s Writings ... 80
Domenico Spinosa................................................................................................... 80
On Cinema. The Novelist Matilde Serao and the New Medium ................................... 85
Luigia Annunziata .................................................................................................... 85
Not quite Classical Hollywood Cinema: the Narrative Structure of Frances Marion’s
Screenplays................................................................................................................... 96
Claus Tieber.............................................................................................................96
The Name Behind the Titles: Establishing Authorship through Inter–Titles ...............103
Anke Brouwers.......................................................................................................103
Artistic Titles in Artistic Films! Investigating Swedish Art–Titles and the Case of Alva
Lundin..........................................................................................................................115
Sofia Bull ................................................................................................................115

12

Divas and Intertexts ....................................................................................125
The European Actress, the Liberty Style, and the Diva on the Silent Screen ............126
Victoria Duckett ......................................................................................................126
Lyda Borelli as a Liberty Icon ......................................................................................137
Elena Mosconi........................................................................................................137
Engaging National Emotions on Screen: European Silent Women in ’Strikingly
Effective’ Melodramas .................................................................................................149
Dominique Nasta & Muriel Andrin..........................................................................149“Optical Harmonies”: Sight and Sound in Germaine Dulac’s Integral Cinema ...........159
Sarah Keller ...........................................................................................................159

National and Transnational Stardom ..........................................................167
Lovability and Problematic Gunshots: Mary Pickford, Her Films and Finnish Film
Culture .........................................................................................................................168
Jaakko Seppälä......................................................................................................168
Asta Nielsen in the Netherlands: 1920........................................................................179
Ansje van Beusekom .............................................................................................179
Dance, Stardom, and the Trans–National Celebrity Status of Anna May Wong ........187
Erin Kelley ..............................................................................................................187
Wang Hanlun, a “Successful” Runaway Nora in the Chinese Film Industry...............194
Yuan Chen .............................................................................................................194
On the Stage and on the Screen: Actresses as one of the Symbols of the Turkish
Modernization Project..................................................................................................205
Selin Tüzün Gül......................................................................................................205

Performing “Femininity”...............................................................................215
I Get Lifted? Delineating Uplift’s Restrictions upon Black Female Desire in Silent Era
Race Films...................................................................................................................216
Nina Cartier ............................................................................................................216
Josephine Baker and Pierre Batcheff in La Sirène des tropiques (1927) ...................236
Phil Powrie .............................................................................................................236with Éric Rebillard ..................................................................................................236
Critical Absences: The Function of Swooning in G.W. Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl ...248
Miya Tokumitsu ......................................................................................................248
Edna “Billy” Foster, the Biograph Boy .........................................................................256
Laura Horak ...........................................................................................................256“The Malicious Woman”. On the Character of Irma Vep in Les Vampires by Louis
Feuillade ......................................................................................................................262
Hélène Fleckinger ..................................................................................................262

13

Studio Branding and Comic Personas ........................................................277“Studio Girls”: Female Stars and the Logic of Brand Names......................................278
Charlie Keil.............................................................................................................278
From Pratfalls to Glamour: Gloria Swanson Goes to Triangle....................................286
Tricia Welsch..........................................................................................................286“Ever on the Move”: Silent Comediennes and the New Woman ................................301
Kristen Anderson Wagner......................................................................................301
Humorous Reflections on Acting, Filmmaking and Genre in Comic Film Productions byAdriënne Solser, Musidora, and Nell Shipman ...........................................................314
Annette Förster ......................................................................................................314

Fashion and Fandom ..................................................................................325
Film, Fashion and Female Movie Fandom in Imperial Germany ................................326
Andrea Haller .........................................................................................................326
Facing the Silent Film Star: Concepts of Beauty and the Camera .............................339
Therése Andersson................................................................................................339
Women between Screenwriting and Fashion Journalism: The Cases of Ruth Goetz andOla Alsen .....................................................................................................................347
Mila Ganeva ...........................................................................................................347
A Method to this Madness? The Myth of the Mad Silent Star.....................................357
Mary Desjardins .....................................................................................................357

14

Studying Women and the Silent Screen
Astrid Söderbergh Widding & Sofia Bull
“The work of the Women and the Silent Screen Conferences […] is to collectively create a new realm of cinema history, neither ’the’ history nor ’a’history, but a strange double world”. This double world, the world of cinematification, is the subject of Jane Gaines’ introductory article, the keynote
speech of the Stockholm conference in 2008. In her conclusion, this conceptof cinematification is turned into the term of cinemelogratification, something that she argues that the early female audiences actually had, but for
which we as scholars are searching anew.
Monica Dall’Asta attempts to frame a feminist film historiography beyond “the great divide” between essentialism and constructionism. She argues for a history that also includes “the films that were never made” ornever officially screened, and which clearly demonstrate that so–called “historical failures” are often failures––as Dall’Asta puts it––of history itself.
Rosanna Maule, finally, deals with a matter that kept reappearing during
the conference: the question of transnationalism in relation to feminist film
history. She argues that postcolonial perspectives on nationhood are necessary to widen “the discussion of gender politics in the transnational scenario
of early cinema”. These three contributions, aiming at framing anew thequestion of how to write feminist film history, also serve as a kind of theoretical introduction to the following thematic sections.
The question of female authorship, perhaps the most classical question in the
study of women and the silent screen, has often been assigned almost exclusively to the role of the director. In the second section of this volume, Pioneering authorships, Marcela Amaral deals with one of those classic pioneers: director Alice Guy. Her argument, however, that ”a narrative effort”
can be seen in her films and that they contribute to introducing narrativity inearly cinema, widens the scope from her pioneering role alone. By proposinga reading of the newly rediscovered Umanità by Elvira Giallanella, especially its reflection on feminine subjectivity, Micaela Veronesi reintroduces
this unknown female pioneer into the history of Italian cinema.
But not only directors are addressed in this section, but also women’s
writings for film as novelists and scriptwriters. The Italian theme continues
with Domenico Spinosa’s discussion of Italian women’s early writings on
the didactic task of the new medium––the first results of research still inprogress––whereas Luigia Annunziata analyzes an Italian novelist, Matilde
Serao, who was also the first Italian intellectual to write about the new medium. In writing on Frances Marion’s screenplays, Claus Tieber––like

15

Marcela Amaral––also deals with the question of the development of classical Hollywood narrative.
Finally, two papers discuss a topic generally ignored within the history of
early cinema, namely the inter–titles. Anke Brouwers discusses Anita Loos
as scriptwriter and author through inter–titles, whereas Sofia Bull deals with
Alva Lundin and inter–titles as aesthetic device. Thus, the contributions tothis section contain not only biographies, but also texts highly related todifferent contexts and questions of style.
In the section on divas and intertexts, an important subtext also lies in what
Victoria Duckett in her contribution has called “typing in tandem”. Duckett
has written her piece “in tandem” with Elena Mosconi, in order to demonstrate the usefulness of collaboration within academia, and the importance ofa common political vision. Their articles deal with melodramas––with focus
on the particular question of how to create feelings and emotions throughacting style and intertextual references to art.
Dominique Nasta and Muriel Andrin have gone one step further in actually writing their contribution together. They deal with emotions––what theycall fiction emotions and artefact emotions––the latter also containing anintertextual dimension.
Sarah Keller––who is writing on one of the women pioneers, Germaine
Dulac––also discusses an intertextual, or rather intermedial, phenomenon:
how visual devices in her cinema refer to and make use of other media. “Theplay of oppositions and correspondences” dealt with by Keller addresses thiscentral question on juxtaposing different perspectives, be it in the exchange
between scholars or between different texts or media.
The next section, National and Transnational Stardom, deals with nationalstars who have actually travelled transnationally, but also with cultural ideasthat travel, thus contributing in another way to the idea of transnational stardom even for national stars who may never have left their home country.
Jaakko Seppälä and Ansje van Beusekom both write on the reception of aparticular star in another country: Seppälä on Mary Pickford in Finnish film
culture and Beusekom on Asta Nielsen in the Netherlands. In Beusekom’s
contribution, there are several references to an intermedial context––in thiscase between theatre and film. Seppälä’s text––and to some extent Beusekom’s––also refer to trade press and fan magazines; this theme is further
developed in the Fashion and Fandom section.
Erin Kelley’s article on Anna May Wong discusses the transnational celebrity of an Asian star in Hollywood. Kelley’s article also connects to thenext section, where both Nina Cartier and Phil Powrie analyse representations of ethnicity in American cinema. In Kelley’s piece, however, yet another dimension to transnationality is added, as the American–Chinese ac-16tress Wong also appeared in a British film; her transnational career thus includes both the Asian, American and European horizon.
In Yuan Chen’s article, the question is turned upside–down; the transnational perspective here has nothing to do with crossing borders. Her analysis
deals with a Chinese star in China, who is read as ”Westernized”. Like Chen,
Selin Tüzün Gül also deals with a non–Western context, in this case actresses as part of the Turkish modernization project, within a cultural context
where women were not supposed to have the kind of roles that they actually
had in film industry.
In the section on the performance of ”femininity”, the authors deal with representations of women on the silent screen from various perspectives, and inparticular how expectations of ”femininity” have been fulfilled or on thecontrary rejected.
Both Cartier and Powrie discuss issues of blackness. Cartier’s article focuses on how uplift ideologies limit the space opened up for female desire insilent era race films, whereas Powrie in his paper, co–written with Éric Rebillard, examines how questions of race restricts the character portrayal in
Josephine Baker’s first feature film La Sirène des Tropiques, and discusses
the complex interplay between blackness and whiteness in the film, particularly in relation to male lead Pierre Batcheff.
Miya Tokumitsu in her article offers a thorough analysis of the swooningof Louise Brooks in Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, and demonstrates how it
reveals “the unstable status of femininity in Western representation”. In
Laura Horak’s text on the Biograph Boy, an earlier unstable moment in film
history is analysed: “a momentous transitional era for American gendernorms and the burgeoning film industry” in the 1910s. And Hélène Fleckinger writes about the “first French vamp”, the ambiguous Irma Vep character in Les Vampires, contravening “the norms of the fantastic like those offemininity”. This section also bridges over to the two following ones, withstudies of personas and stars.
In his contribution to this volume, Charlie Kiel puts stardom in a quite different context than the usual ones, namely the logic of brand names andcompanies. His argument is that the movie company actually formed the starpersona. This argument is repeated from an opposite position in Tricia
Welsh’s article, where she describes how Gloria Swanson went to Triangle.
Together, these articles describe the field of tension between star and company; who actually forms what? Welsh also deals with the fact that Swanson
initially started as a comedienne but after a while wanted to get more serious
roles. Her problems in this case are well comparable to the former section
about expectations and female stereotypes.
Kristen Anderson Wagner deals in her article with the relation between silent comediennes and new women––but from a slightly different perspective
17

than the ones evoked before. According to her, the most important aspect is
how the actual historical audiences read those performers. Annette Förster
on the other hand launches the hypothesis that all these performers were––orat least might have been––stars from the outset, eventually turning into acting or producing.
The last section of the book, on fashion and fandom, deals with representations in fan magazines, in three of the cases specifically related to fashion.
Andrea Haller argues in her article that modernity has been an importantparameter for the centrality of fashion in cinema studies. Cinema and fashion
alike have been considered as “models of the experience of modernity”. Thisis true even of the concept of physiognomy, another returning concept in thisconnection. The articles deal with different national contexts: Andrea Haller
as well as Mila Ganeva writes on Germany: Haller on fandom and Ganeva
on a close relationship between fashion journalism and screenwriting. The
articles also deal with certain myths connected to female stars in the silent
era: Therése Andersson writes on a Swedish film star, Anna Q Nilsson, whowent to the United States but whose “Swedishness” was foregrounded by thepress, whereas Mary Desjardins analyses myths of madness in relation to
American silent stars.
The diversity of subjects in this volume also reveals both the complexity andthe problems of the field of research that the Women and the Silent Screen
Conferences represent. Not only do they deal with well–known, concrete
issues within feminist scholarship, such as pioneers or stars. But they also
have to do with a more fundamental question: that of the medium as such inits early years, and its conceptualisation within a feminist scholarly framework. This clearly reveals that other horizons may be opened towards earlycinema, where the form and function of the medium may no longer be separated from questions of gender, reality or spectatorship. Rather, the scope of
research has to be broadened, even from a gender perspective, to contain themoving image in its entirety. If the legacy of feminist theory, as Jane Gaines
argues in her introductory article, has been “the transformation of the academically abject––thoughts and feelings––into its very basis”, feminism assuch may still be a useful framework not least in theorizing early cinema,
which might widen the scholarly outlook from the films only to contain amuch broader horizon. To quote Gaines again, finally: “The continued vitality of silent cinema studies is testimony to our conviction, however, that thesilent moving image and its acoustic supplement can go where word will notand cannot go”.

18Framing Feminist Film History

19

Women and the Cinematification of the World
Jane M. Gaines
In a 1926 article titled “The Public’s Pleasure,” British critic Iris Barry
wrote: “[…]Now one thing never to be lost sight of in considering the cinema is that it exists for the purpose of pleasing women.”1 Cinema existing toplease women? Here is a productive starting point for the Women and the
Silent Screen conferences, a declaration of the era’s expectations for womencoincident with the expectations for the new cinematograph. What werethese expectations? To be refined as well as to refine others, to be transformed (or just to feel so) and to transform the world.2 In Barry’s statementof purpose we recall the uplifting and improving momentum, the high ideals
and aspirations that moviegoing seemed to have encouraged in a class of
women. This would be the class whose interest was not perhaps in pleasure
as feminists would later define it but whose interest was in finding pleasurethrough pleasing others, but also in averting displeasure.3
So not surprisingly, Barry’s article turns out to be less about viewing
pleasures and more about proper subject matter, which is why displeasure isreally the operative concept here. The article is about the stories she disdains
and her hope that the public would some day ask for “slightly better
dreams.”4 In the body of the essay, along with her lists of exceptional titles,
we find, however, an old complaint. Encapsulated in one small contrast is a
topic I want to open out––a topic not unfamiliar to motion picture theory andhistory, a topic rich and compelling yet fraught with political as well as philosophical problems. Iris Barry, like so many other reformers, then as now,
complains that the tiresome “love and marriage business” on the screen gives
us “soothing syrup, not reality.”5 “Not reality.” “Here we go again,” you say.
What in the world do we do with the “reality” that audiences expect, the“reality” that they have historically been encouraged to expect in the cinema? What is meant by this “expectation of reality”?
The question of the “expectation of reality” is highly ideological. The official cultural version of what is “real and true” has been internalized as what
each of us tests against what is thought to be a “my reality.” The problem
arises when one perceives a discrepancy between “my reality,” that which is
1

Iris Barry, “The Public’s Pleasure,” from Let’s Go to the Pictures (London: Chatto & Windus, 1926), reprinted in The Red Velvet Seat: Women’s Writing on the First Fifty Years ofCinema, ed. Antonia Lant (London: Verso, 2006), 128.
2
See, for example, “Play to the Ladies.” The Nickelodeon Vol. 1, no. 2 (February 1909): 33–34.
3
The reference is to the 1980s definition of pleasure as a feminist issue which began with
Carole Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (New York: Harper
Collins, 1993).
4
Barry, 134.
5
Barry, 131.
20

felt to be one’s own, and some other “reality” (which might or might not be
the official social reality). Most often, the official “reality” becomes one’s
own, a function of hegemony, as we know. But not always. Sometimes one’s
own “my reality” is militantly held against official realities, especially when
“my reality” is empowered by the “our reality” of the minority group, agroup estranged from the official, often privileged, “reality of others.” Later,
however, I will discuss how this “reality of others” is reversed when, as thematerial of domestic melodrama, it fascinates cultural and social class outsiders. There, we will need to ask how the depiction of the harsh “reality ofothers,” so often the subject matter of naturalism or documentary realism, isdrawn down into fictional melodrama, so often faulted for its abandonmentof the very social “reality” from which it may be drawing. This kind of ideological operation that dismisses melodrama is most clear with the move from“my reality is not your reality” to “your reality is not reality” at all. By now
it should be clear that I am discussing how “reality” functions as a rhetorical
trump card, which should explain Iris Barry’s usage above. In Iris Barry’s
complaint, “not reality,” the sugary Hollywood dramatization rejected as“not reality” is not necessarily measured against another’s lived “reality.”
Instead, it appears to be measured against an ideal “reality,” one that may be
synonymous with nothing other than “better things.”
It is difficult to know from silent film era commentary what is actually meantby the term “reality,” especially with so many “realities” anticipated in the firsttwo decades of the appearance of motion photography. The very promise, inLouis Lumière’s terms, “to bring the world to the world,” invited the comparison between the screen depiction and the event depicted, as well as this world
and that world, ours and not ours. How quickly, we ask ourselves, does the motion picture credited with the achievement of the realist goal come to be criticized for failing to reach that goal? Clearly such apparently achieved aesthetic
realism invited comparisons. But oddly enough as soon as the moving image iscredited with achieving a nineteenth century standard of photographic realism, it
becomes subject to judgment by different criteria, criteria cloaked by the term
“realism.” If we cannot be comprehensive here, we can at least start a short listof some of the kinds of “realities” that may be referenced in silent era discourse.
There may be the “social realities” or the topicalities of domestic worlds, sometimes political events, sometimes a woman’s own sense of lived reality. There is
everyday or daily life reality, not to mention the brutal realities of existence, andthe reality always antithetical to the apparently unreal (itself sometimes fantasy,
sometimes falsehood, sometimes hyperbole). Here I want to begin with thequestion of the “realities” that we also find repeatedly coupled with the term“the world,” often synonymous with “everything” as in “everything in it,” paradoxically both microcosmic domestic worlds and the macrocosmic global. This
starting point will also be my ending point. Thus, the silent cinema spectator
seeking “reality” in the cinema parallels you and me, you and me as historians
seeking that spectator’s “reality,” reaching for, by means of our own histo21

riographic method, the so–called “historical reality” that our method can nevertotally deliver but that it continues to seek. In her 1934 University of Chicago
lectures, modernist writer Gertrude Stein said this about the vaunting ambitionof traditional historiography to know absolutely “everything”: “…how can an
historian who knows everything really knows everything that has really been
happening how can he come to have the feeling that the only existence the man
he is describing has is the one he has been giving to him. After all the historian
who really knows everything and an historian really does he really does how canhe have the creation of some one who has no existing except that the historian
who is writing has at the moment of writing and therefore has as recognition at
the moment of writing being writing…Well I am sure I do not know.” 6
Gertrude Stein, critiquing and parodying historiography with her stream of consciousness wit, tells us what we know but that we don’t want to say. And this isthat the historian brings this realm of the historic into existence. The work of the
Women and the Silent Screen Conferences, however, is to collectively create a
new realm of cinema history, neither “the” history nor “a” history, but a strange
double world. I say “strange” as well as “double” because there is an eeriness
about the way in which the former reality of the historical past impinges on ourpresent reality. Perhaps Gilles Deleuze captures something of what we mightcall the eerie “here– but– no–longer– here” aspect of the historical realm when
he effectively says that it exists at the same time that it does not exist.7 This existing non–existence of the historical past is demonstrable in the case of the silent film era which comes into existence for us all over again with every screening. Again, like the silent cinema spectator, we posit another world continuouswith and as full as our own, and in this positing, whether we would say so ornot, we admit to having something somewhat like what post–colonial theorist
Gayatri Spivak has called “empirical desires.”8 These are the desires to see andto know in detail, in us desires culminating in the writing of historical articles
and books, in them (our historical subjects), desires culminating in more moviegoing, sometimes scenario writing, and sometimes moviemaking. What is more
important, their empirical desires are linked to a worldview, which brings me to
my title.
6

Gertrude Stein, Narration: Four Lectures by Gertrude Stein (1934, repr: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 60.
7
See Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (1968; repr: New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994), 81–82.
8
Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1999), 251 – 253, is here much more subtle about the problem that deconstruction has
had with empirical knowledge. Footnote # 84, 251, quotes Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, 75: “What certitude of essence must guide the empirical investigation?…Without venturing up to the perilous necessity of the question or the arche–question ‘what is,’ let us takeshelter in the field of grammatological knowledge.” But in this section her reference to the“empirical” (her quotation marks) is paired with the discussion of “desire” (also hers), withmore attention to a slippage between “desire” and “interests,” which is part of her critique ofMarxist philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault.
22

“Women and the Cinematification of the World” is an attempt to probe
their worldview, to grasp the empirical expectations placed on the machinethat claimed to envelop everything. Cinematification references the nineteenth century anticipation Mary Ann Doane has described as the “guaranteethat anything and everything––any moment whatever––is representable,
cinematographic.” 9 Another way of putting this is to say that what sets thecinema century apart is that it was first century in which everything wascinematographable, the first in which every moment could have been motion
photographed.10 Antonia Dixon and her brother William Kennedy Laurie
Dickson, looking ahead in 1894, wrote in their co–authored History of theKinetograph, Kinetoscope and Kineto–Phonograph: “All the kingdoms of
the world, with their wealth of color, outline and sound, shall be brought into
the elastic scope of individual requirement at the wave of a nineteenth–century wand.”11 What strikes us in the Dixons is of course the imperializing
imagination, the old conquering stance of Anglo culture in the Victorian era.
But the magical cinematographic mastery of absolutely everything promises
something else that we see in the reformers, theatre owners, critics, producers, and players from the silent era. Think of theatre owners like African
American Anna L. Tucker who opened with her husband the Pacific Theatre
for blacks only in New Haven, Connecticut in 1914.12 Or, as Jan Olsson tells
us, Mrs. Anna Mozart who managed as many as fourteen theatres in Los
Angeles and started by showing titles from the Lumières’ first program.13
There was, we suspect, some irresistibly contagious utopianism at the moment of the inception of cinema worldwide, and women were not immune tothis, not only in their “uplift” agendas, but in their risky economic ventures,
scandalous affairs with powerful men, and in nothing more than leaving asmall town and taking a train to the city. We want to know what the cinema
had to do with the encouragement of aspirations, encouragement against thereality of the impossibility of leaving and the difficulty of undertaking anything that you were not expected to do. Cinematification as utopianism I findspelled out in Georg Lukács’s 1913 remarks published in the Frankfurter Zeitung where he says: “’Everything is possible’”: this is the worldview of the’cinema,’ and because it technically expresses absolute reality… (albeit only
9

Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 31.
10
In Jean–Luc Godard and Yousef Ishaghpour, Cinema: The Archaeology of Film and theMemory of a Century. Trans. John Howe (New York: Berg, 2005), Ishaghpour, 4, in conversation with Godard quotes Godard as having said that the it was the cinema that made “thetwentieth century exist.”11
Antonia and W. K. L. Dickson. History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kineto–
Phonograph (1895, repr: New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2000), 33.
12
Kathy Fuller–Seely and Karen Mahar, “Exhibiting Women,” in Jane Gaines and Radha
Vatsal, eds. Women Film Pioneers Online Database (New York: Columbia University Libraries, 2010).
13
Jan Olsson, Los Angeles Before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture(Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009), 134 – 135, 141 – 145, 147–51.
23

empirical) in every individual moment, the validity of possibility is cancelled
out as a category opposed to reality.”14 So, at this moment when, perhaps justfor a moment, “possibility” is thought not antithetical to “reality,” when everything seems possible, this productive antithesis is expressed in a sweeping
historical phenomenon: the advent of cinema. This is what I am calling the
expectation of the cinematification of the world as well as worlds within thatworld. Cinematification is both making everything into cinema and cinema
thought to contain everything, a very historically flavored world view describing their time, not ours. But world cinematification is still somehow our historical problem (as well as our opportunity), the daunting task of studying ittaken up by the Women and the Silent Screen Conferences where the shift ofemphases signals that we no longer study what we called “women and cinema” in the 1970s.15 Now, in our most cross–national phase, women andcinematification positions us to deal with the expectant, exhalant world viewof modernization which includes modernization as the transformation of lives.
And at the same time we are charged to not neglect the failures of modern
democratization, to note that while some select lives have been transformed,
others have not.16 And finally, to us has fallen the job of studying the genresthat celebrated and registered the new conditions for women––the wild comedies and serial queen heroics.17 More paradoxically, and closer to my topic
here, we study the domestic melodrama which made genre lessons out of the
raw material of the failures of possibility in women’s lives. This is the melodrama that narrativized the disjuncture between the hoped for new possibilities
and the stubborn old social realities hardened by gender inequality. The mostinteresting question of all is which fosters which––these social failures or the14
Georg von Lukács. “Thoughts Toward an Aesthetic of Cinema.” Trans. Janelle Blakenship
Polygraph 13 (2001), 15.
15
For a comprehensive overview of these developments see Alison Butler, “Feminist Perspectives in Film Studies,” in The Sage Handbook of Film Studies, ed. James Donald and Michael
Renov (Los Angeles and London: Sage, 2008), 391 – 407.
16
Thomas Elsaesser, ”Melodrama: Culture of Complaint of the Missing Universal of Social
Justice?” Keynote Address, “Film Melodrama Revisited” Conference, Universite Libre deBruxelles, Brussels, Belgium (November 2009) has described melodrama as connected to a“crisis in Western democracy” in which persons live out the consequences of society’s failure
to deliver the promised ideals of equality and justice. For the relation between cinema and“modernity” (the “shorthand” for economic, social, and psychological change), Leo Charney
and Vanessa R. Schwartz, “Introduction” in Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, ed.
Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 1.
17
See, for the important work that makes this case Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity:
Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001),
Ch. 7, especially 55 – 56, where he makes a distinction between sensational melodrama andthe melodrama of pathos; Karen Ward Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), Ch. 4; Richard Kozarski An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915 – 1928, Vol. 3 (New York and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 164 – 166; Jennifer M. Bean, “Technologies of
Early Stardom and the Extraordinary Body,” in Jennifer M. and Diana Negri, eds. A Feminist
Reader in Early Cinema Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 404–433.

24

genres that made narratives out of the discrepancies between cherished dreams
and destitute lives.
For some women, the “possibility not at odds with reality” world view coincided with the local imagination of national and regional cinemas as well as the
economic conditions favorable to starting small companies. Among these were
the Italians Elvira Notari and Elvira Giallanella in the region of Naples, theCzech Thea Cervenkova, who Jindriska Blahova tells us started a company inPrague that lasted from 1918 to 1923 and the Egyptian Bahiga Hafez when she
worked as producer, director, and musical scorer on a sound as well as a silent
version of Al–Dahaia/The Victims (1932).18 Here the phenomenon that Karen
Mahar has noted in the U.S. case is relevant. The number of women in the U.S.
who announced that they were starting companies or allowed their names to be
used as the basis for the foundation of companies––women–named companies
far outnumbered independent companies started by male producers in the silent
era.19And where exactly did it occur to these women producers, like Chinese–
American Marion E. Wong that they, too, could use this “nineteenth century
magic wand”?20 It must have occurred to them in the darkened interior of the
motion picture theatre which is one reason we privilege this historical location
and begin with the spettatrice, as Neopolitan critic Matilde Serao termed her in
1916.21 But the most important thing that can be said about the breathless “expectation of reality,” of everything suddenly “seeable,” is the first principle of its
qualification: everything was not seeable.
1) Our documentary interest in their documentary interest: Although the first
historical movement of Antonia Dixon’s “nineteenth century wand” wished thecinematification of everything, the turning of everything in to cinema, not everything could be turned into cinema. Not absolutely everything in the world, andcertainly not in the first decade. This crucial insight is Heide Schlüpmann’s,
found in her reconsideration of the moment at which the non–fiction actualité,18
On Elvira Notari see Guliana Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory andthe City Films of Elvira Notari (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), on Elvira
Gianelli, see in Ed. Monica Dall’Asta, ed. Proceedings of the Non Solo Dive Conference(Bologna, 2009). On Thea Cervenkova, see Jindriska Blahova, “Thea Cervenkova” in JaneGaines and Monica Dall’ Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Online Database (Columbia University Libraries, forthcoming). On Bahiga Hafez see Magdi Abdel Rahman “Al–Dahaia–An
Egyptian Case History in the Restoration of Nitrate Film,” in Roger Smither, ed. This Film isDangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film (London: Fédération Internationale des Archives
du Film, 2002), 369–374
19Mahar, 160, mentions Sessue Hayakawa and Tom Mix, among others, but “women dominated the trend.”20
See Jenny Lau, “Marion E. Wong,” in Gaines and Vatsal, eds.
21
Matilde Serao, “A Spectatrix is Speaking to You,” in The Red Velvet Seat: Women’s Writing on the First Fifty Years of Cinema, ed. Antonia Lant (London: Verso, 2006), 97 – 99.
Trans. Giorgio Bertellini, From “Parla una Spettatrice,” L’Arte Muta (Naples, Italy) 1, no. 1(June 1916), 31–2.

25dominant at the beginning, that is, from 1895, begins to give way to the fiction
film, which starts to occur around 1907. Why, she asks, when the actualité wasso successful and numerically dominant did the fiction film so quickly come toascendance?22 Many explanations have been offered for this, including the argument that fiction films, made on an assembly line basis, were cheaper to produce than actualités whose production depended upon the uncertainty of disasters breaking out.23 But Schlüpmann’s feminist reasoning is more interesting.
Without denying the early fascination with the documentary mode of the actualité, in fact building on it, she argues that the first fiction films were, as she says
“fuelled by the same interest,” and that they therefore were also a kind of documentation “albeit by other means.”24 Why? The early fiction film shows exactly
the phenomena not seen in the actualité that purported to show all. What we donot see in the exterior landscapes and streets peopled by tourists and workers shesays is “waking up in the morning in their cramped quarters or feudal boudoirs,”
or “washing, bathing or getting dressed.” Neither do we see them “as a family at
the table, in the kitchen or in some attic room. We do not see how they love,quarrel or dream….”25 Another way of putting this would be to say that we donot see that “other reality,” the “reality of others,” often working–class others as
in, for instance, the British film There’s Good in the Worst of Us (1914), directed by Ethlye Batley, to which I will momentarily return.
Note also what happens here to the established narrative of film history when
documentary is awarded a more dominant position. Schlüpmann’s argument forseeing the impulse of the actualité as extending further into the domain of fiction film poses a direct challenge to the received historical narrative in which thefiction film is inevitably dominant from its inception. This is a challenge much
like Alison McMahan’s argument for reversing the order of the silent to soundfilm which allows us to accommodate the earlier success of the post–
synchronized phonoscènes directed by Alice Guy Blaché at the French Gaumontcompany between 1902 and 1906.26 Placing more emphasis on Alice Guy Blaché, then, produces a new narrative order: sound to silent to sound.

22

Heide Schlüpmann, “The Documentary Interest in Fiction,” Daan Hertogs and Nico De
Klerk, eds. Uncharted Territory: Essays on Early Nonfiction Film, (Amsterdam: Strichting
Nederlands Filmmuseum, 1997), 33.
23
See Janet Staiger in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical
Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 115–116, on cost of relying on unpredictable events.
24
Schlüpmann, 33.
25
Schlüpmann, 34.
26
Alison McMahan, “Beginnings,” in Elizabeth Ezra, ed. European Cinema (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 23, argues that with an alternative narrative, that of what she calls“incomplete to complete mechanization,” we might be able to accommodate the technological fact of synchronized sound as appearing chronologically before silent cinema. See Alison
McMahan, Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema (New York and London: Continuum, 2002), 48, where she says that Guy directed more than one hundred of these scenes for
the Gaumont chronophone.
26

In the new narrative that extends the documentary impulse, the complete
cinematification of the world could not be achieved by the actualité alone but
required the supplementary enactment of the fictioned film. In answer to a
documentary fascination on the part of early audiences (who have already been
established as curious spectators), the fiction film comes into being as a meansof extending the exploratory territory of the cinematograph.27 Complete cinematification meant extension into the world of the home and, as we know, finally pushing on into the hitherto unseen and uncharted terrain of the psyche.
But there is a second, corollary question that arises here and anticipates alater historical development. Let us follow Schlüpmann for now and call it the
censorship of sensitive material. Fiction here effectively operates as a disclaimer, a useful defense against censorship: The fictional frame placed aroundthe controversial, intimate stuff of the “lives of others” says, “We can show you
this scandalous situation because it’s ’not true.’”28
2) Telling all without exactly telling anything. But there would be practical problems as well that arise from the aspiration to go everywhere and show everything. Cumbersome cinematographic equipment, Schlüpmann says, could notenter the privacy of people’s homes, thus the practical prohibition that would
legislate against documenting the socio–emotional material of familial relations.
But, we say, once inside these borders, a second censoring, now a self–censoringand obfuscating tendency would develop; ingenious symbolics are resorted to,
and another theory is required. The fiction whose goal was originally documentary “show all” now perfects strategies for disguising and denying what it appears to have shown. Because even when purporting to show all, the fiction film,
extension of the actualité, did not and could not show all, not absolutely everything. Once inside domestic worlds some situations were found to be too muchat odds with the rosy “our reality” of official cultures, too “unreal” (as it would
be said) to record or to exhibit. As we know, it would be the real historical circumstances of women and children, the lived conditions of the household that
could not be shown.29 Now what we want to know is what happens when we
map the impetus of documentary interest onto feminist melodrama theory. We
have a slightly adjusted paradigm: movement from the outside showing to the27
The reference is to Tom Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)
Credulous Spectator,” in Linda Williams, ed. Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 114–133.
28
Schlüpmann, 35, says “Yet the project of recreating the private and intimate sphere in the“home” of the cinema was not only hindered by problems that originated in front of the camera.
It was also hindered by the social taboo surrounding any glimpse of privacy and intimacy.”29
See Catherine Gallagher, “The Rise of Fictionality,” in The Novel, Vol. I.: History, Geography, and Culture, ed. Franco Moretti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 336 –
363, on the way novelistic fiction used realism as a style to encourage readers to accept
imaginary characters and worlds as one way around the depiction of the actual events andpersons who might accuse authors of defamation. The fictional “not true” functioned as adisclaimer.

27

inside, telling all, and from telling all to telling even more without exactly telling
anything.30
In Anglo feminist theory these too terrible conditions of the household
have been understood as the raw material of melodrama, a kind of play on“raw” emotion as material. And here is where we need to ask what the fiction does to the raw material as well as what the raw material does to thefiction.31 Angela Dalle Vacche has raised this question in her recent book on
the Italian silent diva film in the years 1913––1921. The diva genre, she says
was never “escapist melodrama,” certainly not in the way the genre surveyed“major social problems,” the way it dared to take up “prostitution, adultery,and out–of–wedlock births.” One can see, she says, a “’documentary streak’buried in the diva film’s overcrowded wardrobes…” 32 “Buried” is relevant
here because Dalle Vacche observes something that other scholars have also
discovered in so many national cinemas in the silent era: The contemporarycommentary on these films avoids mention of these social problem topics.
With reviews focusing only on the narrative and style of acting in the divafilm, “references to prostitution, rape, or orphanages were usually absent,”
Dalle Vacche says.33 The briefest inventory of melodramas from the first
decades of cinema, especially those produced, written, and directed by
women, confirm this assessment. I have already mentioned the British
There’s Good in the Worst of Us (1914), which resonates with the Italian
Assunta Spina (1913), directed by Francesca Bertini and Gustavo Serena.
Both domestic melodramas are about women whose partners are in prison,
although the British film turns out to be about the husband who returns tojail to insure that his wife receives her charity money and the Italian about
the suitor sent to prison for spousal battery, the crime against her that Assunta’s beauty provokes. Adding to the social issue inventory, Shelley Stamp
has confirmed director–producer Lois Weber’s interest in taking the material
for her photoplays from the headlines, and it is well known that she did not
shy away from stories about prostitution, social welfare, and the scandal ofabortion.34 Still, these few examples are only a beginning. One of our mostpressing research needs is to investigate the range of social issue material
that women directors, producers, and writers have dared to submit to melo30

The oblique reference here is to Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination (1974; repr.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), the fullest elaboration of the idea that melodrama is inclined to “say all” at the same time that it cannot “utter the unspeakable”, 4.
31
One often finds the assumption that cultural texts do something with or to the “raw material” that both is that from which it draws and its content, and I fall back on this for wont of abetter concept. See, for instance, Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present (London and New York: Verso, 2002), who refers to the “raw empiricitiesof the content”, 208.
32
Angela Dalle Vacche. Diva: Deviance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (Austin: University of Texas, 2008), 253.
33
Dalle Vacche, 254.
34
Stamp, Shelley. “Lois Weber, Progressive Cinema and the Fate of ‘The Work–A–Day Girl’in Shoes.” Camera Obscura 56 (2004):140–69.
28

dramatization. One could mention the issue of the unwed mother’s punishment for infanticide that Finnish reformer Minna Canth raised in her playAnna–Lissa, adapted by the Finnish film industry in the silent era, an extant
copy of which is in Helsinki. There is Santanotte/Holy Night (1922), produced and directed by Elvira Notari, which is as its core a young working
class woman’s struggle with an abusive alcoholic father.35 Or, to give another example, La Marâtre/The Stepmother (Gaumont, 1906), attributed todirector Alice Guy Blaché, which features the French police discovering
evidence of physical abuse on a young boy. And yet “child abuse”, “spousal
battery” and “alcoholism” are our contemporary political feminist points ofentry into these films which come to us from a world that would obviously
not have recognized familial discord in these unfamiliar terms.
Here is indeed the question, to paraphrase Christine Gledhill, of the “material of the world” that “melodrama seeks to melodramatize.”36 The question of what melodrama seeks and finds to melodramatize is important one
for feminist theory and historiography as we turn to the project of comparative world cinemas. As we know, the construct “women” does not, has notand cannot contain all the women in the world, then and now, in its theoretical purview. As historian Joan Scott has said, referring to “women” in earlier
centuries, “It’s not just that women have different kinds of possibilities intheir lives, but that ’women’ is something different in each of these moments.”37 Does their differential then constitute our object of study? One
century after the earliest globalization that was silent film distribution wewant to know if cinematification was and continues to be world melodramatization. Much is at stake here in the field since both Gledhill and Linda Williams have argued that the dominant form (originally exported and now imported back to the U.S. from the rest of the world) was not classical narrative
realist fiction, but melodrama.38 Gledhill has recently refined her understanding of melodrama which she now sees as an overarching mode, a “genre–producing machine”––from the family romance to the woman’s film to themale melodrama action film.39 What, then do we do with realism, the much–
35

This film is newly restored, thanks to Monica Dall’Asta and others, and it premiered at the“Non Solo Dive”/ “No More Divas” conference in Bologna, Italy, in December, 2007.
36
Christine Gledhill, “Introduction,” in Christine Gledhill, ed. Home is Where the Heart Is(London: British Film Institute, 1987), 31, who also tells us that this material “will shift.”
37“Unanswered Questions,” “American Historical Review Forum: Revisiting ‘Gender: A
Useful Category of Historical Analysis.’” American Historical Review 113, no. 5 (December2008), 1424.
38
Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom
to O.J. Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 16, argues that melodrama
has historically been the “norm, rather than the exception” in American cinema. The first toassert this position was Michael Walker who in “Melodrama and the American Cinema,”Movie 29/30 (Summer 1982), 2, says that melodrama is for American cinema the “most important generic root.”
39
Christine Gledhill, “Rethinking Genre,” in Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, eds.
Reinventing Cinema (London: Arnold, 2000), 227.
29

maligned aesthetic that delivers the film world that says it is the same as theworld from which it was drawn, but that has this long standing association
with documentary interest in the social world? 40 Progress has been made inchallenging the earlier idea that cinematic realism and theatrical melodrama
parted company and one now hears that melodrama and realism need eachother.41 But if realism and melodrama are co–dependent, where exactly is
melodrama’s challenge to aesthetic realism’s assertion that everything isultimately representable, that its narrative logic delivers “truth,” and that its
mise–en–scène reveals all?42 On what grounds, if any, does melodrama challenge the “what you see is what you get” of classical narrative realism,
which it would need to do at the same time that it requires the raw materialof women’s oppression, what we could call the harsh “reality of others.” If
melodrama seeks recourse to realism it is a necessity born of the need tounderwrite the most desperate of situations, to explain the intensity of suffering, and to warn harsh consequences. But the answer to the question “onwhat grounds does melodrama challenge,” I think, cannot finally be answered with reference to an analysis of the genre or the modality. Melodrama’s opportunity to challenge again (nearly three centuries after its
French revolutionary moment) has been given to it, given to it again byfeminism.43 Melodrama’s second revolutionary opportunity comes from theway film feminism has in recent decades awarded melodrama privileged
access to historical realities, access to those lived dilemmas that have defined women’s conditions of existence: to abandon the burdens of the family
or to be slave to them; to accept its suffocating protection or to languishalone; to abort a fetus or to starve a child.
40
Here, the definition of documentary I like to use is Jean–Louis Comolli, “Documentary
Journey to the Land of the Head Shrinkers,” October 90 (Fall 1999), 40, where he says thatthe documentary film “draws its power from its very difficulty, wholly derived from the factthat the real doesn’t give film the time to forget it, that the world presses on, that it is throughcontact with the world that cinema is made.”
41
Williams, 38, says “Melodrama borrows from realism but realism serves the melodrama of
pathos and action.” Referring to the history of criticism that has followed the move fromtheatrical to motion picture melodrama, Gledhill, 229, says of realism that it “first worked incooperation with melodrama and then disowned it.”42
Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2001), 49–50, explains that the realism of represented social
conditions to which I refer here would be understood in the silent era as closer to the tradition of“naturalism.” If stage melodrama was thought to be “realistic,” however, this was because,
paradoxically, the detailed, seemingly authentic depiction of the most improbable of circumstances found expression in what he calls “spectacular diegetic realism.” Also see 176–177,
where he sorts out the often confusing set of questions having to do with diegetic realism.
43
Thomas Elsaesser, “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama,” inHome is Where the Heart Is, ed. Christine Gledhill (London: British Film Institute, 1987), 45–
47, introduces the legacy of the French Revolution into film melodrama theory. See also
essays by Peter Brooks, Daniel Gerould and David Grimsted in Melodrama:
Stage/Picture/Screen, ed. Jacky Bratton, Jim Cook, and Christine Gledhill (London: British
Film Institute, 1994).

30

To understand how melodrama was awarded privileged access to the real
historical, we need to return briefly to debates in the 1970s.44 Recall that thisis where, in readings of such 1950s American films as Imitation of Life,
melodrama’s opportunity is found in the gap between the so–called “reality”
of the oppression of women and the expression of it. In the famous hydraulichermeneutic, you will recall, “the failure” to “realistically” represent or“say” causes melodrama to resort to the overflow aesthetics of “excess.”45
Further, in this theory, as oppression is concealed and disguised, the film
becomes narratively inconsistent and even incoherent. But wait a minute, notexactly, Laura Mulvey objected at the time. The highly ideological concealment of the structural “incoherence” produced by women’s contradictory
situation is melodrama’s reason for being. This, she argued, most likely
thinking of the widow who cannot be both mother and lover in Douglas
Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows (1955). Ideological contradiction, Mulvey
says, is not concealed, but is rather the very overt content of melodrama.46
Here we would understand ideological contradiction, for instance, in the
expectations placed on women to be sexual as well as pure, to be a motherand yet to give up a child, and to work day and night but to receive no pay
for love’s labor.
One wants to know if, after having moved on from the psychoanalytic
theory fundamental to Anglo American melodrama theory in the 1970s, we
still stand behind it. How, we want to know, would we explain melodramatic
symbolics without it? And are aspects of Marxist feminism still left standing? It would after all be Marxist historical materialism that won’t let go of
the revolutionary possibilities of melodrama, won’t let go of the two basic
tactics of the mode: to dichotomize and to cry out, or to accuse and to triumph, and would want to recall the theatrical history of the French revolutionary dramas that incited the crowd. And would insist on the final material
determinations of women’s emotional and economic conditions while monitoring the persistent ideology of “she asked for it.”
The contradictory conditions of women’s lives and the nuanced differences between these contradictions, culture to culture, are perhaps the one
constant we can count on as we survey the melodramatization of this world
material. One wants to know finally if we, as feminist historians and critics
are also, as Mulvey says, “trapped in the Chinese box” that characterizes
44
In Elsaesser, 67, we find the first inkling of the way “reality” enters the melodrama text
when he says that in such 1950s films as Imitation of Life there is a “gap” opened “between
the emotions and the reality they seek to reach.”45
Geoffrey Nowell–Smith later seems to refine Elsaesser as: “The laying out of the problems‘realistically’ always allows for the generating of an excess which cannot be accommodated.
The more the plots press towards a resolution the harder it is to accommodate the excess.”“Minnelli and Melodrama,” in Home is Where the Heart Is, ed. Christine Gledhill (London:
British Film Institute, 1987), 73.
46
Laura Mulvey, “”Notes on Sirk and Melodrama,” in Home is Where the Heart Is, ed. Christine Gledhill (London: British Film Institute, 1987), 75.

31

melodrama itself.47 After all, melodrama form is brutal as it “forces” its dichotomy, patient as it allows every victim to cry out, generous as it awards
the moral victory to the lesser, but yet uncompromisingly conservative in its
judgments and in its enforcement of the moral code. In case after case, film
after film melodrama, the covert is made overt only to be again concealed. In
Anglo–American silent melodrama theory the paradigm articulated by Peter
Brooks, that organizes our study is still the paradoxical concept that unspeakable acts are as spoken as they are unspoken.48
Cinemelografia
And this brings me to that other construct that organizes the bi–annual Womenand the Silent Screen conferences––silence. As we study the women who do not
all fit into the category “woman,” we also study the silence that was never exactly silence. There is, to carry over my concern about the real historical, a double silence to silent domestic melodrama––the production of silent motion pictures that took up topics about which societies remained silent––infanticide,illegitimacy, adultery. Silent film melodrama significantly keeps these secrets(no word of them spoken), the very secrets that it is desperate to divulge.
Brooks, we recall, noted the similarity between the “text of muteness” and the
project of deconstruction: Nothing is what it says it is; everything is other thanwhat it appears to be. Signs and their usual meanings are estranged, their union
postponed indefinitely.49 The whole process of signification is in upheaval with
one sign system taking over for another. A scar is never just a scar nor a stained
dress just a dress, and an ice flow is never just an ice flow. And the watchwordof post–structuralism at its height: “There is no reality to be known except
through signs.” Melodrama theory, at its height, however, reversed this hightheory prohibition: The only way to know reality would be through the signs inexcess of signs. Profound as well as poignant are Foucault’s thoughts on the
problem of using linguistic signs to describe a painting: “It is,” he says, “not thatwords are imperfect, or that, when confronted by the visible, they prove insuperably inadequate. Neither can be reduced to the other’s terms: it is in vain that
we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say.” He goes further, “And it is in vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors,or similes, what we are saying…”50 Here is the wonderful, terrible double failureof silent melodrama––of the word to express so much, but also of moving pictures and music to contain so many worlds even in their more complex systems.
The continued vitality of silent cinema studies is testimony to our conviction,
however, that the silent moving image and its acoustic supplement can go where47

Mulvey, 75.
Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 4.
49
Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 66–67; 77–78.
50
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1973), 9.
48

32

word will not and cannot go.51 Hence the perfect balanced paradox of melodrama’s wordlessness: unspeakable acts unspoken but expressed elsewhere inanother register. In Italian, there is a word for this phenomenon, a word far more
melodious to the ear than any in English. It is cinemelografia, the visual language of music on the screen.52
Asta Nielsen, it should be recalled, objected that there were too many words
in the American silent photoplay.53 The practice of filling the screen with words,
she thought, did not leave enough to either the skilled actress or to the active
audience.54 Consider now, for us, the centrality of Asta Nielsen as a paradigm
whose early works are the prototype for Schlüpmann’s argument that it is the“failure of the female narrative perspective” that produces the “tragic structure
into which melodrama forces all of reality.”55 This paradigm allows feminism to
put its more revolutionary foot forward as we imagine the moment when thisperspective was ascendant.56 For this is the paradigm that both explains the dichotomized delivery of domestic melodrama and allows feminism a foot in thedoor and another chance to redress social inequalities.
51

Foucault, 9, comparing language to painting (and we can imagine cinema), says “It is notthat words are imperfect, or that, when confronted by the visible, they prove insuperably
inadequate. Neither can be reduced to the other’s terms: it is in vain that we say what we see;what we see never resides in what we say.”52
See Dalle Vacche, 55
53Marguerite Engberg, Asta Nielsen, Europe’s First Film Star (Berkeley, CA:University Art
Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 1996), 18
54
Note, here, photoplay/actress/audience, the old British genre paradigm: artist/film/audience,
our theoretical approach mapped over the ascendance – recession of each. See Jane Gaines,“The Genius of Women and the Ingenuity of Genre,” in Christine Gledhill, ed. Gender andGenre (Champaign–Urbana: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming).
55
Heide Schlüpmann, “Asta Nielsen and Female Narration: The Early Films,” A Second Life:
Early German Cinema’s First Decades, ed. Thomas Elsaesser (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 1996), 118–122; Schlüpmann argues in “Early German Cinema: Melodrama: Social Drama,” eds. Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau, Popular European Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 207, that German melodramas took theirscenarios not from life but the “tragic structure into which they compressed all reality ultimately consisted in nothing other than the collapse of the female narrative perspective within
the restrictions of the dramatic form.” See also forthcoming English translation of Heide
Schlüpmann, Unheimlichkeit des Blicks as Reason of the Heart: The Drama of Early German
Cinema, trans. Inga Pollman (Champaign–Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). (Contrast this with Anglo–American theory in which it is the narrative move from misrecognition
to final recognition of the misrecognized innocence of the heroine that structures melodrama.)
In the one, the woman is awarded power only on the symbolic basis of her higher morality; inthe other, the woman (Asta Nielsen) organizes the narrative in her own terms. Recall Judith
Mayne’s early argument that the early cinema “primitive” narrator was female, a position
suggesting that it is within our theoretical power to reinstate her as well as to extend her reign.
See Judith Mayne, The Woman at the Keyhole (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University
Press, 1990).
56
There are other reasons, including honoring the work of the Asta Nielsen Kinematek in
Hamburg, Germany, and their restoration and circulation of 35mm prints of her films, including Die BorsenKonigin/The Queen of the Stock Exchange. But finally, on the occasion of
Women and the Silent Screen in Scandinavia, it seems fitting that we single out the early
Danish portion of Asta Nielsen’s remarkable career.
33

The Abysses of LifeIf we consider Nielsen’s career in the way that Annette Förster has looked atwhat she calls the “careerographies” of Canadian–American Nell Shipman,
Dutch comedienne Adriënne Solser, and French actress–director Musidora,
it is in the beginning that we see the female narrative perspective asserted.57
We would need to begin with Nielsen’s first Danish film Afgrunden, in English, The Abyss, 1910.58 But to further reinforce the vitality of this paradigm
for us, consider the worldwide ramifications––the national cinemas that took
up the central female paradigm from Nielsen. The Italian diva directly descends from Asta Nielsen and the Mexican cinema actress–director–
producer, Mimi Derba descends from the Italians, citing Lyda Borelli and
Pina Minechelli as her models.59 But we are only beginning to see how
widely Asta Nielsen’s paradigm was distributed. Irela Nuñez tells us that
Stefania Socha, newly arrived in Lima, Peru from Poland opened an “Acting
for Film” academy there. Three years later, in 1929, she produced and directed the fourth Peruvian feature length fiction film, titled Los abismos dela vida/The Abysses of Life.60 While Nielsen’s piano teacher sinks to thestatus of bar maid who shoots the gaucho who has seduced and abandoned
her, Bertha, the character in Socha’s film drops from her social class heights
when she has an affair with her chauffeur. The unscrupulous chauffeur takes
Bertha to a Chinese herbalist to terminate her pregnancy. In a narrative turnthat suggests that Los abismos meets Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat (1915),
Bertha solicits the help of the Chinese herbalist who fails in his attempt topoison the chauffeur, and shoots both himself and the chauffeur when he is
discovered. Perhaps Los abismos de la vida/The Abysses of Life tells us evenmore than Asta Nielsen’s 1910 film about the social depths to which women
could drop, sometimes as the result of irresistible erotic attraction acrossclass. But note how the device of the woman dropping in class status works
to both explore “other reality” worlds out of bounds to middle class spectators at the same time that the device worked to caution and control young
women. The Abyss paradigm explores the moral underclass to which proper
women could not gain access in the first two decades of the last century, but
into which they may have feared they would fall. But also, for Asta Nielsen,
the underclass was the “other reality” of the working class worlds of want
and hardship from which she came. Not surprisingly, Socha’s film los abis-

57

Annette Förster. Histories of Fame and Failure: Adriënne Solser, Musidora, Nell Shipman:
Women Acting and Directing in the Silent Cinema in the Netherlands, France and North
America (Phd. Dissertation, The Netherlands: Universiteit Utrecht, 2005).
58
See Dalle Vacche on Asta Nielsen, 147–57.
59Ángel Miguel, Mimí Derba (Mexico: Archivo Fílmico Agrasánchez/Filmoteca de laUNAM, 2000), 50.
60
Irela Nuñez, “Stephanie Socha,” in Gaines and Vatsal, eds.
34

mos, was a scandal in Peru; Asta Nielsen’s The Abyss was cut and retitled
Woman Always Pays in its 1912 US release.61
The late silent film release date of Los abismos de la vida (1929) testifies
to something that post–colonial theorist Rey Chow has urged that we consider in revamping comparative approaches to world cultures. Comparison,as she sees it, should now include a “critique of the uneven distribution ofcultural capital,” but here the literary studies model cannot finally imagine
the historical situation of world cinematification where sound arrived sounevenly. 62 For in the contemporary circuit of women and the silent screen,
the technological progress narrative is reversed and India, Peru, and especially China where the silent era extends into the mid 1930s, become now
highly prized and privileged sites of research. Crucial for us become films
like the 1932 Al–Dahaia/The Victims, newly restored by the Egyptian filmarchive in Cairo. Actress Bahiga Hafez, to whom I earlier referred, produced
the film first in a silent and then in a sound version, scoring a sound trackand directing the sound segments several years later when sound equipment
became available in Egypt.63
Two developments in feminism put pressure on our theories of womenand the cinematification of the world. One, the field has gone beyond thewoman and cinema paradigm in which the avant–garde was the privileged
feminist aesthetic and turned in recent years to documentary and melodrama
as more fertile, particularly as modes of knowing women’s socio–emotional
historical condition. Second, we see a companion development in FirstWorld feminism’s old hope of internationalizing feminism against the uneven development of both the nations of the world and the development of
cultural theory. Here let me stand back from my argument and say that thistendency to want to excavate the contradictory raw material of women’s
lives out of which melodramas are made may be entirely too dependent on ametaphor of industrial production. Yet this tendency is persistent, and itcomes not only from the historical materialism in our own critical tradition
but from historical spectators as well. Let us return in conclusion to the historical condition of female spectatorship where German sociologist Emilie
Altenloh, in 1914, tells us that the audiences she studied were drawn to61

Engeberg, 14, says that although a Toledo, Ohio, company bought six of Nielsen’s films
that year, these feature films were never distributed widely in the U.S. before World War I.
62
Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007),
argues that global distribution in the first decade of cinema mass circulated a gendered timebomb. In Chow’s terms, “a visibility of visibility—a visibility that is the condition of possibility for what becomes visible” (11). In Schlüpmann’s terms this visibility receives “worldwide
dissemination.” But here we come to a familiar theoretical juncture: we want to know all overagain whether melodrama is reactionary or progressive. Schlüpmann solves the problem byaligning Asta Nielsen with the Danish social drama and German melodrama with the compromised Henny Porten (See Schlüpmann, 2010, forthcoming).
63
Magdi Abdel Rahman “Al–Dahaia–An Egyptian Case History in the Restoration ofNitrate
Film,” in Roger Smither, ed. This Film is Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film (London:
Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film, 2002), 369–374.
35something similar to this. She concludes that their “interest in newspaper
articles[…][was] not all that different from interest in cine–dramas.”64 Interpreting the female spectator’s interests as centered on her own life in thepresent, Altenloh concludes that “Film drama comes to the people by entering their everyday life.” 65 We are returned to Schlüpmann’s “documentaryinterest in fiction” perhaps documentary fascination, a theoretical insight all
the more significant and interesting in its proximity to young German female
audiences observed in 1914.66 We can go further, even, and argue that we areusing the spectator herself as definitive source of important theoretical ideas,
a possibility opened up by collections such as Antonia Lant’s recently published The Velvet Seat: Writings by Women from the First Fifty Years ofCinema where we discover Matilde Serao’s theory of the silent spettatrice.
Serao, writing in Naples in 1916 in L’Arte Muta about the spettatrice as a“creature of the crowd” suggests a theory of spectatorship in which darkness
and anonymity produce what she calls a “bizarre miracle.”67 This is the
miracle of feeling as one, unanimity in anonymity, which she thus describes:
I sat in a corner, in the dark, silent and still, like all my neighbors; and myanonymous and unknown persona became like many others, anonymous andunknown, who were sitting in front of, behind, or beside me. I was like them,an ordinary spectator, without preconceptions, without prejudices, without
any sort of bond to anything or anybody. I did not have any ideas or opinions,nothing of anything crammed my mind, which became pure and childlike,spending so little money, staying in that darkness, in that silent and stationary
anticipation. And do you know what happened? I experienced the very same
impressions felt by my neighbor on my left, who, now urbanized, had formerly been, I think, a little provincial. And when the lady sitting in front ofme laughed, I laughed too because in the dark everybody was laughing; andif the lady behind me cried, I started crying like her and like all the others
who were doing the same. And so I became a perfect spettatrice (translated
spectatrix)….68

Here is a theory of mass culture that doesn’t know the theory of the constructionof the gendered spectator. The utopianism of cinematification, the worldview ofpossibility not at odds with reality, imagines community and unanimity in anonymity. One thinks here of Richard Dyer’s recent theorization of the “historicity
64

Emilie Altenloh, “On the Sociology of Cinema,” trans. Kathleen Cross, with contrituions
from Erica Carter and Robert Kiss Screen 42, no. 3 (Autumn 2001 [1914]): 249 B 93. Originally Zur Soziologie des Kino: Die Kino–Unternehmung und die sozialen Schichten ihrer
Besucher (Jena: Eugen Diedrichs, 1914). repr., trans. and excerpted in Lant, ed. The Red
Velvet Seat, 117–123.
65
Also quoted in Heide Schlüpmann, Reason of the Heart, which suggests that this theory has
built the German female audience into the theory of “documentary interest”.
66
Schlüpmann, “The Documentary Interest in Fiction”, 36.
67
Serao, 99.
68
Serao, 98; Perhaps this is what Lant means by “cross–class” fusion in Lant, ed. The Red
Velvet Seat, 37.
36

of feelings,” which he says is not about the individual as the center of discourse,
about feelings we alone feel alone, but rather about shared feeling, or “living
within the limits of cultural construction of thought and feeling.”69 But Dyer
continues, effectively reconceptualizing the approach to the history of genres, anapproach in which viewers, then and now, belong to the same or similar “structures of feeling.”70 We begin to think of feelings as having histories, those feelings often felt together, as a strange historical coincidence. Like melodramaticcoincidence, of course, our historical coincidence with silent cinema spectators
is ingeniously plotted––it comes, after all, from our methodological construct.
Historical coincidence is the phenomenon of writing the historical narrative interms of the most pressing needs of the historical present. This is an issue that I
have raised before with the question, “Are they Us?”, an inescapable questionthat forces us to think of how we use what we know of our gendered selves toaccess the silent cinema that has ceased to speak to us because of its arcane emotional standpoint, its peculiar encryption.71 We crack its affective code with extreme difficulty. So accompanying the possibility of historical coincidence is thetotal unlikelihood of historical re–feeling.72 We strain to feel but feel unable tofeel exactly as they felt.
Yet what other way is there? One uses one’s own historically produced emotions to study the historicity of the emotions of others. Feminism, of course,
originally gave scholars, both female and male, permission to turn their expertisein emotions into professional insights; the legacy of feminist theory has been thetransformation of the academically abject––thoughts and feelings––into its verybasis. This is particularly true for the study of melodrama, so often criticized forits “datedness,” for the way it wears the specificity of its emotional “historicity”
too obviously. The question of our relatedness to the historical moment of silent
cinematification may hinge on the development of an historical empathy, theperfection of a cinemelografic sensibility, a highly developed feel for the visuallanguage of musical gesture.

69

Richard Dyer, Pastiche (New York: Routledge, 2007), 180.
Dyer, “structures of feeling.” first theorized by Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), ch. 9.
71
Jane Gaines, “’Are They Us?’: Women’s Work on Women’s Work in the Silent International Film Industries.” Italian trans. Ed. Monica Dall’Asta. Proceedings of the Non Solo
Dive Conference (Bologna, 2009). Kay Armatage, “The Women’s Film History Project andWomen and the Silent Screen,” Screen No. 49 (2008), 46 –67, answers the question “Are
They Us?” with a strong “yes.” While my position is more ambivalent and reticent, Armatage
makes an important case for seeing silent cinema director Nell Shipman as not significantly
different from ordinary women. (See Armatage, The Girl from God's Country: Nell Shipman
and the Silent Cinema. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).
72
Thomas Elsaesser (“Early German Cinema: A Second Life?” in Elsaesser, A Second Life,13) puts it this way in reference to viewing early German silent cinema: “At times, one has
the feeling of no longer possessing the cultural or emotional key to unlock their brittle
charm.”
70

37

Conclusion: cinemelogratification
There is finally one other way in which the kind of historical research we dois academically unique and specialized. In addition to the requisite knowledge of other emotional realities, feelings historically felt made coincident,
the historiographic methodology we use has its perfect parallel in its objectof study itself. Indeed, if the cinematograph was early understood as a historiographic machine, we find that our object of study, not uncoincidentally,
has the same goal as the historiography of it, as I started out by saying.73 We
are familiar with the early fascination with itself that turned the cinematograph around and onto the phenomenon of the cinematograph––onto itself.
But here, consider the streamed images of spectators exiting the new Claremont Theatre at 135th and Broadway, New York, NY, March 12, 1915, wehave the phenomenon before right us.74 This Thomas Edison Company actualité is the kind of historical object that stirs the deepest of our “empiricaldesires.” The very subjects of our inquiry within the subject of our inquiry,what is more, acknowledging the historiographic machine at the same timethat they are turned into the cinematographed. Here is the strange phenomenon of unanimity in anonymity, and, one suspects from the expressions on
the faces of the viewers filing out, “cinema existing for the purpose of pleasing of women.” For the briefest moment, our rarefied empirical cravings are
stirred by the object that appears to be revealing so much to us (temporarily
disregarding whether it is or not).75 Here is historical coincidence: we are as
gratified as they appear to be. If we could formulate this: for what they have
had and for what we still search (in our darkened house) is cinemelogratification, the pursuit of which, as we know, is a highly cultivated craving.

73

On the cinematograph called alternatively the historiograph see André Gaudreault, “TheCinematograph: A Historical Machine,” Meanings in Texts and Actions: Questioning Paul
Ricoeur, eds. David E. Klemm, and William Schweiker (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1993).
74
See American Memory, “Inventing Entertainment,” The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edhome.html Showing: On
the Stroke of Twelve (dir. John H. Collins) with Gertrude McCoy and Bigelow Cooper. Released March 12, 1915–Thomas A. Edison Co.
75
I take the concept of empirical desires as never satisfied “cravings” from Alice Guy’s
Madame a des envies/Madame Must Have Her Cravings (Gaumont, 1906), developed in“Empirical Desires,” address delivered at “Cinematic Desires” Conference, CUNY Graduate
Center, March 4, 2010.
38

What It Means to Be a Woman: Theorizing Feminist
Film History Beyond the Essentialism/Constructionism
DivideMonica Dall’Asta
Under what conditions can a feminist film historiography be imagined and practised today? How should we conceptualize the relationship between a feminist–oriented historiographical work like the Women Film Pioneers project,76 and therecent theoretical perspectives such as those raised within the framework ofgender studies? Or, more precisely, how do we conceive of our work on women
film pioneers at a moment like the present, when the very idea of “women” nolonger appears to describe a unified, unproblematic reality and emerges instead
as an intellectual artifact or a sociocultural construction? The purpose of thispaper is then to interrogate our practice of feminist historiography in light ofrecent gender criticism of traditional sexual categories. This seems an unavoidable task, as one of the most important results of that critique during the last two
decades or so has been the deconstruction and even the displacement of what
had constituted––and still to my eyes necessarily constitutes––the basic categoryof any feminist discourse––that is, the concept and category of “women.”
I could gauge the contradictory effects of the sophisticated philosophical discourse put forward by the so–called “anti–essentialist” gender theorists during afilm and gender studies conference that was held in Turin in 2006.77 This was
the first scholarly event of this kind to ever take place in Italy; yet it proved to bewell in tune with the most recent developments of postmodern gender theory,
especially when both Laura Mulvey and Mary Ann Doane––who had just delivered two very brilliant presentations –were abruptly asked to justify their use of
the term “women” as if it were a “natural,” self–explanatory category, and wereconsequently questioned about their enduring belief in the tenability of a feminist critical position.78
Of course, to erase “women” from discourse, and to impede their political action was not what Judith Butler had in mind when she advanced her now widely
accepted theory of gender as a sociocultural construct.79 Following the critique76

Initiated at the end of last century by Jane Gaines, the Women Film Pioneers project now
counts dozens correspondents throughout the whole world. One major, but not exclusive
purpose of the project is the production of a Sourcebook in two volumes, forthcoming.
77“I piaceri del testo. Identità di genere, storia e teoria del cinema,” international conference,
University of Turin, 11–12 December 2006.
78
See Laura Mulvey, “The Young Modern Woman of the 1920s: A Convergence of Feminist
Film Theory and Gender Studies,” Mary Ann Doane, “Screening the Avant–Garde Body, La
Valle dell'Eden, n. 19, 2007 (special issue Cinema e gender studies, edited by Giaime Alonge
and Rebecca West).
79
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York–
London: Routledge, 1990).
39

of those authors who, like bell hooks and Monique Wittig,80 as early as the late1970s and the early 1980s, were already questioning what was then perceived as
obvious evidence of a natural similarity among women, Butler provided powerful means to analyse the numerous, subtle ways in which the normative binary
opposition of “male” and “female” works to repress and restrain the individual’s
performance and expectations to a limited range of possibilities, much in thesame way as other social and economic categories such as race and class. Her
critique of what she portrays as an allegedly monolithic, essentialist account ofsexual difference offered by traditional feminist theory cannot be easily dismissed, yet at the same time it would be unfair not to recognize the significant
role this very concept of sexual difference has played in the elaboration andpractice of queer theory itself. In a way, the groundbreaking feminist gesture ofclaiming difference to claim parity has fuelled an uninterrupted process of gender differentiation that has ended up disrupting the original apparent integrity ofjust that collective subject who first identified itself through sexual difference.
The effort to overcome the aporia revealed by the constructionist critique inthe feminist discourse has originated a number of interesting contributions,
aimed at preserving the theoretical possibility of naming such subject as “thewomen,” without incurring in the fallacies of universalism––a task that appears
crucial not just for the sake of philosophy but primarily for its consequences interms of political action.81
Of course there can be many ways to claim the grounding of a discourse specifically concerned with women. In a recent essay, Jane Gaines sets forth onevery powerful argument by elaborating Walter Benjamin’s vision of historiography as a continuous practice of connecting the present to the past through a

80

For some examples of this strand of debate, see Colette Guillaumin, “Pratique du pouvoir etl’idée de Nature”, Questions féministes, nos. 2–3 (1978): 5–30 and 5–28; now in Sexe, race etpratique du pouvoir. L'Idée de nature (Paris: Côté–femmes, 1992); English transl. Racism,
Sexism, Power, and Ideology (London: Routledge, 1995); Monique Wittig, “On ne naît pas
femmes,” Questions féministes, no. 8 (1980): 75–84, now in La pensée straight (Paris:
Balland, 2001); English transl. The Straight Mind (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); bell hooks,
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End, 1981); Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Women. Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston, MASS: Beacon Press, 1988); Moira Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (London:
Routledge, 1995); Rita Felski, “The Doxa of Difference,” Signs, no. 1 (1997): 1–21.
81
See in particular Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2002). For more reactions to the anti–essentialist critiquesee Gayatri Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York and London:
Routledge, 1988); Denise Riley, “Am I That Name?” Feminism and the Category of“Women” in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988); Toril Moi, What Is
a Woman?, and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Susan Haslanger,“Feminism in Metaphysics: Negotiating the Natural”, in The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Alison Stone, “Essentialism and Anti–Essentialism in Feminist Philosophy,” Journal of Moral Philosophy, no. 2(2004): 135–153; Linda Martin Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2005).
40

search for resemblance and similarities across time. 82 “Are we them?” and “arethey us?” thus become the decisive questions to be asked in a process that aims
at once to interrogate and construct identity, a never–ending process that does
not take for granted the existence of any stable feminine essence, but engages
itself in a continuous reworking of identity. I agree with Jane Gaines that Benjamin’s theory of history can offer an exceptional range of intellectual tools
useful for constructing a feminist film historiography. In the final part of thisarticle, I will offer additional possibilities along these same lines.
To begin, however, I would like to focus on another important contribution, emerging directly from the most classical tradition of feminist philosophy. My reference here is to Iris Marion Young’s essay on “Gender as Seriality,”83 which despite its wide circulation does not appear to have beenthoroughly appreciated with regard to its far–reaching implications for
women’s history. Drawn from Jean–Paul Sartre’s Critique de la raison dialectique,84 the notion of “seriality” invoked by Young seems to be particularly suitable to deal with the quantitative dimension that represents a mostpeculiar methodological aspect of the Women Film Pioneers project. The
term “seriality” is employed by Sartre to indicate a somewhat “weak” modeof collectivity, a “passive” way of being together as opposed to the “active”
mode that characterizes the “group” form.85 While groups are constituted
through a process of mutual recognition among individuals who feel theyshare significant aspects of their experience, and therefore ally themselves toundertake a common project, such a conscious, active experience of self–reflection in the collective is not at all necessary to be part of a series. Instead, the individuals within a series are passively unified simply by the factthat their actions are heavily conditioned and restrained by a particular set ofmaterial structures, which form what Sartre defines as “the milieu of action”.86 Women for instance, Young argues, are passively positioned into a
82

Jane Gaines, “Esse sono noi? Il nostro lavoro sulle donne al lavoro nell'industria
cinematografica muta,” in Non solo dive. Pioniere del cinema italiano, edited by Monica
Dall'Asta (Bologna: Cineteca di Bologna, 2008), 19–30. For Walter Benjamin's theory ofhistory see “On the Concept of History,” in Selected Writings, ed. Michael W. Jennings, vol. 4(Cambridge, MA and London, England, 2003), 389–400.
83
Iris Marion Young, “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective,”
Signs, no. 3 (1994): 713–738.
84
Jean–Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique (Paris: Gallimard, 1960); English transl.
Critique of Dialectical Reason (London: New Left Books, 1976).
85“A group is a collection of persons who recognize themselves and one another as in a unified relation with one another […a] self–consciously, mutually acknowledging collective witha self–conscious purpose.” Young 723–724.
86“Unlike a group, which forms around actively shared objectives, a series is a social collective
whose members are unified passively by the objects around which their actions are oriented orby the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the others. […] Sartre calls theseries a practico–inert reality. The series is structured by actions linked to practico–inert objects.
Social objects and their effects are the results of human action; they are practical. But as material
they also constitute constraints on and resistances to action that make them experienced as inert.
[…] Sartre calls the system of practico–inert objects and the material results of actions in relation
41

series by a particular set, historically and geographically determined, of gender codes and rules that define the way in which objects, spaces and representations function in relation to them. To be a woman, in other words––or afeminine subject in the properly Foucaultian sense of one who is subjected87––one does not need to recognize herself in any sort of abstract feminine nature, it suffices to be recognized as such from the outside, and beconsequently subjected to a preconstituted set of socially defined rules andmaterial conditions.
I find this a particularly valuable response to the essentialist impasse, in
that, to quote Young, the concept of seriality allows “disconnecting genderfrom identity”88 and promotes the adoption of a method based on intersectionality, on the premise that each individual finds her or himself at the intersection of different, multiple series, such as those formed by class, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc. “Membership in the series does not define one’s identity,” Young writes. Moreover, “conceptualizing gender as
seriality avoids” the problem of addressing womanhood as an idealistic universal or an essence “because it does not claim to identify specific attributes
that all women have. There is a unity to the series of women, but it is a passive unity, one that does not arise from the individuals called women but
rather positions them through the material organization of social relations asenabled and constrained by the structural relations of enforced heterosexuality and the sexual division of labor.”89 No doubt this new formulation of thenotion of gender presents some strong similitudes with Butler’s constructionist approach, whose project of producing a “feminist genealogy of the category of women”90 rests on the argument that one becomes a woman only byabsorbing and espousing pre–existing interpretations of femininity. Yet there
are at least a couple of important specifications. In the first place, Young’semphasis on the collective dimension of the series helps to keep open a possibility for political action, through the idea that those who are passively
positioned in the same series can become aware of their condition, and thus
eventually unify themselves in a group to pursue a common goal. Secondly,
the concept of seriality seems to encourage the adoption of a more distinctively historical approach. In fact, while Butler’s discourse is essentiallyaimed to analyse the ways in which the concept of “woman” is constructedin language, Young’s emphasis on the material structures that restrain andcondition the individuals’ performances allows a much more definite historito them that generate and are reproduced by serial collectives the milieu of action. The milieu isthe already–there set of material things and collectivized habits against the background of which
any particular action occurs.” Young 724–725.
87
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random
House, 1975).
88
Young, 733
89Young, 733.
90
See Butler, Gender Trouble, 9.
42cal interrogation of the concrete ways in which an assorted series of empirical, bodily subjects finds itself submitted to similar constrictions and rules.
So what are the advantages that a similar conception can offer to the methodology of feminist film history? In my view, its interest is twofold. On the one
hand, by presenting seriality as a passive way to be part of a collective, the constrictive aspects of gender are highlighted. Obviously, this can also be argued
with regards to the constructionist approach, but where Butler is especially interested in “undoing gender” as a premise for the multiplication of transgender
identities,91 the serial paradigm is more concerned with the analysis of how
power relations work in given material conditions.
Such view can be extremely useful for us as we attempt to make sense of
women’s contradictory position in the film industry at the beginning of the lastcentury, as we try to understand their experience vis–à–vis the set of constrictive
sociocultural rules that defined the limits within which they were meant to act
and operate, or in other words, the prescribed limits of their performative andexpressive possibilities. Though, as it has been argued, silent cinema did likely
represent a somewhat favorable environment for women’s agency,92 especiallyin comparison with the film industries of the following decades, a sheer quantitative analysis can easily reveal how small a minority this production was whencompared to its male counterpart. In other words, if a major result of this research has been the discovery that the women working in the early film industry,
in both creative and managerial roles, were many more than ever suspected, we
still have to acknowledge that in many cases their non–actress filmographies
remain very thin.
This seems to be particularly true with regard to the European context––albeit
several relevant internal specifications are still to be described––and strongly
suggests the need to understand the constrictive dimension of gender in geopolitical terms. For instance, if we certainly know how to deal with such
figures as Alice Guy, Elvira Notari, or Germaine Dulac, that is to say withthose women for whom the authorship argument has been repeatedly advanced,93 the question emerges of how to deal with the much larger numberof women filmmakers who, throughout their entire lives, were only able todirect, write, produce, distribute, and so on, not more that a handful of films,

91

Butler, Undoing Gender (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).
See in particular Karen Ward Mahar’s reconstruction, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
93
For two typical auteurist approaches to Alice Guy and Elvira Notari see Alison McMahan,
Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema (New York: Continuum, 2002), and Giuliana
Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). The viability of such traditional approach to thehistory of women’s cinema has been questioned by Jane Gaines in “Of Cabbages and Authors,” in A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, edited by Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 88–118.
92

43

or even one single film.94 Several more questions arise. For instance, whywere so many of them also actresses? Could this indicate that women’s access to direction, production, and sometimes even screenwriting, was dependent on their previous entry into the film industry in a more traditionallyfeminine role, such as that of an actress? At least in the Italian context, thestrong identification of women with actresses often implied a severe restriction, not just of their expressive possibilities, but even of their desires, as for
instance in the series of women whose attempt to direct or produce films wasbasically motivated by the wish to transform themselves into divas––morethan once, unfortunately, with miserable results.95 And one could go on bymentioning the large number of women who got into the film business byworking as assistants to their husbands, or all those who could attain directorial roles only by setting up independent companies.96 In other words,
women’s access to filmmaking was generally submitted to a number of restrictions and preconditions, which represented as many serious limitations
to what Jane Gaines has called their “desire to make movies.”97
This is obviously a very strong argument against the adoption of an auterist
approach whatsoever in the methodology of women’s film history. And hence
we come to a second aspect of the serial paradigm that can be quite useful for94

To mention just a few interesting case, a list of Italian filmmakers who managed to bring one
single film to the screen would include for instance the names of Elvira Giallanella (p/d/w),
Eleonora Duse (w/a), Matilde Serao (w), Diana D'Amore (d/w/a), Anna Fougez (w/a), Vera
Sylva (p/a), Lina Cazzulino Ferraris (w), while the filmographies of Bianca Virginia Camagni(p/d/w/a), Fabienne Fabrèges (p/d/w/a) and Daisy Sylvan (p/d/a) get up to a total of two titles. In
France, the series of the single–title filmmakers includes figures like Georgette Leblanc (p/w/a),
Marie–Louise Iribe (d/a), Jeanne Bruno–Ruby (d/w), and Renée Carl (d/a). In Britain, somehow
proportionally to the exceptional multiplication of figures that has been recently recorded in thatcountry thanks to the work of the Women’s Film History Network UK – Irland (see for more
information the http://womenandsilentbritishcinema.wordpress.com website), the single–film
series also escalates to include such names as Mary Marsh Allen (p/a), Mrs Bertram Brooke (p),Countess [Ina?] Bubna (p/a), Ivy Duke (w/a), Frances Grant (d/w), Kate Gurney (w), Isobel
Johnston (w), Jessie Robertson (w), Marie Stopes (w), Diana Torr (w), and May Wynne (w/a),while Mrs Sidney Groom (w), Rosina Henley (w), Peggy Hyland (p/d), Dale Laurence (w),Daisy Martin (w), Helena Millais (w), Mary O'Connor (w) all participate into the two–title
series.
95
See for instance the extremely short enterprises of Diana D’Amore (d/a), Fabienne
Fabrèges (d/p/a), Daisy Sylvan (d/p/a), Bianca Maria Guidetti Conti (p/a), Berta Nelson (p/a),
Elsa Tornielli (p/a), Maria Campi (p/a) who went on experiencing direction or production
from a more or less established career as actresses. For more on some of these figures, see
Alberto Friedemann, “Imprenditoria femminile nel cinema torinese,” in Non solo dive. Pioniere del cinema italiano, 195–227.
96
In fact, this seems to be the general rule in the case of women’s cinema. In Italy, the only
major exceptions to such condition are those of Francesca Bertini (who played the lead first at
the Celio and then at the Caesar film companies) and Eleonora Duse (whose sole, bitterly
unsuccessful film was produced by Ambrosio). Most of the women who turned to film direction could do so only by creating their own companies, from Elvira Notari to Diana Karenne,
Elettra Raggio, Gemma Bellincioni, Bianca Virginia Camagni, Daisy Sylvan, and the recently
discoverd Elvira Giallanella.
97
Gaines, “Of Cabbages and Authorship,”44

the purposes of this research. What is specific to the concept of seriality is theway in which it allows us to detect collectives, there where we were accustomed
to see just individuals. This does not mean to imply that collectives have to be
the only focus of attention at the expense of individuals, but rather that individuals are constantly seen in relation to a collective. The peculiar novelty of the
Women Film Pioneers project is, exactly, to shift attention to the exclusive consideration of individual, isolated points of excellence to the multiple reality ofthe series. In the framework of this project, the study of individual figures is anecessary precondition for serial construction, since the detection of similarities
is strongly dependent on the comparison of single case studies. I would like tostress that in such perspective the inclusion in the series does not preclude isolation. As contradictory as it may seem, the paradox is in fact perfectly coherent
with Sartre’s notion of the series as a passive form of collectivity, wherein individuals can share similar experiences without being aware of it––for, as hewrites, a series is simply a “plurality of isolations.”98 Moreover, even though we
can legitimately doubt that women filmmakers did work in isolation from other
women, the paucity of historical documentation that always characterizes
women’s history tends inevitably to transform them into what Walter Benjaminwould call “monads,” that is, unconnected historical images that can become
meaningful only when put in relation with other similar, isolated images, so as toproduce what he suggestively terms a “constellation.”99
So in a way the task of a serial historiography should be that of drawing as
many constellations as possible in the obscured firmament of women’s cinema.
Now, my feeling is that a significant number of such constellations can be put inplace on the basis of recurrences that highlight the constrictive aspects of gender
positioning. Consider for instance the high rate of failures these women faced intheir careers: how are we to explain that so many of them just managed to direct
or produce one single film? It is telling that a great majority of women directors
could produce their films only by setting up independent companies, which,however, were generally short–term and did not survive the global process ofindustrial consolidation begun in the second half of the 1910s. The story of Lois
Weber is a case in point here, as is that of Alice Guy Blaché, yet the pattern isvery much the same also in Europe, where the women who had embraced film
direction and production during the 1910s were progressively pushed out ofbusiness too, as cinema became more and more institutionalized.100 The serial
recurrence of negative coincidences prompts us to look for more general explanations, which in turn can lead us to ask more general questions. If we explain
the unfortunate destinies of so many women’s companies during the 1920s as
the result of the consolidation of power structures in the film industry, we may
98

Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 256.
Benjamin, “On the Concept of History.”
100
See, with particular regard to the American context, Ward Mahar, Women Filmmakers in
Early Hollywood.
99

45

end up asking if a similar transformation also took place in this period in othereconomic fields, and with similar effects on women’s agency. Moving from onequestion to the next, we might end up connecting individual destinies with amore general framework of women’s history, building up a relation between
even the smallest of these figures and, say, the backlash against feminism thatemerged in the 1920s.101
Sometimes––as Annette Förster has stated with regard to Adrienne Sölser,
Musidora and Nell Shipman102––the stories of these women are made up of bothfame and failure; but sometimes, alas, there is just failure. The examination ofsuch a series is a particularly challenging task, which nonetheless might result insome real surprises. In fact, one interesting aspect of the serial paradigm is that itallows us to explain failures not simply as a result of individual limitation, but
by interrogating the limits and constrictions of a specific sociocultural context. It
is far too easy to smile at the naiveté, or artlessness, or excessive ambition ofsome such unfortunate attempts, which were regularly crushed by critics in unsympathetic reviews (in Italy, some typical cases are those of Fabienne
Fabrèges, Diana D’Amore, Gemma Bellincioni, Elsa Tornielli) but how hard
could it have been for a woman at the beginning of last century, to even imagine
becoming a filmmaker? In Italy, for example, women who were willing to starta production company had to deal with the so–called rule of “marital authorization,” a law that obliged them to have their financial projects previously authorized by either their husbands or their fathers.103 Often they had received no formal education whatever and had to be self–taught. How can we be surprised,
then, by their gaze at stardom as a unique and much desirable prospect of liberation and personal autonomy?
Yet, even those who succeeded in acquiring such much–yearned–for starstatus, ended up subjected to its rules and restrictions. Just think of two exceptional failures, as are those of Eleonora Duse and Georgette Leblanc: their challenging attempts to stretch the interpretative scope of their respective star personas––Duse by appearing at sixty–three in a completely unglamorous role of anold mother; Leblanc, on the contrary, by proudly impersonating at the age offifty–four the character of an irresistible femme fatale––were both doomed tofall flat, leaving no space for any future film projects they had in mind.104 We
101

See, for the European context, Karen Offen, European Feminisms, 1700–1950 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000), 252 ff.
102
Annette Förster, Histories of Fame and Failure. Adriënne Solser, Musidora, Nell Shipman,
Doctoral dissertation (Universiteit Utrecht, 2005).
103
For more on the consequences on this law see Simonetta Soldani, “Un cammino in salita.
Donne, diritti e professioni in Italia alle soglie del Novecento,” in Donne e professioni
nell’Italia del Novecento, edited by Giovanna Vicarelli (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007).
104
For more details on Duse’s and Leblanc’s film experiences, respectively in Cenere (Febo
Mari, 196) and L’Inhumaine (Marcel L’Herbier, 1924), see Elena Dagrada, “La tentazione delsilenzio: Eleonora Duse e Cenere” in Non solo dive, 81–92, and Maureen Shanahan, “Indeterminate and Inhuman: Georgette Leblanc’s in L’Inhumaine (1924)”, Cinema Journal, no. 4,
2004, 53–75.
46

can only dream of what they might have accomplished in the cinema had they
been able to pursue their plans, none of which ever saw the light simply because
they had too boldly challenged the codes of gender representation.
This is enough to say that the history of women’s cinema cannot deal solely
with the films that did come into existence, but it has to open up itself to also
include––to quote Godard––“the films that were never made”105: projects thatremained at the fantasy stage, stories that were just imagined and never accomplished. This is a completely different history than what we are accustomed towrite, for it is based on the premise that what came into factual existence is just aminimal portion of all that was attempted––of all that was dreamed and desired.
It is a (hi)story that invites us to work using creative hypotheses and evenimagination––or, to quote Jane Gaines once again, by fictioning the women we
study106––for it is actually in our imagination that we finally become more similar to them.
Such fictioning is also operational in the process of series composition,
meaning that the interest of this new historiography rests entirely in the possibility of connecting together figures who never found themselves in any factual
relation to each other, who never worked together, who always remained sealed
off from one another precisely by virtue of their failure––and sometimes theirrefusal––to meet the stereotyped expectations of a culture that certainly hadsome very clear ideas about what a woman should––or, rather, should not––beor do. So it is suggestive to read along these lines the intriguing, yet extremely
mysterious case of Elvira Giallanella, whose extraordinary antiwar film of 1919,
Umanità, was one of the most unfortunate productions of Italian silent cinema as
a whole. Micaela Veronesi has reconstructed as precisely as possible the vicissitudes of this quite unique film, which was completely ignored by the critics andwas perhaps never officially screened in front of an audience, and which, nonetheless, is of the greatest value for us, in that it represents a most courageous
attempt by a woman director to use cinema for pedagogical purposes, with theintention to infuse the younger generations with the hatred of war.107 Clearly,
Giallanella had made her film with the hope that it might help eradicate war
from history, and clearly she failed. But there are beautiful failures that are morevaluable than many a success: for they show how, too often than not, it is history
itself that fails.
I thank Kim Tomadjoglou for her generous help in revising the English of thisarticle.

105

The quote is of course from Godard’s video series Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–1998); seefor a discussion Dall’Asta, “The (Im)possible History”, in Forever Godard, edited by Michael
Temple, James Williams, Michael Witt (London: Black Dog, 2004).
106
Gaines, Fictioning Histories: Women Film Pioneers, forthcoming.
107
See Micaela Veronesi’s article in this volume.
47

Feminist Film History and the (Un)problematic
Treatment of Transnationalism in Early Cinema
Rosanna Maule
While transnationality was an important dimension of cinema’s early decades, it has only recently become a subject of inquiry for scholars specialized
in this period of film history.108 This paper illustrates the ways in whichfeminist discourse addresses and problematizes the transnational in earlycinema. The asynchronous and varying articulation of gender and modernity
within different contexts of film production and reception around the world
is a central issue in the feminist take on transnationalism. Feminist approaches to early cinema underscore the complex articulation of transnationalism by investigating women’s participation in modernity at the interface of
local, global, sub–national, national and global practices of film production
and reception.
Feminist historiography and the Western paradigm of transnationalism
The constitution of early cinema as an area of research follows the epistemological and methodological shifts within the discipline of film studies during
the 1970s and the 1980s. The scholarship on early cinema is the product of
two reactions, the first against teleological or aesthetically informed positions in film discourse positing the narrative form and classical cinema as
normative models, the second against the passive paradigm of spectatorship
implicit in these models and analyzed within apparatus theory. At the outset,
the goal was to identify film practices and modes distinct from those found
108

Some examples are cited in Robert Sklar ‘Does Film History Need a Crisis?’ Cinema
Journal 44.1 (2004): 134–138, Richard Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900–1910 Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 and Richard Abel (Ed.) The
Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. Oxford: Routledge, 2004, Nick Deocampo, Cine: Spanish
Influences on Early Cinema in the Philippines, Quezon City, Philippines: The National
Commission for the Culture and the Arts, 2003, Alison Griffiths, Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn–of–the–Century Visual Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002 and, most recently, Richard Abel, Bertellini Giorgio, and Rob King eds., The
National/Nation and Early Cinema Bloomington–London: Indiana University Press/John
Libbey, 2008.From a gender–specific perspective, see Miriam Hansen, ‘Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film As Vernacular Modernism.’ Film Quarterly
54.1 (Autumn 2000): 10–22, Catherine Russell, ‘New Women on the Silent Screen: Japan,
China, Hollywood.’ Camera Obscura, 20.3 (2005): 1–13, Rosanna Maule and Catherine
Russell, eds. ‘Another Cinephilia: Women’s Cinema in the 1920s.’ Framework, 46.1 (2005):
51–129, Zhen Zhang, ‘An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: The Actress as Vernacular
Embodiment in early Chinese Film Culture.’ Camera Obscura 36.228 (May): 2002, Zhang,
Zhen An Amorous History of the Sillver Screen Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937. Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 2005 and Rosanna Maule, ‘Women’s Film Authorship and Feminist Film Scholarship: A Comparative Overview.’ La Ventana (Online Journal). Centro
Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades and Centro de Estudios de Género at the
Universidad de Guadalajara: Guadalajara University Press, 2008.
48

in narrative classical cinema and to problematize the conceptual and methodological approaches linked with that model. These purposes inaugurated a
new historiography, bringing together archival research and conceptual
frameworks drawing on, among others, narratology and cultural studies, andcharacterized by a frankly interdisciplinary orientation.
The historiography on early cinema aims not just to rescue this period offilm history from cultural or academic disregard oblivion but to understandand contextualize its diversity from classical cinema by stressing the specificity of its exhibition practices, modes of address, and reception. The reconceptualization or abandonment of formal and aesthetic parameters and categories generally associated with narrative and classical film forms plays afundamental role in this area of studies, and marks the introduction of newconcepts that have had a profound impact on film discourse in general. Thismethodology explains why, while early cinema is comprised within a fairly
rigid time frame, its periodization is marked by flexible chronologies relative
to the emergence and life span of specific film systems or techniques, anddiachronically reverberating in the classical period of film history, as well asin pre– or post– cinematic eras or phenomena.109
The interest of feminist scholars in this period of film history has to dowith the epistemological and methodological possibilities implicit in positing
early cinema as a different type of cinema. The first decades of film practices offer a new terrain of investigation to explore women’s operative margins within the socio–cultural contexts and ideological forces that contributeto constitute cinema as a patriarchal cultural industry and system of representation. This type of investigation developed in two directions: on the one
hand, the study of women film pioneers; on the other hand, a new theorization of female subjectivity within the framework of pre–classical film modes
and reception practices. This purpose subsumes most of the feminist work on
early cinema produced during the 1990s. The work of Giuliana Bruno, AnneFriedberg, Miriam B. Hansen, and Lauren Rabinovitz,110 among others,
109

Scholars generally agree on the division of early cinema into two phases, one starting in
1895 and ending between 1906 and 1908, and another, called ‘transitional’ or of narrative
integration, and marked by narrative integration, beginning between 1907 and 1909 and ending between 1913 and 1916. Each of these phases is divided into further segments, whose
articulation (especially regarding the transitional phase) going from either 1907 or 1909 to
1916, is subject of various interpretations and academic debates. The first phase includes theone–shot/documentary film period (1895–1902) and the multiple–shots/staged films period(1902–1908). Some historians set the beginning and the end of the transitional phase in 1907
(Charles Musser) and 1913 (Charles Keil), respectively. Richard Abel and Rick Altman identify 1910 as a turning point for early film chronology in North American film.
110
Giuliana Bruno. Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films ofElvira Notari. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993; Anne Friedberg. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; Miriam
Hansen. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1991; Lauren Rabinovitz. For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies andCulture in Turn–of–the–Century Chicago. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
49

points to a more fluid and active typology of female subjectivity than thatassociated with classical cinema and theorized by feminist film theorist during the previous two decades.
This focus also explains the distinctive development and position offeminism within the new historiography on early cinema. Film historians,
including those working within a feminist framework of discourse, haveraised methodological perplexities about the excessive or exclusive emphasis
put on gendered identity in this area of feminist historiography, a stresswhich they view as a problematic refashioning of concerns and positions
prominent within apparatus theory.111 Commenting on this issue, Lauren
Rabinovitz cautions against “the serious limitations in focusing only on gender in subject formation and on subordinating social theories, economics,
and geo–politics in silent cinema’s continuous operations as an industrial
practice and commodity.”112 For her part, speaking from the perspective of
feminist historiography in general, Janet Staiger insists on the impracticalityof that position, noting that ’[c]ontemporary identity theory asserts the significance of intersectionality: no specific identity is separable from the complex configuration of identity markers’.113
The latest developments within the feminist discourse on early cinema
have extended the conceptual frameworks and the analytic boundaries of thishistorical practice in the directions that Rabinovitz and Staiger point out. The
contribution of feminist historiography to the treatment of transnationalism
in early film practices is quite unique in that it challenges the Western–
centered parameters informing this area of film studies. Feminist scholars
assume the temporal or cultural discrepancies existing among practices andconcepts of early cinema in different geo–political contexts as discursive andmethodological strategies. Jennifer M. Bean, in her introduction to A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema,114 identifies the reformulation of early cinema’s periodization, conventionally set between 1895 and the years immediately preceding World War I, as a distinguishing trait of feminist historiography, which calls into question the methodology lying beneath this area of111

Tom Gunning, for instance, raises this issue in ‘Early American Film.’ in The Oxford
Guide to Film Studies. Hill, J. and Church Gibson P., eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998: 267. Higashi and Staiger exemplarily summarize the methodological reservations regarding the exclusive emphasis put on gendered identity in film historiography in the special
issue of Cinema Journal devoted to film historiography edited by Higashi (Sumiko Higashi,
ed ‘In Focus: Film History, or a Baedeker Guide to the Historical Turn.’ Cinema Journal 44.1
(2004): 94–100. and Janet Staiger, "The Future of the Past." Cinema Journal 44.1 (2004):
126–129.) Rabinovitz (2005) makes a similar point than Staiger in an article appeared in a
special issue of Cinémas on women in silent cinema directed by Maule (2005), which I quotein the body of this text. (Rosanna Maule. ed. Cinémas Spec. Issue. 16.1 (Fall): 2005.
112
Lauren Rabinovitz. “Past Imperfect: Feminism and Social Histories of Silent Film” inCinémas: Journal of Film Studies, 16, no. 1 (2005), 21–34.
113
Janet Staiger "The Future of the Past." Cinema Journal 44.1 (2004), 126–129.
114
Jennifer M Bean. ‘Introduction.’ in A Feminist Reader for Early Cinema, Jennifer M. Beanand Diane Negra (eds). Durham: Duke University Press, 2002, 1–26.
50

studies. From this point of view, she offers that for feminist scholars, ’earlycinema’ coincides with ’silent cinema,’ as it points to discourses, socio–
cultural phenomena, and technologies connected with modernity that are stillpresent until the end of the 1920s, most particularly in non–Western cinemas
and in cinematic practices conceived outside of the Hollywood paradigm.115
The most recent feminist scholarship specialized in Asian early cinema has
adopted this temporal asymmetry as its methodological premise.
Zhen Zhang’s discussion of early Chinese cinema is a case in point.
Within China, the early phase of film history extends to 1949, to include thepre–revolutionary period preceding the foundation of the People’s Republicof China. Zhang views the ’unwitting parallel’ between this periodizationand the one conventionally used in Western film scholarship as an opportunity to ’relocate early Chinese cinema in a broader cinematic modernity’.
She writes:
The divergent origins of the term in Euro–American and Chinese contexts, and the discrepancies in periodization respectively, alert us to the heterogeneity of the international film scene in the silent period. Rather thantrying to find an equivalent––or contemporaneous––period and practice inChinese film history that squarely fits the category of early cinema in theWest, I choose to use the term heuristically for creating a critical space thatnegotiates its different valences, temporality, and historicity.116
Catherine Russell, introducing a special issue of Camera Obscura on the
figure of the New Woman in Chinese, Japanese and Hollywood films of the
1920s and 1930s, defines ’transnational feminism’ the context within whichfeminist historians may redeem and recover “women’s discourses that may
well have been largely unrecognized at the time”.117 This framework of discourse, she claims, enables a trans–cultural and diachronic dialogue between
early–twenty–first–century transnational feminism and early–twentieth–
century transnationalism. Russell considers the latter “clearly a fundamental
component of interwar Chinese, Japanese, and Hollywood cinemas, one
through which hybrid gendered identities were constructed within Orientalist
and nationalist ideologies”.118 The different temporalities associated with thetransnational context of early cinema also explain the particular articulationof gender and modernity in Latin American films of the silent era, a topic
which has been explored notably at the Fourth Edition of the Women and the
Silent Screen Conference, held at the University of Guadalajara.

115

Bean, 8–9.
Zhang’s article was republished in Bean and Negra (2002) and further developed in Zhang’sbook An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1986–1937 (2005).
117
Catherine Russell, ‘New Women on the Silent Screen: Japan, China, Hollywood.’ Camera
Obscura, 20.3 (2005), 11.
118
Russell, 11.
116

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The problematization of transnationality also characterizes the feminist
position vis–à–vis a much–debated topic in the scholarship on early film
practices, the discourse on early cinema’s relation to modernity. In stretching
the temporal boundaries of early cinema to the end of the silent era and insome cases even beyond then, feminist scholars contextualize early cinema
within a vaster idea of modern culture, which in turn involves a rethinking of
the rapports between pre– and narrative cinema, or pre–classical and classical film forms. To be sure, the opening of the dominant paradigm of modernity outside of high–art canons and aesthetic criteria is not exclusively foundin feminist approaches to early cinema. Yet the perspective from within
which feminist historiography tackles the ideological determinants shapingthat paradigm, that is, the attempt to theorize female subjectivity outside ofWestern epistemology and culture through the exploration of its constitutive
Otherness, is quite distinctive. In this respect, Miriam Hansen’s concept ofvernacular modernism plays within the feminist discussion of modernity.119
Vernacular modernism appears in several gender–specific or feminist studiesof early cinema focusing on non–Western contexts, including Hansen’s own
analysis of Shanghai cinema in the 1920s and 1930s.120 These analyses highlight the pivotal role of female actresses for regulating competing discourses
on gendered identity within modernity.121
In assuming the temporal discrepancies among manifestations or periodizations of early cinema across the world, this new strand in feminist historiography is also questioning methodologies and criteria in use within feminist
approaches to this area of studies. This is the case, for instance, with terms orframeworks traditionally applied to gauge or discuss women’s participationin early film industries, such as the figure of the female film pioneer or theconcept of female authorship.122 For Russell, the abandonment of thesemethods is necessary when dealing with the international dimension of early
119

With this concept, Hansen wants ‘[…] to ‘encompass cultural practices that both articulated and mediated the experience of modernity, such as the mass–produced and mass–consumed phenomena of fashion, design, advertising, architecture and urban environment, ofphotography, radio, and cinema’ (Hansen 1999, 60).
120
Miriam Brutu Hansen. “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film
As Vernacular Modernism.” In Film Quarterly (54.1) Autumn (2000), 10–22.
121
see Hansen (2000), Russell (2005), and Zhang (2002 and 2005).
122
Russell remarks this, introducing the aforementioned special issue of Camera Obscura
including papers selected from presentations given at the Montreal edition of the Women and
the Silent Screen conference, which she co–directed with me in 2004. She makes explicit
reference to the Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP), founded in 1995 with the purpose of
forwarding research on women’s contributions to early film practices in a variety of roles. The
WFPP has been active in a variety of areas, including, besides archival research and publications, film restoration and preservation, organization of screening series and film distribution
at specialized festivals and conferences. The WFPP is now sponsoring a series of sourcebooks
on women’s contributions to early film practices divided by continental area. The first, on US
Cinema, is due with Illinois Press. The second, on European cinema, is being developed. For
discussions on the role of female authorship in early cinema, see, among others, Gaines(2002), Maule (2005), and Rabinovitz (2005).
52

cinema123. Russell’s point is well taken and raises a fundamental issue regarding the project of de–centering Western–focused discourses on transnationalism in early film practices. While both the pioneers’ methods and authorship retain their methodological validity for the study of early cinema,
they have little use for comparative analyses of transnational discussions ofearly cinema. Without suggesting binary divisions between Western and
non–Western, or First– and Third World areas, women’s presence in earlycinema cannot be evaluated through transnational standards of analysis using
figures or approaches informed by Western–capitalist–liberal economic
standards or aesthetic categories. A truly comparative transnational historyof women in early cinema needs a methodologically diversified analysis of
women’s positions within specific cinematic contexts, as well as roles inmodern culture and society, utilizing conceptual frameworks not just limited
to cultural theory, but also social history. This approach informed the threelatest editions of the Women and the Silent Screen conferences and the publications issued from them.124
Theorizing the Transnational in Early Cinema
Transnationality and globalization have arguably superseded nationality inthe geopolitical discussion of cinema and other media. The connotation oftransnationalism as a supranational imagined community within which people, technologies, media images, and ideologies circulate, which the theorization of globalization offers, well suits the borderless scenario of early film
practices. Yet the concentration of this scholarship on a contemporary, post–
national view of transnationalism makes it hardly applicable to the first decades of the twentieth century. More appropriate is a distinguished strand in
the present discourse on transnationalism, derived from revisionist approaches to the concept of nation developed in sociology and cultural theory
during the 1970s and the 1980s.125 In this section, I refer back to this conceptual framework for considering early cinema’s transnational conformation
outside of a Western–centered perspective.
This revisionist scholarship on nation questions the modernist paradigm
canonized during the 1960s in sociology and political theory, which presented the nation as [I quote from Anthony D. Smith here] “intrinsic to thenature of the modern world and to the revolution of modernity”.126 Against
123

Russell, 4.
From the Montreal edition of the WSS, these publications include Russell’s aforementioned special issue of Camera Obscura (Russell 2005), Russell and Maule’s co–edited dossier of Framework (2005), and a special issue of Cinémas edited by Maule (2005).
125
See, among others, Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, eds. Transnational Cinema: The
Film Reader, Routledge, 2006.and, from within a post–colonial framework of discourse, Ella
Shoat and Robert Stam, eds. Multiculturalism, Postcolonialism, and Transnational Media,
New York: Routledge, 2003.
126
Anthony D. Smith. Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of
Nation and Nationalism. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.
124

53

this heuristic view of the nation as a state–building process based on social
reformism and post–colonial self–determination, this literature proposes a
constructionist model, historically contingent upon immanent events as well
as long–term phenomena. For constructionist theorists, the nation is the result of people’s affiliation to notions of collective identity, a thesis perfectly
synthesized in Benedict Anderson’s statement that the nation is an ’imaginedcommunity’.127
This idea of nation was widely influential in film studies during the
1990s, yet almost completely ignored by historians specialized in early cinema and has only recently been recuperated in this area of the discipline
through the discussion of transnationalism. An admirable application of thisliterature to the study of early cinema appears in Ana Lopez’s overview of
the relations between cinema and modernity in Latin America between 1896
and 1920 published in Cinema Journal in 2000. In her article, Lopez adoptsAnderson’s concept of ’imagined community’ to describe “the early formsof mediated modernities […] complexly refracted and inflected”128 that thisrelationship involved, against what she defines as [here I quote Lopez again][…] the narratives of Latin American modernity some scholars want to tell,be they tales of foreign technological and ideological domination and inadequate imitation (à la Armand Mattelart and Herbert Schiller) or contemporary
chronicles of global mediations (à la Martín Barbero).129

With reference to the introduction of the cinematic apparatus in Latin America, Lopez notes:[the] new technology was used for the benefit of the imagined national community, to negotiate precisely the conflicts generated by the dilemmas of amodernity that was precariously balanced between indigenous traditions andforeign influences, between nationalist aspirations and internationalist desires.130

Most scholars working on Asian cinemas underline the necessity of articulating the national within transnational approaches to early cinema. This claim
is the basis of Sheldon Hsiao–peng Lu’s 1997 collection of essays on transnational Chinese cinemas, which includes contributions by the most authoritative scholars in this geo–cultural area. Introducing the book, Hsiao–peng
Lu contends that Chinese national cinema can only be understood in its
properly transnational context. One must speak of Chinese cinemas in the127

Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
128
Ana Lopez. ‘Early Cinema and Modernity in Latin America,’ Cinema Journal. 40.1 (Fall
2000), 48.
129
Lopez, 48.
130
Lopez, 61.
54

plural and as transnational in the ongoing process of image–making
throughout the twentieth century.
Hsiao–peng Lu adopts a symbolic periodization, from 1896 until 1996,
overdetermined by the national/global nexus of the nation–states included
within the category of Chinese cinemas and comprised between the beginning of the transnational distribution and consumption of films in China andthe year preceding the return of the transnational film industry par excellence, the one based in Hong Kong, to the Mainland.
Yingjin Zhang, in his book on Chinese national cinema, also adopts a national context of analysis, which covers “all films produced in mainland
China (including those prior to 1949), Hong Kong and Taiwan”. This “general and potentially comparative framework,” he contends, “enables us totrace the interactions between Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong (all marked
by distinctive dialect uses) in early cinema and transnational cinema
throughout the twentieth century.”131 In his introduction, Zhang also justifies
the decision to maintain a national, albeit transnationally informed, approachto Chinese cinema at a time when post–national and global discourse studies
are predominant in the discipline, as a methodological strategy. Zhang assumes the national as a ’cinematic project’ that articulates the varied andcompeting discourses, practices, and regulations connected with the idea ofnation. Zhang draws from the constructive theory of nationhood, as well as(with some reservations) to Chris Berry’s idea of national agency, which
Berry derives from Judith Butler’s concept of agency as a flexible conceptual framework positing identity as an infinitely iterated and citable concept.132
The constructive and performative nature of national identity is a major
tenet in post–colonial theories of nation, best exemplified by Homi Bhabha’sview of the nation as a form of cultural affiliation based on the articulationof pedagogic and performative discourses. The pedagogic discourse represents political rationality and produces national narratives. The performative
discourse champions the socio–cultural application and experience of thenation. These two discourses, Bhabha suggests, are configured in an ambivalent relationship, which opens a space between the pedagogic and the performative space/language of the nation, the ’in–between’ space of politicaland cultural meanings.
This in–between space is a crucial element to consider when addressing
the borderless yet highly unequal context of early cinema’s production anddistribution. Post–colonial theory is indeed a major conceptual framework in
feminist discussions of non–Western gendered identity in transnational earlycinema. Yet these studies do not always or directly make reference to thediscourse on nation developed within this framework. A case in point is the131
132

Yingjin Zhang. Chinese National Cinemas. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Zhang makes reference to Chris Berry’s 1998 publication.
55

abovementioned special issue of Camera Obscura on the figure of the New
Woman in Chinese, Japanese and Hollywood films of the 1920s and 1930s,
edited by Catherine Russell in 2005. In her introduction, Russell opportunely
highlights the emphasis on national discourse emerging from this comparative study of the intersection of gender and transnational modernism in threedifferent cinemas. Commenting especially on the essays focusing on Chineseand Japanese contexts, Russell praises the ways in which they demonstrate
how national discourse in these countries is often aligned with a dominantdiscourse on high modernism, and opposed to the democratic model of vernacular modernism theorized by Miriam B. Hansen. Russell writes:
Indeed the instantiations of vernacular modernism frequently run counter tothe ideals of national culture. Thus the recovery of these new subjectivities
hitherto obscured by the dominant discourses of high modernism in both Asiaand the West opens up an important new insight into global popular culture.133

Russell is right in underlining that dominant views of modernism run acrossWestern and non–Western divides and it is not conceivable as an exclusive
product of Western culture. While the position on national discourse highlighted in the issue of Camera Obscura Russell edits effectively eschews
essentialist constructions of modernism into Western/non–Western epistemologies, it also overlooks the performative and negotiating aspects of this
discourse.
In an article about Asian gendered identity in post–colonial globalization
titled “ ’green blade in the act of being grazed’: Late Capital, Flexible Bodies, Critical Intelligibility”, Cultural theorist Tani E. Barlow views transnational studies as a sub–specialty of cultural studies meant ’to diagnose general questions of colonization, decolonization, and economic globalism [byclaiming] a supporting historiography rooted in colonial relations particular
to the Atlantic basin and historically European colonial holdings’. 134 Barlow
considers transnational studies as the only area capable of resolving the impasse of feminism in addressing the intersection of gender and race in lightof the Enlightenment heritage [an impasse which Chandra Mohanty prospects as the option between Western and Third–World feminism (1997)].135
Barlow underlines the geopolitical and ideological limits subtending thetreatment of transnationalism, warning that:133

Russell, 6.
Barlow, Tani E., “’green blade in the act of being grazed’: Late Capital, Flexible Bodies,
Critical Intelligibility.” Differences 10.3 (1998), 121
135
Barlow, 119–58.
13456

[…] no historian can reduce to a single epistemic order the diverse experiences of colonial modernity or capitalist postmodernity. Theoretical work at
historically singular sites requires painstaking, patient, indecorous deconstruction, just as writing about scholarly strategies requires acknowledging
the degree to which one is oneself historically and intellectually a subject in
the late–capitalist world.136

Yet for Barlow “this is where the question of national formation in global
capital is openly broached and the dilemma of the "transnational" seriously
explored”.137 Following Barlow, I suggest that postcolonial understanding of
nationhood, emphasizing diversity, hybridism, and transculturation as informing elements of national identity, is a necessary complement to the discussion of gender politics in the transnational scenario of early cinema.

136

Barlow, 120.
Barlow precises: ‘The generalizing claims of the project probably rest as much on what it
precludes (i.e., east "Asia," subcolonialism and subimperialism, semicolonialism, intra–Asian
oppression, Japanese colonialism, the U.S. informal empire, the twentieth century, and so on)
as on what it presumes to be normative (culture, cultural flows, transnational corporations,
British colonialism, postcolonialism, the nineteenth century, and so on).’ (ibid).

137

57

58

Pioneering Authorships

59

Alice Guy and the Narrative Cinema: Narrativity andPioneering in the Early Cinema
Marcela AmaralThis article raises the subject of narrativity in early cinema, proposing a synthetic analysis of Alice Guy’s contribution for this cinema with some of her
films. From what is known about her career, Alice Guy directed more than two
hundred films between 1896 and 1920. That represents a very important contribution for the development and the consolidation of narrative cinema. In a period where non–narrative cinema, represented mainly by “actualities,” was thedominant genre, the films of Alice Guy show, from the earliest ones, important
signs of the development of narrative.
Choosing two of her most significant films from the French period of her career, from 1896 to 1906, as a basis for analysis, this article proposes that we canidentify in these films some elements that can confirm a “narrative effort”, in aperiod when narrativity was not seen or expected in films. It also proposes abrief study of the importance of Alice Guy’s contribution to the process of narrativity in early films.138 This was a period of transition when actualities, an inherently non–narrative cinema, were gradually replaced by a narrative cinema,based on a proper film language.
As the Brazilian author Flávia Cesarino Costa discusses in her book, thistransition happened in phases: an increasing narrative influence can be identified
over the whole process, from the first decade to when narrative cinema wasestablished as the dominant genre.
Alice Guy has an important role in film history, not only for this narrative
development, but also for her pioneering position as a director. Guy is considered by some authors as the first person to have really occupied this position in
the making of a fiction film, La fée aux choux, which according to her was produced in 1896.
This is a much–discussed idea, particularly in terms of the lack of evidence
that could give Alice Guy this precedence. Against what Guy affirms in her
autobiography and in an interview with Francis Lacassin, some authors argue
that it is very improbable that she had made La fée aux choux in 1896––even
before Georges Méliès La voiture du poitier, also from 1896––and point insteadto the first fictional film ever made. There are also discussions about this versionof La fée aux choux that can still be seen today, and whether it is Guy’s real firstversion.

138

Among other authors, the Brazilian author Flávia Cesarino Costa refers to the first two
decades of film history as “First Cinema” (Primeiro Cinema). (Flávia Cesarino Costa, O
Primeiro Cinema: Espetáculo, Narração, Domesticação, São Paulo: Editora Página Aberta,
1995)
60

When Georges Sadoul defines, in his “Dictionnaire des Cinéastes”, AliceGuy as the “first female director” and Georges Méliès as the “first director,” heset what would be criticized in the future as a misconception of Guy’s status.139
This is a concern raised by the “new historiography of films”, with authors suchas Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault worried about the “deletion” that has
been set over the work of many women who worked in the various functions of
the early cinema. As of today, only about twenty percent of what was made in
the first two decades has been recovered, and a huge part of this material remains with unconfirmed identification or even unidentified.
When examining contribution of women to early cinema, we enter into avery uncertain terrain, where it is very difficult to determine precisely who reallydirected a film. There are many filmmakers wrongly credited in many pictures,leaving many doubts about film credits. In many cases, it has been discoveredthat male directors have been wrongly credited on a film made by a woman,when usually those men and women have acted in the same period. That waswhat happened to most of Alice Guy’s films.
Taking into account all these questions and uncertainties that surround thestudy of the earliest period of films, the analysis of Alice Guy’s cinematography
is still an extensive space to be explored and it shows multiple ways to tackle herwork. However, the lack of evidence for deeper study on some issues of her
cinema has restrained the scope of this article in a certain way. For this reason,
this text focuses on an investigation of the matter of narrative in early cinema,
and finally proposes a brief analysis of Alice Guy’s contribution for the narrativization of film. The study also proposes an identification of the elements that
Guy brought to the film scene and how that induced changes in this cinema.
The intention of this article is to focus on a shorter period of the career of Alice Guy and it will specifically discuss the issue of narrative in her films. As theobject of analysis, this article presents a study of two of her most significant
films from this period, La fée aux choux and La naissance, la vie et la mort duChrist (or also La Passion), films that display strong evidence of narrative, but in
an innovative or uncommon way for that time. The films were chosen fromthose that can still be seen nowadays, while taking into account the huge amountof Guy’s work that has been lost.
La fée aux choux
In a cabbage orchard, the Fairy looks amongst the ripe ones for the next
baby to bring out. She moves between the cabbages with her Fairy grace,taking care of the orchard and bringing babies to light.
Based on a French legend about how babies are brought to life, thisfilm tells the story of a fictional character, the Fairy, who charmingly
dances for the camera while walking around the cabbage orchard. The
single frontal shot and fixed camera reveal characteristics of an early139

George Sadoul, Dictionnaire des Cinéastes. (Paris: Microcosme, 1975)61

period of cinema, when the theatrical view–point was privileged, mainly
for technical reasons140. The long shot at a distance from the Fairy isnever interrupted by another shot, and the close up couldn’t be used as a
dramatic and narrative element. If, on the one hand, technical devices
would be gradually introduced to help narrative development, on theother hand, narrativity itself wasn’t the objective of cinema at that time.
However, in La fée aux choux we find a scene built on an interesting
notion of depth. The character approaches and edges away from the camera, bringing up the dramatic space for the Fairy’s action, who walks
through the cabbages, going from one to the other, reaching the back andthe front of the scenario and revealing a geography that enforces the
fairy–tale idea and the narrative intention.
This film fits perfectly in Tom Gunning’s definition for a dominantmodel in this period––the “film of synthesis”––where the mix of non–narrative and narrative elements can be observed. As strong evidence ofit, in spite of all the representative and dramatic intentions the film reveals, the Fairy refers directly to the viewer to show her orchard of babies. Her body language indicates that she is not only conscious of thepresence of the viewer, but she intentionally presents her enchanted orchard to us, which can be also noted when she glances to the camera,
helping to break the most important barrier built by the classical narrative
cinema.
Yet, there is a minor concern in characterizing the notion of time in themise–en–scène. And the idea of space, however well it is defined, is notconnected to any other known geography in the world, not even a known
landscape––or even a mystic place, such as heaven or hell––but simply
refers to an ethereal orchard, where the “Cabbage Fairy” lives.
Until 1906 then the cinema is related to the spectacle of varieties, that was
the main form of exhibiting films, for Charles Musser, the means of representation in the first cinema are (based on) presentations, in the acting style,in the scenario’s design, and in the visual conception, so as it is in the way
to represent the time, the space and the narrative.141

It is interesting to observe then, that already in Guy’s first films it is possible toidentify strong narrative elements, not often seen in the films exhibited in thevaudevilles and other exhibiting spaces at the time. Her films, in fact, are very
connected to narrative issues, being supported by the pillars of fiction and representativity from the beginning.
The notion of adaptation in La fée aux choux, which is based on folklore, reveals what would turn out to be a tendency of cinema and something fundamental for the transition and consolidation of the narrative genre: the adaptation for
140
141

62

Jacques Aumont. “O cinema e a encenação” (Lisboa: Edições Texto e Grafia, 2006), 19
Costa, 2 (author’s translation)the screen of “pre–seen” stories, already represented in other artistic means,particularly for theatre and literature. A large proportion of Alice Guy’s films,
mainly after 1906, when she returned to the United States, were based on adaptations. In 1914, when her husband, Herbert Blaché, founded the U.S. Amusement Company, with Alice Guy as vice–president, they listed their firm objectives in the manifest “The Life of a Photodrama,” in which it is stated what thepre–industrial cinema will strongly support: the need to make out “of cinema aform or art and the need to produce works of art”142; i.e., to justify cinema as aself sustained art, doing it with the adaptation of literature, or with “less risk”,
with already seen theatre plays, or with product from other forms of art.143
In 1902, Alice Guy remade La fée aux choux under the title of Sage–femmede première classe. That was not unusual at that time, when the remake wasused by firms to make more films to meet increasing public demand.
The remake at that time was a matter of expediency, and Alice Guy like others used to remake the films of other filmmakers, often applying new techniques
to it. That was another form of adaptation that would produce a numerous
amount of the same titles, but made by different directors. That would definitely
be an important source for future mistakes made in the process of associating
films with their real directors.
The importance of La fée aux choux for the cinema is then grounded in its
contribution to a narrative awakening in film, with its adaptation of narrative
mechanisms in a period where narrativity wasn’t being yet thought of as an objective to be reached. In this short film, Alice Guy coordinates some elementsthat will serve as a basis for the development of narrativity in films and she will
carry on the narrative idea to her following works, keeping the essence of thisfirst film, but bringing in new elements for narrative
La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (or La Passion)
In 1905, Ferdinand Zecca made a passion play, a very common genre at thattime, based on some tableaux (paintings) about the life of Jesus Christ. In thisfilm, Zecca tried to recreate in each shot one tableaux vivant (live paintings),
using the camera in the style of filmed theatre, in front of a small scenario ofshort depth and where the actors move from one to the other side of the frame.
This film was very well received by the vaudeville audiences, becoming a great
success.
Léon Gaumont gave Alice Guy the task of making an “answer” to Zecca’s
production for Pathé, his competitor. In 1906, with La naissance, la vie et lamort du Christ––also known as La naissance, la vie, et la mort du Notre–
Seigneur Jésus–Christ, or simply La Passion––Guy made one of Gaumont’s
biggest productions and the biggest at that time. This film dates from the end of142

Lacassin, Francis. Pour une contre–histoire du cinéma. (Lyon: Institut Lumière/Actes Sud,
1994), 41
143
Lacassin, 4163

an era in the early cinema. As Tom Gunning defines it, between 1895 to 1906–7
is a period when narrative elements start to be consolidated in films.
However, in La Passion, the narrative structure is shown to be more complex
than the most common models for this time, such as the “chase–form”, considered the first original narrative form in films. Guy’s La Passion brings a well–developed dramatic structure with a sequential narrative, an elaborated mise–en–scène that includes the direction of the actors, the use of innovative technical“gimmicks” like special effects, and detailed scenarios to reinforce the drama.
However, as the story of Christ brings a chronological order to the narrative,
and the whole Christ drama is publicly known, the film in fact presents “episodes” of Jesus’s life, not really looking for linearity, nor for a dramatic unity,
but for several dramatic points. The film has twenty–five sequences, most ofthem filmed as sequence shots. The scenes show intense movement with extras
and a good number of actors, and each sequence is dramatically built around one
happening in the life of Christ.
It is possible to observe here the tendency towards synthesis that the film
brings, but in this case with more complexity. The narrative gains importance bytelling a long and well–known story, but above all, the whole film presents theidea of narration, as it is possible to see in the title that it starts with the birth andends with the death of Christ.
Each sequence in this film brings a unique dramatic structure: inter–titles
precede the scenes, telling in advance what will be seen. This structure illustrates
perfectly the synthetic film that Gunning refers to. On one hand, each sequence
represents a dramatic unity, or, like in the vaudeville, brings one attraction of a“staged actuality” of Christ’s life. It can be distinguished in the acting, visualelements such as the camera angle, and mainly in the importance of each moment chosen to be portrayed.
On the other hand, it is the previous understanding the public has of the storyof the Christ that connects the sequences dramatically and guides the viewer
through the story as one thing, and the notion of linearity comes along with thejuxtaposition of the sequences. This is a fundamental element for the comprehension of the public because, as Musser suggests, it is the awareness the public
has of the story, and also the inter–titles that are substituted for the common
narration made by a projectionist at that time, that will “explain” to the public of
the 20th century what is being told on the screen.
Two cases that illustrate the idea of a mixed structure can be seen in the sequences of the raising of Jairus’ daughter (Le miracle de la fille de Jairo), andthe ascent to Mount Golgotha (La monte au Golgotha).
The first sequence presents a mise–en–scène with extras and actors set inplace as in a choreography. The scene portrays a group that guards the sickdaughter of Jairus, in bed, until the moment her death is revealed. The motherenters in desperation and some people walk around demonstrating their emotions. At this moment, Jesus, brought by Jairus, arrives at the house through oneof the back entrances of the scenario and clears the way to the girl. The extras
64then move to other places in the scenario, going to the stairs on the left side, toleave the centre of the screen to Jesus.
In the Mount Golgotha scene, there are many extras following Jesus while heis climbing the mountain. They are distributed along the landscape, but always
leave the centre of the screen clear for Jesus, who bears the cross. Filmed in anatural setting, something not common at the time for a fiction film, the camera
follows the ascension of Christ, and when he crosses the screen, we keep following his hiking from his back, followed by extras. This final camera angle will be
kept for some instants before the sequence ends and it will give the picture astronger idea of depth. The drama is set in this landscape in perspective andreveals the deep and long Calvary of Jesus before his crucifixion.
Alice Guy makes use of technical elements in this film, such as external locations and actors, to insert dramatic and representative notions. These elements
reinforce the narrative sense in the film, also supported by camera movements
and the use of montage, with cuts in specific points. All of these can be seen as
signs of the development of a film language at this time. However, Guy’s choicefor using them in a “super production” such as this one, particularly in the genre
of Passion Plays, represents a daring idea.
In the sequence of Saint Veronica (Sainte Véronique), in which she cleans Jesus’ face, the editing is used to make obvious the Lord’s traits left on Saint Veronica’s tissue, with a closer shot. In Christ’s funeral sequence (La mise au tombeau), it acquires different meanings related to time–space continuity. In the first
shot, people are carrying Jesus’s body to the mausoleum of Joseph of Arimathea, walking through a rocky location where the tomb lies. In a second shot, thebody of Jesus is taken to the inside of the tomb. The third shot gets back to theoutside, where the Lord’s followers come out from the tomb in sadness.
The montage of La Passion supports with this structure the hybrid narration–
attraction. Guy keeps the story the public already knows in chronological order,
and the narrative has its own dramatic line. But she also promotes a marriage
between technique and aesthetics with the use of cutting, camera movements,
detailed and grandiose scenarios, a great number of extras, text screens, episodes
and so on, which bring in the idea of separated attractions at each sequence.
La Passion, according to its director, was based in chromos––coloured xylography––on the Passion of Christ, by Tissot (LACASSIN, 1994). The adaptation for a screenplay was made by Louis Feuillade. The idea of creating ascreenplay for a film of this proportion is in itself something very interesting toobserve in this period of the early cinema. The adaptation of engravings into afilm makes it an even more interesting relation for the transposing between different artistic media and different forms of expression. The engravings present
the scene as still, like photography, and the cinema gives it a sense of motion
combined with narrative meaning.
Furthermore, it is the “super–production” structure that calls itself to our attention, in a film made in the first decade of the cinema. La Passion utilized65three hundred extras in twenty–five scenarios144––in general scenarios with two
floors––and some special effects––elements very common to find in the films of
Alice Guy. Therefore, this film is considered Guy’s masterpiece for Gaumont.
It is very important to understand the structure in which Gaumont based its
film production at this time. Alice Guy was responsible for hiring and setting thecrews for each production made by the firm, which had to attend to the increasing demand of the public for films. The crew of her films would be the same forseveral productions. This film had a very complex structure of production forthe period and, according to Lacassin, to direct a mainly masculine crew, besides actors and extras, Alice Guy felt the need to hire an assistant to coordinate
the crew, while she could dedicate herself more to the creative process and the
direction of scenes. This assistant was Victorin Jasset, who worked in many ofher films for Gaumont, and also directed his own films. La Passion was, for along time, wrongly credited to him as director.
Another important collaborator of Guy’s productions was Henri Menéssier.
Together they established a long–term partnership that started in France and was
carried on to the United States. As Art Director and Set Decorator, Ménessier’s
work has great importance for Guy’s pictures, since it brought in many elementsthat reinforce the dramatic and representational qualities of her films.
Besides the grandiosity of the reproduction of castles, arenas and the cross ofthe martyrdom, the scenario in La Passion is particularly interesting for bringing
in doors and windows in the back and in the laterals of the scenes, that could be
filled by extras or to contribute to the actors’ mobility during the scene. This
geography gives the film sensations of movement, depth and realism that are
visible in many moments such as the Pontius Pilatus scene (Jésus devant Ponce
Pilate).
In this case, for instance, there is a column in the middle of the scene that divides the screen into two fields. On the left, we see Pilatus inside the castle andon the windows, the desperate crowd waiting for Jesus’s sentence. On the rightside we see only Jesus.
Other films after La Passion would have similar structures. Guy shot manyother super–productions in the United States in her studio La Solax, where she
applied many of the techniques she started developing with this film and in the
French period of her career. La passion is particularly important for being thefirst film with such grandiosity during this period and with this narrative intention.

144
Alison McMahan, Alice Guy Blaché: Lost visionary of the cinema. (New York: Continuum, 2002), 10266

A Woman Wishes to “Make a New World”. Umanità by
Elvira Giallanella
Micaela Veronesi
Professor: So what do men do Marina?
Marina: They wage war. War is natural.
Professor: An implacable truth. And what do women do?
Marina: The same.
Professor: You wage war, do you?
Marina: We all do, Professor.145

Discovering a movie such as Elvira Giallanella’s Umanità,146 beyond being a
notable occurrence for studies on Italian silent cinema, offers a precious starting
point for reflections on feminine subjectivity, generally speaking, as on its specific nature in Italian history, at the beginning of the twentieth century. In moredetail, two questions arise from this movie. The first and most wide–ranging one
directly concerns the existential state of women, and is about pacifism, as a peculiar womanly trait, given a supposed dichotomy between women, seen as
more pacifist, and men, seen as being more inclined to war. Actually a rather
complex balance lies underneath this point, which must also be seen together
with the cultural condition of women in the given historical moment. The second question regards the authoress herself, about whom we have so few records,
both on her life, and her career, and most of them have to be inferred from thescreening of her movie, which suggests an enigmatic personality.
Women and pacifism
145

Amélie Nothomb, Human Rites (Les Combustibles) (London: Oberon Books, 2005), 31.
This film used to lie, forgotten, in the archives of the Cineteca Nazionale (Italian NationalFilm Archive), in Rome, since May 1957, and probably had never been screened for an audience
before being presented in Bologna, in December 2007, during the event “Non solo dive. Pioneredel cinema italiano”. Its rediscovery, occurred by chance, while searching for quite anotherthing, has a tight relationship with the Women Film Pioneers project, and coordinated on aninternational level by Jane Gaines, and in Italy by Monica Dall’Asta. I wouldn’t have paid thedue attention to the name of Elvira Giallanella, just flipping through the pages of the volume on
Italian silent cinema filmography by Vittorio Martinelli, if I had not been caught into this projectby the enthusiasm of Monica Dall’Asta. And if it wasn’t for her professionalism and her tenaciousness maybe we wouldn’t have searched, screened, started to study and at last promoted thefilm restoration, realized on the initiative of Associazione Orlando ("Orlando" Women’s Association) and the Italian National Film Archive, with the support of the Ministero per i Beni e leAttività Culturali (Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities). We are amazed and at
the same time proud of this set of coincidences and casual encounters, because it is like throughour work somehow Elvira came to life again, and completed her project. But I must thank also
all the other persons that, in different ways, contributed to this study: Jane Gaines, Franca Farina,
Irela Nuñez, Davide Pozzi, Luca Mazzei, and – of course – Silvio Alovisio. A special thank goesto Gianluca Nani who helped me in the translation of this text from Italian to English. At last, a
dutiful thought goes to the late lamented Vittorio Martinelli, who first discovered Umanità, andincluded it into his essential movies inventory.

146

67

A feminine pacifist thread of thought does exist; nevertheless, it should beconsidered along with the social context women lived in, before, during, andjust after World War I. “At the fall of the XIX century, all women associations, none excluded, used to heighten the everlasting values of peace, harmony, and safeness, of life opposed to death, etc.”147 During the 1907 Second
Hague Peace Conference “women identified pacifism as their ’intimate’ policy, considered their biological status of generator of life.”148
During this period woman is a weak figure, both as individual and as social
subject; she is considered only for her maternal virtues. She is often constricted into clichés expecting her to be beautiful, elegant, graceful, affable…
all clichés women themselves agree upon, especially in the middle–class environment, where mass culture is taking shape. The prevailing ideal of woman ismainly based on male fantasies. This is the kind of woman that knows herplace––that is to say the home––a place where man can claim refuge and care,without annoyances for his business.149 A “new woman” sets against thisstereotyped woman, according to the phrase coined by Sarah Grand in 1894.150
The “new woman” is neither mother nor prostitute, can say no to marriage,
and needs to emerge in productive as well as in intellectual spheres.
Besides, since the middle of the nineteenth century, women’s movements forthe right to vote began to claim attention, and got themselves talked about.
These movements and the resulting debates highlight many issues until thenconsigned to private life: more than about the matter of suffrage, debating takes
interest in parity and equality, and––subsequently––in women’s specific peculiarities.151 Commonplaces and deeply–rooted stereotypes weighed on women, as
did beliefs about inferior intelligence, and others coming out from anthropological studies, first of all about feminine hysteria, to which is tightly related the147

R. Farina and P. Lejeune, Guerra alla guerra, in Esistere come donna (Milano: Mazzotta,
1983), 189.
148
Ibid.
149
These clichés are recurring in 19th century literature, theatre plays and then in movie plots
and above all characterize a widespread attitude between women themselves. Think about
what Gina Lombroso writes in L’anima della donna (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1921), 42: “morethan on emancipating women, I do insist on making men more chivalrous, with the resulting
double advantage to refine men and to satisfy women”.
150
Sarah Grand, The Modern Man and Maid (London: Horace Marshall & Son, 1898). “First
coined in Great Britain, in 1894, by woman novelist Sarah Grand, the term “new woman” wasused to describe characters of her stories and to refer to women of her times, and their trying
to live in a very different way if compared to their mothers, committing themselves to activities through which declare their independence, their dignity, their right to a public role. Grandkept on rejecting middle–class derived feminine ideals, and defined a “new woman”, awoman that does not agree to being considered a nourishing machine nor a prostitute, that
refuses the idea that “women’s place is the house” and looks for a wider world of thinking andacting”. Cf. Barbara Caine and Glenda Sluga, L’europa e la donna 1780–1920 (PortoSant'Elpidio: Wizarts, 2003), 134.
151
About inequality between women and men see the outstanding work of Guglielmo Gambarotta, Inchiesta sulla donna (Torino: Fratelli Bocca, 1899), 24–35, especially the introduction.
68persuasion of pretending women to be “quarrelsome and inclined to be
touchy”.152 In some cases, as in Gustave Le Bon’s research about crowds,153
such a conception even goes so far as to say that the crowd, typical of modern
cities, and their life, prove to have “feminine specific” features, that is to say
credulity, irrationality and emotional unsteadiness.154
Wondering about women at the beginning of the twentieth century and about
their being or not being pacifist, we meet a lot of points of view, sometimes
opposing and contradicting each other.
Women of the beginning of the 20th century, as well as organizing themselves
into movements for suffrage, political and legal rights, gathered into pacifist
movements. In Italy we can find organizations such as, for instance, the “Società
per il Lavoro delle Donne”155 and the “Associazione per le Donne”156, both established in 1890, aiming at secular education for women, raising consciousness
concerning their rights, and awakening them toward pacifist matters.157 “At the
beginning of the 20th century pacifism was a form of womanly participation in
the public sphere, on a popular basis. Furthermore pacifism was associated tothe so called feminine qualities, the desire to nourish and to protect life”.158 During those years, Bertha Von Suttner published the novel Lay Down Your Arms159
that, starting in 1905, was translated into a dozen languages, and “contributed tomake women support the pacifist cause”.160 Pacifism, maybe because of its
spread amongst women, appeared to men as an excessively idealistic and ineluctable trait, not in accordance with male consciousness, and charged by the harshinternational situation.
On the threshold of the war, all of Europe became interested by feminist ferments and organized groups of women moved to have their rights acknowledged, but all was stopped by the political crisis and the quick spread of theconflict: as Françoise Thébaud wrote, “1914 could have been women’s year, but
it was the year of the war, that brought the sexes back to their place”.161
152

According to some positivists, such as novelist Émile Zola (cf. Germinal, 1885) and scholars Max Nordau and Gustave Le Bon, women are provided with an high violent potential:
involved in the French Revolution, the raisings of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1870, were thebloodiest, most violent and destructive of all. Cesare Lombroso as well, with regard to thepolitical behavior of women, affirmed that once involved in the revolution “women became
terribly furious”. B. Caine and G. Sluga, op. cit., 124–125.
153
Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1895).
154“According to both Zola and Le Bon the most terrifying aspect of mob behavior is that it
behaves like women when they are affected by hysteria, that’s to say in an irrational andextremist way”. B. Caine and G. Sluga, op. cit., 125.
155
Society for Women’s work.
156
Women Association.
157
B. Caine and G. Sluga, op. cit., 138.
158
Ibid., 151.
159
For the most recent Italian edition see: Berta Von Suttner, Abbasso le armi! Storia di una
vita, ed. G. Orlandi and L. Tirone (Torino: Centro Stampa Cavallermaggiore, 1996).
160
B. Caine and G. Sluga, op. cit., 152.
161
La Grande Guerra: età della donna o trionfo della differenza sessuale?, in: Françoise
Thébaud, ed., Storia delle donne, Il Novecento (Bari: Laterza, 1992), 29.
69

War seemed to bring a kind of sexual equality. Men left for the battlefront
and women were left with the tasks of taking care of jobs, houses, and assistingchildren and soldiers. On one side, the conflict restored social order, as hopedfor by anti–feminist movements, but on the other side allowed women to gain
access to roles that up to that moment had exclusively been in men’s hands,
especially in the sphere of work. The war was an opportunity for the emancipation of women; it’s indisputable, continues Thébaud, that it:
had been for women an unprecedented experience of freedom and responsibility. […] War, out of necessity, breaks the barriers that used to rigorously
divide male between women’s jobs, leaving women out of a lot of professions […]. Everywhere, due to the offices women were entrusted with (coffee
bars, hotels, banks, trades, administrative offices), made women visible into
the public sphere, allowing their honesty and accurateness qualities to be appreciated. […] The majority of women workers gain consciousness of theircapabilities, and appreciate the new economic independence.162

In Italy, women’s experience during the conflict even shows revolutionary
traits, because it affected the root feminine identity.
In the French and Italian countryside women plough, sow, mow, spray vineyards with copper; discover solidarity between neighboring women, get bywith the public administration, go so far, in Piedmont, as to hide young deserters.163

But the Great War also brought an endless sequence of human losses, and even
if many feminists were interventionist––so far as to stop their claims and give
their support to conscription (mainly in England and in France)––as the conflict
went on it more and more revealed its absurdity and cruelty. The horrible
slaughter taking place at the battlefront affected the mood of the thousands ofwomen that lost their sons, husbands, boyfriends, and fathers and, with them,much of their hope and chance of sustenance.
In Italy lots of women, mindful of the Libyan War, in 1911, and of the bereavement of sons and husbands, drew up against the war, and took to the streets
shouting “bread and peace”. In 1915, the Avanti! newspaper published a call by
the International Socialist Women’s Committee, aiming to awaken proletarian
women against the war, stressing its useless violence and cruelty; but in othernewspapers and magazines, such as La donna, interventionism left the memoriesof the feminine pacifist tradition in the background, so far––as in Spring 1915––
as to heartily advise its women readers against supporting the congress for peacecalled by Dutch women.164
162

Ibid., 45.
Ibid., 52.
164
About the Italian feminine situation see also the really interesting text of those years, Paola
Baronchelli Grosson, La donna della Nuova Italia: documenti del contributo femminile alla
Guerra (maggio 1915 – maggio 1917) (Milan: Quintieri, 1917).
163

70

So we should keep in mind that even if pacifism did not exclude patriotism,
many women that used to call and feel themselves patriots, believed that thelove of their country had to be expressed by agreeing to the war.165
The history of women is above all the history of different subjectivities, ofthe limits, during so many years, imposed on their self–consciousness and realopportunities for intellectual independence. For this reason, unambiguous andgeneral conclusions are not easily drawn. To say that women are more inclined
to peace than men leads to over–simplification; we can, all the same, refer to a
detachment of women from the dogmatism of politics and to a wider view ofconflict. That’s why it is so significant, nowadays, to investigate the story ofElvira Giallanella, because it is the effort to unravel a little more the enigma of
feminine subjectivity, and learn to achieve a deeper acquaintance of our foremothers and of ourselves.
The enigma of Elvira
Umanità was filmed just after the end of World War I. The movie shows theeffects of war, as a tragic and catastrophic experience, but also embodies thewish to surpass the trauma, and look upon the future in a fearless way. The
movie, nevertheless, reveals some contradictions. The first one is the odd encounter between Giallanella, Golia and Bravetta. The screenplay is an adaptationof the story Tranquillino dopo la guerra vuol creare il mondo… nuovo, a text
for children, in rhyme, written by Vittorio Emanuele Bravetta, and illustrated by
Golia, published in 1915. In the same years Bravetta also worked as a movie
scriptwriter (he was at the head of the script department in Ambrosio), but he’s
better known as a poet, and a writer of historical and popular novels. He is not
new to works for children, and, particularly, he already produced, in 1914, another text, set during the war, Pentolino alla grrrande Guerra, illustrated by
Golia as well. Bravetta was a dubious individual, male chauvinist, interventionist––he later became a fascist––but from these works of his we can infer how
important to him the conviction was that children should not be involved withthe atrocities of war.
Golia, in his turn, was a well known humorous illustrator, and a friend of
Guido Gozzano. In 1914, together with Caimi (director of “La donna”), helaunched “Numero”, a weekly humorous magazine, and cooperated with themost important titles of that time.
Among the three, the least well known is Elvira Giallanella, directress,
scriptwriter, and film producer. Born in 1885, she appeared for the first time in acine magazine in 1917 as co–producer with Aldo Molinari for the production

165

About the inconsistency of women’s attitude towards the war it could be useful to recall
the difference drawn by Jean Bethke Elshtain, between the “many non–fighter” and the “fewfierce”, in Jean Bethke Elshtain, Donne e Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991). See also Anna
Bravo, ed., Donne e uomini nelle guerre mondiali (Bari: Laterza, 1991).
71Society, Vera Film in Rome.166 The few pieces of information we have about
her come exclusively from contemporary periodicals, from which we can reconstruct just a little part of her professional career. At the end of 1919, Elvira Giallanella established the Liana Films society, whose purpose was to “produce
movies for children, with children themselves as leading characters”.167
Articles appearing in magazines between September 1919 to March 1920 tellus that after selling her share of Vera Films to Molinari, Elvira moved to Milan
to set up on her own, planning to produce a film adapted from Tranquillino dopo
la guerra vuol creare il mondo nuovo, keeping the title of Bravetta’s poem unchanged. However, what exactly happened in Milan is not clear. One hypothesisis that Elvira knew somebody in the Lombardy main town: she definitely had aprofessional relationship with a distributor from Milan, an agency called Monopolio Principe, scattered traces of which can be found in most importantmagazines from that period, between 1918 and 1922.
The “Film” magazine provides a couple more pieces of information regarding Giallanella’s activities. Issue no. 37, November 29th, 1919, announces the
opening of Tanquillino, also mentioning another movie, Tomba nuziale, withregard to which a spectacular set design is mentioned, even describing someexamples. Besides, the interest of the female producer in educational matters ishighlighted:
Elvira Giallanella took great care of all problems concerned with child psychology, and convinced herself of the need to offer children a movie showthat can’t be the same for grown up persons, and that help them to define
their disposition and mind, at the same time being entertaining with episodes
they love and can understand.168

Again in “Film”, some months later, we read about the imminent issue of thefirst work of the new publishing house from Milan, founded “thanks to theinitiative and wish of a woman, well known in the movie industry environment for her reliability and firm intents, Ms Elvira Giallanella”.169 From the
166

The fact is deduced from the advertisement of a film of Vera itself (Lotta di elementi,
raffiche d’anime, directed by Aldo Molinari), appeared in Film no. 5 (February 10th, 1917), 5.
167
One of the few facts until now come to light about the cinematographic activity of Giallanella can be found in: R. Mattozzi, La rassegna del film, where “Liana Film” is indicated as a
production house based in Milan, established in 1919 and property of Elvira Giallanella, andabout which a movie entitled Tranquillino dopo la Guerra vuol fare il mondo nuovo is noted
as its only production; Mattozzi himself gives the news of a second film under production,
entitled Tomba nuziale. Announcement of setting up of Liana appears for the first time in themagazine Film no. 30 (September 30th, 1919), 21, where we get to know how Giallanelladissolved her engagement with Aldo Molinari and Vera Film and established in Milan a film
production company of her own, Liana Films, and also about a project for building a cinema
set; we also read how the company is already working with films buying, selling and licensing. The establishment of the house is also quoted in La Vita Cinematografica, no. 7–8 (February 22nd and 29th, 1920), 119, and in La Rivista Cinematografica, no. 6 (March 1920), 62.
168
Cf. “Informazioni, Liana Film” Film no. 37 (November 29th, 1919).
169“About ‘Liana Films’” Film no. 8 (February 8th, 1920).
72

same article we also get to know that Elvira had to discontinue her work
because of a disease, and that now, fully recovered, she is leaving for the
Carso region, to film Tranquillino, with a tiny troupe, mostly of children,
and with the support of the camera operator Sestilio Morescanti.
Anyway, things don’t seem to follow Elvira’s plans. The April 1920 issueof “La rivista cinematografica” foretells that Monopolio Principe, under the
F.U.S.E. label, will take care of producing a series of “humorous educational” films, based on the character of Tranquillino, described as “a little
kiddy that, after the war, wishes to make a new world”. Also “Film”, ofApril 1st 1920, features an advertisement page for the opening of Tranquillino, the “first feature of the F.U.S.E. series”. Both in the advertising and in
the small piece that appeared in “La rivista cinematografica” the names of
the actors are disclosed: a little boy, four years old, Léon Bambouchée(Tranquillino), and a three year–old little girl, Ivonne Leroux (Sirenetta);
moreover, it’s emphasized that alongside them there will be “lions, elephants, seals, monkeys, dogs, cats, and trained sheeps”. According to both
sources the name of the director is that of a dubious Mr. Edmond Davidson,
probably an alias, whereas the camera operator always turns out to be Mr.
Sestilio Morescanti, the only unchanged fact, compared with the informationof the month before. Besides, the author of the subject is reported, but quoting the misspelled name of Carlo Bravetta. Elvira Giallanella just disappeared, along with Liana Films. The name of Bravetta is misspelled, anddubious names are given to the director, and the little boy starring in Tranquillino. It’s worth noticing that in every circumstance of that period inwhich the film is quoted, in both primary sources, such as advertising, andsecondary sources, such as short news, the title Umanità never appears, but
only the one of Tranquillino after the war wishes to make (or create) a newworld. The most likely hypothesis is that Giallanella failed to sell her project, and that with the help of Principe, she attempted a repositioning under adifferent form, which can be defined as less educational and more humorous,
exploiting the child star–system and inventing international sounding names
to increase credibility, according to the trend of that period. The April 1920
issue of “La vita cinematografica” features the advertisement of a trading
company (the Industrial Film, in Trieste), publicizing a huge list of movies,
one among which is named Tranquillino, and Vera Film, in Rome, is credited with that feature, and this catchphrase follows: “the renowned little Italian character”. Later on, after April 1920, no more traces can be found about
Tranquillino, nor about Elvira Giallanella, whose movie appears to sink into
oblivion. The film that eventually survived until today (a 35mm nitrate positive, imbibed and tinted, with unnumbered Italian title cards) must havenever been screened for an audience, because, as reported by Martinelli in
his record, the film must have never obtained a censorship visa.
Now, a key question is: why did Giallanella, a professional, working in
the movie industry for at least three years, based in Rome (one of the few
73towns, together with Turin and Naples, still wealthy enough, during those
years of crisis and decadence for the Italian film industry) decide to establish
a production company in Milan, the less promising market? What kind ofconnection is there between her and Principe, and his satellite companies?
Which kind of commercial contracts led her, at a given moment, to leave hername out of the film advertising? And why doesthe title Umanità never appears?
Those were years during which lots of production and rental societies
used to appear, and disappear, as uncountable as the bankruptcies, advertized
but never premiered movies, individuals promising never fulfilled successes… Umanità is one of those films that remained unscreened. But all theevidence leads us to the supposition that Giallanella didn’t aim so much forcommercial achievement, given her decision to produce her movie in Milan,
but rather cherished a personal dream, in which she deeply believed. Maybein Milan she could find an investor, and, strengthened by her experience inthe promotional field, tried to venture into new activities, with a hope forsuccess that, on the contrary, was never to be met. For this reason, maybe,
she found herself forced to sell the movie exploitation rights, or anyway, aneasy assumption is that she returned in Rome to try the positioning of her
movie in the Italian capital (such a hypothesis would also explain why thereels preserved in the Italian National Film Archive are labeled “Liana
Films––Roma”).
A story of unfulfilled dreams, oblivion and failure: the story of Elvira is
as well, and above all, the story of a woman, and, as for many other women,
tenacity, passion, and farsightedness only let her go so far. At this point one
more question arises: why and how did her movie arrive at the Italian National Film Archive, and remained there, unnoticed, for fifty years?
But the mystery of Elvira is still there, waiting to be unfolded.
The adaptation: male poem, female film?
Umanità is faithfully based on Bravetta’s short poem as regards the plot, andon Golia’s illustrations on the iconographic side. But the most interesting
facets of the movie are the slightest but fundamental differences from its
literary source: most of all the incipit, and the ending, but also some sequences in–between. For instance, the ones presenting the character of thegnome, which plays a definitely narrower part in Bravetta’s work, or theones starring the little girl, depicted by Bravetta as a little Eve, committing
the original sin, and that, on the contrary, Giallanella refuses to present sucha character, so much that in the movie it is the little boy that commits the sin
leading the story to come to its end.
In the movie, unlike the poem, Tranquillino experiences the trauma of
war through a dream. The dream, used as a fictional device to portray the
war through the eyes of a child, is a recurring theme, and can be seen in atleast other two films of those years, Il sogno patriottico di Cinessino (Gen74

naro Righelli, 1915)170 and La Guerra e il sogno di Momi (Segundo deChomón, 1917).171 Both cases refer to movies produced during wartime,
whose purpose is halfway between propaganda and the cathartic effort toface the ongoing drama. Moreover, whereas for Momi and Cinessino war isa game, for Tranquillino it’s an incredible scenario, where there is but remains, carcasses, and ruins of a world that is no more, and that nobody caneven imagine where to start from to rebuild it. This feeling of helplessness
can be found, in an embryonic phase, also in Bravetta’s short poem, but Giallanella develops it, and, what’s more, expresses it with visual strength.
What in Golia’s plates appear as allegorical, somehow detached from reality,
and stylized with a satirical touch, in the movie are much less indirect representations, photographic images that do not dissemble, but depict ruins as
they could be seen at the end of the war.
The film’s locations in fact are war artillery ruins and real remains thatthe authoress had permission to shoot, in the Carso region.172 In other cases,
as, for instance, the sequence of the boots, the staging is visually much more
powerful than it is in the book. The boots of the soldiers, lined up as in thefiles of a platoon, but deprived of their content, are a surreal and disturbing
vision, conceived by the authors of the book, but intensified in its politicalmessage by the directress, who puts on stage the result of the war, seen as
the slaughter of an anonymous, lined up and objectified mass.173
The movie begins with a totally new sequence, if compared to its literarysource. The first two shots show a set of household objects (a tray, a tea set,
cigarettes, and a jam jar), and it looks like they are pictorially arranged, in a
way that gives them a peculiar connotation. We can see the two children
move along in an interior shot, showing a clear middle–class look, butwhere, however, the adults are missing, left off–screen. This first element
discloses a stylistic leitmotiv of the whole incipit, that is to say some avant–garde traits, both in the choice of the narrative theme (the children steal jam
and cigarettes behind their sleeping parents’ backs; the little boy smokes,
while he reads the newspaper and lies on the bed), and in the style used by
Giallanella to shoot the objects in this prologue.

170

The little boy is worried about his dad, who is at the battlefront, and can’t sleep. While
playing with toy soldiers, he falls asleep. He dream of a battle, where his father is wounded,
but, at the end, turns victorious.
171
The little boy is sleeping, and dreams of a war setting, where his toy soldiers come to life,and fight, the harsh way; waking up placates his fears: but, outside, the war is for real.
172
See Film (February 26th, 1920), where information is given about the beginning of theshooting, saying that the woman director “left with her tiny troupe to shoot external takes
which, with kind permission of the military authority and for production needs, will have the
Carso region and the most important places of the – by this time – former battlefields as theirbackground”.
173
These kind of strong metaphors are typical of Lucio D’Ambra’s cinema as well, in those
years the reference director for sure as regards the figurative aspects of illustrated stories.
75Tranquillino falls asleep while reading the newspaper––that carries news
with not so encouraging titles, such as “revolution is bursting out, worldwide”, or “the history of each nation is written in blood, built with sacrifices”––and, while sleeping he has a dream that the directress representswith a montage of archive images. The sequence ends with a take of a crowdof men, all assembled for an assembly, where Tranquillino plays a leadingrole, imagining (by means of a superimposition), to be the speaker haranguing the crowd. At this point the prologue ends, and the story of the film rejoins the beginning of Bravetta’s poem, that is the awful moment of the outbreak of the war.
But why does Giallanella link together the images of a crowd of men in
the streets and the destructive power of war? Maybe she makes an equation
between masses, socialist parties, revolution, violence and global wars.
Maybe such reasoning is not that superficial and, however, has to be set into
the historical postwar period. For this point to be fully understood, the mediatic significance that the Bolshevik Revolution had in Italy should be investigated, to understand its impact on the collective imagination.
Giallanella introduces another element missing in the source text, whichis the importance of the narrative function assigned to the gnome, a puppet
in the children’s room, that comes to life within the dream. On a visual level,
there is a specific interest of the directress in creating a fictitious world, a
dream world, beginning from a mixture between reality and fantasy. What
drifts from the fantasies of the sleeper into his dream is what he saw whenawake, coming up again under a different shape.174 It almost seems that theworld of fantasy conceived by Bravetta and Golia, can be accepted by Giallanella only as a dreamlike perspective.175
If we speak in Proppian terms, the gnome plays the role of the Helper,
having the task of being a guide for the children through postwar devastation. Together they go “to the theatre… of war”: it looks like war as a show,
for the directress, can be a possible scene only in a dream dimension. And so
she turns what in Bravetta’s work176 is but an idiom––“theatre of war”––intoa full–blown theatre, with even a stage, dominated by the disturbing skeleton
of a soldier, wrapped up in a flag. This is an original and daring image: thedirectress puts on stage a kind of an “unknown skeleton”, a symbol of themany “unknown soldiers” that monuments were beginning to celebrate, and174

Just remember, in this regard, what Deleuze wrote in The Time Image (London: Continuum, 2005), 54, about “The Bergsonian theory of dreams shows that the dreamer is not at all
closed to the sensations of the external and internal world”.
175
It should be noticed, besides the character of the gnome, the jam jar, from which Sirenetta
comes out after the outbreak of the war, the same one the little girl was secretly dipping intoat the beginning of the film, another element that enters dream from reality, with a changed
and impossible function.
176
A difference is represented by the volume of “Universal History”, looked up by Tranquillino in the movie, to find starting point on how to carry out his challenging task, and that, inthe poem, is a “Sacred History”.
76humor and satire announced by opening credits turn into black humor. Together with the following image, of the soldiers’ boots, left in a line, but voidof any human content, the gruesome theatre Giallanella puts on stage displays in the most disturbing and powerfully allusive way that sense of tragedy of the just ended war.
The gnome continues his guided tour, taking the children behind thewings, in the backstage area, through distressing scenery made of ruins, debris, pieces of ordnance and pieces of abandoned weapons.
Put in front of such destruction, with grave seriousness, Tranquillino assigns himself the task of making a new world. The central part of the film
quite closely follows Bravetta’s text, where all Tranquillino’s attempts are
unsuccessful, with a climax of tragic helplessness and, as an unstoppable
repetitive compulsion, are interrupted or overwhelmed by violence: not justexternal, but also the violence he has deep inside himself, leading him to act,in turn, in a destructive and cruel way, as when he doesn’t hesitate to bomb
the group of animals who dared to criticize “humanity” for his ferocity. It is
to be noticed that the weight of responsibility is entirely ascribed to the malecharacter, whilst the female character (actively co–starring in the jam theftscene, seen in the prologue), even with a more practical and purposeful nature, plays mostly a comforting part, and in the end even vanishes from thescene.
The only chance of salvation, amidst so much destruction, seems to comefrom God, who intervenes in more occasions, and shows himself, in the end,
to take Tranquillino up into the sky, to let him watch the world from above.
Whilst Bravetta’s poem ends with both the children ascending to the sky,in the movie there is a kind of epilogue, introduced by a title card reading:“reality”. Just as the prologue artfully depicted the prewar scenery usingarchive images whose historical provenance is left undisclosed, the epilogue
is carried out with a montage showing indefinite shots of chimneys, workers
crossing the gate of a factory, work scenes in fields, mines etc.
This ending, conceived as an hymn to reconciling labour, seems to be justlike the “apotheosis” that concluded the first movie féeries, with an evident
message extolling peace arising from activity, and Jesus as the supreme
bearer of these values.
To make a new world
At the end of the war, just like Tranquillino, Elvira Giallanella wishes tomake a new world, and to succeed in this purpose uses the tools she has ather disposal: a tale for children, scenery of war ruins and archive images ofmass scenes. Her movie blends regressive fantasies and social realism, amoralizing will and the old–fashioned tricks of early film.
These contradictions need to be set into the historical period the female
film maker lives in, the uneasy condition women experienced during the first
decades of the twentieth century and the confusion characterizing the first77

postwar years, that is to say, in different words, that “upside down world”
quoted by Françoise Thébaud,177 making lots of changes possible, above all
for the life of women, but even diffusing a lot of insecurity. The reversal ofrules and the resulting destabilization can be found in the story of Tranquillino as well, a middle–class little boy who used to have no worries (that is
amidst the peace and coziness of his home and family), and finds himself
with no family, only the company of his girl friend/sister Sirenetta, in acompletely destroyed world he attempts, in vain, to rebuild, just to continually fall back into the spiral of hate and violence that made him a survivor. In
this upside down world it is possible for children to smoke cigarettes, tokeep public talks, to pilot airplanes… exactly as during the war it had beenpossible for woman to carry out traditionally male tasks, in work as in social
activities.
Moreover, the theme of the upside down world is typical of Futurism and,by the way, it is interesting to recall the existence of an at least indirect liaison between the woman film maker and Marinetti’s movement: Aldo e Renato Molinari, her associates in the management of Vera Film, had been the
makers, in 1913, of Mondo baldoria, a movie inspired by Palazzeschi’s
manifesto, Il controdolore, that all the same was publicly repudiated by
Marinetti.
Besides, in Umanità we can find numerous elements close to traditional
Catholic morals. What strikes us, above all, is the strange blend caused by
the ending, where ideas of peace and brotherhood are confused with ideals ofa socialist mould (see the title card “job for everyone––bread for all––idleness for nobody”), and all the same coming to the exaltation of Jesus,
seen as an example of who could “sacrifice himself for the ideal of humanity” and preached “not to kill one’s own brothers”, as it is stated by the title
card on which the film ends. This mixture is distinctive of Italian women inthat period: women in the Socialist Party used to hold a strong liaison withvalues of brotherhood and social equity belonging to Early Christians andthe similar socialist values.178
Within this commixture we can meet both a specifically feminine bent for
taking ideological sides placed at the outside of political schemes––the way thisbent has been defined by Dora Marsden179––and the lack of familiarity for
women of those years with “making politics”––see the speech of Virginia
Woolf, in Three Guineas.180 To this end, the case of the woman writer Vera
177

F. Thébaud, op. cit., 43.
Cf. Maria Pia Bigaran, Per una donna nuova. Tre giornali di propaganda socialista tra ledonne, in “Nuova DWF”, n. 21 (1982), 57.
179“A very limited number of women, considered individually, is stressing the fact that when
we talk about them, the first thing to keep in mind is that they are individuals, and can’t becompared into a class, a sexual genre, or in a «movement»”. D. Marsden, The new Freewoman (June 13th, 1913).
180
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York, London: Brace, Jovanovich, 1966).
178

78

Brittain is emblematic, whose writings on the war (letters and diaries) reflect the
deep division she lived between an idealist patriotism and the horror of the conflict discovered in hospital wards, before outlining, in her autobiography, a full–blown manifesto against war, expressing a pacifism of a Christian mould, exalting the non–violent nature of women.181
Women have always been cloistered subjects, forced to the fringe of politicaland social life, plain spectators, but even for this reason often more inclined tojudge in more impartial ways. Dora Marsden wrote that there does exist, in some
women, a semi–anarchic spirit, that leads them never to feel entirely represented
by a party, an ideology, and to retain from everything just what they feel fair, tobe curious but never dogmatic, to spend themselves in a cause, but even tochange their disposition in case an ideal proves unsatisfying to them. Marsden
underlines the individualist disposition of feminine nature as less inclined tocomply, bringers of personal needs and wishes.182
It is under this perspective that we attempt to better understand the meaningof Elvira Giallanella’s film and her commitment to peace, with her peculiar
chemistry of both socialist and Catholic inspired ideas. Just as Virginia Woolf,
during the next decade, and in the middle of the thirties, will find herself in trouble in deciding which side to take to prevent war and will give in Three Guineas
an evasive answer on purpose––because intended to overturn feminine pacifism
from a simple attitude to a conscious choice, free, independent, not taken to
conform to men, but to give life to different voices and wishes183––in the sameway Elvira Giallanella, waiting for the “three guineas” to be spent to makewomen culturally more autonomous and independent, gets her individuality
involved and, with all her limits, tries to make a new world stating her “desire ofpeace and freedom for the whole world.”184

181

For a description of the case of Vera Brittain see F. Thébaud, op. cit., 64.
Marsden, op. cit., 285–287.
183
Cf. Woolf, op. cit., 146–148 and 187–188.
184
Ibid., 313.
182

79

The Didactic–Instructive Task of Cinema (1907–1918)
in Italian Women’s Writings
Domenico Spinosa
My intention in this contribution is to communicate the first results of a research I am undertaking, still in progress, which aims to draw attention to anumber of essays written by Italian women on the question of pedagogy incinema.
At the beginning of 1990 the historian and linguist Sergio Raffaelli published an article on the “relationship which school education in Italy tried toestablish with cinema from an early date”.185 Thanks to this article, a set ofwritings became known, published between 1909 and 1918, which exploredthe nature of cinema and suggested that its proper function was educational. In
that period within the sphere of cinema theory, a unity of thought was taking
shape (not without difficulties) whose objective was to work out a logic for theuse of the institution of cinema from an educational point of view. It should be
noted that this impulse had a background of culture and concrete historicalcircumstances which encouraged this view of cinema’s specific role. It isclearly a question of “socialised knowledge”. It has been noted by Francesco
Casetti that “theory is also a form of social knowledge: it tells what a group ofscholars sees in a given phenomenon and, by means of these scholars, what alager portion of the population is invited to see in it. “Seeing” here has a double meaning, because it is necessary to define both which aspects of a phenomenon are perceived and why. On the one hand, there is the “appearance”
with which things present themselves. On the other hand, there are reasons
why they catch our attention. It can thus be said that film theories shed light on
both the notion of cinema shared by a certain society and the reasons why thissociety tends to be interested in films, on both the phenomenon’s characteristics when it enters the collectivity. Both aspects underscore the social natureof the knowledge expounded by a theory. If it is true that the later defines theway movies are watched (as stated above, by a group of “experts” but, throughthem, also by larger groups of people), then it is also true that a theory testifies
to what is seen in films (the social perception of cinema) and the angle fromwhich they are viewed (the conditions of social existence that lie behind thisphenomenon).”186
In 1910 two interesting articles were published connected with the problemof the educational use of cinema: they appeared in the Rivista di Pedagogia of
185

S. Raffaelli, Il cinema per la scuola dei primordi. Per una bibliografia italiana sul cinema
didattico e formativo (1896–1916), in “Prospettiva EP”, a. XIII, n. 1, gennaio–febbraio 1990, 45.
186
F. Casetti, Theories of Cinema: 1945–1990, translated by Francesca Chiostri and Elizabeth
Gard Bartolini–Salimbeni, with Thomas Kelso, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1999, p. 4
(original edition: Id., Teorie del cinema (1945–1990), Milano, Bompiani, 1993, 3–4).
80

Pavia, an important periodical with positivist leanings, directed by Saverio De
Dominicis, lecturer in pedagogy at the University of Pavia. One of the articles,
entitled Il cinematografo nell’educazione,187 was written by Prof. Amalia
Campetti. An interesting and innovative aspect of this article concerns the
problem of the negative effects of cinema on child psyche––an approach
which was to have widespread success in the following decades and become
one of the most cultivated issues in all the later research on teaching withaudiovisual material.
Right from the start, referring to an episode of attempted cannibalism bysome New York children (three twelve to thirteen year–olds, after seeing afilm with some scenes of cannibalism, kidnap a child and try to set fire to it,with the intention of roasting and eating it––they were apparently stopped intime), it is clear what Campetti intends to draw attention to: the power of influence which cinema is presumed to possess, considered in these circumstances as a possible vehicle for moral corruption, because it can portray negative episodes and characters in a seductive light, giving an inviting example
for imitation by the child. According to Campetti, these “thrusts of emulation”
are the product of a double order of factors: on the side of the emulating party
there is acting a predisposition towards a “fertile imagination”, while on theside of the emulated party the power of seduction is working, based on the“fascination of an acknowledged superiority”. The youngster will in this way
be induced to imitate whatever has captured his admiration.
Starting from this assumption, Campetti attacks the “bad example” given
by contemporary cinema productions, which consisted largely of “mimed
dramas in gloomy colours, or vulgar farces”, aimed at achieving an emotional“jerk” rather than stimulating thought and above all unable to provide efficacious structures of moral reference for the spectator: the author wonders if, atthe end of the viewing, the child has “an urge to blame those who jokingly
violate the rules, or feels unconditional enthusiasm for the example that flies in
the face of authority.”
She continues: “In the lively demonstration that one can fool one’s superiors and get away with it; that one can triumph over reason with trickery andforce, how can young people distinguish for themselves that this is all wrong,
wicked and evil? Will they not, on the contrary, come to the opposite conclusion, that in the end anything is allowed if it gratifies the amour–propre, andprovides bait for one’s real passions?”
Campetti’s main indictment against cinema is therefore that it acts negatively on the child’s development of a “moral discernment”. This influence,
according to the writer, is directly proportional to the number of films seen.

187

A. Campetti, Il cinematografo nell’educazione, in “Rivista di Pedagogia”, vol. V, n. 3(1910).
81

Excessive viewing produces other harmful effects:-

The inability to distinguish between categories of “normality” and“extraordinariness” (“when repeated, certain representations will
make them accustomed to exaggeration…., and to the convictionthat they are normal and permissible”)-

the inhomogeneous organisation of the child’s thought (“as far as ratiocination is concerned, excessive viewing will aggravate the tendency of the young mind to wonder from thought to thought withoutorder, and eventually it will tire out the child’s psyche with bewilderment and fear, both pitiable and invincible”)––this last accusationis very similar to that which is launched at television, of stimulating
the emotional and irrational nature of the child, who becomes unused to ordered, rational reflection.

To support her case, Campetti referred to a pedagogical precept of Giuseppe
Segri, an anthropologist of the Spencer school who cultivated an interest forpsychology and pedagogy. Segri wrote that: “Evil should never be shown toyoung children […] because instead of fleeing from it, they will imitate it willingly when the opportunity arises.”Campetti goes on to indicate, demonstrating a rigidly conventional view ofsociety, that what is shown in films should above all nourish the spirit of subordination towards authority, so that the young audience are in the condition to“observe the weaknesses of their superiors […]”. She writes: “To paraphrase afine judgement of Mazzini on sovereigns, they are like statues: to be admired
they must be on their pedestals. Their imperialness is a fact of prestige rather
than merit; once their weaknesses are shown, and it is known that they are susceptible to being taken in, then their fine predominance will disappear”. Thus
ahead of its time, we can say that technical reproducibility not only eliminatedthe aura surrounding art, but also limited that of power (just think that royalty
was one of the favourite subjects of the Lumiére cinema–operators).
Besides the power of synchronised persuasion (cinema brings about immediate imitation), the cinema also demonstrates a capacity for acting in depth, diachronically, inoculating with small doses of poison that will form sediment in
the mind of the child, provoking disastrous effects in the long term. “It should
not be forgotten,” our writer continues, “that alongside those clearly evident
inclinations, there are dormant, latent instincts under determined impulses […].
Nor must we rest in the hope that these children will soon completely forget, as
often seems to happen.”
In her conclusion to the article, Campetti also seems to catch onto a fundamental aspect of the cinema, its capacity to create “possible worlds” that seem topossess the same “consistency” as the real world. In fact she defines film representation as images “which impress us with the charm of the possible!”82

Later, in October 1915, a new column started to appear in an importantmagazine in this field, the Cinematografia italiana ed estera, which claimed tohave the express aim of summarising and completing the debate on educational
cinema. Along with a few curious proposals, the years between 1915 and 1918
tended to reconsider issues which had already been looked at. A very striking
example was the publication in 1917 of the conference organised by Alice Terracini188 four years earlier, in which the question discussed involved a comparison between the didactic efficaciousness of showing slides or films. But before
the publication of Terracini’s conference there were other debates on educational cinema, starting with a short pamphlet by a primary school teacher,
Gisella Chelini.189 She made the pedagogical assumption that the educational
action should tend to reinforce the centres of the child’s interest (“educationmust be interesting”, she wrote, and to achieve this it is necessary to “satisfy thewishes of the scholar, and his most pronounced inclinations”, among which thedesire to see is undoubtedly the most important). She underlines the central roleof vision in the process of infant learning. Referring to Isadora Del Lungo (animportant Italian philologist, graduate of the Accademia della Crusca andscholar of Dante, friend of Gabriele Carducci), Chelini retains that “in our
schools we only say things, we never think of showing them: it has not yet been
understood that nothing can be held in the mind if it has not first been held insight. And cinema, this universal language which gives pleasure, educates andinterests, in its vision of dynamic reality, can answer once and for all to thisnatural need of the child.” Chelini considers the effectiveness of cinema forteaching partly for its function of reducing the intellectual effort necessary forthe acquisition of knowledge. It seems to her, in fact, “thanks to the continuous
succession of scenes and views,” that the child arrives at a moral or historical
truth without effort.
Going back to the essay by Terracini in 1917, in this booklet the author considered teaching support derived from viewing either animated or stills projection to be among the most modern systems of that “search for ways of assisting
the population in learning” which had been activated on account of increased
awareness of “the need to spread knowledge among the masses”, given the “increased requirements of modern life”. The cinema is conceived as a simplification of the learning process which is sought through teaching practices that put
the act of seeing in the centre of their function which in its turn is seen as thechild’s primary cognitive faculty. According to Terracini, “the idea penetrates
into the mind of the child as he is incorporated into the physical world; it does
not stop there or become fixed with evidence and clarity if the images do notpromote the working of perception. The eye, mirror of the soul, is thus the most
188 A. Terracini, Cinematografo o proiezioni luminose? (1913), Cooperativa tipografica
italiana, Roma, 1917.
189
G. Chelini, L’azione educativa del cinematografo nella scuola elementare, Tip. S. Giuseppe, Firenze, 1915.
83

valid collaborator of the formation of thought; it vibrates before the real objects
or their representations, transmits their images to the brain, lights the vivid flameof thought and continues to feed it.”On the question of which is better support between films and slides, the author had a propensity for the latter, because films have the handicap of “rapidityof viewing”. Terracini strongly emphasised that “film viewing is too fleeting:the image which it represents cannot make a deep enough impression to leave
lasting traces. The vertiginous succession of frames detracts from the exactnessof the perception: it is like a synthesis which leaves the mind dazzled by its
splendour but unable to hold onto the constituent elements which appear in
glimpses, almost contracted and deformed.” The actual film, concentrating agreat mass of data in a very short time, risks “provoking numerous errors ofconception” in the child, who is not yet able to cope with such a quantity of
information: a film “arouses admiration, it stuns, and it sets off an intellectual
working process which is fervid, feverish but disordered, because it does notfind the necessary cultural preparation in the spectators.” Therefore, since “forthe young mind it is essential not to present anything complex”, the projection ofslides seems to Terracini to be more suitable than cinema for application inschool activities.
It should also be noted that in 1916 a book came out by Angela Buracci,
Cinematografo Educativo,190 which claimed to help parents to handle the relationship between their child and cinema, so that, Buracci wrote, “they may
choose carefully for children and young people, and be aware of what risks andwhat benefits there may be from this new form of entertainment […] for theintellectual and moral lives of their children.” This essay will be discussed laterin more detail by my colleague, Luca Mazzei.
I would like to conclude with the observation that for almost twenty years,
from its first début in society, films as objects were accompanied by a sort ofmental block in defining gender: for example, the masculine designation of“film” in Italian was only definitively adopted in the twenties. This originaltrans–sexuality of films must be remembered, since it is otherwise difficult toappreciate how slow progress was in the search for a functional identity even forcinema, the new communication machine of the twentieth century.
I would like to give my warmest thanks to the organisers of the interesting and important Women and the Silent Screen Conference, in particular to Prof. Jane Gainesand Prof. Monica Dall’Asta for inviting me to take part.

190

84

A. Buracci, Cinematografo educativo, Tipografia Sociale Sironi, Milano, 1916.

On Cinema. The Novelist Matilde Serao and the New
MediumLuigia Annunziata
Toute vibrante d’action, de pensées, Mathilde Serao évoque la vie grouillantede Naples, dans le soleil de feu e d’or. Tracer d’elle un portrait n’est pas
chose facile. Les aspects sont nombreux, variés comme son talent. […]Redactrice en chef d’un grand quotidien, femme de coeur qui s’interesse à ses
enfants, romancière emerite, elle a tour à tour la faconde âme du journaliste,la douceur attendrée de la mêre, la profondeur de l’écrivain qui pense.191

This is how Matilde Serao appears to the eyes of Germaine Dulac, in a description whose several handwritten versions (at least eight) are preserved in the Archives of the National Museum of Cinema in Torino. The French director andjournalist writes and rewrites almost maniacally the incipit of her article, seeking
the most suitable form and vocabulary to outline the complex figure of thiswriter defined as “exuberante, pétulante, pleine d’ésprit.” And she ponders:
Il faudrait pour donner un croquis exacte de Mathilde Serao en reunir [de ses
aspects variés] une série disparate, et les dérouler avec la rapidité de vues
cinématographiques. Ce n’est pas dans une seule image que l’on peut fixer
les different aspects de sa physionomie mobile[…]Matilde Serao was born in Patras (Greece) in 1857 where her father, an anti–
Bourbon Neapolitan publicist, had sought refuge on account of his politicalideas. She spent her childhood in Naples where she grew up amidst a difficult
economic situation. She graduated as a teacher and worked in a telegraph office.
In the meantime, she was introduced to the political and literary entourage of
Naples by her father. She contributed to reviews such as “La Farfalla,” the review of realism and Scapigliatura. The publication of her first novel Cuore Infermo in 1881 introduced her to the cultural life of Rome where she contributed
to “Capitan Fracassa” and teamed up with Luigi Lodi, Gabriele D’Annunzio andEdoardo Scarfoglio. With the positive reviews of her second novel Fantasia in“La Nuova Antologia” Matilde Serao attained success as a writer and journalist.
Shortly afterwards she married Edoardo Scarfoglio, a mediocre writer who was
nonetheless a ruthless literary critic and strong polemicist, very close to Gabriele
D’Annunzio. The relationship was professional as well as romantic. In the Italian capital, they founded the “Corriere di Roma,” which was renamed “Il Mattino” after their subsequent move to Naples. As well as taking care of the ad191

Germaine Dulac on Matilde Serao, Germaine Dulac fund of the National Cinema Museum,
Turin, u.a. A327/21. I would like to thank Dr. Carla Ceresa for her help during the consultation of the quoted manuscript.
85

ministration of the newspaper, Matilde Serao regularly published her own political articles under a pseudonym. The union with Scarfoglio was short–lived andin 1904 Serao filed for a divorce and then set about founding her own newspaper, “Il Giorno,” which became a rival of her husband and son’s “Il Mattino.”
The purpose of this brief biographical note is to emphasise the centrality of
Serao’s position within Italian cultural life. Undoubtedly, she was an emancipated woman, the first woman to head a newspaper in Italy, and was unafraid toapply for a divorce when she believed her marriage to have failed. “From the
beginning to the end of her career as a writer of fiction, Serao was predominantly concerned with women, as the audience and subjects of her work […]Serao’s universe is essentially female. The centrality of the female protagonist in
her work is striking, especially when compared to her often cursory delineationof male characters”.192
As a journalist, Serao explored political corruption, and the deplorable living
conditions of Naples, but also the changes in society. She was to be the first
Italian intellectual to write about cinema, charting the effects of cinema on urban
life. In March 1906, on the pages of her newspaper “Il Giorno” she published
Cinematografeide! The suffix of the neologism that she coined indicates the
epidemic character of the new medium. In only a few years, the virus had affected the city of Naples. Serao describes a city invaded by cinemas where people talk only about the new medium, forgetting the problems of the Italian parliament or the state of the city. Here is a very significant passage:
Il cinematografo regna, e impera, e s’impone, e domina, e spadroneggia, e invade ogni cosa, la mondanità, la beneficenza, l’arte, il teatro. E la macchina
terribile, non contenta di aspettarvi in agguato nella sala semibuia, viene fuorialla luce del sole e vi colpisce in pieno movimento e coglie a tradimento,
quando meno l’aspettate. Siete in villa, aspettando qualcuno? Ed ecco ilcinematografo che vi piglia in pieno colloquio e immortala nei suoi films ilvostro innocente flirt. Dove salvarsi? Come salvarsi? Nessun rimedio, lettrice, lettore!
The dreadful machine is not satisfied to await you in the dark of the theatre; itsprings out in the sunlight and catches you in movement, tricks you when you
least expect it. Are you at the promenade Dante? There comes the cinema andcatches you while you chivalrously lecture a beautiful lady about the site, andit immortalized you…. Are you in the park waiting for somebody? Therecomes the cinema, which catches you in the middle of a conversation andimmortalizes your innocent flirting in a film… Where or how to find shelter?
No remedy, ladies and gentlemen! Where to save? How to save? No remedy,
lecturer, reader!193

192

Rinaldina Russell, Italian Women Writers (Westford: Greenwood Press, 1994), 388.
Gibus, “Cinematografeide!”, Il Giorno, March 30, 1906. Reprinted in Aldo Bernardini,
Cinema muto italiano, vol. 2, (Bari: Laterza, 1981), 20–21. Gibus was Matilde Serao’s pseudonym.
193

86

This description as early as March 1906 of Naples suffering from cinema as
a disease is very suggestive. Quoting Giuliana Bruno in Streetwalking on aruined map:
The presence of film in the city affects both sides of the camera. This early
description by a woman writer conceives of film as an apparatus: the filmic’machine’ is a mechanism of production and reception, marked by the scopic
regime and the passion perceiving. As if rewitnessing the primal scene, allscenes caught by the ubiquitous camera eye are of an erotic nature. Eroticism
is the fantasmatic ground of cinema: with a poetic twist, Serao sums up theconcept by asserting that flirting is transformed into film.194

After this article, Matilde Serao seems to get tired of cinematografeide. She is
the author of numerous films reviews including a roundup of classics so–called’cinema masterpieces of the Teens’. Serao is often attentive to the issue of spectatorship. For instance, in her review of Intolerance, she refers to the spectators,
and divides them into three broad categories: those who want to be moved tears
or laughter, those who want to be launched into a dream without limits, andthose who want to learn, to know, and to judge, guided by reason and discernment. Matilde Serao was appointed by the Neapolitan film distributor in Naples,
Gustavo Lombardo, to write an elegant brochure of Intolerance. Obviously
Serao wrote well about Griffith’s movie and she concluded that it had the merit(she writes “a miracle”) to satisfy the triple desires of the unknown spectator: tothink, to dream, to feel.
The second issue that interested Serao was the relationship between writers
and the cinema, an issue that obviously concerned her very closely. In her criticism, Serao divides writers into categories, distinguishing between those whoscorn the cinema, those who are disappointed by the situation of the arts andunsure of what to think, and finally those she defines as eclectics: those whowant to experiment writing for cinema. From her article, it seems that the novels
and poetry of the ’Teens’ were going through an uninteresting period, therefore
the most courageous writers were turning to cinema and were attempting to raise
this new art–form to the level of high art by turning their gaze to the high andsublime stories of Dante, Goethe or Dumas. Serao herself began by sharing theview of these writers and seeing great literature as a good source for the film, but
she then took it upon herself the role of viewer:
Per mesi e mesi […] sono andata a vedere, coi miei occhi mortali, per i miei
dodici soldi, per i miei otto soldi, che cosa mi piacesse, che cosa mi allettasse, che cosa i commuovesse, in uno spettacolo cinematografico. Mi
sono seduta, in un angolo, allo scuro, in silenzio e in immobilità come tutti
gli altri miei vicini; e la mia figura anonima, la mia persona ignota, sono diventate consimili a tanti altri esseri anonimi…
194

Giuliana Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory & The City Films ofElvira Notari (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 80
87

For months and months, and with a feeling of sincere humility, I did only one
thing: I went to the movie to take up my role of spectatrix. With my mortaleyes, I went to see, for few cents, or even less, whatever might please, amuse,or move me in a film show. I sat in a corner, in the dark, silent and still, likeall my neighbours; and my anonymous and unknown persona became likemany others, anonymous and unknown… I was like them, an ordinary spectator, without preconceptions, without prejudices, with out any sort of bondto anything or anybody.195

In the darkness of cinemas, Serao discovered that she experienced the same
impressions felt by her neighbour, who could be a shop assistant or a little
provincial. She starts crying or laughing exactly when her neighbour laughs
or cries. As a spectatrix, she became convinced of a truth: the audience ofthe cinematograph is made of simple souls with a common spirit. For thissimple crowd Serao makes an appeal to the writers, the playwrights, even toherself:
Ah, poeti, romanzatori, drammaturghi, fratelli miei, non cerchiamo
ansiosamente e tormentosamente il soggetto raro, il soggetto prezioso, per lenostre films! Lasciamoci andare alla verità delle cose e alla naturalezza dellepersone: cerchiamo di narrare, di descrivere, di tratteggiare delle buone
istorie,balzanti nell’arte nostra dalla vita medesima, e assumenti quella
inafferrabile ma palpitante aureola di poesia che sgorghi dal cuore nostro
innumerevole.
We should not strive so anxiously and painfully for rare and precious scenarios for our films! Let’s just go to the truth of things and to people’s naturalness. Let’s just tell plain good stories, enriching our craft from life itself andtake on that elusive but passionate aura of poetry, which springs from ouroverflowing heart.

Serao’s opinions about films echo her opinions about literature. In The Encyclopædia Britannica we can read:
She was a naturalist, but her naturalism should be understood in a muchwider sense than that which is generally given to it. She was a naturalist because her books reflect life with the utmost simplicity of means, sometimes
with an utter neglect of means, and at the same time she is an idealist throughher deep sense of the beauty and nobility which humanity can attain, and towhich her writings continually aspire. All her work is truly and profoundly
Italian; it is the literature of a great mass of individuals, rather than of one peculiarly accentuated individual; the joy and pain of a whole class rather thanthe perplexities of a unique case or type pulsates through her pages.196
195

Matilde Serao, “Parla una spettatrice”, L’arte muta, June 15, 1916, 31. Translated in English as A Spectatrix is speaking to you, in Red Velvet Seat: Women's Writings on the First
Fifty Years of Cinema, ed. Antonia Lant and Ingrid Periz (New York: Verso, 2006), 60
196
Hugh Chisholm, The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literatureand General Information, 1911, 661.
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When Serao talks about cinema and writers she refers to the faults and thepossibilities of the new medium:
La prima impressione che prova uno scrittore cui si chieda di scrivere per ilcinematografo, è un senso di ripugnanza. E si comprende: il poeta, ilromanzatore, il commediografo, il giornalista non possono non ritenere la
rinuncia alla parola come una diminuzione capitale.
The first impression a writer feels when asked to write for the cinema is asense of repugnance. It’s easy to understand: the poet, the novelist, the playwright, the journalist cannot consider the subordination of the word as anything other than an abomination. He who is used to penetrating the soul andarousing the passions, doesn’t see in the mimic art a medium able to represent its spirit: and in cinema there are the mechanical aspects which may displease the self–elected high priests of pure Art…197

In Serao’s opinion cinema is a brand new art form that confronts everyone.
And despite its deficiencies as an artistic form, cinema has the qualities that
attract poets of the medium to devote their lives to the representation of human actions.
She argues that cinema is not well suited to represent scenes of love or
pain as literature, but there is a capacity in cinema that she defines as extraordinary or miraculous: the ability to represent the crowd, the collective
movements, in large naturalistic scenes.
Matilde Serao expressed these opinions in an interview with “Giornaled’Italia” in 1916. She had reviewed films such as L’inferno, Quo Vadis?,Cabiria and Intolerance. Although her reviews are often suspected to becommissioned, it is thought that she was quite free to choose what to write
about.
For example, reviewing Quo Vadis? she wrote:
Niuna forma rappresentativa poteva mai dare una visione più palpitante, piùcompleta, più vera, più bella di ciò che può essere il Quo vadis? vivente, se
non quella, spinta sino al prodigio della ricostruzione cinematografica. […] I
luoghi, i conviti, i paesaggi, le orgie, gli orrori, il terribile quadrodell’incendio di Roma, l’evidenza del quale non è stata mai raggiunta in alcuna cosa somigliante, destano impressioni ed emozioni indicibili.
No representative form could ever give a more palpitating, more complete,
more real, more beautiful sensation of what can be the living Quo Vadis?, if
not that, push until prodigy reconstruction film. […] Location, conviti, landscapes, orgies, the horrors, the terrible image of Rome burning, evidence of
which has never been achieved in resembling anything, convey indescribableimpressions and emotions.
197“Matilde Serao e il cinematografo”, Apollon, Febrary 1th 1916, 32.
89

In May 1918, Serao intervened with an article called Consiglio di Famiglia(Family Council) published in the sarcastic film review “Cin.” In her sarcastic
writing style, Serao highlights the negative aspects of film, giving a picture of
the negative positions that persisted in 1918. She offers the following warning:
Il cinematografo è una trivialità esosa. I cinematografari sono cretini o birbanti. Il cinematografo è immorale. Il cinematografo deve essere un’altracosa. Il cinematografo lo dobbiamo fare noi. Bisogna scacciare i mercanti dal
tempio del cinematografo. La censura che fa? Il popolo si corrompe, alcinematografo. Tassate i cinematografi, sino all’osso. Chiudete i cinematografi…
Cinema is trivial. People who work in the cinema are fools and scoundrels.
Cinema is immoral. The cinema should be educational. The cinema has to besomething else. We must make a new kind of movie. We must drive out themerchants from the temple of cinema. What is censorship doing? The people
are being corrupted in cinemas. Reassess cinema. Close the cinemas.198

Serao is concerned that these warnings might influence writers who are attacked
by critics and censors. She hopes that cinema can continue to be a wonderfulwindow onto modern life––the recreation of the spirit. If cinema has to be educational, it runs the risk of becoming boring. If it has to be Art, (with a capital A)
it runs the risk of becoming abstruse and annoying. If the actors are concerned
about aesthetic principles they risk losing sight of the drama of expression.
We have sought to focus on Serao’s writing about cinema, but it has to beremembered that she also wrote for cinema: she wrote the screenplay of a film
entitled La mia vita per la tua! for Caesar Film, directed and interpreted byEmilio Ghione in 1914 (no copies of it are currently available). The writer defines it as “an attempt at cinematographic novel” and in fact, at least according
to the critics of the time, it can be said that it remained an attempt. Nevertheless,the publicity that was launched in journals created a climate of great expectationin the public, relying specially on Serao’s name. For instance, La vita cinematografica published an interview with Maria Carmi (the protagonist in therole of Elena de Soubies), where the actress claims to be very much captured by
the subject of the film, something that has happened to her very few times, anddoes not miss the opportunity to praise Serao, defining her as capable of writinga “truly cinematographic story.” The complicated story seems to influence theactors, even before the spectators, and the author of the article, reporting her visit
to the set during the shooting of the film, writes on having had the inkling that in
the studios of Caesar Film, the greatest event in Italian cinematographic art was
being prepared.199
198

Matilde Serao, “Consigli di famiglia”, Cin, May 12, 1918, 2.
See “Maria Carmi parla del “soggetto” che Matilde Serao ha scritto ed ella ha interpretato
per la MONOPOL FILM di Roma”, La Vita Cinematografica, no. 34–35, 15–22 September
1914, 41–42.
199

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On the occasion of its first Roman screening, the same journal publishes areview of three whole pages, with a detailed description of the plot. However, the commentary is not at all positive; the story is reputed as too complicated to be followed and understood by the public. The names of Serao,
Carmi, Ghione, and Carminati are considered a guarantee for its financial
success, but are not sufficient for an artistic one.200 However, despite thenegative review, several film adaptations were made of her literary work.201
In his memoires, the attorney Francesco Soro refers to another unfortunate attempt by the author at a collaboration with the world of cinema: thecommission of two original screenplays by David Karenne Film for anequivalent of 16,000 lire. However, when the first text entitled Il doppio
volto is delivered, Serao does not get remunerated and is forced to threatenwith legal action. Unfortunately, not even Serao’s pleading with Diana
Karenne brings about any results and, in the end, the author gives up202. Il
doppio volto will be later directed by Giulio Antamoro in 1918 with theAmerican actress Helen Arnold in the main role, but the film turns out to be
produced by Polifilms of Naples.
Despite the thematic and geographic closeness with Elvira Notari, Serao
always refused to concede the rights of the cinematographic adaptation ofher novels to the Neapolitan director. According to Vittorio Martinelli, thewriter’s refusal of the requests for the transposition of some of her texts,
especially those with the most vivid description of the lower–class and bourgeois circles of Naples, was always a cause of great regret for Notari. However, the writer despised Notari’s films so much that she preferred to concede the rights of Addio Amore! and Castigo to Floreal, a Roman production
company with a very low profile. Sterminator Vesevo, also among those inwhich Notari was interested, was instead produced by Palatino/Uci, with the
Vesuvio being paradoxically reconstructed on the beaches of Civitavecchia.203
How could such a rigid attitude towards Notari be explained? Antonia
Arslan, a scholar in popular and feminine literature, suggests a key readingthat could help to understand an attitude that other literary women of thetime seem to share.

200

See “La mia vita per la tua! di Matilde Serao”, La Vita Cinematografica, no. 44–45, 1914,
81–83.
201
The following titles are those that are known to have been inspired by Serao’s works: O
Giovannino o la morte (Gino Rossetti, 1914), Addio amore! (Alberto Carlo Lolli, 1916),
Castigo (Ubaldo Maria Del Colle, 1917), La mano tagliata (Alberto Degli Abbati, 1919),
Dopo il perdono (Ugo De Simone, 1919), Temi il leone (Ubaldo Maria Del Colle, 1919).
202
See Francesco Soro, Splendori e miserie del cinema (Milan: Consalvo, 1935), 163.
203
See Vittorio Martinelli, “Sotto il sole di Napoli”, in Cinema e Film: la meravigliosa storia
dell’arte cinematografica, vol. 2, ed. Gian Piero Brunetta and Davide Turconi (Rome: Armando Curcio Editore, 1988), 366.
91

It is exactly successful women––and the ’respectable ones’––the diamond–points of feminine achievement in literature, who prove to be […] uncertain
in drawing the theoretical consequences of an emancipationist and social nature, which would seem to be a logical consequence of the cases described intheir narratives. It is a phenomenon that can be found […] in Matilde Serao[…] and many others […] as if creatively depicting and observing reality, as
well as conceiving and accompanying their ’defeated’ characters, had induced them to a fundamentally negative and self–limiting reflection on themselves and the world. Matilde Serao even denies the existence of the woman
question, and speaks ironically about working women with a belittling andcontemptuous tone.204

In any case, despite her unsuccessful attempts at the cinematographic adaptation of her novels and the difficulties in her career as a scriptwriter, it seems
that Serao cultivated her interest for cinema until the very end, as it is demonstrated by this late text where she refers to many other unrealized screenplays. In 1926 she writes:
Conosco un antico proprietario di una grande sala cinematografica, che è restato coi cassetti pieni di manoscritti pagati e mai eseguiti. Ve ne è uno mio,
da darsi in quattro serate, uso Fantomas: s’intitolava: Il talismano. Mi fu
pagato diecimila lire. Mai vide le scene. E fu l’ultimo. Da allora giacciono in
un mio cassetto speciale, ben sette film, dico sette, rimaste ahimé, inedite!
Nessuno me le ha mai chieste: nessuno me le chiederà. Per brevità nonenuncio i sette titoli di queste mie opere. E, forse, fra queste composizioni
sconosciute alle genti vi è il capolavoro della cinematografia. Tutto accade. E
questo capolavoro resterà ignoto. Così, per questa mia rabbia silenziosa, ma
sempre viva, in fondo al mio spirito, io avevo finito di frequentare da anni, lesale tenebrose.
I know the old owner of a huge cinema, who is stuck with drawers full ofmanuscripts that were paid for but were never turned into films. One of themis mine, to be shown in four nights, where I use Fantomas: it was entitled: Iltalismano. I was paid 10,000 lire for it. It was never filmed. And it was thelast one. Since then, I’ve had seven films frozen in a special drawer, seven I
say, are left, alas, unrealized! No one ever asked for them, no one will everask. In order to be brief, I won’t name the titles of these works of mine. And
perhaps amongst these compositions unknown to people, there is a masterpiece of cinema. Everything may happen. And this masterpiece will remain
unknown. Thus, because of the silent, but always fresh anger at the bottom ofmy spirit, I have stopped frequenting those gloomy halls for years.205

The journal “Al Cinemà” reports the news of Matilde Serao’s participationin the realization of Roberto Leone Roberti’s film Napoli che canta in 1926.
The film––reflects the columnist––turns out to be:
204

Antonia Arslan, “Ideologia e autorappresentazione”, in Annarita Buttafuoco, Marina Zancan, eds., Svelamento. Sibilla Aleramo. Una biografia intellettuale, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1988,
168–171 (quoted in Bruno, Streetwalking on a ruined map, 242–243).
205“Matilde Serao e il cinematografo”, Lo schermo, no 17, 1926, 13.
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a real ’film of songs’ inasmuch as Neapolitan popular songs are what enliven,
not a plot, but a photographic representation of the Neapolitan uses and costumes, the characteristic odd types of the city. In short, Naples’ life […].
“Napoli canta” takes us for a few instants to an atmosphere of dreams andpoetry. Its conception and realization by Roberto Roberti and Matilde Serao
is praiseworthy. They succeeded in integrating magnificently the scenes withthe accompanying melodies, providing an illusion that equals the very reality,
or even surpasses it.206

The captions of Napoli che canta are almost all literally drawn from theshort–stories and the early sketches that the writer published in 1879 in acollection entitled “Dal Vero”.207 The volume was published in seven editions, the last of which was published in 1916. A great part of the captions of
the film comes from a text dedicated to that particular expression, the popular song, which is almost always linked to love. Serao points out.
Amore diverso dal nostro amore grossolano e che può giungere a certe delicate espansioni, sognate solo dalla fantasia del poeta; amore che dona egualmente un garofano ed un colpo di rasoio: amore che non s’inchina, non porta
guanti e suona per ore intiere la chitarra sotto la finestra dell’amata.
Love that is different from ours, a coarse love that can reach certain delicate
expansions, dreamt only by the poet’s fantasy; love that bestows at the sametime a carnation and a blow of a raiser: love that does not bow, does not wear
gloves, and plays the guitar for hours under the lover’s window.208

The short version of the abovementioned passage appears in one of the captions of the film:“Nella canzone si parla quasi sempre d’amore…amore che non s’inchina, nonporta guanti e suona per ore intere sotto la finestra dell’amata”.
“Popular songs almost always speak of love… love that does not bow, does
not wear gloves, and plays the guitar for hours under the lover’s window.”

The caption is followed by the images of a serenade played at the window ofa young woman, who is lying down, enjoying the song. This is only one
among the numerous instances of written and visual transposition of the very
first works of Serao that one comes across in Napoli che canta. It remains tobe verified whether the writer, as the article in the journal “Al Cinemà” im206“Il film della canzone: Napoli canta”, Al cinemà, n. 23, June 6, 1926, 7. A copy of the filmwith captions both in English and Italian has been found in the United States, California, in
2000, restored by George Eastman House and presented at the 22nd edition of Days of Silent
Cinema in October 2003.
207
Serao, Dal Vero, Milan: Perussia & Quadrio, 1879, now, Id., Dal Vero, edited by P. Bianchi, Naples: Dante & Descartes, 2000.
208
Serao, “La canzone popolare”, in, Dal vero, 167.
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plies, has directly collaborated in the realization of the film, or she has simply ceded the rights of the collection.
Finally, it is appropriate to conclude by referring to an article Serao dedicated to Rodolfo Valentino, which was, nevertheless, a pretext to once again
speak of women, of female spectators. Valentino dies of a peritonitis attackat the age of 31 on August 21, 1926. Two weeks later, Serao publishes along article about Valentino on her newspaper, but the true subject is, in fact,
the female universe. The journalist imagines the mourning of women, of all
women, from the adolescent to “the capricious lady,” from “the unhappy
provincial wife” to “the romantic seamstress” (and the many female characters of her novels seem to parade in this gallery), grief before which men’s
offences are worth nothing. The actor of the magnetic gaze, who enchanted
the female public without leaving them any escape, is nothing––the author
writes––but a phantom, someone who, despite existing in flesh and blood,
has exercised his charm merely through a shadow on the screen, penetrating
the hearts of the female spectators. It is exactly this nature of being untouchable and unreachable that has become the center of millions of women’s
desire, an image indispensable for enduring every day life. Wondering
Matilde Serao writes:
Qual donna è senza fantasma, grandioso, esiguo, piccino, qual donna può
sopportare la vita reale, se non porti in sé, questa invitta simpatia, questa
fedele devozione, questo legame tanto più forte, in quanto è fondato sullo
spirito, quasi sempre, e non sui sensi, quasi mai? Quale donna non porta, con
sé oltre il suo destino, oltre ogni suo tempo, questo suo fantasma, che è
talvolta, purtroppo, un sublime tranello della fantasia, un sublime inganno delcuore? Una donna va alla sua morte, col suo fantasma… E hanno ragione
forse gli uomini di essere gelosi del fantasma? Eh sì, forse, hanno ragione…
What woman lives without a phantom, be it grand, meager, or petty, what
woman can put up with real life if she does not carry in her this undefeatedattraction, this faithful devotion, this bond ever stronger as it is almost always
based on the spirit, and hardly ever on the senses? What woman does notcarry in her, besides her destiny, beyond her time, this phantom, which is attimes, unfortunately, a sublime trap of the imagination, a sublime deceptionof the heart? A woman goes to her death with her phantom…And are men
perhaps right to be jealous of the phantom? Ah, yes, perhaps they areright….209

Here we find part of Serao’s thoughts on women’s condition, her conformist
attitude towards the process of emancipation. A contradictory attitude that iswell represented through her position as a separated woman who nevertheless is against divorce, in keeping with her argument that since “no one canchange everything, we might as well change nothing,” or rather, do not take
209

Serao, “Fantasma”, Il Giorno, Sept. 8, 1926. I would like to thank Silvio Alovisio forhaving shown me the article in question.
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away from the woman her only compensation, the only right she is left with:that of suffering for herself and for others.210 However, the issue of Serao’s
relation with feminism is too complex to be confronted in this essay.
After Serao’s death in March 1927, her literary works fell in oblivion foralmost 20 years. Pietro Pancrazi edited the first edition of her complete
works in 1944. However, it should not be forgotten that cinema first had themerit of drawing attention on Serao’s literature. In 1941, Alberto Consiglio,
in an article on “Cinema e Letteratura Popolare,” which appeared on Film
Quotidiano, invites producers to look at the Neapolitan writer’s novels, atthe cinematographic opportunities offered in her works. At the same time,
Fauno Film commissions Sergio Amidei with a cinematic adaptation of her
novels Addio Amore! and Castigo, which will be directed by Gianni Franciolini in 1942 with Clara Calamai in the main role. In the same year, Luigi
Chiarini’s first film Via delle cinque lune comes out, inspired by O Giovannio la morte and based on a script by Chiarini, Umberto Barbaro, and Francesco Pasinetti, which transposes the setting from Naples to Rome. In thesame period, other stories of films revolve around Serao: a project of cinematic adaptation of La virtù di Checchina, on which Alberto Lattuada works
in 1943, and a subject by Luigi Zampa entitled Notizie sensazionali, on thetormented sentimental and professional story of the couple Serao–Scarfoglio.
We cannot but hope to come upon new documents, articles, and unedited
subjects enabling us to more precisely outline the complex relation between
cinema and Serao, this extraordinary author.

210

See Serao, “E i figli?”, Il Mattino, Nov. 19, 1901.
95

Not quite Classical Hollywood Cinema: the Narrative
Structure of Frances Marion’s Screenplays
Claus Tieber
Introduction
At the Women and the Silent Screen conference in 2006, JoAnne Ruvoli
gave a presentation about Frances Marion and Mary Pickford. According
to Ruvoli their films can be seen as transitional, as an intermediary between the tradition of sentimentalist literature and modernity.211 In thisarticle I would like to take up the aspect of seeing Marion as working in–
between two different paradigms, but I want to change the focus to thenarrative structure of her screenplays. In viewing these films and reading
her scripts, it becomes quite clear that their narrative structure is somewhat
different from what is commonly regarded as Classical Hollywood Cinema(CHC).
Classical Hollywood Narrative
If we consider CHC as the dominant model for fiction film from 1917 on,these films should match its main criteria: cause and effect––therefore alinear, motivated, logical plot, no coincidences and a protagonist who propels the plot by trying to achieve his/her goal. Deviations from this model
sometimes are explained with the tradition of sentimental literature or the
melodramatic impact on cinema. Alternative models of narration in fiction
film are sometimes called “parallelism” or “situational dramaturgy.” But
these models are meant to describe fiction films pre–1917, before CHC. It
is generally assumed that different forms of storytelling ended in the late1910s. For the purpose of analyzing the screenplays of Frances Marion, I
am therefore introducing a different model.
Dual Focus Narrative/Structure
The concept of Dual Focus Narrative (DFN) was developed by Rick
Altman. Altman wanted to analyze the structure of the American film musical and identified different patterns of organizing plot information beneath the commonly analyzed surface.212 In his new book “A Theory of
Narration”, “Dual Focus Structure” is defined like this:211

JoAne Ruvoli, “Frances Marion and Mary Pickford: Early Modern Feminists at Play?”,
paper presented at the Fourth International Women and the Silent Screen Conference, University of Guadalajara, Mexico, June 8, 2006.
212
Rick Altman, The American Film Musical. (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1987), 19ff
96

The narrator follows no single character throughout but instead alternates
regularly between two groups whose conflict provides the plot. Because thegroup rather than an individual plays the lead role, individuals are primarily
conceived as placeholders, defined by the group, rather than as characters
whose development constitutes an independent subject of interest. Succeeding following–units typically portray the two sides engaged in similar activities. This parallelism induces comparison of the two sides, the source of the
text’s main rhetorical thrust. Each new pair of following–units is related tothe previous pair by the principle of replacement. […] The text ends when thetwo sides are reduced to one, by death or expulsion, or through marriage orconversion. 213

According to Altman, Dual Focus Narratives can be found in medieval
popular epics as well as in recent comic books, in Gothic novels as well as in
Hollywood Westerns. Both models (CHC and DFN) can be of help whenanalyzing the narrative structure of fiction films (i.e. the organization of plot
information, to reduce the term on purpose). In most cases, neither of themcan be found in a pure, textbook–like way. Neither do they exclude eachother. They are just two different ways of storytelling that can be mixed. The
use of each model is not restricted to a certain period of time in film history,
although there are times when one or the other becomes dominant. Bothmodels can still be found in Hollywood films today.
In this article I want to analyze the narrative structure of Frances Marion’s
screenplays using these two models. In order to get a clearer picture of thespecifics of her screenwriting, I have to compare her work to that of her contemporaries.
Daddy Long Legs (1919) is my first case study, a film written by Agnes
Christine Johnston, based on the epistolary novel by Jean Webster, directedby Marshall Neilan and starring Mary Pickford. Comparing this film to another Pickford vehicle written by Marion will bring a more accurate pictureof Frances Marion’s contribution to film history.
Daddy Long Legs (1919)
The film tells the story of the girl Judy (played by Pickford) who grows up in
an orphanage. Then a rich benefactor offers to pay for her education. He
wants to remain anonymous, and in return asks only for one letter eachmonth from Judy. At the end Judy has grown up and is the author of a successful book that has made her rich. The anonymous sponsor turns out to be
the man Judy has fallen in love with: happy ending.
The film tells its story in a quite interesting way. First we see a baby born
into a rich family. Then a baby is taken out of a garbage can. There are acouple of scenes in which the two girls are being compared. There is no continuity in the plot in these scenes; one doesn’t follow the other by cause and213

Rick Altman, A Theory of Narration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 55.
97

effect. Their “follow pattern”, as Altman puts it, is related to opposites andsymmetries, to ideas, not to plot development.
The first time the film shows Judy’s love interest, the man who gives thefilm its title, Daddy Long Legs, is situated in the middle of the film. The firsthalf of the film is full of funny scenes in which Pickford shows off her attractions, her charm, wit and comical talent. These scenes, however, are notreally relevant for the plot. But they are organized according to a pattern thatuses opposites, symmetries and parallels as its main principle. Rich andpoor, male and female, old and young––these binary structures are used inthis film to full effect.
The narrative structure of Daddy Long Legs can be described as a “situational dramaturgy”, according to Lea Jacobs and Ben Brewster214. The film
consists of situations in which Pickford is presented the way her audience
loves her. (The film became Pickford’s greatest box office hit so far). But theconcept of a situational dramaturgy, which often mentions George Polti’s
rather obscure “36 dramatic situations”, does not explain how these situations are put together.215
I want to emphasize in this short glimpse at Daddy Long Legs that opposites play a crucial role in this narrative structure. In order to write a screenplay that works in this framework, clear, mostly one–dimensional characters,
types, representations of ideas rather than psychologically motivated characters are needed.
The second point I want to stress is the unity of the story in an Aristotelian sense. In CHC this unity can be found in most films. In films like Daddy
Long Legs, the story is told mostly episodically. There are a lot of scenes
taking place in the orphanage with little or no plot information, there aremany time gaps, and until the middle of the film, when we see Daddy Long
Legs, the anonymous sponsor, for the first time, there is in fact no plot. And
finally: Judy in Daddy Long Legs is not an active agent of the story. She
makes the best of her situation, but she is not in control of her own destiny.
Daddy Long Legs is a typical example of the influence of sentimental literature. As Nina Baym defines the genre: “The story of a young girl who isdeprived of the supports she had rightly or wrongly depended on to sustain
her throughout life and is faced with the necessity of winning her own way
in the world.”216 The passive women was a standard type of sentimental literature, though seldom the protagonist.

214

Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press
1997), 19–29
215
George Ponti, Thirty–six Dramatic Situations. (Boston: The Writer Inc., 1977)
216
Nina Baym, Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–
1870 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1978), 19.
98

The Love Light (1921)
The Frances Marion film I want to analyze as a case study for the narrative
structure of her screenplays is The Love Light from 1921. This is one of thevery few films that Marion also directed herself. The Love Light is quite
different from other Mary Pickford films, but in terms of narrative structure,
themes and issues it is quite typical for Frances Marion.
The film tells the story of Angela who lives in a small fishing village in
Italy. The film starts just before the First World War. Giovanni is in lovewith Angela, but he has to leave for the front. Angela finds a man at thebeach who pretends to be Joseph, an American deserter. They fall in lovewith each other and Angela hides him from the other villagers. But then she
finds out that he actually is a German spy and the villagers chase him todeath. Angela gives birth to a girl, but the events have driven her into madness and so she is transferred to a convent for treatment while her baby isbeing raised by another woman. Giovanni comes back from war but he isblind. They fall in love with each other and Angela gets her baby back:happy ending.
This is, apart from all the pathos and sentiment, an extraordinary story fora film dating from 1921; even more so for a Mary Pickford film. At firstsight The Love Light looks like CHC: Three acts, a continuous plot with
Pickford as a tragic heroine. But if we take a closer look the narrative structure becomes less clear.
Unity of plot
Although the scenes follow each other by cause and effect, it is difficult tomake out the plotlines. There is the love story between Giovanni and Angela––he loves her, goes to war, comes back, happy ending––this plotline isonly planted in the first act and it commences not before the third act. Thelove affair between Angela and Joseph, the German spy, takes place only inthe second act. The struggle for the baby is part of the third act. The Love
Light therefore has three different plotlines, but not one of them continues
throughout the whole film.
The third act offers a special problem, because it is a kind of epilogue
lasting twenty minutes. It takes place after Joseph’s death. After the tragic
end of this relationship a new storyline begins, which in fact is a completely
new story, linked to the first act more strongly than to the second, and thisconnection is constructed on some little plantings at the beginning of thefilm and on nothing else. The continuity of the plot is rather fragmented andthere is no unity of plot.
Situations
The Love Light was made to make Pickford appear in a different light. This
was the downright objective of the film. Pickford, who produced the film,
did not want to play a child again. The whole third act can be explained by99

her wish to play a mother (although she already had played one in Tess of theStorm Country in 1914). There is a long funny scene in the first third of thefilm, in which only animals are shown; the scene has nothing to do with therest of the film, not even symbolically. And there is a big sea–in–the–storm
scene at the end, a big action scene for which Marion’s directing was criticized. Although this scene is better integrated and motivated by the plot thenthe animal scene, it owes its existence in this form much more to the conventions of melodrama than to the demands of storytelling.
Jeanine Basinger calls these scenes “a series of incidents that stop the plot
dead as she (Pickford) caters to her audience.“217 These incidents or situations where developed solely because Pickford and Marion wanted them tobe there and not because they were structurally, psychologically or logicallymotivated.
Active agent
Angela as played by Mary Pickford is in no way a classical Hollywood protagonist whose quest for her goal is propelling the narrative. In the first act
she simply does not have any goal. She is presented in the typical Pickford
way, as a funny, happy and optimistic young woman. In the second act it
becomes her goal to hide Joseph from the villagers. After his death, during
the third act, she remains mostly passive. The only situation in which she isgetting active is the rescue of her baby from the shipwreck. But in spite of
the fact that her baby is not with her, she does not do anything to change thisstate of affairs. Angela can be seen as an active agent only in the second act.
In the rest of the film she remains passive as Pickford is shown in almost allof her films.
With its discontinuities, its passive protagonist and its non– or loosely integrated situations it is difficult to regard The Love Light as CHC. Influencesof a situational dramaturgy and of melodrama can be identified; the wholestory is told that Kevin Brownlow calls “Melodrama with a capital M.”218 It
is still different from a dual focus narrative like Daddy Long Legs. Analyzing the elements in these films that could as well have been used for a moredualistic way of storytelling, it becomes obvious how Frances Marion
changed the narrative conventions of her day.
Marion’s characters
Marion’s screenplays differ from those of her contemporaries: Her scenes are
more strongly motivated, they are connected by cause and effect, much morethan––for example––the scenes of Daddy Long Legs or Tess of the Storm Coun-

217

Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press 1999), 40.
Kevin Brownlow, Pickford Rediscovered. Rare Pictures of a Hollywood Legend. (NewYork: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999), 180
218

100

try. But Marion’s screenplays are not quite CHC, even if we choose to understand the term in a wider sense.
Whereas other screenwriters at the time used dual focus narrative to a great
extent, Marion changed this model of storytelling by creating more complex,
less binary characters. In other words, Marion broke the rules of DFN by writing
characters that––compared to her contemporaries’ work––were motivated morestrongly. This applies particularly to her female characters. In the case of The
Love Light it would have been easy for Marion to set up the characters of Angela and Maria, the woman who takes Angela’s baby as a foster child, in theparallel pattern of a DFN.
Marion could have characterized the two women as opposites: On one side,
the good one, who had helped a deserter, and on the other side, the bad baby–
snatcher, as it was done in Daddy Long Legs and in numerous other contemporary films. Instead, she presents Maria not as the evil antagonist of Angela, but
as a woman with a comparably similar tragic history. Maria is not a stereotype
of evil; her acts are motivated by the loss of her own child. (Note that bothnames are biblical. Marion doesn’t make them antagonists simply by the choiceof names, like a lot of screenwriters did in the silent era and later on.)In other cases from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Toll of the Sea to talkies like Min and Bill or The Champ, Marion never structures her plots by meansof complete opposites. She changes this way of storytelling by writing multi–
dimensional characters, especially female characters. This does not mean that
Marion never created “bad” female characters. But in most cases she motivatedtheir evil behaviour, either by the loss of a baby as in The Love Light or by alcohol abuse as in Stella Maris or Min and Bill.
Modern elements: Humour and Realism
JoAnne Ruvoli noted that one of the modern elements in Frances Marion’s andMary Pickford’s films can be detected in their humour. They brought comic
relief to otherwise very sentimental narratives. They changed the whole tone ofthese stories. Another modern component is the realistic elements in some of
Marion’s and Pickford’s films. Daddy Long Legs is a film about an orphanage.
The life there is not at all depicted as funny. Judy, the character played by
Pickford, is found in a garbage can; children are dying in this orphanage.
Pickford chose topics that were very realistic at her time. Topics like violenceagainst children or child labour can be found in more than one of Pickford’s
films. Compared to films by her contemporaries, Marion’s films––especiallythose for Pickford––are less rough, which is also an effect of her storytelling,which doesn’t rely on simple opposite characters.
Marion’s later screenplays
In her later screenplays, beginning with Stella Dallas, but especially in her talkies like Min and Bill or The Champ, Marion uses the narrative structure of CHC
in most, but not in all of her screenplays. A clear three–act structure can be101found, and––most important––an active agent, a female protagonist such as
Stella Dallas or Min, or a male hero as in The Champ. The reasons for thischange in structure have their roots in the fundamental change of Hollywood’s
production process.
Story conferences had become a regular institution in the late 1920s and early
1930s. The transition to sound brought a tendency towards realism and therefore
the final abandonment of sentimental or melodramatic forms. Lea Jacobs notes ashift in public taste in during the 1920s, away from sentimental and melodramatic to more naturalistic and realistic forms.219 It is tempting to regard thisdevelopment as a linear and straightforward one. But rather than perceiving
Frances Marion’s screenplays as part of a similar transformation in storytellingthat corresponds to the shift Jacobs mentions, I suggest we should acknowledge
Marion’s achievements as successful solutions to the problems she had to tackle;
solutions that were influenced by the restrictions and frameworks of her time,
but are not confined to them. What Marion achieved could almost be seen as analternative model of narrative structure in fiction film.
Conclusion
Today, screenwriters and audiences are getting exceedingly bored with the blatancy of classical Hollywood storytelling and they are looking for alternatives. I
am convinced that Frances Marion’s screenplays can teach us many things:
Firstly, it is far more important to solve practical problems than to strictly follow
a certain model of screenwriting. In doing so, one can even create a new model
as Marion almost did. Secondly, the solution for changing restrictive conventions is to be found in the creation of characters. Writing multi–dimensional
characters will not only break down the boundaries of conventions and formulas, but also will help to find new and successful solutions to the structural problems of our times. Marion herself was very aware of the importance of well–developed characters. In her screenwriting manual, published in 1937, shewrote: “Characterization is the most important factor in the film story, and noingenuity or originality of the plot will save a photoplay, which has inadequate
characterizations.”220 She regarded character more important than plot: “Giveme an interesting personality with definite characteristics and I will find a plot
inherent in the particular situations into which only his individual traits could
naturally lead him.”221 As a character–centred screenwriter, Frances Marion was
indeed a pioneer.

219

Lea Jacobs, The Decline of Sentiment: American Film in the 1920s. (Madison: Universityof Wisconsin Press, 2008)
220
Frances Marion, How to write and sell film stories. (New York: Covici – Friede, 1937), 31
221
Ibid., 33
102

The Name Behind the Titles: Establishing Authorship
through Inter–Titles
Anke Brouwers
Silent cinema’s inter–titles222 appear to have been as unpopular with earlymovie–audiences and critics who initially felt them to be disruptive andredundant, as with film historians who have largely excluded the written
title from their research into silent film style and narration.223 This leaves
exciting opportunities for future scholarship, for if we agree that the filmic
discourse, the means available to filmmakers of the silent era to tell a story,
consisted both of the photographic images and the written inter–titles, we
can ask a myriad of new questions. We can ask to what degree these inter–titles could influence a film’s narrative, nudge it into a certain direction,
just like choices regarding editing, camera–placement, lighting, as well as
the actual narrative construction on the level of the plot, shape the way afilm story is told. We can wonder whether or not images and inter–titles
served the same unifying purpose at all times, and whether or not the specific tone of voice, the way things are put, implied or asserted in the inter–title, resulted in a discernible speaking voice attributable to the personal,
recognizable style of a particular writer. We can also think about the mutual dependence of inter–titles and photographic images as they both, to acertain degree, become void and meaningless without the other and gain
meaning and focus from their juxtaposition. Additionally, inter–titles continue to pose practical problems and challenges for archivists all over theworld confronted with prints that have translated inter–titles. While thehistorical import of an original print is unquestionable whatever its “nationality,” we must consider the fact that translated inter–titles make theartefact different from its original, because it necessarily offers a different
experience to the one intended by its makers; things (meaning) get lost intranslation much in the same way the photographic image loses some of its
quality with each successive generation of prints.224 Therefore, detail, subtlety, and other properties of the narration may have disappeared in thesurviving print. Without the aid of an original continuity script or written
222

During the silent era, the written title between photographic images could be more or lessinterchangeably referred to as captions, leaders, subtitles, cut–ins or inter–titles. For reasonsof clarity I have opted for inter–titles because the term is least subject to confusion. In quotes
other terminology may be used.
223
Surely, inter–titles have been addressed, but comparatively speaking only in limited ways.
Tom Gunning has recently noted that the academic study of inter–titles has been scant. Inter–titles are usually analysed for plot, seldom for style. See: Gunning, Tom. True Heart Susie, in
The Griffith Project. Vol. 10 (1919–46), edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai, 18–27. London, BFI
Publishing, 2006, 22.
224
Although this is interesting from a historical point of view, another factor influencing our
experience is that most inter–titles are in archaic language and spelling.
103

outline it comes down to guesswork to determine how good or bad thetitle–writing might have been, or what it may have contributed to the film.
The archivist’s (and contemporary audience’s) estimation of the film may
be influenced to an extensive degree by the quality of the surviving inter–titles. If we take the written titles to be a substantial part of the film, we
have to ask the question whether any film can be considered complete
without them.
This list of questions is by no means exhaustive and my article will not
address them all satisfactorily or even minimally. I will concern myself
with one problem specifically, namely whether we can locate rhetoricalstrategies and tendencies that suggest a recognizable personal style, thestylistic mark of an often neglected creative agent in silent film, thescreen– and/or title–writer. In addition, the suggestion of personal style intitle–writing will lead me to reconsider received notions of cinematic narration in silent film. I will argue that the creative screenwriter or title writer
could turn the inter–title into a layered, playful, often intertextual environment for establishing a speaking voice comparable to that of the literary
narrator––addressing the audience with omniscience, authority or amusement. Such comparison does not suggest the presence of a virtual narratorin (silent) cinema equivalent or even related to the literary “implied author” as decisive power behind a text to whom we attribute the narration.
When I suggest we locate a speaking voice that is much like the literary
speaking voice, I take this as a rhetorical strategy taken up by actual writers, not as the “voice” of a virtual cinematic narrator who somehow encompasses every narrative impulse in a film.225 In rejecting the necessity of
postulating a more or less personalized narrator for every (film) narrative,
my position comes closest to that put forward by David Bordwell, although
my perspective differs slightly precisely because it deals with a explicitly’literary’ part of a film, the written inter–title. For now suffice it to stressthat the speaking voice we encounter in a certain style of title–writing fromthe mid–teens onward is to be taken as a strategy that allowed writers tocontribute to the narrative relatively free from mediation from other, often
more dominant, agents in the filmmaking process––actors interpreting plot
and character, directors staging and orchestrating the action or visualizing
it with the assistance of set–designers, cameramen, lighting technicians etc.

225
See David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) and Poetics of Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2008), chap. 3; Tom Gunning,
D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), Seymour Chatman, Coming to Terms: The
Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990) a.o.
for (part of) the debate.

104

A brief survey of the history of inter–titles in the silent period will be
useful to make my arguments more concrete.226 Inter–titles met with grave
resistance when they first appeared with more frequency in narrative contexts from roughly the end of the primitive period, around 1908. Turning tointer–titles to explain or announce impending action was thought to flag
the filmmaker’s failure to convey meaning visually, to disrupt the narrative
flow and to disturb the diegetic realism and illusory power of cinema.227
Moreover, early inter–titles were often redundant, awkwardly phrased or
sequentially ill–placed so that they obscured instead of illuminated or annoyed instead of diverted the audience. Throughout the first half of theteens the industry was looking for the best way to present written information both in terms of placement and function, embracing and discarding
several proposed solutions to ensure smooth narrative integration.228
Around the same time screen writing manuals, critics and audiences alikelobbied for the eradication of written titles, claiming a title–less film as theideal. If that was asking too much, they advised at least a moderate andsensible use.229
During this transitional era, with the number of complex literary adaptations and more ambitious or original story lines increasing, the inter–title,
either explanatory or dialogue,230 was not so easily abandoned for it proved
too precious a tool to the filmmaker to convey plot information, clarify the
tempo–spatial relations between shots, intensify intended emotional response, and present psychological states that were difficult or impossible topresent visually. From about 1915 the call for fewer inter–titles voiced inreviews, manuals, and trade papers, turned into a demand for better ones:
explanatory inter–titles became more sophisticated in that they no longer
summarized impending action but rather established a situation; experimentswith function and placement of dialogue titles had resulted in a fairly standardized practice which made narration appear less controlling and imposing. William Everson notes that “as their value became understood, [inter–titles] were incorporated into the actual structure of the film, contributing to
its pace and rhythm.”231 Inter–titles thus became an integral part of narrative
cinema. Yet while narration generally became more invisible as it was fitted
226

The best overviews of the form, function and evolution of inter–titles can be found in
William Everson, American Silent Film (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), chapter 8; Eileen
Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema 1907–1915 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990), chapter 9; and David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1985), chapter 15, upon which I am largely basing my survey.
227
See Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 140
228
Bordwell et al, Classical Hollywood Cinema, 184.
229
Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 142, and Thompson, Classical Hollywood Cinema, 186.
230
Barry Salt reports that in 1907 and 1908 the use of dialogue inter–titles was extremely rare.
Salt, Film Style and Technology. History and Analysis (London: Starword, 1983), 107.
231
Everson, American Silent Film, 128.
105

into the classical paradigm, a taste arose for the sharp and well–phrased inter–title as a special attraction of its own. Kristin Thompson explains thatinstead of adhering to a strictly pragmatic, more or less inconspicuous role(i.e. telling the audience what is going to happen next), the “literary” inter–title “contribute[d] something extra to the film.”232 This “something extra”
encompassed voiced attitudes, opinions, asides, jokes or afterthoughts. Inter–titles deliberately became more overt, directly addressing the audience, poking fun at their own function, the story or characters and situations in it, andflaunting their “omniscience,” a type of address typical of Victorian literature.233 This intentional self–consciousness was tolerated, even encouraged,
because it literally counted as an “extra” and could thus be advertised for its
added entertainment–value.234 Anita Loos is credited, then and now, as being
the first to radically and consistently put that “something extra” into her titles, and for establishing the “literary” or “Loos–style” title.235
Before we take a closer look at Loos’ style of titling, let us first turn to thequestion of why the inter–title was so attractive a device to screenwriters in
the first place. Everson points out that for a long time the inter–title was the
only area in which a screenwriter experienced relative freedom and creativity, as the scenarios themselves were more mechanical than creative in nature.236 In Everson’s contention, the role of the screenwriter remained underappreciated until the twenties, for the bulk of the scenarios were either written by directors aspiring to a maximum amount of creative control (like Von
Stroheim or Griffith in the twenties), adaptations of classical works uponwhich standard romantic and action–laden patterns were imposed, or starvehicles leaving little room for creativity since they had to be tuned to astar’s established or developing persona.237 It was by way of the inter–title
that the writer could insert “mood” and “atmosphere,”238 could develop a

232

Bordwell et al, Classical Hollywood Cinema, 187.
Thompson names Dickens and Thackeray, but Victorian literature in general, including the
19th century sentimentalists, exhibited this kind of omniscient narration. This literary styleseems to have been very influential on various levels of narration, rhetoric, and characterisation, but its influence may have been indirect in that rather than copying from this literature,screen and title–writers borrowed from each other.
234
Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, 143235
Loos is mentioned in early accounts of film history and is credited with being “the first” inLewis Jacobs and William Everson. Her influence is reiterated in recent historical surveys.
Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film. A Critical History (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1968), 221; Everson, American Silent Film, 126; Thompson,
Classical Hollywood Style, 187.
236
Everson, American Silent Film, 127.
237
Everson’s account should be taken as slightly overstated for around about 1916 screenplay
writing could be sophisticated and precise, even including nudges or cues towards artistic
effects as can be judged from scenario manuals. See, Edward Azlant, The Theory, History andPractice of Screenwriting, 1897–1920. (PhD Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin in
Madison, 1980).
238
Everson, American Silent Film, 128
233

106

“narrating voice beyond the neutral stating of facts”,239 thus making highly
visible a recognizable personal style at the level of narration. Most radically
we can think of inter–titles as a challenge, albeit a subtle and unobtrusive
one, to the position of the director as “unifying voice” and to the claim ofauthorship such a position implies.240 The specific case of Anita Loos also
demands a weakening of Everson’s contention that star vehicle writing necessarily offered limited creative possibilities. I would suggest that in writing
dialogue titles for Doug Fairbanks expressing good–natured, dynamic ’pep,’
Loos contributed to a considerable degree in establishing this star’s persona,conveying through a silent medium how a star would ’sound’ to the audience.241 Frances Marion, the scenario writer closely associated with Mary
Pickford, for whom she wrote career–defining films such as Poor Little Rich
Girl, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Pollyanna, similarly had a big handin establishing the way Pickford ’sounded’ (a lower class, often Irish, sociolect mixed with the spontaneity and sincerity of children’s language). Significantly, Marion was also Pickford’s ghost–writer for her syndicated advice column ’Daily Talks.’So, with all other aspects of screenwriting being much more subject to norms
and control stemming from the nature of a highly industrialized and commercialized art,242 the inter–title was an attractive playground. But should wetherefore assume that it automatically became a vehicle for personal style?
How did a writer achieve this kind of authorial control, how exactly did she
manage to insert “mood and atmosphere”? We have put forward that thenarrative discourse of a silent film consists both of the photographic images
and the written inter–titles. Tom Gunning reminds us that what makes film
unique, what sets it apart from other storytelling media (like literature, cartoons and so forth), is the iconic quality of its photographic images. In literature, Gunning asserts, drawing on Genette, showing is one way of telling.
Films on the other hand always show something, there is always an overabundance of things to look at in a photographic image, but telling requires
some specific handling of the material; it requires structuring and pre–focusing, cueing, nudging and occasionally contrasting, it requires, in short,
239

Bordwell et al, Classical Hollywood Cinema, 186.
For me every film offers several authorial roles but these are structured hierarchically.
Depending on the situation the most “dominant” author can be usually the director, producer,
writer, or star. Authorship is therefore multiple and should be located with a film’s specific“creative cluster”: the specialized agents whose contribution is most significant to a film’s
artistic identification and differentiation from other films.
241
Everson contends that next to Fairbanks, William S. Hart similarly exploited the potential
of inter–titles to amplify both his screen character and the content of his films. See Everson,
American Silent Film, 131.
242
The continuity script, standard practice from about 1914, was a blueprint for filming andthere was a significant uniformity in its presentation and form. (See, Janet Staiger, “Blue
Prints for Feature Films: Hollywood’s Continuity Scripts,” in The American Film Industry,
2nd ed. Tino Balio (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 189.
240

107

the imposition of narration. Let us bring back to mind why inter–titles wereintroduced and kept on in the first place: they were meant to structure andclarify cluttered images, to help distil an engaging story from what is shown,to help the director (or whomever) tell the story. Inter–titles were meant toelucidate what was unclear, or too complex to convey by showing alone, andto conjure up what was too expensive or logistically difficult to show. But as
we have seen, from the mid–teens, the literary inter–title did much more thanthat. If a director can be said to implement a narrative voice through a specific handling of the filmic narrative discourse, through editing for instance,
as Gunning has shown in the case of D.W. Griffith’s243 early career at Biograph, or through staging and lighting as in the case of a European director
like Feuillade, the screen– or title writer imposes narration through the inter–title, titles being just as indispensable and normatively integrated a part ofthe silent feature film. Replying to a column in the New York Times they
heartily disagreed with––since it still advocated an austere, strictly pragmaticuse of inter–titles––Anita Loos and John Emerson defended the profusion ofinter–titles in their own work as a way to ensure a sufficiently large “artistic
field.”244 Within this “field” the writer could achieve subtlety and complexity, impose careful characterization and realism which could not be done by
the actors in the photographic images with pantomime alone. Loos and Emerson concluded that, lest it become a “humorless, unhuman spectacle,” theintellectual as well as artistic potential of any film depended on its (quality)inter–titles.245
While the screenwriter could not control how a director would handle her
synopsis, scenario or continuity script, inter–titles (if not changed too drastically after production, added or removed without the writer’s say, or(re)written by someone else)246 were mostly taken verbatim from the written
outline. Most scenarists were well aware of the impact inter–titles could
have on a narrative, influencing or changing meaning, mood, genre or even243

Of course, Gunning’s focus on editing as Griffith’s most significant technique to turnimage into narrative and to exert authorial control is historically, technically and biographically grounded. Moreover, a director like Griffith (the first film ‘auteur’) wrote most of thetitles for his later features himself. Griffith’s penchant for moralizing was mostly done
through editorial inter–titles which repeated or clarified the moral lesson to be inferred fromthe story. This heavy reliance on both word and image, illustrates Griffith’s awareness thatinter–titles enhanced his authorial control.
244
Anita Loos and John Emerson quoted in “The Emerson–Loos Way,” New York Times(February, 1920). Source: http://www.public.asu.edu/~ialong/Taylor51.txt, ed. Bruce Long
(January 2010)
245
Ibid.
246
Inter–titles were a part of the continuity script in that there was an indication of what theywould say and where they would go (as well as what they should sound like), but they wererevised after editing. See Janet Staiger, “Blue Prints for Feature Films: Hollywood’s continuity Scripts,” 189. Yet, significantly, in the continuity scripts of influential screenwriters suchas Frances Marion for instance, the suggested inter–titles, which often contain jokes or well–crafted sentences, appear unchanged in the finished film.
108

plot and characterization. On her first (uncredited) writing job for William
Brady, Frances Marion saved an un–releasable Alice Brady vehicle “by writing additional scenes…even a new set of subtitles.”247 She added a shortprologue and epilogue and added inter–titles to change the film’s plot andgenre from serious costume drama to “slapstick comedy.”248 Loos madesimilar claims in 1917 when she contended that she liked it when her funnyinter–titles “kidded” the story and turned scripts intended for drama into
comedy.249
It’s time to make clear my position regarding the theoretical discussion on
the nature, status and necessity of constructing a cinematic narrator. I would
put my position closest to David Bordwell’s. Bordwell’s claims have remained unchanged since he postulated a theory of narration in his book Narration in the Fiction Film in 1985, a position which he has recently reiterated
and elucidated in his most recent book, Poetics of Cinema (2008). Bordwellconceives of narration as a dynamic process providing cues to an audience
who, through inferential elaboration, make up the story. This impersonal
conception of narration, one that does not need the theoretical, ’virtual’ presence of a narrator, has ignited fierce debate. I agree with Bordwell that inthinking about cinematic storytelling we should not automatically adapt
theories of literary narration, specifically those positing an ’implied’ author,
but that we should instead attribute the conceiving, structuring and handlingof a film’s story–world to real agents using their particular technical abilities. Yet written inter–titles seem to warrant another look that at least takes
into account their unique and specific way of telling a story. Inter–titles areafter all read and interpreted, and therefore it may be fruitful to keep thecomparison with the literary speaking voice at least in the back of our heads.
As a strategy, as a way of presenting a story, the written inter–title shares
more than one trait with what Bordwell, in his essay “Three Dimensions ofFilm Narrative,” attributes to the literary speaking voice.250 I have argued
already that for screenwriters, whose work undergoes a certain and sometimes large degree of mediation or transformation (through interpretation,
picturalization, dramatization), the fact that there was limited mediation in
the case of written inter–titles presented them with the most direct way toimpose narration. Inter–titles could take the creative possibilities in cueing
an audience pretty far: commenting on the story, stressing particular plot
elements, making notes or asides, directly addressing the audience, all things
247

Frances Marion, Off with their Heads! (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972), 32. (Ihave been unable to find, based on Marion’s own synopsis and those available at the AFI
database, what title she is referring to.)
248
Ibid.
249
Anita Loos quoted in Karl Schmidt, “The Handwriting on the Screen” in Everybody’s
Magazine (June 1917). Source: http://www.public.asu.edu/~ialong/Taylor51.txt, ed. Bruce
Long (January 2010)
250
David Bordwell, Poetics of Cinema, chap. 3.
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that a literary speaking voice could and in the case of nineteenth century
literature almost always would do. A comparison with this literary device
seems not too far–fetched, as the ’literary’ inter–title would seem a significant exception to the lesser degree of “saliency or pervasiveness,”251 Bordwell attributes to the cinematic voice. From 1915 onwards, we are often extremely aware of a speaking voice addressing us.
Anita Loos liked to boast of her radical inter–titles in contemporary interviews when she recalled: “My most popular inter–title introduced the nameof a new character. The name was something like this: “Count Xxerkzsxxv.”
Then there was a note, “To those who read titles aloud, you can’t pronounce
the count’s name. You can only think it.”252 Loos not only touches upon thevexed linguistic nature of the inter–title as a device to be read, she also gently ridiculed the (probably rather annoying) habit some people had of readingout titles aloud. Edward Azlant has pointed out that inter–titles like this one,which address the audience in their act of reading and interpreting the titles,
allow for “the creation of an ironic frame outside the narrative itself,” andthat the experience and interpretation of silent films was much more layered
and complex than we usually assume.253 The potential for self–consciousness
and meta–criticism, always within the standard of course, seems most radical
here and was employed most adventurously by powerful personalities whowanted their creative identity asserted. Loos, dubbed by her husband “themother of comedy titles,”254 delighted in using an authorial voice in her titles
which would often be discordant with the images, thus creating indeed avery layered type of narration, double–voiced, judgmental, and always perceivable. Both Thompson and Bordwell point out that such high degree ofnarrational presence was conventional and codified at the beginning or endof the film or a sequence.255 While this is certainly true, we notice that, especially in longer feature film, the speedy succession of new scenes and sequences allows the inter–title’s speaking voice to restate its presence andimportance.
A closer look at the ’Loos style’ should be illustrative. Loos’ favoured mode
was satirical comedy mocking contemporary American everyday life. This
inclination made her films, as Kevin Brownlow notes, not merely entertaining but also pertinent and momentous.256 Her scripts for Doug Fairbanks
251

Bordwell, Poetics of Cinema, 122.
Loos in Schmidt, “The Handwriting on the Screen,” n.p.
253
Azlant, The Theory, History and Practice of Screenwriting, 1897–1920, 154.
254
John Emerson quoted in Lillian Montanye, “The Play’s the Thing ” in Motion Picture(April, 1918). Source: http://www.public.asu.edu/~ialong/Taylor51.txt, ed. Bruce Long (January 2010)255
See Thompson, Classical Hollywood Cinema, 174 and 177; and David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 167.
256
Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone by… (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1968), 275.
252

110

especially debunked prevalent social norms, mores and institutions, mostly
national fads and idiosyncrasies such as vegetarianism, spiritualism, the national ’aristocracy’ of vulgar business moguls. At the same time, Brownlow
notes, they intended no real or ’engaged’ social criticism. Her satire did not
spring from “a suppressed social conscience, but from a bubblingly creative
sense of fun.”257 Loos was not struck by the reform fever of the teens (in factreformers are always mocked or highly dubious) and merely took up socio–
culturally relevant subjects to poke fun at. Her scripts did not explore psychological or emotional depths but prefer situation comedy and ironic contrast to make a point or resolve the plot. Essential to her satirical style were
her inter–titles that delighted in self–conscious, cheeky, Algonquinesqueword–play. This self–assured self–consciousness of narration was assured byinter–titles rife with alliterations, oxymoron, puns, double entendres andcomic metaphors that directed attention to their linguistic nature. The narrating voice suggested by these inter–titles was a conspicuous one, playing withthe audience’s expectations and delighting in a jocular style of presentation.
A few examples from Loos–Emerson comedies:258 at the end of Wild and
Wooly (Emerson, 1917), an inter–title breaks in and pauses the action tostate: “But wait a minute. This will never do. We can’t end a western romance without a wedding,” confronting the audience with genre expectations and reiterating the fabricated nature of filmic narrative. Loos is overtly
present and making comments throughout scenes. In His Picture in the Papers (Emerson, 1916) the audience is ordered to note a “hygienic” kiss between two characters. At another point in the film a title “begs leave” fromthe audience to introduce a rather dull character, or expresses frank emphatic
relief when Doug’s character finds a new opportunity to achieve his goal
after many failed attempts, exclaiming: “Oh Joy! He will consult the famous
female [a clairvoyant], perhaps she can give him a tip on his picture business[…].” American Aristocracy (Emerson, 1916) offers its audience assistancein understanding an expensive word just used with a note: “Note: entomologist––high brow term for bug hunter.” After initial introductions at the beginning of Down to Earth (Emerson, 1917), an inter–title reassures the audience that it has not wandered into the wrong screening, confirming “No, thisis not a Pathé weekly, it is part of our story. We first meet our boy and girl at
a football game.” In the Social Secretary (Emerson, 1916), an inter–title
257

Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone by…, 275
When the rules of classical narration were standardized, overt self–consciousness of narration was almost exclusively comedy’s domain, but a similarly visible, or “audible,” if notquite so irreverent speaking voice was often employed throughout more pathetic and sentimental stories, suggesting that the Loos–style title pervaded other genres as well. For instancethe insertion of famous quotes, fragments of poems or rhymes or the repetition of pathetic
inter–titles to increase the affective response of the audience, as well as intensifying adjectives such as “poor” or “little” (as in “poor Alice” or “little Mary”) are all rather deliberateacts of empathic narration reminiscent of the speaking voice of a sentimental or Victoriannovel.

258

111

reconfirms its status as guide in the story while punning on the occupation ofa character with this interjection: “Now here returns to our story Mayme’s
Portugese count whose lime business has been squeezed by the war.” A later
title deadpans with dry logic that, “The count follows up his meeting with
Elsie, reflecting that marriage with Elsie may be better than 3 dollars a
week.”
Several Loos–Emerson–Fairbanks collaborations show a flair for a hyperbolically alliterative style––as in “Pete prefers Pugilism to pushing
Pringle’s products,” from His Picture in the Papers, and “Your puny pussyfooting policies are taking the pep out of patriotism,” from In Again, Out
Again (Emerson, 1917)––or for repeated punning and wisecracking, as inthese zingers from American Aristocracy: “Mrs. Greene–Rivers is one of theleading spirits of the alcoholic set,” and “Mrs Budhauser seeks a corking
opener to break through the bars of society.” These deliberately over–written
titles ensure the writer’s constant presence. Puns abound in Down to Earth as
well: in introducing the line–up of patients at the sanatorium where Doug’s
love interest is accommodated, the screenwriter has counted on the audience
reading the titles out loud to themselves as they are all puns describing theirailments: “Mrs. Helfer–Eton, Lydia Fuller–Germes, Gordan Jinny.” Later inthe film, an inter–title comments on the action with a quote: “’Sleep, oh gentle sleep/ that shuts up sorrow’s eye’––Shakespeare”; when, a few titles later,
the narrating voice starts quoting again, it debunks its own snobbishness bysigning with “Shakespeare again.” Towards the end of the film the speaking
voice, gleefully displaying its omniscience, deliberately gives away the outcome of the final plot point, the kidnapping of the heroine, with this inter–title: “And they might have pulled this [the kidnapping] off, if Bill had been
taking his usual siesta with the others, but as it happened he wasn’t.” We are
explicitly reminded we are being told this story by an agent who knows morethan the protagonist and the audience combined. The remainder of the film
consists of Doug showing off his impressive heroic abilities (winning a fightwith one hand!) and the final inter–title before the fade–out displays theusual self–consciousness of narration when it proclaims that, “There’s nothing to do but go finish our nap––the story’s over.”Irony was another important ingredient of the Loos comedy. Irony wascreated in two ways: either by having titles undercut their own message (inAmerican Aristocracy: “Has America an Aristocracy? We say yes! And toprove it we take you to Narraport–by–the–Sea, where we find some of ourfinest families whose patents of nobility are founded on such deeds as daring
as the canning of soup, the floating of soap and the borating of talcum”), orby having them say one thing and then showing another, extracting humour
from incongruence much in the way of what Noel Carroll has termed the112

’switch image’.259 The latter also implies that the images are only funny because of the preceding inter–titles. The importance of Loos’ titles for American Aristocracy (Emerson, 1917) can be measured by considering the images without the titles, images that, apart from some Fairbanks acrobatics,
are rarely funny in themselves but become so because the titles prime us toridicule what we see. On the other hand, a title from the same film funny initself because of an obvious pun, “Mrs Greene–Rivers, one of the leading
spirits of the alcoholic set,” becomes even funnier when it is followed by theimage of a weary and bored old lady. This discrepancy between what we are
told and what we see (or the other way around) once more asserts the importance and power of the voice suggested by the inter–title to influence ourinterpretation of a story.
Surely, Loos did not ’invent’ the literary gag; punning, irony and alliteration are common enough rhetorical techniques. But her confident and sustained use of such titles made them into a personal trademark. The Loos
formula was essential to Fairbanks’ energetic, mildly rebellious persona andwas reprised by others after the collaboration ended. When the Clouds Roll
By, directed by Victor Fleming and titled by titles–specialist, Thomas J. Garaghty, opens with a teasing, distinctly Loos–ian, inter–title: “It is midnight
along New York’s water front. It is also midnight in the Wallstreet district.
However, this has nothing to do with our story, except it is likewise midnight
uptown where we first meet Daniel Boone Brown––an average young man.
Our tale proper opens with the eating of an onion.” For several of the other
Fairbanks features not written by Loos or directed by Emerson it is unclear
who was responsible for the titles. Moving Picture World reported in December 1916 that by specific request from Fairbanks, Loos was to write all
the inter–titles for the features in which he starred, so she may have been
responsible for writing, or at least revising inter–titles on scripts she did not
author herself. During the twenties, slapstick features––especially those fromthe Hal Roach studios, scripted by studio stalwart H.M. Walker––would
draw on the Loos/Fairbanks wisecracking style, but her influence was already being felt in the late teens, as shown in a two–reel Harold Lloyd comedy from 1918, Two–Gun Gussie, with distinctly Loos–ian titles like thisone: “Whooping–Cough Charlie, the Sheriff of Pleurisy County, loves thesmell of powder––talcum.”
These examples have hopefully shown that the inter–title could weigh on
the generic, atmospheric as well as narrative properties of a story, and often
did. Surely, with this contention I do not intend to play down the importanceof other aspects of screenwriting, such as narrative structure or thematic
predilections, as capable of expressing a personal style; I have merely tried
to put the spotlights on inter–titles as an understudied aspect of screen narra259

See Noël Carrol, Theorizing the Moving Image (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001), 151.
113

tion. Inter–titles had the power to, as Loos termed it, “kid” the story forcomic effect, or (in more dramatic and sentimental stories) to establish moodand elicit sympathy. Her sustained and deliberate use of self–conscious narration both established her personal trademark (which she exploited) andstarted a “deluge” of Loos–style “literary gags” in other films.260 During theteens inter–titles would eventually be no longer seen as either betraying visual purity or interrupting the action.261 On the contrary, they became relied
upon and appreciated to such a degree that they increasingly warranted specialized agents to rewrite or polish them. Some of these title–writers would
later even merit individualized credit, a direct attribution of authorship. Asinter–titles most directly reflected the style and personality of those who
designed and integrated them, thereby making important choices about what
information, either explanatory or spoken, was essential to the story, they areworth listening to when considering silent film narration and by extension,
silent film authorship.

260

See Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film, 221.
Hugo Münsterberg objected to inter–titles for the former and Epes Winthrop Sargent for
the latter reason. See, Azlant, The Theory, History and Practice of Screenwriting, 1897–1920,
chap 4.

261

114

Artistic Titles in Artistic Films! Investigating Swedish
Art–Titles and the Case of Alva Lundin
Sofia Bull
On the 8th of November 1920, the same day as Mauritz Stiller’s film
Erotikon premiered in Sweden, a small article appeared in the film magazine
Filmnyheter with the headline: “Erotikon’s titles: artistic supplements to thefilm”:
Erotikon is clearly an attempt to create a Swedish film comedy that is elegant
and neat through and through, and down to the titles the result is very successful. These guiding remarks that accompany the plot are exactly as you
want them: witty, clever and funny, at the same time easy and stylistically enjoyable. On top of this, they have been supplied with typographical designs,
made by Mrs Alva Lindbom–Lundin who is worthy of great praise. The styleof the Erotikon titles is elegant, playful and droll, and they are in excellent
harmony with the tone of the film. They certainly call attention to the mottoof Swedish quality productions of today: “Artistic titles in artistic films!262

Articles focusing solely on intertitles were far from common in the Swedishpress at this time. It seems intertitles for the most part were considered anecessary evil that at most deserved a fleeting comment in film reviews.
That Erotikon’s intertitles were deemed worthy of a whole article suggeststhat they were indeed something out of the ordinary. As mentioned, the intertitles had been provided with illustrations by the previously unknown
female artist Alva Lundin (born Lindbom/Lindbohm) and their success became the starting point of her long–lasting career within the Swedish film
industry that would last into the 1960s. Lundin created art–titles263 for atleast 20 silent films during the 20s and after the transition to sound she continued her work, then as designer of credit sequences for around 400 featurefilms. On top of this she also created illustrations, graphics and typography

262(my translation)”Erotikons texter. Konstnärliga supplement till filmen”, Filmnyheter, 8November 1920, 13)
263
Bordwell use the term “art title” for “the expository title enhanced by a pictorial design”(David Bordwell, “Classical Narration”. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (England:
Routledge, 1985), 28. One should however keep in mind that it is unclear whether this term
was actually in use at the time. In the Swedish context there doesn’t seem to have existed one
common term for this phenomenon during the 1920s, but an article in Filmnyheter from 1924
speak of “artistic titles”. (“En Kartongartist för svenska filmtexter: Lundins ritbyrå med Fru
Alva Lundin i spetsen”, Filmnyheter, No.11, 1924, 8) On a similar note, Claire Dupré la Tourhas pointed out that the term intertitle actually only “appeared in the early 1920s to differentiate the practice from the then new process of subtitling”. (Claire Dupré la Tour, “Intertitles
and titles”, Richard Abel, ed. Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (London: Routledge, 2005) 326f)
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for an unknown, but undoubtedly large, number of information– and commercial films.264
This article is a first glimpse of my ongoing research on the career ofAlva Lundin that I initiated as part of the Women Film Pioneers Project. It
will focus on Lundin’s work as an art–title designer during the 1920s andapart from presenting some of the biographical information I have uncovered, my primary aim is to contextualise her work. I will begin by discussing
the general climate for art–titles in Sweden during the 1920s and then go on
to consider the fact that Lundin at that time was one of very few female artists in Sweden who could make a living from her skills.
Art–titles in context
In 1920, art–titles were a fairly new phenomenon in Sweden. There are only
a few known earlier examples, all made by the artist Arthur Sjögren. A
Filmnyheter article from 1924 labels Sjögren as the very first art–title designer in Sweden.265 His career in the film industry was brief; the database of
the Swedish Film Institute (Svensk Filmdatabas) only lists three films withintertitle designs by Sjögren. The first is Dunungen (In Quest of Happiness,
Ivan Hedqvist, 1919), followed by Carolina Rediviva (The Beloved Fool,
Ivan Hedqvist, 1920), and finally the Victor Sjöström film Mästerman (ALover in Pawn, 1920). However, the above–mentioned article in Filmnyheter
actually claims Sjögren to be the creator of art–titles of “several films by
Sjöström”, which suggests that the list is incomplete.
Even though Sjögren’s career as art–title designer was short, it definitely
deserves more research in the future.266 One issue that needs to be further
investigated is the fact that Sjögren also designed the posters to Dunungenand Mästerman––which thus got what we would now call a coherent“graphic profile” with matching titles and promotional material. In comparison, it seems Alva Lundin was never commissioned to create posters or otherpromotional materials for films. Since Sjögren was an independent artist, it
is possible that he might initially have been hired to create the posters for thefilms, although this is pure speculation. Similarly, I have not been able tofind any sources explicitly explaining how Lundin first got “discovered” by
the film industry.
In her case I am however able to make a more qualified guess. It seems
quite probable that Lundin first got hired by the film company Svensk
Filmindustri to design the typography of intertitles. Lundin was a skilled
264

One example being the commercials Ingmar Bergman directed for the soap Bris in theearly 1950s.
265“Filmtexternas utsmyckning: En detalj som börjar ägnas allt mera omsorg”, Filmnyheter,
No. 8, 1924, 8.
266
The Filmnyheter article state that “Mrs Alva Lundin really has been the only specialist on
titles the last couple of years”, which confirms that Sjögren had left the film industry well by1924. (ibid, 8).
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calligrapher; her primary source of income was typographical designs forletterheads, diplomas and such.267 What is known to be her first intertitle
design, the handwritten intertitles in Mauritz Stiller’s film Herr Arnes Pengar (Sir Arne’s Treasure, 1919), was also of an exclusively typographicalnature. It is thus a fair assumption that Stiller (or someone else on the filmteam) then discovered Lundin’s artistic talent and decided to put it to further
use in Erotikon the year after.
Lundin’s typographical intertitle design for Herr Arnes Pengar reminds
us that handwritten intertitles can be seen as an important predecessor tomore elaborate art–titles. A majority of the films shown in Swedish cinemas
at the time (both Swedish productions and imported films with translated
titles) did at the time have printed intertitles. However, during the earlysummer of 1920 (six months before Erotikon premiered), it was debated in
the trade magazine Biografbladet whether handwritten titles were preferable.
The pseudonym “The Reviewer” urged film companies to “hire proper calligraphers––no bunglers, but draughtsmen that knows what they are doing.”
268
He was convinced that “printed title cards that are then photographed, cannever be as good as handwritten titles.”269 Furthermore, he suggested thatsuch draughtsmen should collaborate with the translator (in the case of imported films), “to be able to decide the style of the titles.”270 Finally, “The
Reviewer” professed himself certain “that the audience prefer a film withtitles that are aesthetically pleasing than a film with haphazard titles or titles
that have been left in the hands of a typesetter.”271
Lundin’s titles for Herr Arnes Pengar seem to have been made with thesame conviction in mind, namely that titles with an individual typographic
design made for a more expressive and aesthetically pleasing film. In thiscase Lundin used a beautiful blackletter font that implied the historic period
in which the film was set. The practice of letting lettering indicate the period
or setting of the story was already common in Hollywood. David Bordwellhave suggested in The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of
Production to 1960 that it probably was “influenced by playbills and illustrated books: narration rendered as typography.”272
Several Swedish films from the 1920s had intertitles that used typography
artistically. As in Hollywood, alternate type–size and typeface were often

267

One article mentions that Lundin’s company usually was commissioned “typing addresses” (“adresstextning”), which could refer to both diplomas and letter–heads. “En Kartongartist för svenska filmtexter: Lundins ritbyrå med Fru Alva Lundin i spetsen”, Filmnyheter, No.11, 1924, 8
268(my translation) ”Filmkritiken och filmtexterna”, Biografbladet, Year 1, No. 4, 1 April
1920, 9269
Ibid, 9270
Ibid, 9271
Ibid, 9272
Bordwell, 26.
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used to simulate sonic qualities.273 Capital letters or a large type–size could
for example indicate shouting. An example of expressive typography thatpoints to the similarities between typographical design and illustrations canbe found amongst the title–cards to the film Två Konungar (Two Kings (mytranslation), Elis Ellis, 1925).274 One title has its letters written in an unevenline, thus suggesting a drunken man’s speech, but there actually exists analternate version of this particular title–card where the intoxication of the
speaker is instead evoked by a drawing of a glass of beer. Although it remains uncertain which version actually ended up in the film, this example
shows how either typography or illustrations could sometimes be used toachieve the same result.
Furthermore, some believed that illustrated borders were more apt tomake aesthetically pleasing intertitles than handwritten individual typography. In the following issue of Biografbladet, Albin Malmström, head of afilm laboratory in Stockholm declared that “The Reviewer” was completely
wrong in his claims that hand–written title cards were better than printed
ones. 275 Although Malmström agreed that the goal was to “make the title
harmonize with the content of the film”, he asserted that his technical experience had proven that handwritten text would always look sloppy anduneven in comparison with the neatness of printed text, when blown up on
screen.276 He admitted that the American film industry did have the means to
produce very detailed handwritten titles that were aesthetically sufficient, but
he emphasized that this was impossible in a Swedish context since the market was too small to cover the costs of such productions. Finally, Malmström
concluded that the Swedish film industry instead should borrow another
Hollywood practice that was considerable cheaper, namely to provide thetitles with borders.277
To decorate the titles with borders had been an important move towards
art–titles in America quite a few years earlier. This has, for example, beensuggested by Barry Salt in Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis,
when writing on the development of illustrated intertitles in Vitagraphfilms.278 Already in 1910 Vitagraph had begun to make “a few films which
had special illustrated borders around the intertitles” and Salt suggests that

273

David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema:
Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (England: Routledge, 1985), 188.
274
These title–cards are amongst those in the title–card collection of the Swedish Film Institute Archive. It’s currently unknown who created the titles of Två Konungar, but I’m fairly
sure they have not been made by Alva Lundin.
275”Filmkritiken och filmtexterna: Ett genmäle”, Biografbladet, Year 1, Nr 7, 15 May 1920,
19f
276
Ibid, 19f
277
Ibid, 19f
278
Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (London: Starword, 1992),
107ff
118

this might have been a “response to the new striving after ’art’ in film–
making which had just begun.”279
The most striking example of this was Daisies, in which the whole plot
turned on that flower, and which was present in most of the film scenes invarious forms. Here the intertitles had a border of daisies, instead of having
the standard ’picture frame’ style decorative border.280

Vitagraph was “fairly typical of American companies in the way they handled intertitles”, but also exceptionally early in toying with illustrated intertitles.281 According to Salt, “the vogue for illustrated intertitles […] only
started in American films in 1916”, but the Vitagraph film Consuming Passion; or St. Valentine’s Day in Greenaway Land actually moved on from
simple illustrated borders as early as 1911, by adding “drawings of toys andother things which changed in accordance with the course of the narrative”
to their title–cards.282
The craze for art–titles lasted into the early twenties in America283, but asI have already mentioned, that is only when it started in Sweden. The reception of Swedish art–titles in the domestic film magazines was mostly positive, but that this by no means meant that the Swedish film journalists were
impressed by the American predecessors. In fact there was a noticeable fearof Americanization, expressed for example in a 1924 Filmnyheter article on
Lundin’s art–titles:
In America they are willing to spend much effort and money on decorating titles; many companies have a whole department dedicated to their title–cardillustrators who are busy from dawn to dusk, creating painting after paintingthat the texts are later copied into. However, in most cases there is no point intrying to mimic the American title decorations, even though we sometimes
see domestic attempts where nobody has considered whether the “novelty”
actually is beautiful. The American title–card artists usually create the mosthorrid things, where cypress trees, engagement rings, moving clouds and sunrises are being repeated over and over again in utter boredom. Luckily, ourfilm companies here at home have managed to avoid the great danger of title
decorations that are banal and nonsensical, which would be the result if they
are put in the hands of people without artistic taste and sophisticated ideas.284

The comparison is of course a great compliment to Lundin as an artist––butshould primarily be understood as a defence of the domestic production that
felt the competition of imported American film with considerable higher
279

Ibid, 108Ibid, 108281
Ibid, 108f
282
Ibid, 108f
283
Ibid, 109284
(My translation) “Filmtexternas utsmyckning: En detalj som börjar ägnas allt mera omsorg”, Filmnyheter, No. 8, 1924, 8
280

119

production values. Although many of Lundin’s intertitles are surprisingly
free from simplistic symbols and stereotypes, she also did create some quite
predictable decorative titles. One example is the art–titles of Rågens rike
(The Kingdom of Rye (my translation), Ivan Johansson, 1929) that simply
sport different illustrations of rye.
When considering the debates surrounding art–titles it is important to remember that the very practice of including intertitles was actually quite controversial both in Hollywood and Sweden, albeit during slightly different
periods. When it comes to the American context, Kristin Thompson has
pointed out that “during the period from 1913 to 1916, there was a widespread belief [in Hollywood] that the film with no inter–titles was the ideal.
Scriptwriters seemed to assume that every title in a film betrayed a weak
point where its author had failed to convey the situation properly throughimages.”285 Claire Dupré la Tour has, in her text on intertitles in
Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, summarized the main criticisms against intertitles in American trade press articles debating the usefulness and limits of
titles, stating that they were thought to “(1) [spoil] suspense by giving in
advance a summary of the action, (2) [have] an adverse impact on the ’reality effect’, (3) [be] too frequent or too lengthy, and (4) [lack] explicitness
and readability.”286
However, with the increasing standardization of the feature film around
1916, intertitles became a less controversial part of the films, partly because
films grew longer and more complicated, which made filmmakers convincedthat at least occasional inter–titles were necessary287, but also because more
effort was put into the writing and design of intertitles, which popularized
the idea that they could actually contribute to the film’s success.288
When it comes to the writing, Anita Loos is always mentioned as themost important figure for this shift in opinion. Loos’s intertitle texts for Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), and for a number of films staring Douglas Fairbanks, soon made witty and cleverly written intertitles fashionable.289 Typical for the “Loos–style” were “a narrating voice which goes beyond the neutral stating of facts”; intertitles thus started to add something extra to the film
narrative, which made them seem less redundant.290 Similarly, art–titles became another way to motivate and legitimize the use of intertitles, in part by
granting “the intertitle a privileged status vis–à–vis the image”,291 but also
because they––like the Loos–style writing––could contribute something to285

Thompson, 186
Dupré La Tour, 328
287
Thompson, 86
288
La Tour, p. 329 and Thompson, 186
289
La Tour, p. 329 and Thompson, 186f
290
Thompson, 186f
291
La Tour, 329
286

120

the narrative by including “a symbolic, sometimes non–diegetic object toconvey an idea.”292
Several Swedish scholars have pointed out that Erotikon’s intertitles weredirectly inspired by the success of Loos–style titles in USA.293 They are alsoa prime example of the type of art–titles that provides new information andguides the audience’s interpretation of the film as a whole. Bo Florin has in
his PhD dissertation Den Nationella Stilen: Studier i den svenska filmensguldålder argued that the general plot and staging of the film (including theart–titles) were reminiscent of Hollywood comedies, which made it receive
very mixed reviews.294 According to Florin, Erotikon got “caught in the
crossfire”295 between two opposite strands within Swedish film journalism,
one that argued that Swedish film should reinvent itself according to international standards (which Erotikon could be said to have done) and one thatwas fiercely protective of the national style.296
We can thus conclude that Swedish art–titles were indeed a controversial
practice where two different debates actually intersected: that of the very
existence of intertitles and that of the Americanization of Swedish film.
Considering this, it is no wonder that Mauritz Stiller himself was reluctant topublicly announce the importance of Erotikon’s art–titles. One interview he
did even ended up as an article in Filmnyheter with the argumentative headline “Film without titles––a future style to aspire and hope for.”297 The article
praises Erotikon for actually having “the smallest amount of titles so far”
and then goes on state that Stiller “emphasizes that every purposeful director
of course should struggle to gradually rid themselves from the titles. A film
without titles would naturally be an ideal––for the future.”298 Furthermore,
he is of the opinion that:[You] can’t forget that the titles always have to be the least important part ofa film, even though they of course require the necessary attention. In otherwords, to build a film around a few beautiful or funny titles would, whatever
the literary source they come from, be a severe sin by a director and something which nobody with any sense of artistic reasonability would ever beguilty of.299

292

Thompson, 187
Bo Florin, Den Nationella Stilen: Studier i den svenska filmens guldålder (Stockholm:
Aura Förlag, 1997), 149f and Rune Waldekranz, Filmens Historia: De första hundra åren,Del 1 (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1985), 533
294
Florin, 144f
295
Ibid, 145
296
Ibid, 147
297
”Film utan text – en framtidstro att sträva till och hoppas på”, Filmnyheter, Nr 8, 22 november, 1920, 4
298”(My translation) Ibid. 4299(My translation) Ibid. 4
293

121

Stiller did however not rid his following films of intertitles, or from art–titles
for that matter. On the contrary, a few years later he hired Lundin yet again,
this time to create between three– and four hundred art–titles for his two–part adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s novel Gösta Berlings Saga: Del 1 och 2(The Legend of Gosta Berling: Part 1 and 2, 1924). Lundin’s efforts werethen admired in several articles. In fact, her art–titles never did receive negative attention, in spite of the various debates raging around intertitles in the
Swedish film press throughout the 1920s.
A female artist in context
When going through the articles specifically focused on Lundin and herwork, it is noticeable that many of them openly comment on her gender,
which for one thing calls for a discussion about Lundin’s status as a female
artist working within the film industry.
Although it at this point had become slightly more acceptable for awoman to work as an artist or illustrator in Sweden, it was still unusual.
Following a number of fundamental changes in Swedish society, female
students had been accepted at the art schools since the middle of the 19th
century.300 Lundin attended the female section of the art school Tekniska
skolan during the years 1904–06.301 Supposedly, Tekniska skolan was slight
more accessable for female students because it was the school focused onteaching the applied arts, such as crafts and design. Lundin’s diploma showsthat she took courses in, among other things, geometric constructional
drawing, shading technique, perspective, free hand drawing, figure drawing
and landscape drawing, painting and typography as well as calligraphy.302
That she moved on to become an illustrator, not an independent artist,must be seen as typical of students from Tekniska skolan in general, and forfemale art students in particular. At the time, few women were able tobecome successful independent artists; most either worked as art teachers orillustrators (if they continued working after their education at all). In
particular, female artists were frequent illustrators of fairytales andchildren’s books, probably because these were genres considered to belong
to the “female sphere”.303 This could perhaps be seen as a parallell to
Lundin’s work within the film industry. Much like illustrations of children’sbooks, film was often considered less prestigious compared to the fine arts.
Perhaps this actually made it somewhat easier for her, as a female artist, tosustain such a long and successful career.

300

Ingrid Ingelman, Kvinnliga konstnärer i Sverige (Uppsala: Acta, 1982), 32f
Tekniska skolan was later renamed Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts andDesign).
302(My translation) Utdrag ur betygshandlingarna från afdln. B. Tekniska skolan för kvinnliga lärjungar: Alva Maria Lindbohm, Stockholm, 26 March 1907, 1
303
Ingelman, 70f
301

122

However, even though a female artist working within the film industry
would perhaps have been seen as somewhat less “threatening”, it was still
uncommon. Two articles about Lundin specifically comment on the fact that
she was a woman, something they obviously considered to be unexpected.
One article describes Lundin as follows:
Mrs Lundin is an energetic and inventive lady, and the film directors thathave had the opportunity of collaborating with her are delighted with herwork. This is not surprising when considering that she has an ability to hit thenail on the head that never fails. In addition, she has a sense of humour––something that, according to prevalent prejudice, isn’t that common amongst
the female sex.304

Apart from the rather derogative suggestion that it is surprising to find awoman with a sense of humour, this description actually ascribes quite a lotof agency to Lundin. I have not been able to recover any paperwork giving
clues about the nature of the collaborations between Lundin and the filmmakers she worked with. The only documents I have come across are lists of
title texts that were sent to Lundin by Svensk Filmindustri, but they do notinclude any notes or instructions about the designs or illustrations.305 The
above quoted article is certainly not a completely reliable source, but it does
seem to indicate that Lundin was allowed to work quite freely. Lundin is notpresented as a mere “hired hand” simply executing the ideas of the director,
but rather as a creative collaborator of more equal standing. She is the one
with the sense of humour and the ability to hit the nail on the head. The factthat Lundin got her own prominent credit in the opening sequence of
Erotikon also suggests that she was considered by Svensk Filmindustri as thesole creator of the art–titles.306
Another article from Filmnyheter, about Lundin’s work with the many
art–titles of Gösta Berlings saga, suggests that such artistic freedom andresponsibility was indeed uncommon for a woman.307 Firstly, the article
points out that the impressive task of creating over 300 titles “required theefforts of an able man for several weeks”, only to humorously note that the
man in question actually was a woman. Secondly, it goes on to mention that
although Lundin did the work, she was actually assisted by her husband andthat the two “young artists” ran their company together.308 It is indeed correctthat Alva Lundin and her husband Sven Lundin ran the company Lundins
304(My translation) Filmnyheter, No. 8, 1924, 8These documents can be found both amongst the general title–card collection and thecollection of material from Alva Lundin’s company, both at the Swedish Film Institute Archive.
306
The opening sequence only consists of three credits, the first being the director Mauritz
Stiller, followed by that of Alva Lundin and the third being the film company Svensk Filmindustri.
307
Filmnyheter, No.11, 1924,8
308
Ibid, 8305

123

Ritbyrå (Lundin’s Design) together, but the article is incorrect in suggestingthat the two of them created inter–titles together. According to Lundin’s
relatives, Sven titled himself Manager and only attended to the administrative tasks required to run a company. He was definitely not an artist andAlva was thus in charge of the artistic decisions.309 The fact that the article isunclear about this work division further suggests that Alva Lundin, as a female artist with much artistic freedom, transgressed normative gender roles.
Perhaps the idea that she was dependent on her husband to manage “the taskof an able man” seemed reassuring at the time, even though artistically thiswas not actually the case.

309

Sofia Bull, Interview with Ulla Wickbom (daughter) and Ulf Wickbom (grandson), Stockholm 5 March 2007.
124

Divas and Intertexts

125

The European Actress, the Liberty Style, and the Divaon the Silent Screen
Victoria Duckett
Typing in tandem
It is difficult to find examples of co–operative scholarship, particularly infeminist film studies. By this I mean that it is difficult to find scholars writing together, proactively. There are plenty of collections of essays, certainly, but these seem to come together in retrospect and are offered as asort of reflection upon the dynamics of feminist change. In this sense, it isas though we really do need an editor to tie us together and say yes, wehave all been tugging at the same thread, even if we have not known ofeach others existence and have yet to actually see the films, articles, photographs and so on each of us describe. That seventies moment which Laura
Mulvey speaks of in her introduction to Visual and Other Pleasures—that
moment when women wrote together collaboratively, anonymously, politically, differently, and optimistically—now seems a long time ago and tiedin to a project very different from our own.310 At its most basic level, it
attests to a group dynamic we can no longer boast. Practicalities of space
and time––or perhaps, actually, of career and of the need to write and research in the first person singular––have stopped us from organizing feminist ’events’ in the traditional sense of the term. We are now researching
and writing the history of women in film and come together at annual festivals and forums such the Women and the Silent Screen conferences. It isin the effort to demonstrate that collaborative work can still be productive
and that a shared political vision can still shape the tasks we choose toundertake that our articles (my own and that of my colleague, Elena
Mosconi) are offered. Although they have been written independently, they
have been typed in tandem. It is hoped that they will be read and understood in this way.
Seeing Stockholm: an anecdote about living
Feminism is not, obviously, only about writing for a common good. We needto describe what it is we are doing and where it is we think we are going. We
will begin, therefore, with an anecdote Marc Bloch repeats in The Historian’s Craft. He states:
There is an anecdote which I have already recounted elsewhere: I had gonewith Henri Pirenne to Stockholm; we had scarcely arrived, when he said tome: “what shall we go to see first? It seems that there is a new city hall here.
310

See Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1989), viii & xv.
126

Let’s start there.” Then, as if to ward off my surprise, he added: “If I were an
antiquarian, I would have eyes only for old stuff, but I am a historian. Therefore, I love life.” This faculty of understanding the living is, in very truth, themaster quality of the historian.311

We want to begin our feminism here: in Stockholm with its civic spaces andavant–garde public arts. Because it is our contention that there is a style of film––a style that, for purposes of clarity and simplicity, we will call the ’Liberty
Style’ of cinema––which was popular up until the end of the First World War
and that this style of film had less to do with antiquarian history than it did witha new form of public engagement in the world. In following Bloch and Pirenne
we are therefore asking that the avant–garde potential of public art be acknowledged just as we are signalling a methodological choice. In other words, ourexplanation of what the Liberty Style might be is tied into specific microhistorical case studies drawn from continental Europe––Sarah Bernhardt and Lyda
Borelli––and the detailed examination of particular films. Our aim is to demonstrate not just that the European theatrical film can be recuperated from its status
as filmed theatre, but that the theatrical actress (particularly the actress from thelegitimate theatre and the Continental stage) was able to engage with film in a
new, productive, and challenging way.
Our case studies are not random. While Bernhardt and Borelli are very different individuals, they enable France and Italy to come together under the one
stylistic model and to be examined within the same time frame. Moreover, they
provide a way out of the dead end of diva and/or star studies (or the introversionof cultural studies more generally). Indeed, our work is largely a response to thetendency to discuss the theatrical star in terms of biography and to cast her (it isalways a ’her’) as some kind of disciplinary intruder, as though it was only intheatrical pose or through exaggerated theatrical action that she marked a material presence on film. What we are challenging, therefore, is not just the imageof the diva as a reckless and ignorant artist but the idea that the very control andauthority she wielded on stage was lost on film. More important than questions
we are posing in terms of authorship, however, are those that we are asking
about our relationship to film history. Are we able to think beyond the cinema of
attractions and narrative cinema as our conceptual models of early film? Can we
see the ’theatrical’ film as a new art or style of expression rather than as an inevitable expression of a retroactive and anachronistic Europe? Because unlessand until we recognize that there was not one cinema moving inevitably towards
classical American cinema, the theatrical European actress will remain ananachronism, a kind of nineteenth century leftover, the flip side to film andmodernist progress. As we suggested above, we are historians and so our task is
to contextualize and understand ’the living.’
311

Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books,
1953), 43.
127

The disciplinary debate
Our engagement with questions of theatricality, anachronism, and stardom
come (obviously) on the heels of other works. We do not need to repeat thecriticisms which theatre historian David Mayer has directed at Nicholas
Vardac’s Stage to Screen (1949), Roberta Pearson’s Eloquent Gestures(1992) or Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs’s Theatre to Cinema (1997).312 Nor
too do we want to redress the very selective way in which Charles Musser
has more recently recuperated the theatre in his article “Towards a history oftheatrical culture: imagining an integrated history of stage and screen.”313 We
will instead position our project within the context of Christine Gledhill’srecuperation of ’theatricality’ in her book Reframing British Culture: 1918 –
1928, Between Restraint and Passion. Here, in a thoughtful reflection upon
what it means to recuperate a criticised genre or style of film, Gledhill statesthat she wants:…to evaluate films for what they do rather than what they fail to do. Such an
approach questions the relegation of this cinema as ’old fashioned’, rethinking its relation to the practices and values of its surrounding and preceding
cultures, which to a critical intelligentsia appear all too easily as regression
from the modernism promised by film.314

Gledhill’s focus is British film in the decade 1918–1928. She engages withthe very ’staginess’ of British film, arguing that the shared perceptual framesof British theatre and cinema provide evidence of a specific cultural practiceor imaginary. Hers, then, is a move to recuperate British film from the signs
of its theatrical regression. Tying British film in to a model adapted fromother historians of British culture (particularly in to David Peters Corbett,writing about post war British painting) she explains that even if English
painting between the wars turned from Vorticism and Futurism, it was nevertheless “a response to modernity, rather than a failure of modernist imagination defined by Continental examples.”315
We are turning, then, to this ’Continental example’ and arguing that evenhere an ’old fashioned’ theatrical cinema can be isolated and recognized.
Rather than determining a modernist margin, however, this cinema addressed questions which went to the core of contemporary concerns. What
was film? Where did it stand in relation to the theatre? Was it a new art? A
312

See David Mayer, “Learning to See in the Dark,” Nineteenth Century Theatre 25 (2): 92–
114 and “Which Legacy of the Theatre? Acting in Silent Film: Some Questions and Some
Problems,” in Screen Acting, ed. Peter Kramer and Alan Lovell (London: Routledge, 1999),
10–30.
313
Charles Musser, “Towards a history of theatrical culture: imagining an integrated historyof stage and screen,” in Screen Culture: History and Textuality, ed. John Fullerton (Eastleigh:John Libby, 2004), 3–20.
314
Christine Gledhill, Reframing British Cinema, 1918–1928: Between Restraint and Passion, (London: BFI, 2003), 2.
315
Ibid.
128

craft? Mere reproduction? A popular art? A high art? A quotidian object?
The works of Bernhardt and Borelli answer these questions in specific andconcrete ways. The question, as Gledhill reminds us, is about visible presence and concrete facts. It is about what films do.
Beginning with Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt is famous for her two narrative films La Dame aux Camélias (1911) and Queen Elizabeth (1912). As Richard Abel recounts in The
Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896–1914, La Dame aux Camélias is a
two reel condensed version of her famous five act play. It is “perhaps themost regressive of all surviving Film d’Art productions” because of its focus
upon studio decors, narrative intertitles and the long take tableaux. Queen
Elizabeth––described in similar terms––is renowned for the fact that itproved an enormous box office hit, gaining for Zukor the profits that would
finance his Famous Players series.316
It is here that discussion about Bernhardt stops. While I have, on otheroccasions, made some effort to contextualise the costume, tableaux and narratives used in these historical films, today I want to address Bernhardt’s
next film, Sarah Bernhardt à Belle Isle (Sarah Bernhardt at Home, Filmd’Art, 1912). Not only does this provide us with a fresh and interesting lookat the actress, but it is a film which forces us to ask new questions about theactress and her engagement with the medium. Indeed, the most obvious
questions begin with the genre of film itself: if Bernhardt was indeed merely
reproducing her theatre on film, why would she bother to make a film which
had little or nothing to do with the theatre? Why not take any one of her’other’ famous theatrical roles––Phedre, Cleopatra, Theodora, Jeanned’Arc––and bring them to film? And if she was, alternately, only using film
as a way to publicize herself, why not take us back stage or introduce us toher cast, give us a glimpse of her famous wardrobes and jewellery or a tourof her atelier in Paris? Why bring us to Belle Isle, her holiday retreat, andshow herself walking around windy coastlines collecting flowers? Since thiswas the first home movie made by a star for film, why not focus a little moreon the home? Why all this outside movement, this roaming from place toplace, particularly since she obviously found it difficult to walk (her leg
would be amputated three years later)? And so on. These are the questions
which can be asked of this film. Rather than directing discussion towards thestar and publicity, I want to ask what it is we are seeing. Because it is quite
obvious that Bernhardt was famous and that a popular audience watchedfilm. It is not so obvious, however, for us today to appreciate what it was she
was trying to achieve with film.

316

See Richard Abel, The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896–1914 (Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998), 314–315.
129

An island landing
I will open my analysis with the film’s establishing opening shot. It shows
Bernhardt being rowed to shore from the steamship, L’Emile Solacroup.
This ship was a famous passenger ship which took people from mainland
France to Belle Isle en Mer, an island in Brittany. Reproduced on postcards
at the time, the ship pointed to both a growing trade in tourism (and hence
also the postcard) and to the expanding reach of steam and rail travel. Indeed, given that the ship was actually named after Solacroup, the famous
nineteenth century director of the Paris–Orleans railway, it also points tochanges in public mobilization and conceptions of speed and distance. Thisfocus upon newness and novelty was linked, too, to the fact that Victor
Laloux had, in 1900 (on the eve of the Exposition Universelle and in a record two years), completed the Gare d’Orsay. As the first electrified railway
terminal in the world, it was also considered a masterpiece of industrial architecture. As the implicit starting point of Bernhardt’s journey, we are returned to an image of a modern Paris which she had, in her own turn, helped
to define.
Bernhardt arrives by steam (train and boat) to Belle Isle but is then rowed
ashore. This is not a landing at the Port de Palais, the ’actual’ port of Belle
Isle where Bernhardt would later be photographed, amid large crowds ofpeople. Nor, too, does this image duplicate the images which circulated on
post cards of Bernhardt’s arrival at this same beach (the more remote ’Plagede Poulains’) since we no longer have an anonymous, waiting crowd watching her disembark from the row boat.317 Instead, ours is a solitary regard held
on an otherwise empty beach. This suggestion of privacy, of a secluded andprivileged spectatorship, helps to confirm the idea that this is an intimate andrevealing document of a famous actress returning ’home’.
In this same opening scene we can see a small boat to the far left. This is afishing boat, identifiable through its distinct sails, which recalls the paintings
which Maxime Maufra had completed a few years earlier from this same
beach.318 Establishing the presence of a local community and suggesting its
hardy, resilient nature, we then move on to a shot in which we watch threesmall rowboats head to shore. Figures wave and although we cannot see
precisely who these are, the introductory title has already told us that Bernhardt is travelling with her son, Maurice. We can assume, then, that we havebeen included in Bernhardt’s group of close intimate friends, that the actressis signalling her awareness of our presence, and that even if she can not
really see us (just as we can not really see her, she is both too far away and,anyway, a film), there is a reciprocal acknowledgement of fictional presence.
317

See, for example, the image reproduced in Jean Dupont–Nivet, Sarah Bernhardt: Reine dethéâtre et souveraine de Belle–Ile–en–Mer, (Rennes: Éditions Ouest–France, 1996), 40.
318See, for example, Maufra, Rentrée des bateaux de pêche, Belle–Ile–en–Mer, oil on canvas,
26 x 32, 1910 (Galerie Durand–Ruel, Paris).
130

This is not an instance in which we imagine ourselves part of a thronging
and invisible crowd (the beach is empty) but one in which we can enjoy thefiction of our own uniqueness, our undisturbed importance upon an unnamed
beach. Moreover, this is also an instance in which everything we see––thesteamship, the fisherman’s boat, the newsreel–type footage of Bernhardt’s
arrival––is shot, grouped, and framed entirely for us. Hence in the second
shot the steam stops pouring from the funnel just as the fisherman’s boat
disappears from sight yet Bernhardt smoothly continues her approach towards us. In this way, we know that Bernhardt is labouring for us, that she isworking to produce this public fiction of her private retreat.
In this first shot, as Bernhardt approaches shore in her rowboat, visual
meanings change. On the one hand, we have a collage of respective boats(the stream ship, the rowboats, and the fishing boat returning us to Maufra).
On the other, we also have Bernhardt’s own boat again returning us to impressionist painting, specifically to Edouard Manet’s Escape of Rochefort(1881), with its similar composition, indistinct grouping of people on a rowboat coming towards us, as well as its sense of expectant arrival. Yet
whereas Manet was painting an event some 6 or 7 years after the fact andreconstructing an escape from an island (Henri Rochefort escaped from theIsle des Pins, Noumea, by stopping a ship whilst on an excursion in 1874, by
1880 he was newly in Paris),319 Bernhardt’s trip depicts an event as it unfolds
and is about an escape of an altogether different sort: Bernhardt escapes toan island, she is less a political than a public prisoner, and she seeks the very
isolation that Rochefort obviously disliked.
Decoration and display
What, however, are the terms of Bernhardt’s film as a new art? Aren’t wemerely seeing a renegotiation of impressionist painting? (Here Maufra andManet, later I will speak about Claude Monet, John Peter Russell, and Gustave Courbet). In a sense, yes, we are indeed seeing a renegotiation of impressionist painting since film is––of necessity––an art produced en plein
air, it is representing an ordinary excursion, it marks the passage of time,and focuses upon the description of physical movement. But in Sarah Bernhardt à Belle–Isle we are also dealing with film as a decorative art, meaning
the photographic image as a reconstructed art object and not just a material
document telling us of a given event. Hence, in the next shot Bernhardt’s
greyhound rushes forwards to meet her boat. This is the dog in Georges
Clairin’s famous portrait of the artist (Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, 1876)
given its ’liberty’; this is his curving tendril tail which ended the curves ofher own sinuous body finally freed into actual movement. In other words,
319

See ‘French Notes’, “The Report on Rochefort’s escape and the Penal colony”, New YorkTimes, February 22, 1875, 2 and “The Escape of Rochefort”, New York Times, April 19 1874,
9.
131

with film we have a movement from inside to outside, a shift from a line that
describes movement through dress and pose to the depiction of the movement itself. Thus, on film, the dog rushes to join its mistress just as she
waves to her watching audience. Gone is the opulent décor frozen into aformal image of dog and owner; gone, in other words, is the idea that thefemale artist was best correlated with a seductive interior and the related
presumption that woman signals a return to touch and texture alone. Stilldressed in white and still the fundamental anchor in the image, Bernhardt’s
portrait is brought, through film, quite literally out into the world.
It is important that we keep focused on this renegotiation of women’s roleas decorative object and as decorative artist. For in this same image––andlater in others––we have Bernhardt carried to the shore, we have her boxes
carried uphill for her, we have her being cared for and looked after in a manner very different from traditional images of woman in a rural setting andvery different from earlier portraits of women ’at home’. Indeed, we need
only realize the extent to which gendered roles are being essentially reversed(or at least significantly revised) in order to appreciate the extent to which
Bernhardt is authoring her own image on film. For example, there is a shot
just after her landing on shore where we see men carrying her luggage. Thisis compositionally and thematically very similar to Jean–Francois Millet’s
Peasant women with brushwood (1858). Like the painting, which famously
depicts two anonymous women carrying heavy loads of wood on their backs,
the film shows men leaning forward, their caps covering their face as theystrain against the boxes on their shoulders. Rocks and shrubs line the paththey are walking on; we can see the curved points of their heavy clogs as
they walk diagonally up, across the screen. Here, as elsewhere, Bernhardt
authors her own image by this shift in iconographical reference. Men, it istherefore suggested, anonymously labour for Bernhardt in this rural retreat.
Bernhardt is the star, carried off the boat and given flowers, she is the queen
arriving at her castle (her house is the fort we see in one of the images). As if
to reiterate her point about self– representation and female authorship, Bernhardt has a young female companion rush ahead to take a quick photographof Bernhardt as they approach her house. Later, in her atelier, Bernhardt
sculpts. Surrounded by busts, she busily moulds a portrait of Edmond Rostand, the playwright whose L’Aiglon she had made famous on the stage adecade earlier. Joined by a female secretary who busies herself with a book,
Bernhardt is a professional artist capable now not only of bringing Rostand’sverse to the stage but of materializing his physical form. Later, Bernhardt isshown writing thoughtfully in her study, again attended to by a female maid.
And even later, there is the local festivities in which a ’Breton dance’ isshown. In each instance, it is Bernhardt who is both a patron and a participant: that gendered division between artist and subject is actively refused.
It is not just the agency given to the female artist which is important here,
but the fact that the arts are no longer celebrated in their isolation. This had
132occurred earlier, in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, when Bernhardt exhibited
sculpture in Paris, London, and New York and gained much press and attention through this. Photographs of the period, particularly those by Melandri
in 1871, famously show her cross–dressed in a white satin suit as she
sculpted or painted in her atelier. This was, clearly, suggestive of both gendered and artistic transgression. By 1901, however, it was explained how“one of the phenomena of the present day is the number of female artists
now practising sculpture and the allied arts, practising them steadily”; in
1903 the popular journal Femina would feature images of female artists intheir respective studios.320 By 1912, therefore, Bernhardt was not proving her
literary and/or artistic talents but combining these within the one work,within the one film. Hence it was actually film which––unique amongst thearts––facilitated a plurality of vision and a permeability of artistic borders.
Bernhardt’s male companions––those men who follow her along the coast or
who join her for lunch or who salute her and/or carry her bags––are thephysical bodies who bring a very different sense to the idea of artistic’work’.
Painting and presence
To turn, now, to painting and to argue that even if we do not have any ’actual’ images of Bernhardt painting in the film, the visual composition of eachscene drew upon works which were familiar to her contemporary audience. I
suggested, at the beginning of this paper, that Bernhardt consciously engaged with impressionist painting in the opening shots of the film. And I
think that Bernhardt went on to do this throughout the work, choosing torecontextualize familiar images and styles rather than have herself shown’actually’ painting. The most obvious instance of this is when Bernhardt
inserts herself as protagonist into a shot of the seaside on Belle Isle. Here,
she is shown gesturing to a sea in which waves move against the rocks andin which an untouched nature is defined by an uninhabited, windswept coastline. Like Gustave Courbet in the 1870s, presenting a wave in terms of its
sensorial impact or, more recently, like Claude Monet or John Russell (bothin 1890) painting the effect of water hitting rock on Belle Isle, Bernhardt isdefining nature in a way that has many parallels to the shock and sensation
we otherwise relate to modern, urban space.321 Where Bernhardt departs
from these earlier paintings, however, is in the insertion of herself: she andher companions are actually part of this rugged nature, it is they who intrude
upon it and introduce us to it. In this way, Bernhardt demonstrates a subjec-

320

See M. H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of Today (London: Cassell & Co.,
Ltd., 1901), 12 & “Les artistes femmes au Salon de 1903,” Femina (55), May 1, 1903, 519–
521.
321
See, for example, Monet’s Storm at Belle Isle and the compositional similarities between
this and the shot in which Bernhardt sits on a rock and waves expansively out to sea.
133

tive engagement in the world: she might return woman to a wild and bountiful nature, but she is very clearly changing its representational meaning.
The same might be said of Bernhardt’s re–working of the landscape:
Monet and Vincent Van Gogh present us with fields of poppies only occasionally populated by people. Hence, Monet’s wife and son stroll indistinctly
through his 1873 canvas, Poppy Field near Argenteuil; these two––and there
are another two figures behind them again––might be any mother and son.
Bernhardt, however, is instead at the front of the screen in her ’field of poppies’ presented in the film. Identifiable, and clearly directing the activity of
the women who surround her, she again mediates visual meaning. The poppies are therefore replaced by roses and camelias, women pick the flowers
and collect huge bundles which they then pile onto a cart. Rather than blend
in to the background of the image, women define and determine a physicalpresence.
Even the picnic Bernhardt depicts in the film represents less a lazy lunchtime meal than a conscious reworking of familiar visual motifs. The camera
therefore pans left across a group of men who––in terms of pose and setting––recall Edouard Manet’s famous Le déjeneur sur l’herbe (1863)––and thenonto a table that is compositionally and thematically reminiscent of Pierre–Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881). What we are missing, of course, is both Manet’s nude models and Renoir’s sense of relaxedengagement. Instead, a woman (Bernhardt) is there to direct our gaze and to
define visual meaning: the camera stops on the lunch table where Bernhardt
sits, organizing and choreographing surrounding activity.
This sense of visual transformation––whereby one image slips into another, one history extends and develops another––is best illustrated in thescene just before the film’s conclusion. At this point Bernhardt is finallyplaced within a ’public’ (the local Breton community) and celebrated as apatron. After speeches, a ’Breton dance’ is performed for her by the locals.
Bernhardt is in the distance, signing autographs, and it is unclear whether
she is even watching the performance. In the foreground, a group of men andwomen dance around playing musicians. The obvious source for this image
is Paul Gauguin’s Breton Girls Dancing (1888), where three girls have flowers pinned to their chest and hold hands, their figures describing a circular
movement. Behind them is a village, with a church spire and buildings. In
Bernhardt’s film the Breton dance has changed in meaning and motivation: aspontaneous act is now a gesture of recognition and an islolated few havebecome an entire community.
The fiction of the painter’s anonymous presence––or, at least, his capacity
to capture the primitive remains of the modern world––has also been denied.
Not only do we again have Bernhardt at the centre of the image (if not literally, at least symbolically, for this celebration is for her) but we have activity
clearly choreographed for the camera. There is no pretence, as there waswith Gauguin, that the Breton community was a spiritually pure peasant134community and Brittany an isolated retreat free from the corruption of themodern world. Instead, Belle Isle and its peasant community is documented
and brought forth as a vibrant part of the modern world, dependent uponoutside patronage for its sustenance and new technology for its visibility.
Indeed, Bernhardt was very public in her support of local activities and initiatives and actively promoted them. The ’danse Bretonne’ performed in herhonour as benefactor of a local co–operative bakery was not only featured onher film but was publicized on the cover of the journal Excelsior in August
1912. In 1911 Bernhardt also famously responded to the storms which destroyed the island’s fishing fleet by staging a ’Matinée de Gala’. This was abenefit performance of the play Pain d’hiver des pêcheurs de Belle–Ile–en–
Mer which also saw the publication of a programme illustrated by Georges
Clairin.322 The change from the image of an untouched utopian retreat to one
in which the local community actually celebrated the presence of a female
outsider (Bernhardt) indicates the extent to which the notion of an originalprimitive innocence was being eroded.
Here we must remember that we are on Belle Isle, that is, on an island
traditionally celebrated for its cultural and geographic isolation and regarded
as a frontier against the Dutch and English. This is where Alexandre Dumas
set his novel The Man in the Iron Mask (1850) and where his King explainsthat he wants the fortifications to remain intact upon the Island, but that it is
not these which draws him to the place. He accordingly states: “You would
not guess what I want to see at Belle– Isle, Monsieur Fouquet; it is the pretty
peasants and women of the lands on the sea–shore, who dance so well, andare so seducing with their scarlet petticoats!”323 It was also here, on BelleIsle, that Dumas had Porthos, one of his characters in the Three Musketeer’s,die. In an equally famous work (which marks the beginning of his historic
dramas) Dumas’s play Mademoiselle de Belle Isle (1839) similarly focusedupon Gabrielle, an attractive youth from Belle Isle. This is a role which
Bernhardt played in November 1872 on her return to the Comédie Française
and which was one of the few works by Dumas to remain in the repertory of
the Thèâtre Française into the twentieth century.
Conclusion: the woman at the window
When Bernhardt brought Belle Isle to screen in 1912, however, she was’playing’ no one but herself and she represented the island a little differently
from Dumas’s description of musketeers, knights, fishermen, and the Court.
It was, certainly, a place in which solitude and silence could be enjoyed. It
offered ’savagery, fishermen, sea, and sky’. But it was also what she called’little and immense’, in that it was a small landmass that expanded forever322

See the reproduction of these images in Dupont–Nivet, op. cit., 200.
Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),
450.

323

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outwards, meaning that it moved out to the sea, and out, finally, to America.
This is a very different tale, then, of the wranglings between capital andprovince, Paris and Brittany, described by Dumas. As Bernhardt explained in
Femina, in an article written in 1904, “Yes, it is small, Belle Isle; but it issavage and it is immense, because Belle Isle is one of the points of the oldworld, the point where Europe plunges into the Ocean, and this Ocean, withits black rocks and transparent green waves hurls itself infinitely ahead,
where I imagine America, and still more worlds!”324
The film concludes with a portrait of Bernhardt. She is indoors, alone
with three dogs, seated comfortably as she turns and looks out a window.
This is the closest we have been to her; it is an intimate image exposing a
quiet moment alone. That it is only at this moment, and through this image,that we finally have Bernhardt
fixed calmly, decoratively, within her home is telling. At this point, when
she gestures out the window, we might say that she is old, that the camera isstill, and that she represents an image of Europe’s anachronistic (and theatrical) collapse. But we might, alternatively, compare this image to that painted
by Clairin some forty years earlier and, following Gledhill, ask that weevaluate the film for what it does. Sarah Bernhardt at home shows Bernhardt
arriving by train, by steamship, and by rowboat. It shows her sculpting, writing, and transforming the visual and narrative meaning of the pictorial andliterary arts. Finally, it shows her at home looking out onto the sea andthrough this, onto America. America was the ’New World’, a modernity ofwhich Bernhardt certainly imagined herself a part. In other words, this film
is not about the decorative arts constructing a sanctuary of a safe and feminine home. It is about a window opening outwards. It is, as Bloch might say,an anecdote about living.
This paper was originally accompanied by illustrations. You can see them on:
www.italiansilentcinema.net/proc/wss2008/duckett

324

Georges Bouidon, “Sarah Bernhardt à Belle–Ile, Une letter de Mme Sarah Bernhardt”,
Femina, August 1, 1904, 235.
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Lyda Borelli as a Liberty Icon
Elena Mosconi
The Lady of the Painting
The relationship between the great French actress, Bernhardt, and the Italian Diva, Borelli, is shown in a photograph taken in 1911 in Cesare Tallone’s atelier by the photographer Emilio Sommariva.325 It is a photographwhich depicts an artist painting an actress. Tallone (the painter) is completing an enormous portrait of Lyda Borelli. Borelli, one of the most important actresses in the Italian theatre in the teens, entered film just two years
after the completion of this image. She is shown wearing Salomè’s costume, which was a role she famously played on the stage. As we know, thisrole was written by Oscar Wilde for Sarah Bernhardt but she could not––for reasons of censorship––bring it to the stage. This photograph demonstrates Borelli’s popularity in the 1910s. It also gives evidence of the relationship between Italian theatre and contemporary (that is, modern) European culture.
We do not need to again demonstrate Borelli’s importance to Italian society of the teens. Nor must we reiterate the fact that her fame increased
when she left the theatre for cinema in 1918 when she married.326 As mostpeople know, during these years in Italy a new term––“Borellism”––wasinvented in order to explain the public notoriety of Borelli’s gestures.
Moreover, many historians such as Gian Piero Brunetta, Cristina Jandelliand Angela Dalle Vacche have given exhaustive interpretations of her art
and work.327 In the same vein, we do not need to discuss Borelli’s status asan erotic icon. As it is commonly known, it was Antonio Gramsci, writing
in 1917, who reduced her to this, stating that:325

Cesare Tallone (1853–1919) was an Italian painter known for portraits and scenes of landscapes. He taught in Milan to a generation of famous painters such as Carlo Carrà, Antonio
Sant’Elia, Aroldo Bonzagni and Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. Emilio Sommariva (1883–
1956) was a photographer who lived in Milan, too. His work was devoted to landscape andcity pictures, to the photographic reproduction of paintings and portraits, mainly of actresses
and artists. His photographs (45000 negatives on glass plates and 2700 original prints) are
now in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense of Milan. See: Giovanna Ginex. Ed., Divine.
Emilio Sommariva fotografo. Opere scelte 1910–1930 (Busto Arsizio, Varese: Nomos, 2004).
326
Borelli’s career in film was very short but intense: she played 13 films in the years 1913–
1918.
327
Gian Piero Brunetta, “Sing, o Goddess…”, Fotogenia, 4–5 (1998): 279–286 and Gian
Piero Brunetta, “Divine apparitions”, Cinegrafie, 12 (1999): 168–176; Cristina Jandelli, Le
dive italiane del cinema muto (Palermo: L’Epos, 2006); Angela Dalle Vacche, Diva. Defianceand Passion in Early Italian Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008). I am gratefulto the important work of these scholars. In this paper, I have attempted to both develop anddialogue with them.
137

It is necessary to study Borelli’s case as an example of sexuality. There is noother way to understand it, to explain it and also to get free from it. […] Thiswoman is a piece of a prehistoric and primordial humanity. No one can explain Borelli’s art, because it doesn’t exist. Borelli isn’t able to interpret anyother creature apart from herself.328

These statements of Gramsci were shared by many critics. Borelli wasconsidered either beautiful or an artist, as if one was an alternative to theother.329
The point of my discussion is very different. I want to ask why and how
we can (or should) return to Borelli. That is, I want to ask how might werecuperate an actress who––in comparison with other actors––has been
considered, like Bernhardt, to be too theatrical, too boring, too decadent, ina word, too anachronistic for both the cinema and the modernity it helped
to inaugurate. Perhaps, as a critic has suggested,330 she inspired other stars,
particularly during the twenties and the thirties. That is, her figure was still
alive and productive many years after her retirement from the scenes. Or
maybe––on the contrary––Borelli was too ’contemporary’ for her age,meaning that she was actually an inadequate representation of her time andso emerges as an anomalous and theatrical misfit in the eyes of posterity.
In any case, what we must pose is a historical question, a query that authorizes us to look outside the field of cinema and that allows us to investigate the social, political and artistic contexts of Borelli’s fame. In doing
this, we are once again engaging with Borelli just as we might engage with
Bernhardt. Indeed, it is certainly not by chance that they both refused to
devote themselves only to cinema and continued to recite in the theatre andto undertake many other activities. In their opinion, we could argue, cinema was only part of a more complex engagement; it was just one aspectof an attempt to articulate and create a new form of artistic expression. In
this sense, their performance stops being boring or decadent or even anachronistic and becomes, instead, the visible testimony of a modern Belle
Époque aesthetic.
A Multiple Portrait of the Actress
Let us return to Sommariva’s photograph and consider how it can be readon a variety of different levels. First of all, it is the reproduction of an artistic performance. The photograph shows an articulated set with a play ofmise en abîme. The Diva, outside the theatre, plays the role of Salomè, andshows––in her costume and theatrical pose––a moment of dramatic climax.
328

Antonio Gramsci, “In principio era il sesso…,”, Avanti, February 16, 1917, now in Antonio Gramsci, Letteratura e vita nazionale (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1991), 329–330.
329
Many critics’ statements are collected in Lyda Borelli (Roma: Museo Internazionale delCinema e dello Spettacolo, 1993).
330
Fausto Montesanti, “Parabola della diva”, Bianco e Nero, 7–8 (1952): 55–72.
138

But the performance can be appreciated only by the painter: in fact, we asviewers are aware of her artificiality. As in a play on the theatre, therefore,
the photograph frames the scene and creates a complex representation oftime and space. There is the painter who sees the actress, there is the bi–
dimensional space of his painting, and there is also the tridimensional
space of Borelli who poses and of the painter’s profile that brings depth tothe scene. Furthermore, in the same image there are different temporalities.
There is the past that is represented and made immortal in the big portrait,
which has been solemnized by the gold–plated frame. There is also a more
recent past, the time of Salomè’s and Borelli’s performance. There is animperfect tense (a past time but not concluded) in the painter who is still
completing his work. There is also a present tense (time), the moment of
the photographic shot. Finally, there are two more future times: the time ofthose who in 1911 saw this picture in the Photographic Exposition in Romeand Turin (where it won prizes) and there is a future that becomes up–to–
date today, 100 years after the shot.
At another level, and speaking very generally, this photograph reveals
an intermedial and intertextual relationship between the classic and thecontemporary painting, a relationship between the biblical tradition and its
decadent translation in late 19th Century, and between the cultures of thetheatre and the opera. Clearly, we must remember here that Strauss composed Salomè and that the music was performed in Italy in 1905.
The picture also offers one final question: who is Borelli in this photograph? And who is the protagonist, the model, or the painter? The title, “inthe painter’s atelier”, focuses attention on the painter Tallone. But how
could the painter be an artist, without this kind of model? This picture
prompts me to ask, then, what Borelli was in the Italian cinema of the Belle
Époque. I want to briefly explore, as in Bernhardt’s case, the relationshipbetween Borelli and the other arts.
The Diva’s Gesture
The similarity between Bernhardt and Borelli are outlined in 1915 by aliterate, Lucio D’Ambra, who would a few years later write the screenplay
of Borelli’s Carnevalesca. As he stated, “Reine de l’attitude et du geste
wrote a poet addressing to Sarah Bernhardt. It is possible to readdress thesome words to Lyda Borelli. […] This actress doesn’t express herself onlywith her voice, her eyes, her face. All her figure is dramatic, eloquent, expressive”.331
Many scholars have spoken about Borelli’s acting. Gerardo Guccini,
who is a theatrical historian, has introduced the term “performative acting”
in relation to her.332 This means that there are some moments in the diva’s
331
332

Lucio D’Ambra, La Tribuna, November 27, 1915.
Gerardo Guccini, “Tecnicismi borelliani”, Cinegrafie, 7 (1994): 118–124.
139

film––that we can compare to melodrama’s arias––devoted to a particularkind of acting. In these instants, as in moments of dramatic climax, thediva shows an exasperated and antinaturalistic acting, due to different
kinds of passions: love, delirium, hysteria, and so on. She generally (andliterally) lets her long hair down as she gives herself up to an impulsive
and ’out of order’ performance style. Film historian Mario Verdone has
instead laid emphasis on her “decadent acting”, which is a style of performance very close to dannunzianism (a style that comes from Gabriele
D’Annunzio, the decadent and symbolist Italian poet). This way of acting
is based on “a refined and elegant sensuality, and on plenty of exhausted
sighs.”333 Other scholars stress her “hysteric and nervous acting”, or her“liberty acting”.
Notwithstanding these differences in how Borelli’s performance stylemight today be interpreted, the main criticisms of her acting concern thefact that it is repetitive, always the same, as if she really was playing only
one character in all of her films. On the contrary, I think that Borelli shows
an intentional coherence in her characters. They all belong to a high anddecadent social class (even when they have humble origins), and to a contemporary milieu (in fact she tries to avoid historical characters). Indeed,
her “plastic” silent art of acting is based on statuary shoulders, a white andpale visage, copper–blonde hair, a sinuous body wrapped in silk or satin
clothes, and on large and precise gestures. This means that Borelli shows aperformative use of eyes, arms and hands, which amplifies the dramatic
power of acting. “In my opinion––writes Borelli––the relationship between
beauty and art in film is mainly collected in hands and eyes”.334
We can note that, during this period, painters (Boldini, for instance) also
gave more importance to hands, as a new way to give emphasis to the female character. The hands can frame the face, in order to highlight a passion, or are an extension of the arms and the feelings of heart. We could
show many examples in relation to this.
At the same time, eyes and hair also become more dynamic and vital inorder to express pathos. We can think here, for instance, of the Pre–
Raphaelite Beata Beatrix (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1864–1870) and recall
the importance of Symbolism which brought attention to different elements
both of the subject and of the décor.335 Further, we must also remember thatclassical acting (in the theatre and in melodrama) is referenced by Borelli,
and that this is charged with emphasis, languor and dramatic exhaustion in,
333

Mario Verdone, “La recitazione del Decadentismo nel cinema italiano ‘muto’”, in L’uomo
visibile – The Visible Man, ed. Laura Vichi (Udine: Forum, 2002), 357–363. Verdone argues
that in Italy there is at the time a kind of decadent attitude spread through literature, picture,graphic arts, social costumes. Cinema only recalls and puts together these models of “inimitable lives” and makes them visible for a wide public.
334
Lyda Borelli, “Bellezza ed eleganza”, L’Arte Muta, 6–7 (1916): 7–9.
335
Rodolphe Rapetti, Le Symbolisme (Paris: Flammarion, 2007).
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for example, death scenes enacted by the heroine. These intertextual conjunctions are very broad and complex, as Gian Piero Brunetta, Cristina
Jandelli and Angela Dalle Vacche have shown. We can ask, at this point, if
Borelli’s and the Diva film in general is explicitly Symbolist, Pre–
Raphaelite, or Art Nouveau or if it simply “gives a shape” to a taste thatwas diffused in European culture. Before trying answer this question, however, let me give a closer look at the kind of intertextual relationship I am
commenting upon.
Pictorial Taste
We are today aware of the various ways in which a pictorialist taste wasarticulated within the Diva film. Let’s consider first the spatial organization of the set, the position of the camera and the length of the shots. According to Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs,336 we can note how Borelli’s
films depended upon the pictorial taste of the time. In the early films of the
Diva there is no shot counter shot, but a spatial articulation of depth which
is held for a long time, and this allows audiences to appreciate the actress’s
figure and movements. Nevertheless, the set is often fragmented into several parts in order to create dynamic effects. This is evident, for instance,in the frame of a window (or a balcony) that introduces depth, light, or, atleast, a connection between a private and a public space, joined through thefemale character.
An example of this occurs in Malombra (Carmine Gallone, 1917). Here,
we can observe the back lighting of Marina di Malombra looking at thelake through her room’s window. Silhouette and back lighting effects were
often used in Italian cinema of the period––mainly in open air scenes––asquality marks, according to a photographic taste that tried to imitate painting.337 Photographic pictorialism— and this is a pictorialism quite different
from that described by Brewster and Jacobs above—was publicized in Italyat this time through the review The Artistic Photography edited in Turin.
A similar use of a pictorial surface that creates the effect of spatial extension is given by the employment of the mirror in the frame. The mirror’s presence reduplicates the female image, revealing her inner ambiguity. This effect can also be seen in contemporary painting, photograph andtheatre.
Water is another pictorial element par excellence, as we have seen in theprevious examples concerning Bernhardt. Water brings fluidity to the picture, whilst it is also a projection of the thoughts and pathos of the character. The lake’s waters form the figurative environment of Marina di
336

Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
337
Barry Salt, “Il cinema italiano dalla nascita alla Grande Guerra: un’analisi stilistica”, in
Sperduti nel buio, ed. Renzo Renzi (Bologna: Cappelli, 1991), 51.
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Malombra, the main character of Fogazzaro’s drama Malombra, brought tocinema by Carmine Gallone in 1917. The quiet movement of the water ofthe lake that is always different, but never changes, suggests the idea of thepersistence of the past in the present. So, in her repeatedly sailing up anddown the lake’s surface, Marina is able to convert her personality into herancestor’s one, and thus takes revenge on her relatives.
Besides matching the film’s female character, the lake image can bejoined to the boatmen and their work. In this context, it outlines and raises
social issues, and so conforms to a figurative tradition proper to Northern
Italian painting (i.e. Gaetano Previati, Giovanni Segantini, Pellizza da Volpedo). Many references to modern painting can also be seen in the open air
scenes of Borelli’s films. These scenes show an ’anti–theatrical’ space.
Although in Diva films interiors are predominant, many open spaces arealso featured, such as gardens. In the natural environment of the wood, as
in the cultivated space of the garden of 19th century upper class country
villa, the Diva finds the possibility to give free expression to her inner passions, to dance, and to repeatedly renew her engagement with life.
The garden, with its flowers and animals, is also related to Symbolism
and to the floral and decorative taste of Art Nouveau. Further, we can notice the way in which the symbolism of the butterfly ties in with this garden motif, in that its metamorphosis entails a veritable ’flowering’ of
woman and of life.
This process of metamorphosis can be likened to that of the old Albad’Oltrevita, the main character in Rapsodia Satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1917),
who turns into a young creature before finally transforming back into an
old woman at the end of the film. Here the influence of the poet Guido
Gozzano, who dedicates a whole (but unfinished) poem to butterflies,338
might be cited together with the importance of Turinese culture in the
spread of the Italian liberty style.
Another recurrent theme in Liberty design––and a presence in gardens,
too––is the peacock, a symbol of elegance and magnificence, but also of
renewal and acquaintance: its ’hundred eyes’ symbolically give this animal
a consciousness of everything. The peacock tail becomes a decorative motif also in the applied arts and in female clothes. Hence, it appears––forinstance––in the hat that Borelli wears in the liberty fantasy of Carnevalesca (Amleto Palermi, 1918).
The use of the garden and outdoor pictorial space also provides, moregenerally, a reference to Spring as the season of rebirth and of flowers.
Again, in her films Lyda Borelli is usually surrounded by flowers in many
338

Guido Gozzano published in March 1914 in the newspaper La Stampa some lyrics about
Butterflies, (Epistole entomologiche), that he never brought to and end. In 1911 maybe hehelped his cousin, Roberto Omega, who worked at the Ambrosio society in carrying out adocumentary on butterflies.
142shapes and colours. We can cite here Malombra, La donna nuda, Rapsodia
satanica, Carnevalesca, and so on. Flowers are also always present in
decadent culture. A historian of Italian cinema, in 1940, therefore makes aconnection between the decadent poetry of Gabriele D’Annunzio in Paradisiac Poem (1893) and the acting style of Lyda Borelli, stating (in words
which directly reference D’Annunzio): “Isn’t it true that many roses fell
from your hands, since you were so tired?”339
The Body of the Arts
We could continue to enumerate the relationship between Diva films andcontemporary painting, from the Pre–Raphaelites on to Symbolism and thenon to Liberty. But this is not enough: Borelli and Diva films also recall
film’s relationship with all other arts and modes of expression. Diva films
are, in other words, rich with complex references to Liberty culture in general (to its graphics, painting, literature, décor, and so on). They are also,
however, continuous attempts to join these arts together, to bring one art toanother.
The theatrical and literary origins of many screenplays are quite obvious.
We can go further, then, and say that Borelli (such as Duse, Bertini and theother Italian Divas) took an active part in defining the creative process offilm. We know from Borelli’s correspondence with Baron Fassini, the Cines
chief and main producer, that she gave suggestions in order to put into film
the romance of D’Annunzio Forse che sì, forse che no (1910). The plot is
partially autobiographical, and joins together modernity (expressed throughaviation and velocity) with fatal languishing passions, mental illness, suicide. Borelli, who really wanted put romance into the film, and preparedherself to become the fatale Isabella Inghirami, proposed clothes designed by
the famous dressmaker Mariano Fortuny. They would have, explains Borelli,“strange decorations and colours and shapes, but they would be entirely very
nice and artistic”. The shape of the dresses, in Borelli’s opinion, could help
the public to better understand the main character: “I believe that an opticalsuggestion can steer audiences toward a particular feeling.”340 Again, there isa continuous overlap between literature and film, between mode and acting
in that every art and every symbol changes into another art or symbol
through the body of the Diva.
If we consider music, the process is similar. The presence of music in
Borelli’s films is relevant, where Borelli often plays piano (in the bourgeois
fashion of her characters), or where it becomes a theme or motif in the plot
or used at the figurative level. In Rapsodia Satanica, for example, Pietro
339

Eugenio Ferdinando Palmieri, Vecchio cinema italiano (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1994) (firstedition 1940), 102.
340
See letter written on 1 march 1917 to Barone Fassini, in Lyda Borelli (Roma: Mics, 1993),
59–60.
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Mascagni––one of the main Italian music composer’s of the time––was engaged to compose the film score: the importance of this score is suggested,
clearly, in the title of the film (Rapsodia is a musical word). But the importance of music derives from its capability to enhance the synaesthetic powerof film, through the body of the Diva.
In this context, we can also consider dance. Indeed, in the same way thatmusic helped to define the meaning and function of the Diva, so too did
dance demonstrate both Borelli’s capacity as a dancer and her engagementwith the rhythmic function of film (we know that many scenes of the films
were taken while an orchestra played). To say it better using Eric de
Kuyper’s words, dance lets us move from the physicality of the diva’s bodyto an order which is more spiritual and immaterial.341
This merging of styles, symbols, and meanings is typical of Symbolism’s
poetics. Different materials, arts, and forms meet together in the diva’s body.
The diva’s body, in effect, enables the transition between the arts or between
modes of expression. We must realize, however, that we are not in a Wagnerian drama, where different arts are expressed by a singular author. On thecontrary, the diva on film is a versatile and always changing figure who
shifts gestures and poses just as she shifts focus upon different passions orvarying arts. We move from one costume to another, from a symbol to a
decoration, from a gesture to a flower, from a plastic pose to dance. In thissense I would argue that cinema, particularly the Diva film, is a dynamic
form of expression. This dynamism is expressed both through the process ofartistic and figural metamorphosis and through the abstractions made (paradoxically) visible by the body of the Diva. Both of these lead, I would further argue, to the Liberty art form.
The Actress as an Artist
We have explored the different ties of Diva film with the figurative and literary culture of Belle Époque. Now we can turn to consider what kind of authorship it expresses. In other words, what really does a “Borelli film” or a“Bernhardt film” mean or represent? Recent debate about authorship in earlyand feminist cinema has provided theoretical, historiographical and methodological tools342. As everyone knows, this issue has given increasing im-

341

Eric De Kuyper, “Alla ricerca delle tracce dell’«Art nouveau» e del Simbolismo nel cinema dei primi decenni”, in Storia del cinema mondiale. L’Europa: Miti, Luoghi e Divi, ed.
Gian Piero Brunetta, vol. 1 of Storia del cinema mondiale (Torino: Einaudi, 1999), 189–194.
See also La danza delle avanguardie (Milano: Skira, 2005), catalogue of the exposition occurred in Rovereto (MART), which offers many suggestions about the connections between
dance, painting and theatre in the some period.
342
It is impossible to recall here the whole debate; see at least Jane Gaines, “Of Cabbages andAuthors”, in A feminist Reader in Early Cinema, ed. Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002); Rosanna Maule, “Une histoire sansnoms: les femmes et le concept d’auteur dans le cinéma des premiers temps”, CiNéMAS, 16/1
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portance to the Foucaultian idea of the author as a function of the text and to
the artistic and discursive practices evident in social and cultural contexts.
So, returning again to our examples, we have to relate Borelli’s and Bernhardt’s work in film to their theatrical milieu343. Since they are both actresses
and not writers, their degree of authorship depends mainly on their acting, on
their ability in giving a personal interpretation of a given theatrical work. An
excellent interpretation makes them earn the status of “artist”. In this context, we would suggest that it is productive, in considering the work of the
Diva in film, to shift from the issue of the author to the more undefined oneof the “artist”.
The exploration of the female artist has been undertaken by art historians.
Still today, there is attention paid to the fact that history has marginalized female artists and it remains necessary to recuperate their work.344 The difficulties are here similar to those we encounter in film research: the first question
relates to whether there exists a specifically ’female art’. Another question isrelated to the issue of female absence: why are there so few women artists? A
way to move beyond this problem is, in our opinion, to highlight the notion of“artistic intention”. If we address ’intention’ we can leave behind a series ofsimple oppositions, such as the high/low divide and the staging/acting binary.
In this way, we formulate a new possibility: the possibility that artistic results
depend largely on the economic conditions of production and on visibility.
Moreover we can pay attention here not only to the result (the “work of art”),
but also to the artistic process, and to the idea of what––in the artist’s opinion––a specific form of art in a certain historical moment is.
Let us consider, for instance, Borelli, who insists in calling herself an artist in her cinematographic work just as she did in the theatre. In doing this,she implicitly recognizes film as an art. As a critic argued in 1917, “Lyda
Borelli doesn’t express in film a new o a special type of acting, but a newform of her art. It is more effective than expressive, more plastic than impressive, more artistic than true.”345 Gramsci goes further in stating that
“Borelli is the artist par excellence of the film, whose language is only human body in its always changeable plasticity.”346
These statements agree with Borelli’s own idea of cinema, as we can inferfrom her words. On many occasions she outlines the non–realistic attitude ofcinema and its capability to make inner psychology visible. The theatrical(2005): 35–58 and Monica Dall’Asta, “The Singular Multiple: Francesca Bertini as Star andDirector”, Immagine, 12 (2006): pp. 48–68.
343
See recent Maggie B. Gale and John Stokes eds., The Cambridge Companion to The Actress (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
344
See, about the history and the debate of women artists in figurative arts, Linda Nochlin,
Women, Art, Power and other Essays (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988); Marina Corgnati,
Artiste (Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2004).
345
Pier da Castello, La Vita Cinematografica, April 22–30, 1917.
Antonio Gramsci, “In principio era il sesso…,”, Avanti, February 16, 1917, now in Antonio
Gramsci, Letteratura e vita nazionale (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1991), 329–330.
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performance, with actors and people watching in the public, makes the actress feel the sensations of ’life’; on the contrary, the cinematographic set
makes her feel alone and isolated in front of the camera. This introduces a
gap that repeatedly frames acting; the lack of speech forces the actress tofind a personal way to replace it. As Borelli explained, “The cinema represents with plastic and harmonious acting the absent speech” and inner sensations. Further, beauty and elegance had to accord exactly with the inner psychology of the character. She continues: “The shapes of our gestures, the lineof our plastic expression have a rhythm that must be harmonious with thewords which they supply.”347
On the one hand, Borelli thereby gives a proper definition of what cinema
is. On the other hand, she operates artistically through cinema: she gives her
own contribution in order to make cinema become an art. This is, again an’art’ which relates to her own intent as an artist; it is not necessarily congruent with what cinema was. During the age of Belle Époque, when the aesthetic movement very much involved an act of personal and visual elaboration, the artist became a mediator between life and art. It was she who applied to quotidian life the refined manners of art, and it was also she who
reproduced, in her artistic work, her own quotidian life, filtered by her artistic sensibility. In this sense, we can argue that in the Diva film, the actress isthe artist who not only embodies different expressive disciplines, but who isalso the figure who enables them to become Art. This is particularly clear as
Dalle Vacche points out in the case of the Diva film in Italy, and in all theother countries (generally in Europe) where modernity was new but also
related to traditional culture. In Francesco Casetti’s work, there is a model ofnegotiation that we apply a little differently here:348 the diva’s body on film
is a site of negotiation of what a new art, proper to the new century, can be.
Through her body, different cultures, arts and expressive forms interlock.
Towards a “Liberty” Art?
Now we can return to what we posed about Liberty Diva films being full ofreferences to contemporary arts and culture. Perhaps some of these references are explicit quotations, some are involuntary, some belong to a common language of art, or they relate instead to an individual’s artistic intention. Sometimes it is impossible to separate the one from the other, to argue
that any one particular influence, language, or style is unique. In any case,because Borelli and Bernhardt are cultivated artists, they pose questions

347

Lyda Borelli, “Bellezza ed eleganza”, L’Arte muta, 6–7 (1916).
Francesco Casetti, Communicative Negotiation in Cinema and Television (Milano: Vita e
Pensiero, 2002). About cinema as art in 20th century, see also Francesco Casetti, Eye of theCentury. Film, Experience, Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). Remember that this model of artistic intersection is specific to the Diva. Popular actresses—
drawn from the music hall or variety stages—pose different questions and different problems.
348

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about what a new, modern art should be. At the same time, they also suggest
the necessity to develop a new art in the new century.
We need to ask, at this point, what kind of art we are dealing with. In Italy
we have a debate about the “Liberty style”, the floral and national declination of the European movement of Art Nouveau, Jugendstil and Modern
Style349. Liberty is first considered––in the Italian debate––as a decorative
more than architectural style (that is to say more “formal” than “substantial”); it develops first in graphics and decoration, but its aim is to contaminate all kind of arts and modes of expression. Moreover, Liberty wants topursue new artistic aims without conflicting with the past; it essentiallywants to transform its cultural heritage into new lines, forms, and ideals. If
we assume this style as an aesthetic model that implicitly underlined theDiva film and motivated many of the Diva’s ideas about film, we can (perhaps provocatively) better understand their eclecticism. That is, we can relate post impressionism, the pre Raphaelites, Symbolism and Art Nouveau––
as well as the more general taste for decoration––to the Diva film. In thisway, the diva can be re–read through a new intermedial lens, as Angela
Dalle Vacche suggests.350
Let us explain. Liberty did not differentiate between pure arts (the noblearts) and the applied arts––and for this reason it was not accepted by old
intellectuals, at least in its early years––but joined together technical skills
and artistic spirits. Liberty was also a co–operative art in the sense that it
joined different competencies (more than one person worked on any given
art object). Liberty art was made by artisans and not by industrialists, meaning that every Liberty object was different and that products were essentiallycrafts. These aspects we can also find in our examples of the continental
Diva film. Moreover, Liberty was a style of art made by the bourgeois (themiddle and upper classes) in order to reach a popular audience. Film partakes in this same momentum. The years themselves also overlap, in thatthey both (Liberty and the Diva film) coincide with the Belle Époque, and349

See: Francesca Cagianelli and Dario Matteoni, eds., La belle Époque. Arte in Italia 1880–
1915 (Cinisello Balsamo, Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2008); Fabio Benzi, Liberty e Déco.
Mezzo secolo di stile italiano (1890–1940) (Milano: Federico Motta, 2007; Laura Vinca–
Masini, Il liberty – Art Nouveau (Firenze: Giunti, 1976); Rossana Bossaglia, Il Liberty in
Italia (Milano: Charta, 1997).
350“The combination of old and new transpired through the ambivalent and simultaneous
backward and forward orientation of leaves and flowers in the art nouveau style. It is thecurve that interests me in the construction of the diva film as a cultural type. The curve, directionally a mixed form par excellence, can split itself between the avant–garde and the backlash. Thus, the curve also echoes cinema’s blurring of the boundaries between high culture
and popular entertainment, mixing of directions and levels can be assessed through two complementary processes at work in art nouveau itself: on the one hand, the raising of minor arts
to aesthetic ranking; on the other, the serializations and consequent lowering of icons fromhigh culture into clichés for popular consumption”. Angela Dalle Vacche, Diva Angela Dalle
Vacche, Diva. Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2008), 108–109.
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they have the some spaces of diffusion (we can remember, in Italy, the cities
of Turin and Rome). Finally, we must remember that Liberty moved fromthe atelier to its public, from inside to outside, and from the home (furniture,lamps, windows) to its public exhibition (such as the Paris and Turin Expositions, but also urban ornamental décor, house’s and buildings façades).
Again, this was exactly like the cinema, which moved from small to large
movie theatres, from a little to a large presence in everyday life and costumes, as the “Borellism” wave illustrates.
Perhaps, at this point, we must acknowledge that the Liberty style and theDiva film are both a little unrealistic and together fail to differentiate true
and original art from vulgar imitation. Indeed, as the word itself suggests,
Liberty is the style that seeks to make Italian culture a little more free fromall kind of ties, and a little more experimental. If this means that art collapses
into kitsch or camp, so be it: the point is that our European actresses, properly contextualized, were women who also chose to perform this possibility.
In other words—and this is the point which we want to stress—what is’really’ anachronistic is not so much their effort to bring the Liberty taste tofilm, as it is our own incapacity to see what films do. We need to now go on,
therefore, to understand if the traces of art nouveau in European cinema canmore generally authorize us ask one final and important question: whether
the European cinema (headed by the female Diva) was imagined––for a certain period and through a certain “genre” of film by its contemporaries as thetrue “art nouveau”.
The paper was originally accompanied by photos. You can see them at:
www.italiansilentcinema.net/proc/wss2008/mosconi

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Engaging National Emotions on Screen: European
Silent Women in ’Strikingly Effective’ Melodramas
Dominique Nasta & Muriel Andrin
In his “Poetics of Melodrama”, Russian Formalist Sergei Balukhatyi considers that all elements in melodrama “are subordinate to one overriding aesthetic goal: the calling forth of ’pure’, ’vivid’ emotions, concurring to an’emotional teleology’”.351 Situations implying a strong emotional shock,unexpected twists and sharp reversals in the storyline, and ’strikingly effective situations’ contribute to this teleology. Characters are involved in expressive emotional relationships, which are both universal and primitive,
while they express their emotional experiences through impassionate andfully explicit speeches. Beyond these obvious features building emotionalteleology, Balukhatyi also brings forth technical principles structuring melodramatic representation: the principle of relief (schematization of plot situations and characters), of contrast and of dynamics co–exist in order to engender what Peter Brooks has defined as the melodramatic mode of excess.
The latter is based on the use of rhetorical figures such as hyperbole, antithesis and oxymoron.352
Reorienting Balukhatyi’s general view on melodrama, Boris
Tomashevsky insists on the pluridisciplinary or syncretic aspect of melodrama: “grand spectacle par excellence”, it makes constant use of operatic
staging and lavish settings, implies musical accompaniment as heritage of
pantomime. Besides, “the author of a melodrama had to have the imagination of a painter”.353
Considering that film characters from melodramas are also subject to ’reversibility’, the ’vicious’ repents and becomes virtuous through contrastive,
polar changes of plot. Yet, contrary to Balukhatyi’s idea, most feminine
characters are not always “devoid of individuality, either personal or everyday realistic”; even if they are types and often ’one–dimensional’, they canalso reveal multiple aspects of their personality.
The three films we chose to analyze (Mario Almirante’s La statua di carne(1921), Holger–Madsen’s Towards the Light (1919) and E.A. Dupont’s Pic351

Daniel Gerould, “Russian Formalist Theories of Melodrama,” in Imitations of Life, ed.
Marcia Landy (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 121.
352
We have examined these figures in different contributions for the last ten years: see« Figures de l’excès dans les Mélodrames Pathé d’avant 1915 » in La Firme Pathé Frères(Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2004), « Usage de l’hyperbole dans le mélodrame
européen des années 10 » in Il Melodramma (Roma: Bulzoni eds., 2007) and « Mélodrame et
oxymoron: variations filmiques sur la fin paradoxale » in Limina–The Film’s Treshold(Udine: Forum, 2004).
353
Gerould, 130.
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cadilly (1929)) make relevant use of feminine types. Their emancipation leads
to very complex representations. Literature, painting, theatre, vaudeville andmore specific art movements (Symbolism, Art Nouveau or other forms according to specific temporal contexts) consequently influence and define thesecomplex feminine representations.
The above–mentioned films are far from being “famous melodramas”.
Towards the Light, an Asta Nielsen vehicle, for instance, has practicallynever been analyzed genre–wise but more for its framing and camera work.
La statua di carne is barely mentioned as part of the Italian divas’ realm.
Piccadilly is mostly well known for Dupont’s stylistic mastery and the starstatus acquired by Anna Mae Wong following the film’s release, its melodramatic identity being downplayed. Yet, these films perfectly exemplify theEuropean melodramatic paradigm: apparently stereotyped characterizations
ultimately reveal extremely complex representations, both in their syntactic
logic and in their European generic features. Indeed, it is only through the
melodramatic filter that these characters and their contribution can be fully
understood. Besides, if masculine protagonists often appear to be at the coreof the narration, feminine ones eventually prove the motor of the melodramatic plot. Far from standing for idle or passive divas, the characters of Italia
Almirante–Manzini, Asta Nielsen and Anna Mae Wong’s deliberately andknowingly act upon their situation, even if they are finally caught up by fate.
What will be at stake is to see how they embody an obvious evolution in thecreation of a specific emotional discourse.
As we will try to show, this double articulation is actually dependent on
what Ed Tan and Nico Frijda have coined as being both fiction emotions (Femotions) and artefact emotions (A emotions). F emotions, on the one hand,are “responses to events in the fictional world” in which “the viewer sharesin the feelings of the protagonist” hence creating an empathic emotion.354 A
emotions, on the other hand, “include enjoyment and admiration of the film
as a film”, the film being a “manmade artefact”. Feminine characters fromour examples will be the theatre of both kinds of emotions provoking a newkind of audience response.
In La statua di carne (1921), a screening of a Teobaldo Cicconi play
(1874), Mario Almirante casts his cousin, Italia Almirante Manzini, as the
double character Mary and Naomi Keller. Count Paul Santarosa, deceived byhis fiancée, Lorina, meets Mary, an artificial flower maker who takes pity on
his apparently poor condition; once he gets a job, he withdraws from society.
Lorina ultimately learns about him and writes a warning letter to Mary, wholater falls ill and dies. After a long trip, Paul returns to his former “world”
and meets Naomi, a dancer who strikingly resembles Mary. He pays her to354

Ed Tan and Nico Frijda, “Sentiment in Film Viewing,” in Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, ed. Carl Plantinga and Greg M.Smith (Baltimore & London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1999), 52.
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act as the perfect portrait of Mary. She falls in love with him while thememory of Mary still haunts him. After a few narrative twists, Paul provokes
a duel with an old admirer of Naomi. He wins the duel and discovers that hedoes love Naomi.
Far from the “hysterical and twisting body language” of Italian divas asdefined by Angela Dalle Vacche, actress Italia Almirante–Manzini acts on adouble and intricate persona.355 Almirante’s persona conveys emotional teleology through a body both physically and psychologically structured to entail it. Thus, in her first onscreen appearance, she embodies Brooks’ hyperbolic instance, through what we have coined in past contributions as being a
synthetic hyperbole. Caught up in a window frame, she is seen wateringsome flowers and petting a caged bird, then having an excessive coughing
fit. This introduction reveals her profound nature before she is really introduced by the narration through a necessary syncretic characterization: thefloral element, the mise en abyme through the caged bird, but also the generic reference of La dame aux camélias seals her narrative fate. Her later
impersonation is similarly characterized, this time by a mask and a glittering
dress at a carnivalesque party. As Dalle Vacche points out, the diva combines two extreme postures, demonstrating that “the diva’s cultural function
was to embody a conflicted answer to major changes within sexual and social relations”.356 Yet, Almirante–Manzini differs from the double articulation of a ’rigidly elegant and callously flexible’ character.
If Paul is established as the film’s main character, he obviously serves tohighlight Maria’s complex personality. The doppelgänger dynamics further
developed in the double identity of Maria and Naomi, is first introduced by
Paul and his friend David who pretend to be beggars when they first meet
Mary and her girlfriends, returning from work. The core of the emotional
discourse is clearly articulated around the active force of Mary. Their meeting with Paul and David progressively increases Fiction emotion thanks todynamic editing devices.
But emotion reaches its peak in the sequence where Mary and Paul are seen
in his new home: they meet and kiss, while a peasant–woman holding a childin her arms is seen playing the accordion outside of their window. Mary is
obviously torn between real life, her work in the artificial flower factory, anda dream life with Paul as her everlasting love. The moment seems to entail atypical Fiction emotion in which we identify with the character’s passion.
Yet, Mary’s representation by the film director also plays on Artefact emotion through synthetic hyperboles: we are shown a painted portrait of hers by
355
Angela Dalle Vacche, Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2008). Italia Almirante–Manzini’s fame was surpassed later on by Pina
Menichelli’s.
356
Angela Dalle Vacche, op.cit., 8.

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Paul and she is again surrounded by flowers. The “musical” counterpoint
during the kiss enhances the same level of emotion, acting this time as an
iterative hyperbole: it repeats the vibration of a kiss under a different, nonvisual, form.
What is striking in this example is the plurality of emotional manifestations. Beyond synthetic and iterative hyperboles, literal hyperboles also express the character’s physiological state by way of titles. When receiving a
letter from Paul’s former fiancée and discovering his double identity, Marycollapses into another coughing fit. The title will read: “When she is nervous
or excited she always has a bad spell like that”, foreshadowing her fatal
destiny. The representation of her inevitable death also contributes to assign
the character a metaphysical dimension. It provokes an oxymoron echoing
pictorial syncretic references such as Symbolist painter Giovanni Segantini’s
Rose Petal (1891): she dies with her eyes wide open, a “happy death” since
she seems to be following the voices that call her (title: “I hear beautiful
voices, they are calling…calling”).
The film’s second part revealing Mary’s masked substitute relies on amore carnival–like dimension. The party where Paul meets Naomi clearly isa strikingly effective spectacular scene, creating an Artefact emotion. The
debauchery of the party and the constant echo of death are inextricably still
linked through Paul’s toast: “I pledge you a toast to death… the death oflove!” The image of the dead will haunt Paul and Naomi’s relationshipthroughout the second part of the story. The resemblance to Belgian symbolist George Rodenbach’s novel “Bruges–La–Morte”, who also inspired Evgenii Bauer’s Daydreams (1915) is more than obvious. When Paul runs to
Naomi’s side when she faints at the duel, it is the image of Mary which reappears. We are thus invited, through a binary flashback, to compare both
representations. Paul’s revelation of Naomi’s love is expressed through atextual oxymoron: “I have been blind––but you have made me see!” Despite
the ’happy ending’ reuniting Paul and Naomi, it is Mary’s image from beyond that vividly impregnates the spectator’s mind.
In accordance to the aesthetics of the late teens, Holger–Madsen’s Mod
Lyset/Towards the Light (1919) sets up an even more complex network offeminine characterizations. Holger–Madsen, former actor and acclaimed
director of Danish (with Nordisk) and later on German films, seems to havefavoured spiritual topics, which were already at the core of well–known
films such as Evangeliemandens Liv starring Valdemar Psilander (1915).
The film features Nielsen as Countess Ysabel, a decadent aristocrat who
experiences a spiritual transformation. Leading a young admirer to suicide
and marrying a con who will deceive her, she becomes infatuated with ayoung charismatic evangelist, Elias Renato (Alf Blütecher). But he resists
her temptation and, after a few ’twists and turns’, she becomes a preacher
herself.

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The film plays on the ’phantasmatic link’ which binds Nielsen to her audience for whom she has often stood for perverse and evil characters.357 Yet,
as Heide Schlüpmann and Karola Gramann stressed in their analysis, Nielsen
plays on a two–level articulation. She thus highlights the main points of the
intrigue, while also making the audience aware of her performative acting.
Representing Balazs’ concept of ’sign language of eroticism’, Nielsen “tookleave of rigid linguistic forms by means of gestures and facial expression,
behaviour patterns which she clearly displayed”, eventually also revealing“the reality of people”.358 Dresses and props helped her build a whole repertoire of characters. Frank Kessler, who goes beyond Balazs’ idea of physiognomy, explains how Nielsen expresses psychological states not only
through mimico–gestural acting but also through her dresses and haircut:
they work as “precise indications revealing the character’s situation eversince she appears” to the spectator who has to literally “read the clues”.359
Synthetic hyperbole is again used in Holger–Madsen’s characterization.
Known for his striking pictorial compositions, “his use of side light, inventive camera angles and close–ups combined with unusual sets”,360 the Danish
director heightens emotional impact through the use of symbolic inserts, themost famous being the one where Ysabel tempts Elias. The latter subsequently appears as Christ tempted by Satan. In this particular sequence, Holger–Madsen intertwines different types of visual clues provoking a striking
Artefact emotion. There are references to pantheist symbolic imagery, topictorial religious imagery (Christ’s portrait with a lamb which echoes Elias’
gestures) as well as an embedded famous Christian parable, namely that ofElias as a Christ tempted by Satan.
Yet, the most striking example of the use of symbolic inserts is situated at
the beginning of the film and concerns Ysabel. Nielsen is represented inthree dissolving portraits that summarize her ever–changing psychologicaland moral states. In a comparative hyperbole, Ysabel consecutively appears,
in three hypostases, frivolous countess, repent in prayer (both ’framed’), andfinally in her angelic dimension (where the frame disappears). Editing plays
a crucial part in the melodramatic composition. The general principle of thefilm will be a constant comparison between the fates of several characters

357

Françoise Audé, “Asta Nielsen”, 1895, 13 (December 1993), 54: “Dès ses débuts,
fortement marqué de sexualité, le lien fantasmatique unissant Asta Nielsen à ses spectateurs
explique qu’on lui ait fait don de plus de perversité qu’il n’est raisonnable. Le public a nourri
son image de ses propres spéculations et Asta Nielsen s’est prêtée de bon gré au jeu, auxrôles”.
358
Heide Schlüpmann and Karola Gramann, “Asta Nielsen, The Language of Love” in Il
Cinema Ritrovato 21a edizione (Bologna: Cineteca Bologna, 2007), 83.
359
Frank Kessler, “Le portrait–repère: l’actrice et le modèle” in Iris, 14–15 (Autumn 1992),
101–102.
360
Ib Monty, “Holger–Madsen”, MacMillan Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, vol. II, ed.
Christopher Lyon and Susan Doll (London: Macmillan, 1984), 264.
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implied, displaying very clear dynamics of contrast (by the use of natural
and/or artificial light).
After the living portraits, the film pursues with a comparative hyperboleof the literal kind (“The frivolous countess, who toys with men and their
feelings the same way she played with dolls as a child”) establishing Ysabel
as an evil character in an antithetic narrative situation.361 The cross–cutting
between the glamorous party (echoing La Statua di carne’s excessive party)
and Elias’ incredibly realistic island of beggars from the “sacred territory”
further builds the antithetic discourse. The antithesis and cross–cutting will
be repeated throughout the film, culminating in the spectacular opposition
between the beggar island assaulted by the flames and the priest walking onwater.
Simultaneity of action through cross–cutting is but one technique which
structures the plot. The film also relies on the character’s predestination orfate, as it can already be seen in the opening ’tableaux vivants’ of Ysabel. Itis peculiarly true of Felix’s destiny, expressed via a scriptural rhetoric, whichemphasizes Ysabel as evil character. His obsession with Ysabel is first seen
when she plays with him at a party where she offers him « the hand of theheart ». The allusion to the hand comes back as hope (“In the hand you gave
me to kiss lies my future and destiny”) then as despair in a letter she receives. After his suicide, his dead body, discovered by Elias, lies in her living room and the letter reads: “my love for you meant life to me––now I takedeath from your beautiful hand”. The last sequence is built on a perfectoxymoron since Ysabel simultaneously receives the dead body and the letter.
Predestination also strikes Ysabel, when, after her husband has been arrested and taken to prison, she throws her veil in the flames in an excessive
gesture––sealing her fate––or when she is confronted to Felix’s uncle who
appears in her own mirror, reminding her “What a man sows he also reaps!”
This use of the embedded mirror as an analytical hyperbole is, as Ron
Mottram and David Bordwell have shown in their respective studies, typicalof Danish early cinema. It allows deep focus and expansion of the playing
space but also displays, in this particular case, a painterly use of light andcomposition.362
According to Janet Bergstrom, Nielsen’s characters are always sanctioned
for their subversive behaviours so as to move back within social norms in the
final scenes, yet “she is never a conventional victim”. The end of Towards
361

Ysabel’s true nature is systematically expressed, underlined by different kinds of hyperboles and displaying the two forms of emotions. The insert on the spider’s web (symbol of
Ysabel’s play with men) plays on metonymical hyperbole, typically referring to artefact emotion “like a fly caught in the golden web of the spider”.
362
Ron Mottram, The Danish Cinema before Dreyer (New Jersey & London: The Scarecrow
Press, 1988), 87, David Bordwell, “Nordisk and the tableau aesthetic” in 100 years of Nordisk
Film, ed. Lisbeth Richter Larsen and Dan Nissen (Copenhagen: Danish Film Institute, 2006),
81–95.
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the Light reveals Ysabel has converted and married to Elias. She is presented
by Holger–Madsen as an independent preacher, addressing her own flock,“an angel” for those listening to her. The comparison is again underlined by
the use of iterative hyperbole: Ysabel, as announced in the prologue, is now
an angel with long blond hair, a star shining for the magi in a pious ending
vignette, a tableau vivant.
In the English production by German director Ewald André Dupont, Piccadilly (1929) the double acting articulation is crafted between two separatecharacters, confronting late 19th century imagery to 20th cinematic culture. In
the screenplay by reputed writer Arnold Bennett, Mabel (played by ’shimmer dance’ inventor Gilda Gray), the star dancer, is the club’s manager, Valentine’s lover. The latter fires her dancing partner because he is jealous ofhim. Valentine casts ShoSho (Anna Mae Wong), a Chinese servant as his
next dancing star after seeing her suggestively dancing in the scullery. Whenher act proves to be a hit and Valentine falls for her, Mabel turns jealous. So
does Jim, who will ultimately kill ShoSho.
Wong’s ethnicity did not allow her to be the lead cast of the film, yet obviously she steals the part away from Gray’s hands. Her formal integration in
the stylistic environments through her silhouette, her striped sweaters, features and haircut, but above all her dancing, make her a perfect impersonation of 1920s experimental art. She is the show.
The spectacular is indeed at the core of the film’s emotional discourse. If
it is still conveyed by the appearance of a more traditional Mabel (in her
expected dress code––lavish feathers, jewellery as well as her pathetic,
highly theatrical acting style), it is reshaped by a more distanced approach.
Three essential perspectives entail A emotion: the idea of ’total design’ insetting, specific visual filmic devices and transitional pre–sound era aesthetics features.
The film’s ’total design’ was coined by Tim Bergfelder as a concept thatemphasized pre–planning the ’look’ of a film before shooting began, thus
involving designers with key aspects of creative control during the production process. In Piccadilly, the combined work of Dupont, Alfred Junge andWerner Brandes created a stylistic mood to the film. The design was built fora ’maximum visual impact while at the same time facilitating the work of thecamera’.363 Art Deco aesthetics proved to what point film is considered as art(A emotion). This is confirmed by the abstract geometry of the set, Werner
Brandes’s chiaroscuro lighting and Alfred Junge’s amazing set designs. Suchis the case of the Piccadilly dancing club with its circular structure, the fluid
yet hierarchical organization of the curved balcony, the curvilinear staircaseswith swirling banisters, the orchestra, the dancing floor and the dining tables.
363

In Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European
Cinema, ed. Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris and Sarah Street (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press, 2007), 82.
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Moreover, there are relevant details, such as the transparent snail–like staircase at the end of which Shosho meets Valentine. They also contribute tohelp foster the forthcoming F emotions. Even the way Valentine discovers
Shosho for the first time is conditioned by a spatial delocalization in which
the flamboyant dancing hall finally leads to the scullery. Artefact emotion
concludes the film with its circular ending (a few newspaper men walking
with placards––reading “Life goes on at the Scala”) visually echoing the
opening credits’ presentation on the London buses.
If most of the film design relies on this A emotion, the visuals may lead toa more complex scheme; such is the case of the sketching scene when Valentine meets Shosho in his office to discuss the fact that she could be part ofthe dancing show. Shosho sits on a chair with her striped shirt, short skirt
and ruined stockings (exposed in a clearly voyeuristic way by close–ups on
her legs), explaining that the last time she danced, there were ’men andknives’ involved, while Valentine is sketching her portrait on a piece of paper. This scene echoes Wong’s stylized portraits by Paul Klee. Emotional
bipolarization is expressed quite simultaneously through the portrait (A emotion) and the detailed title about Shosho’s past (F emotion). The use of theChinese Buddha mascot is first considered as a prop which conveys Shosho’s exotic identity and her national complicity with Jim: it quickly becomes, via an analytic hyperbole, a narrative element entailing, once foundon Valentine’s desk, Jim’s jealousy.
The second parameter structuring this complex emotional discourse is tobe found in the use of purely cinematographic devices. Just as in Towards
the Light, the elaborate cross–cutting which characterizes the film allows
once again a very complex display of different kinds of emotions. If the firstdance sequence already indicates the possibility to play on two different
registers, the Shosho dance definitely sets things between A and F emotion.
Establishing the tension in a comparative hyperbole (Mabel asking Valentine“How do like my dance” just before Shosho’s part starts), the cross–cutting
alternates the visual impact of Shosho’s dance with Mabel’s watching.364 It
literally suspends the plot. In a perfect oxymoron, Mabel faints while Shosho
triumphs.
The third parameter, related to the pre–sound transitional aesthetics, isobviously expressed through synaesthetic effects. These are present throughthe multiple subliminal perception instances implied in the musical accompaniment, but also by chromatic occurrences (visible in the restored tinted
digital copy). A striking example appears in the confrontation between
Mabel and Shosho. In a typically Expressionist vein, Mabel’s shadow appears on the street in a blue tinted image, then confronts Shosho with excessive, passionate gestures. Restrained, Shosho glows in her yellow tinted
364

The effects are very similar to the reflecting light, mirrors and shades of Moholy Nagy’s
contemporary photographs.
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apartment, surrounded by fetishistic exotic objects (goldfishes, oriental folding screen, transparent window pane with a Fujiyama design), naturally triggering emotion A. The physical confrontation will prove to be a synthetic
figural hyperbole.
Shosho (like Mod Lyset’s Ysabel) could have easily fallen yet into another stereotype.365 Oriental clichés sustain her from the moment she becomes Valentine’s dancer (her Chinese handwriting, the chosen dancing
costume, but also the dance itself referring to traditional Chinese and Mongolian dances with Jim playing the Chinese erhu as background music)366.
Yet, Dupont helps Anna Mae Wong project her character to still anotherlevel, suggesting a co–existence both as stereotype and as modern atypicalcharacter. In this context, her Chinese identity is both a mark of her perverse
manners and of her ambiguous erotic nature. The sequence in downtown
Piccadilly, in which she takes Valentine to a Limehouse joint and he confronts her complex personal universe, finally reveals her true nature. Thus,
she is now defined by her links with the downtown community. Her situationis perfectly echoed in the mise en abyme of the tipsy woman dancing with ablack man, thrown out for her interracial misdemeanours.
Far from numerous stereotyped personas from the twenties, the charactersembodied by Almirante–Manzini, Nielsen and Wong clearly incarnate feminine emancipation contributing––in narrative and visually codified terms––
to set up a structural category which defines their identity. The way they
metamorphose at the end of the plot make this point even more relevant. The
three characters are linked to a necessary death; Mary’s death brings her
doppelgänger Naomi in the picture; Ysabel’s evil side dies, changing her
moral status in a ’reversible melodramatic twist’; Shosho’s murder by Jim,
entailed by melodrama’s moral teleology, reinforces her return to a specificnational territory. Yet, whatever their ending, what remains of their presence
downplays the masculine characters. It is Mary’s image that pervades in theend; Ysabel’s conversion casts a shadow on Elias’ practice, whereas Valentine is literally pushed away from the resolution of Shosho’s death, the plot
focusing more on the ethnical dimension.
What these drastic identity changes as well as the characters’ collective
dimension (on which we have purposefully insisted) show is that their conscience is “in phase” with the world. Through their destiny, they convey a
new view of the world. The extra and intra–diegetic emotions they provoke
render this view relevant. Without the articulation of different types of emotional discourse, their worldview would not be perceived as such.

365

As it shows in Philip Leibfried and Chei Mi Lane, eds., Anna Mae Wong: A Complete
Guide to Her Film, Stage, Radio and Television Work (London: McFarland & Company, Inc,
2004).
366
Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Anna Mae Wong: From Laundry Man’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), 94.
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In Jean–Paul Sartre’s Theory of emotions, true emotion is linked to somekind of belief (croyance). Emotion is what someone has to endure; we cannot stop it or prevent its physiological manifestations. Sartre explains “consciousness does not only project affective meanings on the surrounding
world; it experiences the new world that it has just built. […]. It means that,when there is no way out, consciousness takes refuge into the magical worldof emotion, it literally dives into it, degrading itself.”367 This belief affects
the body itself; “the consciousness which is moved resembles the consciousness which is set to sleep. It is throwing itself into a new world and transforms its body, as synthetic totality, so that it can live and seize this world.”
The films’ endings have this strong projective quality. Our thematic andstylistic analyses are only fully completed when one understands that thesedevices are ways to project characters’ personalities beyond the situation
itself. They become symbols of new existing modes. Yet, this is a temporary
state of things, related to the potentialities of the silent screen. Soon, these
double, innovative feminine representations will leave the floor to more predictable types.

367

Jean–Paul Sartre, Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions (Paris: Hermann, 1995 – firstedition in 1938), 52–54, “L’émotion est un phénomène de croyance. La conscience ne seborne pas à projeter des significations affectives sur le monde qui l’entoure; elle vit le mondenouveau qu’elle vient de constituer. Elle le vit directement, elle s’y intéresse, elle souffre lesqualités que les conduites ont ébauchées. Cela signifie que, lorsque toutes les voies étaientbarrées, la conscience se précipite dans le monde magique de l’émotion, elle s’y précipite tout
entière en se dégradant. La conscience qui s’émeut ressemble assez à la conscience qui
s’endort. Celle–ci, comme celle–là, se jette dans un monde nouveau et transforme son corps,
comme totalité synthétique, de façon qu’elle puisse vivre et saisir ce monde neuf à travers
lui.”
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“Optical Harmonies”: Sight and Sound in Germaine
Dulac’s Integral Cinema
Sarah Keller
In the first shots of Germaine Dulac’s 1928 film Arabesques, several bare tree
branches scoop downward, swaying gently in a breeze, followed by a shotfrom the ground looking up to the sky through a tangle of branches. This second shot dissolves into a closer view of the same branches and sky, and at thiscloser range, the sun forms an areola of light. After another dissolve, the samebright light, closer now, is reversed: that is, rather than looking up through thetrees, we realize we now look down at a pool of water in which the bright lightreflects and shimmers gently. In this brief, fleeting series of images, Dulac
establishes the abstract realm of what she called “integral cinema”— something she has described as “a visual symphony made of rhythmic images.”368
The unanchoring of the viewing position within the abstract display of images
corroborates the feeling that to make sense of this film, the spectator mustreconfigure herself in relation to old viewing habits. After these opening shots,squares of pure light flash across the screen, closer and closer, situating thefilm’s interest squarely in the realm of the abstract play of shadow, light, andreflection.
The three highly experimental short films Germaine Dulac created in 1928
and 1929—Thèmes et variations, Arabesques, and Disque 957—are often
cited as exemplary in terms of demonstrating the visual style Dulac adopted asa result of her theories toward a pure or an integral cinema. Replete withcinematic legerdemain and striking imagery, these films profess Dulac’s profound interest in the “purely visual” elements of cinema. Dulac appears to
privilege the visual in her theorizations about the cinema, as well as in her
films themselves. Indeed, for Dulac “visuality” is the most basic and necessary
condition of cinematographic expressivity, a quality she laments that mostcommercial films neglect.
It would be a mistake to neglect the importance of Dulac’s privileging of
the visual in her films and theories about film as a medium. However, alongside this theoretical and practical emphasis on the visual—even in this set of
highly abstract and imagistic films, where visuality seems to be the end rather
than the means of cinematic expression—Dulac’s work depends upon not justvisuality but a submerged audibility. Even when she insists that “The cinema
is a silent art. Silent expression is its categorical rule”, we must remember that

368

Germaine Dulac, “L’Essence du cinéma—l’idée visuelle.” Écrits sur le cinéma (1919–
1937), ed. Prosper Hillairet (Paris: Éditions Paris Expérimental, 1994), 66. My translation, as
are all translations, unless otherwise noted.
159

music is something of an exception to the rule she outlines.369 While in someof her later work (Celles qui s’en font, e.g.) Dulac directly experiments withsound–on–disc recording and the way in which music or sound might workwith images, the idea of musical sounds, cadences, rhythms and harmonies
exerts a less–direct but highly important influence on Dulac’s understandingof the cinema even in the silent era. For Dulac, sound is not a counter–valence
to visuality; indeed, it shares the same aesthetic principles she embraces within
the principle of the visual in her films. Thus collisions between sound andimage—“optical harmonies,” a “symphony” of “rhythmic images,” “sonorous
visuals,” etc.370—dominate the language Dulac uses to describe her film practice. In part because of her investment in questions of medium–specificity,which are filtered through debates about “pure poetry” and “pure cinema,”
Dulac inflects her film work with a unique relationship to the “silent” screen,
one which she imagines as full of vibrant, sonorously visual symphonies.
Germaine Dulac’s film work touches many genres at once. Her films run to
all ends of the generic kaleidoscope: from Impressionist and Surrealist experiments to documentary newsreels to melodramas to serial adventures topure cinema. By 1923, in the midst of (and intimately related to) her involvement with what would later be known as Impressionist cinema, and having
recently completed La Souriante Madame Beudet, Dulac picks up on the discourse surrounding pure cinema. For example, she cites her film’s expressionof “ideas, sensations, light…” and notes that the more abstract of these expressions are as highly valuable as those that serve narrative ends.371 Indeed, thetwo tendencies (abstraction, narration) work together. The next year, at a conference at the Musée Galliera, Dulac discusses “the expressive processes ofcinema, the role of different shots and angles and perspectives, dissolves, superimpositions, blurring, deformations.”372 The language of film, for Dulac,
depends less upon what happens when (although she worked in narrative
forms on a regular basis), and more upon what is expressed, emotionally andaesthetically, through or even despite the exigent surface of the narrative. This
language draws directly upon what she saw as the potent, ephemeral qualities
of music, which convey in a highly abstract way sensuous information.
369

Germaine Dulac, “The Expressive Techniques of the Cinema,” trans. Stuart Liebman.
French Film Theory and Criticism: 1907–39 Vol. I, ed. Richard Abel (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988), 305.
370
Germaine Dulac, “Films Visuels et Anti–visuels,” Écrits, 118. Also, L.B. Danou, Le
Cinéma de ma mémoire: En Hommage personnel à Germaine Dulac, telle que je l’ai connue(Paris: Jouve, 2005).
371
Germaine Dulac, “Entretein de Germaine Dulac avec Paul Desclaux,” Écrits, 27. While thecentral discursive feature of La Souriante Madame Beudet is an Impressionist interest in thesubjective, introspective state of its eponymous protagonist, the qualities Dulac cites here arethose which go beyond the Impressionist tenet of access to the subjective states of its characters. Moreover, Dulac never completely abandons some of the Impressionist strategies of thisfilm in later works, so it is not as if she “develops” away from this initial aesthetic. Instead,she tends to mix strategies for whatever specific cinematic purpose she has at hand.
372
Germaine Dulac, “Les Procédés expressifs du cinématographie,” Écrits, 31.
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In order to express cinematic ideas, Dulac uses objects, framings, light,
and duration to create a drama enacted through visual elements carefullybalanced in shifting oppositions. Her notion of pure cinema depends uponelevating the audience’s ability properly to perceive and appreciate the seventh art. Moreover, for Dulac, cinematic comprehension ought to draw upona “visual sense, analogous to a musical sense.”373 That is, while a pure cinema requires developing and refining a sense of visual aesthetics, the audience would have a fuller sense of what is required of their engagement withpure cinema by drawing upon their understanding something of music.
Music serves as a special touchstone for Dulac, and as such it directly features in a number of her silent films. In La Souriante Madame Beudet, forexample, the title character enjoys playing Debussy on the piano, and employs music as an imaginative sonic escape from her husband. His character,moreover, is developed in relation to his appreciation for opera. Revolted byhis provincial musical interests, Madame Beudet refuses to go with him to
the opera one evening. When she settles in for the night, happily alone andready to bask in her solitude, she discovers that he has locked her piano.
Being denied access to the pleasure of her own music in Monsieur Beudet’s
absence, she decides to prepare his revolver for an “accidental suicide.” Music is that important to her. Others of Dulac’s films also present pivotal musical situations. La Folie des Vaillants (1925) concerns the musical talent ofa gypsy, whose violin charms all who hear it. L’Invitation au voyage (1927)
and La Princess Mandane (1928) both include key scenes in which characters dance (or decline to dance) to prominently featured bands. Dulac’s films
are simply saturated with music that no one in her audience hears.
Besides scenes that feature music directly, Dulac’s films engage musicalrhythm on the visual level. Of La Souriante Madame Beudet, her former
secretary recollects Dulac’s comment about the accumulation of visualrhythm, which builds ultimately toward a climax: “[These are] simple gestures, simple looks by Madame Beudet toward her husband—but one will
feel through the course of the film the intensification of these looks […]announcing the final drama. This progression […] works above all throughthe play of shots and their rhythm.”374 Dulac’s sense of montage is based
upon the development of a rhythm according to the needs—whether narrative, documentary, or experimental—of each film. The rhythmical sense—amusical sense—both underscores the narrative movement of La Souriante
Madame Beudet and generates meanings of its own, founded on conveying afeeling through the (in this case) acceleratory power of rhythms. To borrow amusical term, it is the crescendo of the film’s montage that builds to the cli373

Germaine Dulac, “Quelques réflexions sur le ‘Cinéma Pur,’” Écrits, 74. My emphasis.
Dulac spends a good deal of energy attempting to develop this sensibility in her audience: shelectures extensively throughout France about a selection of films striking in their imagery(e.g., Abel Gance’ La Roue) in the 1920s and 1930s.
374Danou, op cit., 22.
161

max. Dulac considers herself the orchestrator of that rhythm and of the subsequent emotions it evokes.
In addition to the praxis of her films, Dulac’s theoretical writings often
cite music in relation to cinema. Laurent Guido has convincingly categorized
Dulac as a key figure embodying the “age of rhythm,” the period of the
1910s–1920s when discourses surrounding the arts, and especially the cinema, were indelibly marked by the question of rhythm therein.375 In a particularly apposite chapter, Guido traces the use of musical analogy in relation to pure cinema during this period, both through the dominant philosophical concepts in circulation in France at this time and through the writingsof important practitioners or critics of cinema, including Dulac. In this context, Guido convincingly demonstrates the often contradictory nature of thecomparison drawn between cinema and music in Dulac’s thinking. For instance, rhythm is both concrete, even geometrical in its construction, andnuminous, having validity as an expressive technique mainly in the realm of
the ineffable, of the fleeting sensation.376 Similarly, in Richard Abel’s account of the debates around pure cinema in France at the end of the 1920s,
he notes that Dulac at that particular moment in her career seems to abandon
narrative form altogether, though at other times she had embraced it: “Dulac…imagine[s] a cinema entirely autonomous from narrative […] Dulac
now repeatedly defends a non–representational cinema that would bring to
the surface from the depths an ’imperceptible music.’”377 Her abandonmentof narrative lines suggests a desire to see how far the musical analogy might
stretch.
The comparison with music in fact drives Dulac’s thinking even when it
is not stretched to its limits. In part, Dulac asserts the comparison between
them in order to raise the cinema to the level of the more established musicalart, by association.378 However, her use of the musical analogy goes wellbeyond this rationale. It provides a framework, almost paradoxically, fordeveloping her own and the spectator’s sense of the visual. As she notes:“The musician plays with sounds, like the cineaste plays with images.”379
375

Laurent Guido, L’Age du rhythme: Cinéma, musicalité et culture du corps dans lesthéories françaises des années 1910–1930 (Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 2007).
376
See Guido, Chapters 3–4 especially.
377
Richard Abel, “The Great Debates,” French Film Theory and Criticism, 332. Abel cites
evidence for his claims through Dulac’s “Les Esthétiques, les entraves, la cinégraphie
intégrale.” L’Art cinématographique, vol. 2, 46; “Du Sentiment du ligne,” Schèmas, 1(February 1927), 26–31; “La Musique du silence,” Cinégraphie, 5 (15 January 1928), 77–78;
and “Films visuels et anti–visuels,” Le Rouge et le noir (July 1928), 31–41.
378
Along these lines, Dulac also frequently compares the cinema to poetry and dance. For
example, see Dulac, “Cinéma et poèsie,” where she notes: “One has copiously denied in thecourse of recent inquiries the poetic possibilities of the cinema. This attitude has disconcerted
me because the cinema is poetry itself, much more than theatre, much more than spectacle. It
is rhythm in its oppositions and concordances. It is harmony.” From the Dulac archive at the
Bibliothèque du film (Paris), DULAC Box 311: Folder 3.
379
Dulac, “Aphorismes…” Écrits, 60.
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Because Dulac presupposes her audience’s unfamiliarity with the artistic
terrain of integral cinema, she draws upon their affinity for musical analogy
as a way to strengthen their ability to traverse that terrain.
In her most experimental films, Dulac directly seeks to express her visionof integral cinema.380 That vision also embodies a sonic sense: optical harmony. Disque 957—which Dulac based on two of Frédéric Chopin’s Preludes (numbers 5 and 6)—explores the actual spinning of Dulac’s record of
Chopin’s music alongside several associated images, creating a rhythm inthe visual realm that echoes the rhythms inherent in the record which is its
subject and focus. The film begins with an image of the record player and ahand putting the needle to the record. The image cuts to an overhead view ofthe spinning record. Then, through a series of dissolves, Dulac highlights
only certain sectors of the record, masking the rest of the image so as todraw attention to different parts of the disc.
Whether Dulac literally intended Chopin’s music to accompany a screening this film, she meant the idea of this music to accompany it.381 Being suspicious of musical accompaniment, which was both too variable and too
powerful to be ignored, Dulac likewise distrusted synchronized sound in theearly days of sound cinema for the distortions that often occurred. (Note,
incidentally, that this set of films falls exactly on the threshold of the transition from the silent into the sound era of cinema.) In Dulac’s mind, anyway,
although music serves as an apt metaphor for cinematic expression, the visual on its own is sufficient for conveying ideas (musical ideas, too): “theimage is already a visual symphony […] The music must submit to [the image].”382
Disque 957 is underscored by the idea of Chopin’s music, and the images
she chooses aim to picture these rhythms. While Dulac both imagines animage’s ability to generate sound (through focus on a record and through,perhaps, the convention of accompanying silent films with music) and essentially demonstrates the ability of the camera to highlight whatever it chooses(through masking), here she also seems to explore the surface quality of animage, by highlighting the inaccessibility of what belongs properly to thesoundtrack in the image track. Where is the sound? Is it here, on this part of
the record? The image of a record is not the sound recorded on it, as Dulac
realizes; instead, the image of a sound–making device associates sound andimage. Of much greater importance, certainly, than where the music, is themusic’s effect upon us. Dulac uses a musical metaphor and evocative images
essentially to create the same sort of mood, reportedly, she found in listening380

See “Quelques reflexions sur cinéma pur,” Écrits, 73–5.
Dulac’s interest in the relationship between sound and image finds further expression in
the sound era when she makes a series of short films accompanied by popular songs andillustrative of those songs in some way, including Celles qui s’en font, featuring the song “À
la derive.”
382
Danou, op. cit., 22.
381

163

to her own disque 957 in the first place. The fact that the images pulse andmove according to a compelling montage only further corroborates the impulse for music Dulac professes in the context of this film.
The association of sound and image is crucial to Dulac’s sense of visualrhythm and symphonic imagery:
The integral film we dream of composing is a visual symphony made ofrhythmic images in which the sensations of an artist coordinate and are projected onto the screen. A musician doesn’t always write under the inspirationof a story; more often it’s under the inspiration of a feeling. The Garden in
the rain by Debussy or the Raindrop Prelude by Chopin, for example, are theexpressions of a soul which pours its heart out, reacting among objects.383

The objects (i.e., the image of these objects) among which the soul finds
expression are the point of fixation for Dulac’s series of abstract films. In
content, these films deal with correspondences among sometimes diverse–
seeming things, and the camera highlights both these things’ self–sufficient
alchemy and the way in which they accrue meaning based on their relationship with each other. The resultant feeling—the soul pouring itself out—
finds expression in Dulac’s case through images, but as we have seen, it
comes into being with the assistance of the metaphor of music and the soundsubmerged in the reference to Chopin and others of her favorite composers.
As suggested above, for Dulac, a pure cinema is, after all, a visual phenomenon. Integral cinema is “pure movement or abstract expressions, purely
visual, whether lyrical, poetic, psychological.”384 Thus the cinema shouldn’t
simply tell stories; it should also express something less causal, based on thedrama of harmonies and rhythms in correspondence with the sensations andfeelings of her protagonists. Importantly, the sensations of both the filmmaker and the protagonists are shared with the audience as a result ofrhythm; we feel certain sensations because visual rhythm—any kind ofrhythm—is something one feels, even bodily. In fact, sensation is at the heartof Dulac’s admixture of visual and auditory elements. While she depends
upon visual images for their ability to mobilize the foundational tools ofcinematic écriture, she doesn’t wish to undercut the felt sensation that more
aptly derives from rhythmic endeavors like those associated with the auralityof poetry and the sonorous qualities of music. As Guido notes, Dulac draws
upon the German Romanticist tradition “which attributes a privileged link
between music and the immaterial, the stirrings of the soul.”385 Dulac, heclaims, believes in the possibility that the sensibility and sensations accessedby the cinéaste might be conveyed to her audience through the immaterial

383

Dulac, “L’essence du cinéma—L’idée visuelle.” Écrits, 66.
Dulac, “Cinéma et poèsie,” op cit.
385
Guido, 141.
384

164

realms of light and movement fashioned into particular rhythms.386 In thisway, Dulac draws upon the privileged position of music to access such immaterial realms and then confers that position upon the cinema.
Rhythms are created through the patterning of images in Dulac’s abstract
films. For example, in Thèmes et variations, where the title itself draws uponmusical analogy, the imagery draws upon dance, allowing Dulac to extend
the parameters of artistic rhythm through reference to another rhythmic art
form. In this film, Dulac’s imagery and editing strive to create meaning
through juxtaposition:
This is the effort I have attempted in Thèmes et variations, where thanks to
the image, a sort of correspondence of rhythm attempts to create a simple
pleasure for the eyes, without a story: the movement of machines, of adancer, a cinegraphic ballet.387

At first this juxtaposition seems so straightforward as to be almost banal. Imagesof a ballerina are crosscut with various pieces of machinery; their movementscomplement each other, forging a connection between the organic movementsof the woman and the mechanical movements of the machinery.
Rather than simply reducing the ballerina to mechanical movement, however,
we must remember that Dulac—steeped in modernist fascination for mechanization as well as technology (the cinema most especially)—is also raising mechanical movement to the level of a high art: the ballet.388
Most of the film follows this format of a crosscutting that highlights the relationship between human and machine parts and motions. However, at the very
end of the film, the imagery shifts, and Dulac suddenly complicates this simple
juxtaposition. Now she includes images of nature—where the ballerina mimics
the sprouting of a seed, for example, or where a waterwheel dissolves into water.
Initially these images seem to operate under the same pretension as the earlier
imagery—hands are like seeds, etc.—with the difference simply that now theballerina is compared to natural phenomena rather than mechanical movement.
However, the syntax of the film and the presentation of its imagery belie thesimplicity of such a formulation. Superimposition, masks, and dissolves become
more prevalent, and they link nature, machinery, and images that don’t seem
properly to belong to either end of the spectrum from natural to mechanical, like
386

Guido, 157. Guido argues that the debates surrounding cinéma pur fall into two camps:
those, like Léon Moussinac, who privilege sentiment, and those, like Dulac, who privilege
sensation. He notes that these camps are not dichotomies; instead, they depend upon “a degree of radicality between two forms of sensation: the one part [sentiment] which involves
always sentiment and the other part [sensation] its pure form, which is supposed to be free ofit.”387
Dulac, “La nouvelle evolution,” Écrits, 139.
388
This mixture of high and low art in bringing the fascination for the quotidian in contact
with the ballet serves as the theme of the infamous collaborative dance performance piecefrom the previous decade, Parade, by Diaghilev, Satie, Cocteau, Picasso, et al.
165

a close–up of a bell, or images so abstract as to be indecipherable as objects (asthe waterwheel, above). Moreover, the pace of the film slows, and the images
compile according to an unrestrictive, suggestive logic. In fact, the “variations”
of the title therefore become unbound from the terms of the original themes andre–asserted according to the logic of a visual rhythm. Dulac presses the film into
the service of a statement about rhythm itself by mobilizing the complex rhythmic language unique to cinema. The patterns of images rendered through montage possess their own, revelatory logic.
Even Dulac’s narrative films situate both character subjectivity and aesthetic
concerns in the tools of the camera, demonstrating a concern with the rhythm
specific to the cinematic medium. For instance, in La Princesse Mandane, theprotagonist spies a bejeweled crown in a strongly protected vault. Dulac renders
the crown as a stunningly sharp–focused close–up at first, before letting theimage go blurry for a moment. There is a slight shift of the camera from left toright before the crown snaps back into stunning, dazzling sharp focus again. A
dance scene which takes place at the same moment elsewhere is cross cut into
the action of stealing the crown, and it features similar movement—following
the dancers left and right. By capitalizing on the rhythm of the dance but associating it with the realm of the cinematic (a stunning close up), Dulac creates aparticular example of cinematic rhythm in the context of narrative.
Dulac consistently imports ideas about music relative to the cinema, as wellas their mutual concern for rhythm. She mixes sonic/musical and visual elements in the cinema mainly in two ways: she uses sonic media as a metaphor for
how visual images generate affect and meaning, or she mixes the two in an intentional synesthetic blending of the senses. In “Le Succès d’un film?” she depicts visual images in sonic terms:
The image is not only the photographic reproduction of an act or something
seen, but also and more so a dramatic harmony, a harmony in which fullness andtone are facts put rightly in the place of visual, sensitive, and expressive elements which compose it, cast in the measure of a movement–rhythm.389 In asilent cinema where she believes “tone” can nonetheless be a fact, Dulac mobilizes principles of sound, harmony, and rhythm in order better to represent thesignificance of purely visual phenomena. Whether Dulac is working in narrative
forms or in forms that more easily allow for the play of oppositions and correspondences, she manages to strike a graphic, rhythmic, musical harmony byjuxtaposing the various abstract lines her images take.

389

Dulac, “Le Succès d’un film,” Écrits, 148

166

National and Transnational Stardom

167

Lovability and Problematic Gunshots: Mary Pickford,
Her Films and Finnish Film Culture
Jaakko Seppälä
Hollywood makes stars because stars sell movies, as Richard Dyer has put
it.390 It goes without saying that this function is not restricted to American
markets. When Hollywood films were imported to Finland in increasing
numbers in the years following the First World War, names and images of
Hollywood stars began to appear on the pages of local papers and magazines. Both Finnish film distributors and exhibitors used stars systematicallyto advertise the latest motion pictures. Various magazines directed the public’s interest into the private lives of stars by publishing star–related articles.
In the new star discourse, Finnish film culture got amalgamated with Hollywood films and promotional material.
In the late 1910s and early 1920s one of the biggest Hollywood stars inFinland was Mary Pickford––“America’s Sweetheart”. Lovability was also amajor characteristic of her Finnish star image. However, in 1921 her sweetness was momentarily beclouded by the critical reception of one of her major films. Even though Hollywood kept marketing its products as politically
free entertainment, foreign audiences made sense of them on their own
terms. Hence, even an actress whose star image was as immaculate as that of
Pickford could become a political concern.
A Star is Born
In late 1919 Suomen Kuvalehti––which at the time was the general interest
magazine with the biggest circulation in Finland––published a portrait ofMary Pickford on its front cover. A modest text accompanied this image:“Mary Pickford, one of the most popular and attractive film actresses.”391
There is nothing more about her in the issue. In the published image, which
seems to be a publicity still, Pickford peeks through a chink of a door. She
smiles and looks eye–catching but, I would say, slightly shy. Pickford’sbeauty, which is present both in the image and the caption, was to be an important element of her Finnish star image. To what extent the reading public
were familiar with Pickford and her films at the time this image was published is not an easy question to answer. On the basis of film censorship
documents it appears that in 1919 her major feature films were still unknown
in Finland. None of the Pickford films distributed by Artcraft Pictures had
been seen in the country. However, it is likely that some of the Pickford
films distributed by Paramount Pictures had been released in the mid 1910s.
390

Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1986), 5.
391
Suomen Kuvalehti, issue 37, 1919, cover.
168

Furthermore, a number of Finns must had had heard rumours about
Pickford’s worldwide fame, as many had relatives who had immigrated to
the United States. It is also worth pointing out that in 1915 Pickford’s highsalary had been discussed in a short–lived film magazine Biograafilehti andshe had even been called a star.392 However, we should not jump to any hasty
conclusions. The magazine was not widely read. Furthermore, In Finlandsuch discussions were rare in the late 1910s and so were Pickford films. As
Janet Staiger has pointed out, we need to ask whether audiences saw actors
as stars.393 When it comes to Pickford, I do not think they did, not yet. Before
the turn of the 1920s star–related publicity material was not widely available
in the country.
Considering that Pickford’s private life was not discussed in public, I
have reached the conclusion that “America’s Sweetheart” was still, in theterms of Richard deCordova, a picture personality in Finnish film culture.
According to deCordova “the intertextuality that constituted the identity ofthe picture personality was produced and maintained largely by the cinema
itself.”394 This was the situation in Finland in the late 1910s. Images andtexts, like the article published in Biograafilehti and the cover of Suomen
Kuvalehti, did not much expand this identity as they are related to Pickford’s
films and her professional identity. In Finland, the private lives of film actors
and actresses were not generally, if at all, discussed in public before the turnof the 1920s.
In the spring of 1920 Suomen Kuvalehti published yet another Pickford
photograph on its front cover.395 This image differs from the earlier one insome significant respects, making it indicative of Pickford’s new status in
Finnish film culture. In this image, an elegant–looking Pickford poses for thecamera. It is a portrait. In other words, it is an image of Pickford instead ofbeing an image of an actress named Pickford playing a character. Furthermore, an inscription is discernible. The published image is a publicity portrait. As such, it is an indicator of American fan culture coming to Finland. A
caption saying “Pickford is the highest paid woman in the world” accompanies this portrait. Nothing is said on the cover about her being an actress. A
shift of interest is evident. Pickford is now represented as a person––not as aprofessional actress.
The shift is also evident in the article on Pickford that is published in thisissue titled “The best–paid woman in the world: A description of a visit to392

Outi Hupaniittu, ”Nuori Apollo, vanhan mamsellin ystävä: Helsinkiläisten suosikkinäyttelijä Valdemar Psilander ja 1910–luvun elokuvakulttuuri” in Elokuva historiassa, historia
elokuvassa, ed. Heta Mulari & Lauri Piispa (Turku: Kulttuurihistoria, 2009), 48.
393
Janet Staiger, “Seeing Stars,” in Stardom: Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill (London and New York: Rouledge, 1991), 10–11.
394
Richard deCordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 51.
395
Suomen Kuvalehti, issue 12, 1920, cover.
169the home of a world famous actress”.396 Thora Holm, who wrote this text andto whom the image published on the front cover is dedicated, was a journalist working for Swedish film magazine Filmjournalen. It seems that Suomen
Kuvalehti had bought this article and translated it into Finnish. The editorial
board clearly expected there to be interest for an article on Pickford.
Whether this was because she was widely known as an actress or because
readers were supposedly interested in the best–paid woman in the world is atricky question to answer. The latter is likely but at this time she may also
have had admirers in Finland.
As the article’s rubric suggests, Holm writes about her meeting with
Pickford and her mother at the star’s home. Several aspects of Pickford’s star
image that were to persist throughout the 1920s are present in this early article. This makes it a key text in the study of the development of Pickford’s
Finnish star image. The article offers readers, in the words of Jon Burrows,
an experience of authentic personality.397 Holm stresses how Pickford is bothordinary and extraordinary. In the words of Holm, her persona is small andartless. The author says she found it hard to believe the Pickford she talked
with was the distinguished film star. She was so modest and pleasant. Smalland artless she might have been, but at the same time she was extraordinary.
The most marvellous things about Pickford, according to Holm, are her long
golden hair, beautiful brown eyes, fine–looking skin and body of a twelve–year–old. Pickford, Holm stresses, receives invitations to marry and from2000 to 3000 fan letters a day. Here characteristics of childlikeness andwomanliness are represented as indicative of Pickford’s real self, which,according to Gaylyn Studlar, was the state of affairs in the United States aswell.398 More intimate revelations concern Pickford’s dreams and hopes.
Pickford, for example, had told Holm she wished she could travel to Europe
someday for the reason that she received so many letters from there. I suppose there were those who hoped she would also visit Finland. Among theissues mentioned readers learned about Pickford’s career and high salary.
Bluntly put, this article was supposed to give the readers an idea of whatkind of a person the world famous actress was.
Some of the most persisting myths about Pickford and her career that circulated in the United States were imported to Finland with the publication ofHolm’s article. Pickford, just to give an example, had told Holm she hadbegan her acting career when she was only five years old. This, however, is396

Thora Holm, ”Maailman parhaiten palkattu nainen: Kuvaus käynnistä maailmankuulun
näyttelijättären luona.”, Suomen Kuvalehti, issue 12, 1920, 290.
397
Jon Burrows, “ ‘Our English Mary Pickford’: Alma Taylor and Ambivalent British Stardom in the 1910s,” in British Stars and Stardom: From Alma Taylor to Sean Connery, ed.
Bruce Babington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 32.
398
Gaylyn Studlar, ”Oh, ’Doll Divine’: Mary Pickford, Masquerade, and the Pedophilic
Gaze” in A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, ed. Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 366.
170

not true as according to Pickford biographer Eileen Whitfield she was eight
years old when she first starred on stage.399 In other words this interview, justlike the imported publicity stills and portraits, were building a certain kind ofimage of Pickford. Pickford’s Finnish star image was, in effect, largely controlled by the Hollywood studios. However, whether something is true or not
is beside the point. When it comes to star images what really matters is what
is said to be true. That is what gets discussed.
Oh, Little Girl, Never Grow Up
In the early 1920s more Pickford related articles were published in Finland.
One of these appeared in 1921 in the newly founded film magazine
Filmiaitta (and in its Swedish language edition Filmrevyn). The anonymous
author of this article depicts Pickford’s beauty and kindness in poetic terms
and stresses how these are destined to warm the cockles of one’s heart. Interestingly, next to nothing is said about Pickford’s career and private life. It
is as if the author is not willing to make a distinction between Pickford andthe characters she plays. This text, even though presumably written by ajournalist working for the magazine, is best interpreted as an expression of
fandom. As such, the article largely indicates what the attraction was allabout. In the light of this text contemporaries saw Pickford as ’a fairytale
princess […] who is good, simple and a natural soul that does not want toknow anything about pretence and hypocrisy’.400 Even though Pickford wasa talented woman and many contemporaries knew about her long acting
career, success and enormous earnings, she was discussed as a benevolent
girl, some even referred to her as a doll.401 The characters she plays in her
films are good–hearted girls. In contemporary discussions those characters
are always referred to as children and under no circumstances as women.
Even though it was possible to think of Pickford as a “child–woman,” myargument is that in the Finnish discourse of the early 1920s her girlish attributes somewhat outweighed more mature ones.402 It seems that Finns did not
pay as much attention to the private lives of Hollywood stars as they did totheir screen performances. Hollywood divorces, drug addictions and murders
were discussed in Finnish magazines but star scandals were an unknown
phenomenon in Finland.403

399
Eileen Whitfield, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood (Kentucky: The University
Press of Kentucky, 1997), 22–23.
400
Anonymous, ”Mary Pickford”, Filmiaitta, issue 2, 1921, 18.
401
Anonymous, ”Kaksi kaunista ihmistä: Suomen Kuvalehden Pariisin kirjeenvaihtaja haastatellut Douglas Fairbanksia ja Mary Pickfordia”. Suomen Kuvalehti, issue 21, 1924, 667.
402
Gaylyn Studlar, ”Oh, ’Doll Divine’: Mary Pickford, Masquerade, and the Pedophilic
Gaze” in A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, ed. Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 350.
403
Jaakko Seppälä, ”Tähtikuume viriää Suomessa: Tähtien ihailu ja omasta tähteydestä
haaveilu”, WiderScreen, no. 3 (2008), http://www.widerscreen.fi/2008–3/

171According to the article published in Filmiaitta Finns now had the pleasure of seeing Pickford in one of her latest roles––that is, as “a young orphaned girl” in A Romance of the Red Woods.404 This film directed by Cecil
B. DeMille had been released in The United States already in 1917––fouryears earlier. A Romance of the Red Woods was in no way one of Pickford’s
latest films as claimed. Because new first–rate Hollywood films, like theones starring Pickford, were expensive, Finnish distributors and exhibitors
could afford them only years after their initial release dates. This conclusion
can be reached by comparing Finnish and American released dates of prestige productions and star vehicles. Thus, feature films starring Pickford had
not yet been screened in Finland in the late 1910s. A peculiar state of affairs
resulted from this disparity between the release dates: Finns knew about
Pickford’s career, private life and popularity but had not seen her featurefilms. This created expectations.
One by one, the anticipated Pickford films were imported to Finland in
the early 1920s. No box office records survive from the silent days, but the
popularity of these new films cannot only be interpreted solely on the basisof the type and amount of advertisements and criticism published in contemporary magazines and newspapers. We must also take into account the discussions that took place around Pickford and her films in the readers’ sections of Finnish film magazines. When United Artists opened its office inHelsinki it advertised coming attractions with major stars like Pickford.405
Pickford’s films were also advertised in big magazines like Suomen Kuvalehti.406 Furthermore, film magazines published a variety of Pickford related
questions and answers sent by their readers. One who used the pseudonym“Shimmy”, just to give an example, wanted to know if other readers’ ofFilmiaitta knew whether Douglas Fairbanks and his wife Pickford were stillin Europe.407 Other kinds of Pickford related texts were also published infilm magazines. One reader who used the pseudonym Pick Landwart had
written a poem celebrating Pickford’s role in The Poor Little Rich Girl
(Maurice Tourneur, 1917) to be published in Filmrevyn.408 Considering thenumber of advertisements and the quantity and quality of these discussions it
seems that most Finns did not mind watching old films as long as they were
as good as those starring Pickford as an adolescent girl. This is an important
fact to notice because in 1924 one anonymous reviewer wrote about how old
anticipated films had often turned out to be disappointments.409

404

Anonymous, ”Mary Pickford”, Filmiaitta, issue 2, 1921, 18.
Anonymous, ”Näytäntökauden uutuuksia”, Filmiaitta, issue 10, 1923, 126–127.
406
Anonymous, ”Huomattavia filmejä”, Suomen Kuvalehti, issue 49, 1923, 1423.
407
Shimmy, ”Är Doug och Mary ännu i Paris?”, Filmrevyn, issue 3, 1922, 57.
408
Pick Landwart, ”En stackars, liten rik flicka.”, Filmrevyn, issue 7, 1922, 128.
409
Anonymous, ”Filmikronikka”, Ylioppilaslehti 21 (1924), s. 334.
405

172

Dickensian Atmosphere
A Romance of the Red Woods opened in Finland in late 1921. Stella Maris(Marshall Neilan, 1918) soon followed. The anonymous journalist working
for Filmiaitta stressed in poetic words what a pleasure it was to see the celestial star in A Romance of the Red Woods.410 The film, when it comes to
Pickford’s role as a brave orphan, seems to have fulfilled all expectations
that had been fostered by the press. Stella Maris, on the other hand, was not
as easily digested. In late 1921 Filmiaitta published a review of the film
written by an anonymous author.411 In this review Pickford is volubly praisedfor her dual role in the film. She plays the role of Stella Maris, a young crippled girl, and that of Unity Blake, an insecure orphan who is neither beautiful nor happy like the other character. According to Kevin Brownlow, “forthe most beautiful star in the world to play such an ugly character was an actof courage unprecedented in the cinema”.412
The plot of Stella Maris, the reviewer argues, is badly inflated. According
to him the climax of the film shows a lack of judgement and exemplifies badtaste. At the time when there was no yellow press in Finland and critics felt
it was best to neglect inferior films instead of writing negative reviews, thiswas harsh criticism.413 In the climax under discussion, Unity shoots her former mistress who is a bitter alcoholic released from imprisonment short timeago. She does this partly as a revenge but also because the woman stands inthe way of the love affair of Stella Maris and John Risca who is legally married to this spiteful character. After committing the cold–blooded murder,
Unity takes her own life. The suicide takes place off–screen. When the mistress and Unity, who has also been in love with John, lie dead, Stella is happily united with her loved one. “A happy ending is achieved at the cost of
two lives”, as Brownlow has put it.414
In the review under analysis, the two gunshots are seen as highly problematic. With a different ending, it seems, the film would have been rather
good. Just how spectators reacted to this criticised climax is not known. The
published review has at the very least directed attention to these awkward
aspects. Some, however, seem to have found the film to their liking. One ofFilmiaitta’s readers actually began to use “Stella Maris” as her pseudonymon the readers’ section.415 The review, it seems to me, is best seen as an indirect expression of contemporary attitudes. Many liked Stella Maris, that
410

Anonymous, ”Mary Pickford”, Filmiaitta, issue 2, 1921, 18.
Anonymous, ”Filmiohjelmistosta.”, Filmiaitta, issue 4, 1921, 54–55.
412
Kevin Brownlow, Mary Pickford Rediscovered: Rare Pictures of a Hollywood Legend(New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999), 145.
413
”Toimituksen huomautus”, Filmiaitta, issue 10, 1923, 134.
414
Kevin Brownlow, Mary Pickford Rediscovered: Rare Pictures of a Hollywood Legend(New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999), 144.
415
Stella Maris, ”Mikä näkemistänne saksalaisista historiallisista filmeistä oli suurenmoisin,mikä kaunein?”, Filmiaitta, issue 7, 1921, 109.
411

173

much is likely, but at least some found the conclusion unacceptable. The
purpose of the review was to make them think just that.
The important question is: why did the anonymous reviewer, and supposedly many spectators as well, find these gunshots so problematic when
Pickford and her films were loved in general? One might assume that answer
relates to the Dickensian atmosphere of Stella Maris, although Finns at thetime were not against melodrama and tragic endings in general. Numerous
Tsarist films, which are famous for melodramatic action and unhappy if noteven horrifying endings, were popular and appreciated in Finland.416 Even in
the early 1920s after Finland had gained independence Finnish critics wrote
positively about them.417 In other words there must have been something elsein Stella Maris that related to Finnish culture in a troubling way.
In Finland Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (John S. Robertson, 1920) premiered
around the same time with Stella Maris. This is another film with a tragic
ending where the leading actor, in this case John Barrymore, plays a double
role. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a tremendous success at the box–officeand critics vastly praised it. Barrymore’s acting skills were especially celebrated.418 It seems to have been acceptable for him to play the obnoxious roleof Mr. Hyde. However, although Pickford’s role as Unity showed skill, it
was found to be troubling and unattractive. One considerable reason behind
this may have been the fact that at the time Barrymore was largely unknown
in Finland whereas Pickford had a robust star image as a sweet fairytale
princess. Barrymore playing Mr. Hyde gave taste of his considerable acting
skills without violating audiences’ expectations. The cruel ending of Stella
Maris was so uneasy to watch because it was the lovely Pickford playing therole of the murderer who ends up taking her own life. Many Finns must havefelt that Unity was not the Pickford they had read about and paid to see.
They Both Reached for the Gun
Both Stella Maris and A Romance of the Red Woods premiered in Finland inlate 1921. Pickford handles revolvers in both films, but only Stella Mariswas criticised for the way in which she does this. Clearly it is worth exploring how Pickford’s star image and the comments published in Filmiaitta
relate to these gunslinging scenes.
A Romance of the Red Woods tells the story of an orphaned girl named
Jenny Lawrence who travels to the West to live with her uncle. When preparing for her journey a friend warns her of the dangers lurking in the Westby showing her a drawing depicting settlers attacked by Native Americans.
416

Sven Hirn, Kuvat elävät: Elokuvatoiminta Suomessa 1908–1918 (Helsinki: VAPK–
kustannus ja Suomen Elokuva–arkisto, 1991), 196. Markku Nenonen, Elokuvatarkastuksen
synty Suomessa (1907–1922) (Helsinki: Suomen historiallinen seura, 1999), 94.
417
L. Kki, ”Kuvafilmi sivistysvälineenä III”, Filmiaitta, issue 17, 1925, 298.
418
Anonymous, ”Filmiohjelmistomme”, Filmiaitta, issue 7, 1922, 116; ”Filmiohjelmistosta”,
Filmiaitta, issue 3, 1921, 42.
174

Jenny pulls out a small revolver and shows it to her friend. This is gesture isa statement of her ability to defend herself. However, the gun is so tiny thatspectators are hardly impressed. Then she proceeds to demonstrate how therevolver works. At the moment of pulling the trigger she is slightly looking
away from her assumed target. In other words Jenny knows how the gunworks but she lacks both guts and skill to use it properly. This scene emphasises Jenny’s vulnerability even while tells about her determination andcourage. Here, attributes of Victorian femininity are mixed with characteristics of the new woman.
Later in the film Jenny faces a situation where she is threatened by an outlaw holding a bullwhip. Jenny takes her revolver and aims to shoot. The gun,however, is not loaded and she is too scared to look at her target. Her threatening does not make much of an impact on the outlaw. Being sure Jenny will
not be able to shoot, he gives her his huge long barrelled revolver. ’Try thisone––– it’s loaded!’, the intertitle says.419 Instead of grabbing the gun Jennystarts to sob. The outlaw––and presumably spectators as well––were rightabout her: there is no way she is going to be a killer.
In Jenny’s last gun scene in A Romance of the Red Woods she rides astagecoach that gets robbed by the outlaw and his companion. Being determined at the moment of danger she takes her small revolver and loads it. By
now Jenny has spent enough time in the West to have gained more gumption
and talent for defending herself. When outside the stagecoach she aims
properly at the masked outlaw whom she does not recognise. Then sheshoots. She hits the outlaw in the arm wounding him. This wound becomes avital plot device. It is a stigma in the hand of the outlaw with whom Jenny isfalling in love. Later in the film he wants to reform and Jenny protects himfrom villagers who recognise him from this wound and want him hanged––perhaps Jenny even begins to regret she ever shot at him. All things considered Jenny is a brave good–hearted girl, just the kind of beautiful character
Finns of the day expected Pickford to play. Even when handling guns Jennyis true to the star image the audience had learned to take pleasure in.
In the climax of Stella Maris, Pickford handles a gun in a different way.
In the scene in question mistreated Unity Blake is an angry and bitter character that intrudes her former mistress’s house while she is asleep. In otherwords here we have Unity breaking the law. Unity stalks in the dark corridors carrying a pistol in her coat pocket though spectators do not know about
the gun just yet. Parallel editing is used to indicate that the former mistresswakes to the noises Unity makes. Gloomy low–key lighting emphasises dark
tensions. At one point light falls on the eyes of Unity whose face and bodyare surrounded by vast shadows. She does not blink. Her staring eyes foreground her determinedness. Unity might not know what she is about to face419

A Romance in the Red Woods in The Cecil B. DeMille Classics Collection (DVD set by
Passport International Entertainment, 2007).
175

but whatever that might be she is ready to go through with it. Looking quietly ahead she opens the door to her former mistress’s bedroom and closes itbehind her. There is no way out. When the mistress is fully awake and realises who is in her room she mocks the intruder. She makes clear her intention to go on with her wicked deeds until she has broken Stella Maris’ heart.
Unity’s memories of herself being mistreated by this woman are now depicted. Hoping to protect Stella from such sufferings and exacting revenge
Unity pulls the trigger of the gun she holds in her pocket. A cloud of smoke
bursts in to the room and the former mistress dies. Then Unity shoots herself.
This suicide, however, takes place off–screen and spectators learn about it
later. The gun in her pocket must be as small as the one seen in A Romanceof the Red Woods. However, at close range and when properly aimed it isjust as deadly as the one that is held by the outlaw in A Romance in the Red
Woods.
In the United States Pickford was loved for playing angels with “dirty
faces”. In the early 1920s Finns were eager to see her play such characters.
This interest had been fed by material published in magazines. However,Unity was something different––certainly not an angel. Her actions not only
violated the audience’s expectations but their morals as well.
Contextualising the Case
It seems the actions that Unity takes in the climax of Stella Maris steeply
contradicted expectations that had been created by the Finnish press andmore conventional Pickford films like A Romance of the Red Woods. Skilfully narrated melodramatic action where lovability is contrasted with brutality in realistic surroundings––like in Stella Maris––truly shocked many
Finns of the day. There are interesting cases that prove this. For example, D.
W. Griffith’s murky London melodrama Broken Blossoms was relentlessly
cut by national film censorship.420 Explicit sexuality and violent scenes wereamong issues the film sensors ruled against. Apparently the most violent
scenes of Broken Blossoms were at least shortened, although it is not known
what exactly was cut. However, even in this cut form the film appalled
Filmiaitta’s anonymous reviewer.421 Witnessing how a father beats herdaughter’s love affair to pieces with great enjoyment was, according to thisreviewer, so vulgar that audiences would surely detest it. Without thesebursts of violence that are contrasted with lovability the reviewer would have
liked the film. Broken Blossoms was praised for fine acting and Griffith’sstory telling. This criticism is surprisingly similar to that on Stella Maris.
Conversely, the melodramatic scenes in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were acceptable, even pleasing in all their nastiness, because they were not tied to
lovability or to realism for that matter. In Filmiaitta the film was reviewed
420
421

Valtion elokuvatarkastamon päätösasiakirja 12169.
Anonymous, ”Katkenneita kukkasia”, Filmiaitta, issue 12, 1923, 156.

176

unambiguously as a suspense story based on a well–known novel.422 According to the reviewer the film told a lot about the dual nature of man. The unpleasant scenes where Jekyll is transformed to Hyde were seen as being depicted with horrifying realism. Yet this realism differed from that of Stella
Maris and Broken Blossoms. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a fantasy film
whereas Stella Maris and Broken Blossoms lack fantasy elements altogether. It
seems that there was something in the lifelikeness and recognisability of theevents and milieus portrayed in these two films that troubled some Finns.
To understand why the realism of the melodramatic events depicted in
Stella Maris was seen that troubling it is necessary to contextualise the reception of the film a bit further. In 1918, soon after becoming a sovereign state,
Finland faced a civil war. Revolutionary elements, inspired by the Bolshevik
revolution, took over country’s socialist movement and called for a general
uprising. It has been estimated that around 36,000 people died during this conflict and many were tortured and mutilated.423 In the early 1920s when Stella
Maris and other films discussed in this article were reviewed in Filmiaitta thenation was severely traumatized by these events. In my view the Civil War
and its aftermath are contextual factors that must have affected the reception ofthese and other films. However, one needs to be careful in making such assumptions. The events of 1918 were not openly discussed, least of all in film
related articles. In other words, arguments that can be made about the relationof these events to the reception of Stella Maris remain hypothetical.
So how could Stella Maris relate to the Civil War? The answer is straightforward. Unity Blake is a working class character that rises against her former
mistress. Furthermore, she uses violence to drive her cause. To Finns, thescene where the armed working class character intrudes into the upper class
home must have been a harsh reminder of the violent events that had takenplace in 1918. According to psychohistorian Juha Siltala, armed rebellious
women were severely hated by the winning side and it treated them accordingly.424 Unity Blake, my argument goes, brought uneasy memories to mindsof spectators who were looking for escapist entertainment promised by
Pickford’s star image. The fact that a happy ending follows Unity’s actions iswhat Filmiaitta’s reviewer referred to when he argued that the film exemplifies bad taste. In real life the consequences had been anything but happy.425
Here we have an example of a reading created through negotiation of a set ofcultural relations that certainly was not predicted by Hollywood studios.

422

Anonymous, ”Filmiohjelmistosta.”, Filmiaitta, issue 3, 1921, 41.
Juha Siltala, Sisällissodan psykohistoria (Keuruu: Juha Siltala ja Kustannusosakeyhtiö
Otava, 2009), 16.
424
Juha Siltala, Sisällissodan psykohistoria (Keuruu: Juha Siltala ja Kustannusosakeyhtiö
Otava, 2009), 433–460.
425
Juha Siltala, Sisällissodan psykohistoria (Keuruu: Juha Siltala ja Kustannusosakeyhtiö
Otava, 2009), passim.
423

177

Pickford’s Star Image in Finnish Film Culture
At the turn of the 1920s the nature of available information concerning
Pickford was transformed. Previously her private life had not been discussed
on the pages of Finnish magazines. This transformation brought the star into
existence. Richard deCordova argues that “with the emergence of the star thequestion of the player’s existence outside his of her work in film became theprimary focus of discourse.”426 Pickford talked about her life and dreams in
the interview that was translated into Finnish. Furthermore, in the early
1920s film magazines published questions and answers concerning her identity outside the medium. Pickford’s private life became an important part ofthis discourse. Now she was a character in a narrative that was separablefrom her work in any film and this discourse involved people in the cinema
outside the movie theatres.427 However, it seems that the private life of
Pickford and other Hollywood stars did not weigh as much in Finland as in
the United States. Pickford’s work in films was still the primary focus of
discussions rather than her life outside the cinema.
Even though her private life was not the main focus of discussion,
Pickford’s Finnish star image was surprisingly similar to her American one.
One reason for this state of affairs was the fact that a lot of publicity material
was imported to Finland. This material, just like the films, was made in Hollywood. However, if we agree that “audiences create meanings through theirnegotiation of a set of cultural relations that extend well beyond the boundaries of any individual film”, as Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes have put
it, we might want to ask why there was no distinctively Finnish conceptionof Pickford?428 It seems to me that the values at the heart of Pickford’s star
image had a great deal to do with this. Her star image, like star images ofother stars, was constructed to elicit particular responses. Ideas and morals
Pickford expressed in interviews, publicity portraits and other images of her
published in Finnish magazines and the films themselves were found endearing. Finns were eager to discuss her films and they wrote poems about her.
The climax of Stella Maris excluded, the majority of filmgoers were of theopinion that Pickford was, even when handling guns, just lovable.

426

Richard deCordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 98.
427
Richard deCordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 99, 114.
428
Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes, introduction to Hollywood Abroad: Audiences andCultural Exchange, ed. Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes (London: BFI, 2004), vii.
178

Asta Nielsen in the Netherlands: 1920
Ansje van Beusekom
In 1920 Asta Nielsen visited the Netherlands twice: in September, she appeared as the guest of honour at the Internationale Kino Tentoonstelling in
Amsterdam; in November, she toured the country with a staged pantomime,
La Main. On both occasions she received a warm welcome from the audience that went out to hail her in the street on her tours between the railway
stations and the theatres. The press clippings on her reception and on her
performance leave no doubt that Asta Nielsen was the best–known film celebrity among the Dutch cinema and theatre audiences in 1920.
Johan Gildemeyer had organized De Internationale Kinotentoonstelling or
I.K.T. (International Film Exhibition) in the garden of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Before the war, Gildemeyer had been the Dutch distributor offilms produced by the German PAGU. He had introduced the first Asta Nielsen films in his Union Elite Bioscoop in Amsterdam in 1911. The I.K.T. wasa brave try to restore the broken relations in the international film businessafter World War I. Because the Netherlands had kept their neutrality during
the War, the country considered itself afterwards as the best place for negotiations between the former belligerent parties. Queen Wilhelmina had
thought so in terms of international politics and Gildemeyer did likewise interms of film trade. Although the I.K.T. as a whole was regarded as a flopbecause the Americans stayed away, the French hardly showed up and theDutch authorities still weren’t prepared to take film seriously, Asta Nielsen’svisit was regarded as a success. Critics compared her welcome to that of
Sarah Bernard and her performances doubled the amount of visitors to theexhibition during the week of her performances. According to reports in the
trade press the scenes of Engelein and La Dame aux Camellias, that she re–enacted live with the Dutch actor Willem van der Veer, stunned her audience.429 Asta Nielsen surely lived up to the high expectations she had createdin her films, films that were familiar to the Dutch movie–going audience in
1920.
The critical reception of the stage play in November, however, also
showed disappointment. Although it was obvious there was a star at workwhen she finally arrived on the scene, the critics had expected to see more of
Asta Nielsen herself. “’The Hand’ (La Main) was not strong enough to keep
its grip on our throats[…]”, mocked the critic in the NRC.430 The mimed
stage act was considered too short and moreover mostly filled with the third–
rate acting of Nielsen’s Dutch co–actors, “a bunch of ’variété–Israëlieten’429

Anonymous, “Asta Nielsen op de I.K.T,” De Filmwereld 3 (1920) 32: 3.
Anonymous, “Tournee Asta Nielsen. De Hand”, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 8 November 1920, Avondblad B.

430

179

(3rd–rate actors)”, whose histrionic acting prevented the spectators fromfeeling taken in. The props and special effects were also managed clumsily.
Another critic compared the show with a ’Fish dinner (Visch diner)’ thatconsisted of two hors d’oeuvres containing a little portion of expensive fish,
followed by a main course of cheap cabbage and potatoes mishmash.431 The
critics felt offended and underestimated and they all claimed to prefer Asta
Nielsen on screen instead of on stage. They confessed that on screen her
mimic face and swirling body had often moved them to tears.
The question I would like to answer here is not why Gildemeyer invited
Asta Nielsen to the IKT or why she was invited to come back and perform
on stage. It is pretty obvious that the Dutch impresarios saw in Asta Nielsen
a star attraction for their own benefit. Instead, I am more curious about whatmight have persuaded Asta Nielsen to come to Holland and act on stage. In
1920 she was also engaged in many film projects. Moreover, according to
her own memoirs she had not returned to the theatrical stage before 1926 andwe find no trace of her visits to Holland at all.432 Her visits might not haveleft a big impression on her, considering all the projects in which she wasinvolved in Germany, but a little historical correction based on contemporarypress records is appropriate here. I wish to understand her decisions in thecontext of her situation in WWI and its aftermath. Dutch writings on film
and the availability of her films in the Netherlands during this period form
the other parameters of this research.
Asta Nielsen from 1916 to 1920: unemployed and drifting
According to her own memoirs, Asta Nielsen Die schweigende Muse, as a
Danish actress, living and working in Germany at war, she had hardly beenable to work in Germany from 1916 on. She travelled over the world, visiting the Americas by ship with her husband to be, Freddy Wingarth, while
waiting for her divorce from Urban Gad to come through. In New York she
visited Fox and Vitagraph in 1917. She attended film shoots but refused toparticipate in any offered film projects. As we also know from contemporaryinterviews she rejected the American way of filmmaking and its commercial
commitment to entertainment. In her eyes American film was not art: theAmericans highly underestimated acting and overestimated beautiful faces
and exteriors instead.
Although nobly following her heart, her early rejection of American
ways of filmmaking must have cost her a lot. Looking at this rejection
from another angle, big contracts might also not have been offered to her
because she was quite unknown to American audiences outside New

431

Anonymous, “Een volle schouwburg op Zondag–namiddag”, De Nieuwe Rotterdamsche
Courant, 22 November 1920, Avondblad B.
432
Asta Nielsen, Die schweigende Muse. trans. H. Georg Kemlein (Rostock: 1961), 272.
180

York.433 Therefore, the possibility that Nielsen had not been welcomed in
the US with the honours she was used to in Europe cannot not be excluded:
American audiences hardly knew the European diva because her films hadpoor distribution, if any. Either way, Nielsen was much too much her own
woman to fit into the American Studio system that had evolved at the time.
Financially, though, not having an American career must have been toughin the years to come. The theatre proved to be a good alternative to fallback on.
As soon as she could travel in 1917, she returned to Europe, first to Denmark until the war was over, and afterwards back to Berlin. Nielsen chosepassionately for her expressive style of acting that was based on sharing
emotions with her audiences. 1920 appears to be a decisive year in which
she made a definitive choice between industry á la Hollywood and the art
film. With her own company called Art–Film, founded with her new husband, she could not have been more outspoken. Art–Film produced Hamlet
in 1920 and Freule Julie in 1921. In 1920 Nielsen was also involved in thefollowing other film projects: Der Reigen and Kurfürstendamm by Richard
Oswald, Graf Sylvain’s Rache by Willy Grunwald, and Steuermann Holk
(with Paul Wegener) for Maxim films. After years of silence many parts
were again at her disposal. Rausch (Strindberg), directed by Ernst Lubitsch,with whom she did not always agree, had brought her back to the German
film scene in 1919. Nevertheless, despite all the work, Germany’s economy
and film industry was far from stable after the war and her ambitious art
project needed money. In the years before 1919 while out of work, sufferingfrom a divorce, and taking a costly trip, she must have spent a lot of money
without any money coming in. The Netherlands, compared to Germany,
appeared as an oasis nearby where good food and cash were still available.
According to her own reports in 1920, the first time she visited the Netherlands was when she returned to Europe with the steamer Frisia, landing in
Holland.434
Asta Nielsen’s reputation in the Netherlands in 1920
During her visit to the IKT Amsterdam in September 1920, Asta Nielsen was
delighted to discover that she was still famous in Holland. Thanks to the
Cinema Context database, launched by Karel Dibbets of the University of
Amsterdam in 2006, I was able to trace the Asta Nielsen films programmed
433

The popular reception of the Asta Nielsen films in the United States still has to be investigated. Richard Abel has started to look into this in his trade press research. So far, talking tome at the WWS in Stockholm, June 2008, he has not found clues that her films were widelydistributed. Jennifer Bean writes about the problematic distribution of Asta Nielsen films in
New York in: Jennifer M.Bean, “ ‘Übers Meer gebracht’ in Amerika, 1912–1914
in:Unmögliche Liebe.Asta Nielsen, ihr Kino ed. Heide Schlüpmann e.a. (Wien: Verlag Filmarchiv Austria, 2009), 337–352.
434
Anonymous, “Asta Nielsen op de I.K.T,” De Filmwereld 3 (1920) 32, 3.
181

in the Netherlands before 1920.435 From 1912 on, the name Asta Nielsen wasadvertised more frequently and for longer in various forms than that of any
other screen or stage star. Her name, not the film title, was the most important eye–catcher. A privilege accustomed to stage stars, this was a new phenomenon in the Netherlands for a film star. As Corrina Muller and Martin
Loiperdinger pointed out, the industry, Paul Davidson’s PAGU, treated hername as a brand name in order to promote a certain type of long featurefilm.436 From 1912 on, the German Monopole films were manufactured anddistributed in a new financing system based on blind selling and block booking. Exclusivity and seriality were among its main aspects and the name Asta
Nielsen guaranteed continuity in expectations. She performed as the leading
lady in many different roles in the Asta Nielsen Monopole–series of PAGU
as well as in other productions. In trade ads as well as in the ads in the newspapers the name Asta Nielsen would therefore function as a mark of recognition and as a label of a certain quality. If there wasn’t a truly great actress atwork, this strategy would have failed, and according to contemporary critics
she was marvellous. In the Dutch cinema, Asta Nielsen was visible thewhole time between 1911 and 1920.
An extraordinary long article on Nielsen as an actress appeared in the literary magazine the Nieuwe Gids in 1913,437 in which the theatre critic Joh.
W. Broedelet reported on her tremendous fame, performing every night in
New York and St. Petersburg, and at the same time in small Dutch cities like
Meppel and Sneek. The article also criticized bulk production wherein thecentral role of the star seemed to be the only reason to produce a film. Although Broedelet praised Asta Nielsen’s tremendous timing and presence––even on film he could see he had encountered one of the greatest actresses of
his time––he considered it a shame she had to show her ’silent’ art in suchpoor plays like Die Sünden der Väters. No better than one was accustomed
to in the cinema, this was a cheap melodrama. Only the scenes wherein Asta
appeared were worth looking at. In the Dutch writings on Asta Nielsen andher films, this difference in quality between Nielsen and her films would bean everlasting aspect, even as late as 1929.
Due to the War, film imports between 1914 and 1918 were obstructed orwere at least risky. Cinemas therefore programmed old stocks of favourite
films. The old Asta Nielsen films were available. Moreover, they also could
be regarded as Danish, thus neutral. Reckoning with the Netherlands neutral
state, they brought with them little risk. If we may believe the ads, Asta435

http://www.cinemacontext.nl
Corrina Muller, Frühe deutsche Kinomatographie. Formale, wirtschaftliche und kulturelle
Entwicklungen 1907–1912 (Stuttgart/Weimar: B. Metzler, 1994). Martin Loiperdinger, Dererste Filmstar in Monopolfilmverleih“, in: Unmögliche Liebe.Asta Nielsen, ihr Kino ed. Heide
Schlüpmann et.al. (Wien: Verlag Filmarchiv Austria 2009), 177–182.
437
Joh. W. Broedelet, “Asta Nielsen”, De Nieuwe Gids (1913), reproduced in De
Kinematograaf 1 (1913) 42, 351.
436

182

Nielsen kept the audience going to the cinema during the difficult war years.
Dutch cinemas kept on promoting old Asta Nielsen films as new throughout
the war. Abraham Tuschinski, an up–and–coming cinema chain owner andfilm distributor, managed to present a ’new’ Asta Nielsen series every September from 1916 on. The Asta Nielsen series 1916–1917 contained 14 newtitles.438 Thanks to this kind of creative programming and recycling, Asta
Nielsen films never left the movie theatres for long. The Cinema Context
database shows that pre–war films produced in 1914 like Die Falsche Asta
Nielsen and Engelein’s Hochzeit were released in 1916 for the first time,
while Engelein, after its first release in 1914, had reruns every year until
1918 in various programmes. The German films produced for Neutral in1916 were released in the Dutch cinemas in 1918: Vordertreppe–
Hintertreppe, Das Weisenhauskind, Das Eskimobaby and Die Rose der
Wildnis. Die Börsenkönigin of 1916 even had to wait until after the War andwas shown in 1919 and 1920.
Cinema Context shows that early Asta Nielsen films of 1911 and 1912 also
returned regularly in different programmes throughout the War. This diachronic programming, often in a double bill set–up with more recent productions, meant that the Asta Nielsen films were in competition with more recent
productions from various sources. Im Grossen Augenblick (1911) was re–released in two movie theatres in The Hague in 1916. In one theatre, Asta
Nielsen had to compete with Italian diva Lyda Borelli in Fior di Male (1916);
in the other, the film shared the program with Franz Hofer’s Das Rose Pantöffelchen. Asta Nielsen could be seen in programmes with films of Victor
Sjöström, Louis Feuillade, Tom Mix and Charlie Chaplin and her films werethus programmed together with Danish, Swedish, American, French and German films.
Although the critics kept Asta Nielsen in high esteem––her lively acting
and mood changes expressed in her face and body were considered of the finest quality––the films she had to perform in were gradually more disputed.
The Dutch critics raised questions such as: why was she neglected by the industry? Or: Why did no one care to make use of her special skills in good scenarios? The Asta Nielsen films of the late teens were considered even worse
than the early ones and according to the critics they often failed to deserve thepredicate ’art’. On the contrary: in 1918 Felix Hageman criticized her more
recent productions and favoured her early ones: “If we want to be honest,
don’t we have to admit that in Asta Nielsen’s dramas the line certainly is notgoing up?”439 He suggested that the cinemas had better rerun her first films andexpected that the audience would come running to see them. The recent Asta
Nielsen films were categorized as mainstream ’burgerlijk drama’ and Nielsen
had to lift up these cheap, flimsy melodramas all by herself.
438
439

Advertisment Thalia and Royal, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 31 August 1916.
Felix Hageman, “Oude films”, De Filmwereld 1 (1918) nr. 43.
183

Although in 1920 Asta Nielsen was by no means forgotten in the Netherlands, her star status was no longer beyond criticism. Critic Max van Wesel
wrote that she had become too old to play little girls. According to his opinion, she like no other had to be aware of the cruelty of the all–seeing camera
in combination with the all–revealing lights.440 Moreover, Charlie Chaplin
surpassed her in fame in the newspaper ads. During the film contest at the
I.K.T. a jury member noted of the third prize winner, The Cure (Chaplin): ’I
would not dare to say that the acting of Charlie Chaplin is less than that of
Asta Nielsen.’441 From her memoirs we know that she regarded Chaplin as
the only American phenomenon worth looking at on screen.
Still, despite these comments it was clear that she still formed a steadyclass of her own in 1920. Probably without realizing it herself, her visit to
Amsterdam in September 1920 can be regarded as a well–timed move inorder to keep her reputation in the Netherlands as the first and one of the best
movie artists in sound cinema. But maybe it worked the other way round as
well: she may have rediscovered herself and her fame and grandness in thisquiet niche that Holland was at the time. In order to understand the warm
reception in the Netherlands of Nielsen and her ideas on film as art, some
explanation of Dutch film culture in the 1920 is necessary.
Dutch film culture after the war
After the war Europe had changed tremendously, but one can say that theNetherlands in comparison with most other European countries had changed
the least. While its neighbouring countries were deeply shattered by WorldWar I, the Netherlands remained neutral. Although it suffered from side
effects caused by the war, such as men away from home due to mobilization,coal and food shortages, rocketing food prices and obstructions in international trade, its economic and political infrastructure remained intact.
Whereas the Allied countries needed the help of the United States to end theconflict and thus had to acknowledge its military and economic supremacy,
the Netherlands hardly noticed the presence of the United States in Europe
and its influence on changes to come. While Paris and London were invaded
by American films from 1915 on, in 1918 Maurits Binger, director of theHollandia Filmfabriek in Haarlem was still convinced of a dominant position for the Dutch film industry in the international film market after theWar. Binger took as its example the pre–war Danish film industry (Ole Olson’s Nordisk).442 According to the trade press and the first popular bi–
weekly on cinema, De Filmwereld, the European pre–war concept of the art
film industry still was seriously considered as film’s most important destiny440

M.H.van Wesel, “Een praatje over Filmacteurs”, De Filmwereld 1 (1918), 11.
Anonymous, “Filmwedstrijd op I.K.T.”, De Filmwereld 3 (1920), 36.
442
Maurits Binger, interview in De Filmwereld 1 (1918), 47.
441

184

after the war.443 Asta Nielsen was regarded as a pioneer on this royal road tofilm as art. Asta Nielsen as star perfectly fitted in the concept of film as art
industry: she was the greatest actress, the first to know how to use film’s
qualities to her advantage, using gestures instead of spoken words, hypnotizing her audiences with her gaze and at the same time appealing to large audiences. According to the Dutch critics––and I emphasize critics, not audiences here––she was always better than the movies she performed in. Expressed for the first time in 1913, this notion became a mantra in the historyof Asta Nielsen’s reception in the Netherlands. In 1920 Asta Nielsen herself
adopted the same line of thinking: she wished to perform her art in better
films and founded her own company, Art–Film. But although she occasionally performed in films based on famous modern plays by Strindberg or Ibsen in 1919 and 1921, they flopped and were criticized for Grunwald’s orWolff’s dull direction.
In 1927 and 1929 Filmliga protagonists Menno ter Braak, Jo Otten andSimon Koster positioned Asta Nielsen in their own conception of film history. They considered Asta Nielsen a great, tragic artist who performed her
art in barren circumstances during the dark ages of film.444 It was a goodthing, though, that the film avant–garde circles embraced her: only theirvenues programmed old films again after WWI. If we can give one unquestionable credit to the avant–garde film movement that emerged in the 1920s,
it is its sense of the heritage of film history, exemplified by the screening ofold films for their aesthetic qualities. Early Asta Nielsen films and the Chaplin Mutual shorts certainly belonged to the most successful reruns. However,all Dutch critics from 1913 to 1930 missed the fact that the much praised
early Asta Nielsen films were intended as mass art or entertainment by theirproducer Paul Davidson and their creators Asta Nielsen and Urban Gad.
Only later, after 1920, would Nielsen deliberately attempt to create art films.
Film at the end of the 1920s, however, had proved to the most cynicalcritic its artistic potential in many different forms, but only in the margins ofa larger film industry. In 1913, film art was just beginning. In 1920, in somepeople’s eyes, film as art was on the brink of a splendid future, but in 1930,
art as film’s major destiny was readily banished to the margins, even in the
Netherlands. The real tragedy, however, was that the later Asta Nielsen films
lost their appeal to mass audiences in the 1920s because they were considered too artistic.

443

Ansje van Beusekom, Kunst en Amusement. Reacties op de film als een nieuw medium in
Nederland, 1895–1940 (Haarlem: Uitgeverij Arcadia, 2001) Chapters 2 and 3.
444
Simon Koster, “Op bezoek bij Asta Nielsen”, Het Vaderland, 14 September 1927; Menno
ter Braak, “Asta Nielsen en het scenario”, Filmliga 1 (1927) 2:10; Jo Otten, “Asta Nielsen”,
Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 19 October 1929.
185

Asta’s choice
When one reads Asta Nielsen’s own statements in her memoirs from the
1920s and 1940s, her complaints about the ’wrong turn’ filmmaking hadtaken are very consistent. Recurring themes like the industry that favours
looks and story over skilled actors, and its favouring spectacle over psychology, dominate her discourse. She also emphasizes the lack of good scenarios
for film that had only became worse after the emergence of the sound film.
The lack of good film offers and changed conditions even became her main
reason to return entirely to the stage in 1926. Her judgment has never beenquestioned, but looking at what she actually did on stage may raise somequestions. In doing so, I’ll keep my Dutch critics in mind.
Considering her own choice of repertoire for stage plays in the 1920s:
Rita Cavallini and La dame aux camellias, one wonders why she preferredthese old models from the 19th century over the more challenging, daring andmodern heroines like Hedda Gabler or Freule Julie, parts she actually performed on screen, but as far as we know, never on stage. Especially because
she claimed to have left film production and returned to the stage because
the quality of the scenarios offered to her grew from bad to worse, I wonder
about her own bad choice of repertoire once she re–appeared on stage.
This surprisingly ambivalent picture of modern experimental acting on
film versus old–fashioned diva roles on stage, however, raises more questions than my research on Asta Nielsen in the Netherlands in 1920 can answer. I am therefore delighted to inform you that Annette Förster is conducting new research on Asta Nielsen’s theatrical career in Germany. I am sureher choice in 1926 was driven, just like her visits to The Netherlands in
1920, not only by artistic but necessarily economic and pragmatic motives aswell. After all, she had to live and support her sister and daughter in Denmark as well.

186

Dance, Stardom, and the Trans–National Celebrity
Status of Anna May Wong
Erin Kelley
I always had to play a slave, temptress, prostitute, ordoomed lover. My lines were in ’Chinglish,’ I was
forbidden to kiss Western men, and I always had to dieso that the woman with the yellow hair could get thewhite man.445– Anna May Wong

Appearing in over sixty feature–length films throughout the course of her forty–
year career, Anna May Wong (1905–1961) was branded by the press as the“Chinese girl”, the “little Chinese star,” and the “Chinese flapper.” Whetherdrowning herself after being abandoned by an American husband in Toll of theSea, 1922 or exacting revenge on a white man in Daughter of the Dragon, 1931,
Wong has been defined by roles in which she played either the passive and pathetic Madame Butterfly or the dangerous and cunning Dragon Lady. Withinvariations of this racial binary, her characters were typically punished for transgressing racial and social boundaries. Consequently, much of the critical analysis regarding Wong’s acting career emphasizes her achievements as a Chinese–
American actress in spite of the limitations prescribed by Hollywood’s racism
and the resulting stereotypical Orientalized roles and acting styles imposed on
Asian women.
More recently, however, scholars have attempted to propose alternative
analyses of Wong’s status as a Chinese–American actress in which she actively
challenged Hollywood’s racism through performance strategies. As Yiman
Wang has argued, most Asian–American actors were seldom critiqued for theirperformance skill or performative strategies, being instead viewed solely as anindex of a homogenous and exoticized Orient.446 As a result, an actor like Anna
May Wong had no choice but to perform a mimetic version of Yellowface inscribed by Hollywood’s Orientalized conventions of portraying the Asian“other.” Yet through the mastery and manipulations of these mimetic forms, her
performance worked as a strategy that destabilized the Asian American’s situational dilemma in the 1920s.447

445

Sheridan Prasso, The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls and Our Fantasies of
the Orient (New York: Public Affairs, 2005), 8–9.
446
Yiman Wang, “The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong’s Yellow Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era” Camera Obscura 20, Number 3 (2005), 161.
447
Ibid.
187

I would like to push this idea further by suggesting that Anna May Wong’s
mastery and manipulation of mimetic forms were a symptom of her stardom orwhat Miriam Hansen calls the “star phenomenon”448 in which the star systemchallenges the classical cinematic paradigm as both an industrial norm and ahistoriographic construct by eluding the formalist focus on narrative. In her book
Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship and the American Silent Film Hansen writes:
The star phenomenon not only eludes the formalist focus on narrative (principles of thorough motivation, clarity, unity, and closure), but also complicates the psychoanalytic–semiological preoccupation with the illusionist
mechanisms of the classical apparatus and the unconscious workings of classical modes of enunciation.449

Using Hansen’s argument as a point of departure, I would like to propose analternative frame for understanding Yiman Wang’s pioneering approach, suggesting instead that Ann May Wong’s transnational celebrity status as a Chinese–American star subverted, complicated, and ultimately transcended theideological narrative of E.A. Dupont’s 1929 film, Piccadilly. Using performance
strategies of dance to shape the way her body signifies race, gender, politics, andnationality, Wong cultivated an identity that complicated the classical cinematicparadigm, creating a tension between her star persona, cultural stereotypes, andmoments of performance that exceeded narrative intent.
Each of the dance performances located within the film’s text constitutes a
specific text in and of itself that contradicts the overarching ideological codesand structures predicated by classical cinema. By analyzing dance as a “performative strategy” of intervention, Wong’s character Sho–Sho disrupts the ideological discourse of emerging classical cinematic codes (by eluding formalist
narrative conventions of motivation, clarity, unity, and closure) through the creation of an intertextual dialogue between dance and stardom as she transitions
from scullery maid to nightclub dance star. In this article, however, I will focus
on Sho–Sho’s scullery dance and her opening night performance in the Piccadilly Club’s ballroom.
One of the challenges of writing about dance is how to define and describe it
within the context of Piccadilly. Besides functioning as a narrative mechanismthat provides visual spectacle, dance is used to create desire. The physicality
inherent in dance offers a format in which the stereotypes of white imagination
are played out on the Orientalized body of Wong’s character Sho–Sho. The
cultivation of Wong’s star image relied on her Chineseness, the recurrence of
the Orient as a cinematic motif, and the way in which her body was associatedwith perceptions of racial character. Thus, by exploiting these gendered stereotypes, Wong’s stardom allowed her to establish as well as manipulate a set of448

Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship and the American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 246.
449
Ibid.
188

traits associated with her performance style that could be carried over from one
film to the next, allowing her to become both the object of desire as well as theprimary agent of narration. In Piccadilly these traits are expressed through Sho–
Sho’s dance performance(s) as Wong plays out the Orientalist fantasy by exhibiting herself as an exotic dancer whose body is consumed by not only the whitemale gaze, but the Asian male gaze, and the white female gaze.
Dance is also utilized as a means of representing the potential for both economic and social mobility as well as the fluidity of movement within a society
segregated by race and class. Through a variety of performance spaces in locales
such as the ballroom of the Piccadilly Club, the Club’s scullery, and a pub in
London’s Limehouse district, dance becomes the medium of interrogation andsocial juxtaposition. Within the film these locales produce cultural definitions aswell as areas of action that have the potential to construct boundaries, creating
tension and division between the film’s protagonists. However, by using dance
to juxtapose different types of performance spaces and spectatorship, as well as
trigger movement between established social spaces, cinematic codes regarding
the transgression of racial and social boundaries can be interrogated.450
Wong’s performance style in Piccadilly not only dictates sanctioned and unsanctioned modes of mobility and spectatorship, but forces an acknowledgementof the status of the non–white transnational film star by paralleling Sho–Sho’s
rise to fame with that of her own. Set in a cabaret in London’s West End the film
opens with Mabel Greenfield (Gilda Gray, 1901–1959) and her dance partner
Victor Smiles (Cyril Ritchard, 1897–1977) as the featured act of the Piccadillynightclub. One evening a patron is served his meal on a dirty dish and his complaints disrupt Mabel and Victor’s dance routine. The owner of the club, Valentine Wilmot (Jameson Thomas 1888–1939), goes into the scullery to locate theproblem. He discovers a young Chinese maid, Sho–Sho, entertaining her fellow
kitchen workers with a sensual dance. Valentine fires Sho–Sho for causing thedisruption and Victor for making passes at Mabel. Business, however, begins tosuffer as a result of Mabel dancing alone. In an effort to boost business Valentine offers Sho–Sho a chance to perform at the club. Sho–Sho’s dance routine isa huge success and she becomes the star attraction. Soon there after Sho–Sho
becomes romantically involved with Valentine, but is ultimately murdered at theend of the film by her jealous boyfriend Jim.
This rags–to–riches story of Chinese scullery maid turned Piccadilly nightclub dance star can be used as a model to examine how stardom and narrational
strategies contributed to Wong’s public reception. Her arrival in London followed on the heels of the Cinematographic Film Act of 1927, which required
British theaters to exhibit a certain number of films per screen per year.451 As a
450

Christine Gledhill, Reframing British Cinema, 1918–1928: Between Restraint and Passion(London: BFI Publishing, 2003), 25–27.
451
Ruth Vasey, The World According to Hollywood, 1918–1939 (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1997), 42.
189

result of this political and economic act to protect British–produced films, studios dramatically increased their production to meet the demands of theater
owners.452 The increase in British film production resulted in an increase of opportunities for Wong to be cast in feature roles outside the Hollywood system,
and in 1929 she made her London debut as the Chinese scullery dancer in Piccadilly.
Wong’s connection to the immigrant working class audience is perhaps mostevident during Sho–Sho’s scullery dance. As previously mentioned, Sho–Sho’s
dance is the cause of the disruption in the ballroom as well as the first instance inwhich Sho–Sho exerts absolute power over the fate and financial success of the
Piccadilly club. This scene rearticulates the relationship between spectacle andspectator by removing both Valentine and the film audience from the performance space of the scullery.
Sho–Sho’s dance is for the women working in the scullery, thus making the
primacy of the male gaze no longer functional as the dominant discourse. By
directly challenging the standard notion of spectacle and spectator, Sho–Sho’s
performance elevates the secondary discourse, that of the woman and the femalegaze, to the fore.453 Her performance represents a moment in the film where thedominant ideological discourse of the white male is rendered strange and unable
to properly access the alternate sphere of the working–class. We only becomeaware of the scullery dance through the disruption it creates in the upper–middle
class sphere of the ballroom. Visual access to Sho–Sho’s dance requires movement from the ballroom to the scullery, which also becomes a classed and gendered performance space based upon its intended function and the type of people located with in it. In this case, the working class sphere of the scullery is
revealed to be a collective space capable of transgressive acts. Like Valentine,
the film audience is not an informed viewer and this is reinforced by our alignment with him as he moves from the ballroom through the kitchen and finally tothe scullery.
In the first sequence of establishing shots the camera cuts from Valentine
watching the women in the scullery, to the scullery women watching Sho–Sho,to Sho–Sho performing her dance, and then back to the scullery women. As aresult, our direct gaze, like Valentine’s, is mitigated by the relationship between
Sho–Sho and the working class women of the scullery. Close–up shots ofWong’s sensual dance performance atop the impromptu stage of the scullery
table hypnotize her audience. Like the women of the scullery, we too become
oblivious of the disruption this performance has caused, completely entranced
by Sho–Sho’s dance as she thrusts her hips and swings her waist in slow circularmotions.

452

Ibid.
Claire Johnston, “Dorothy Arzner: Critical Strategies,” in Feminism and Film, ed. E. Ann
Kaplan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 146.
453

190

Because the life of a star existed outside the confines of individual films andby the publicity that surrounded his/her public and private life, the stars’ presence in a film had the ability to blur the line between the ideological underpinnings of the narrative and the narrative itself. In Piccadilly this blurring between
the diegetic and non–diegetic narrative is first demonstrated through Sho–Sho’s
scullery dance. Our initial access to Sho–Sho is vis–à–vis her status as a working class Chinese immigrant living in the Limehouse district and working in theentertainment district of Piccadilly. Through this social and racial positioning
within the narrative, Wong and the character she plays are clearly aligned with
Britain’s immigrant working class. As the film progresses, and as Sho–Sho’s
success transports her up London’s social ladder, she becomes emblematic of
the potential for upward mobility within European society.
Wong’s ability to destabilize boundaries of race, class, and spectatorship byquestioning relationships between performance space, codes of desire, objectification, and self–conscious references to performance through the reinvention ofher persona abroad, is reified in Sho–Sho’s opening night performance. Throughdance Sho–Sho transitions from the working–class sphere of the scullery to theupper–middle class sphere of the ballroom. Establishing herself as a conduit
between gendered, raced, and classed boundaries, Sho–Sho becomes the objectof desire as well as the spectacle of consumption for a variety of people. Like
her performance in the scullery, Sho–Sho directly challenges the standard notionof spectacle and spectator, as her performance proposes a multiplicity of new
discourses.
Visually, disruptions in the ideological discourse are illustrated throughWong’s dance performance and the types of relationships it initiates between
different members of the audience. Reinforced by camera shots and editing
techniques that align the gazes of the audience members through framing andcross–cutting, Sho–Sho’s body becomes the corporeal conduit that simultaneously unites these various spectatorial groups, and makes apparent their power
struggle in relationship to different modes of looking vis–à–vis one another.
The scene opens with an establishing shot of Sho–Sho dressed in her exotic
dance costume comprised of a sequined bodice and phallic headdress. The camera then cuts to a shot of Jim, Sho–Sho’s boyfriend, who is not only a spectator,
but himself a spectacle within the performance, as the musical accompaniment.
The camera cuts back to Sho–Sho, this time establishing the spectacle–spectator
relationship between herself and Valentine, which, as we soon learn, is based
upon the delicate balance between Valentine’s dependence on Sho–Sho as acommodity of dance and the absolute power she wields over him and the financial success of the nightclub.
Sho–Sho’s relationship with Valentine as both the headlining act and his loveinterest is reinforced through the next two camera shots in which Mabel’s displacement and ultimate marginalization is foreshadowed. In this frame the presence of Sho–Sho’s dancing body is made visible by the shadow it casts on thedance floor. The mise–en–scène, consisting of candles rotating in globes of re191

fracted light, blended with the red tinting, phallic headdress, and gyrating body,highlights Sho–Sho’s embodiment of the imagined threat and potential dangerof the Oriental “other”. Sho–Sho’s dancing body as threat to Mabel’s status isunderscored by the next sequence of camera shots which crosscut between
Mabel’s frightened face, to Sho–Sho’s exotic dance, to the gaze of the malepatron’s in the Club, back to Sho–Sho, and finally to the gaze of the female
patrons.
Sho–Sho’s new status within the Club’s hierarchy, however, does not elide
her relationship with the working class women of the scullery. Towards the endof her performance, as Sho–Sho’s dance is reaching its climax, her friend andco–worker Bessie peeks through the “Staff” door, crossing the working–class–bound space of the scullery into the upper middle–class space of the ballroom.
Through her association with Sho–Sho, Bessie becomes a part of the social transitioning. Similarly, through her active participation in the spectacle–spectator
relationship established between Sho–Sho’s performance and her voyeuristic
viewing of it, Bessie’s status becomes aligned with the Club’s wealthy patrons.
As Sho–Sho’s performance comes to an end and the camera does one final
pan through the ballroom––capturing the multiplicity of gazes from the club’s
audience members including Mabel, Bessie, Jim, and Valentine––it is obviousthat the consumption of Sho–Sho’s body, while symbolic of a variety of social,sexual, and class related relationships and contexts, is not representative of one
specific ideological discourse. Instead, a reinterpretation of the pre–existingclassical discourse with regard to ownership and control over the Orientalized
body is played out during Sho–Sho’s dance performance.
While Wong’s portrayal of a Chinese dancer had the capacity to undermine
established boundaries of race and class within British society, it also made apparent growing tensions between the British Empire and its colonies with regard
to interracial relationships. Wong brings these issues to the fore through Sho–
Sho’s mobility as a dancer working in Piccadilly and living in the slums of the
Limehouse district. Sho–Sho’s ability to traverse racial, ethnic, and social
boundaries, while still maintaining her role as a dancer who unites various spectatorial groups, makes apparent the power struggle with regard to different
modes of performance.
Given the narrative arc of the film as presented through Wong’s performance, Sho–Sho’s death at the hands of her jealous Chinese boyfriend––allowing
for the restoration of Valentine and Mabel’s relationship––is a weak attempt at
reinstating racial and sexual hierarchies within the film. Having systematicallydisrupted the ideological discourse throughout two–thirds of the film, the eradication of Wong’s character within the last few scenes is both abrupt and unprecedented.
While Piccadilly attempts to present a darker and perhaps more cynical version of the Hollywood narrative of white heterosexual romance, the film’s structure does not necessarily accomplish the traditional modes of resolution andclosure. As Claire Johnston has noted:
192

The drive towards narrative resolution and closure of the dominant discourse
in classical cinema traditionally involves the ’happy ending’ or its inversion,both embodying the notion of unification, the completion of the man by the
woman and the myth of sexual complementariness.454

Ultimately, Sho–Sho’s death becomes a byproduct of the classical cinematicparadigm that foregrounds the white–heterosexual romance and condemns interracial relationships. Yet this evaluation of racial and sexual hierarchy in narrative cinema does not take into account the power of Wong’s star persona, who,by playing a Chinese dancer, challenged the implications of this argument byforegrounding cinematic identification between spectacle and spectator vis–à–
vis issues of race and gender.455 In Piccadilly Wong’s stardom created as wellas subverted classical cinema’s racial and gendered stereotypes through Sho–
Sho’s dancing body. Using dance as a tool of interrogation, Wong’s performance strategies represent the systematic refusal of this classical paradigm bydestabilizing the boundaries and hierarchies of race, class, and gender throughthe character of Sho–Sho.
Despite the convenience of closure that Sho–Sho’s death brings to the film,
we must acknowledge the ruptures that Wong’s performance strategies createdwithin the narrative––disturbing the conventions of classical cinema––and creating a space in which she had the ability to question established codes of desire
between spectatorship, performance space, and the objectification of the female
body. Wong’s performance not only initiated an intertextual dialogue between
dance and stardom, but gave her career the longevity and fortitude necessary in
an industry that was inherently racist.
For the British film industry, Wong’s Chinese–American star presence not
only offered a heightened level of charm, charisma, sexuality, and eroticism, butsomething specifically “non–American.” While Piccadilly’s text is comprised ofan ensemble of dance performances that destabilize boundaries of race, class,and spectatorship, it is only through Wong’s portrayal of Sho–Sho as an ethnic
working–class heroine attempting to survive in an increasingly bourgeois environment that she becomes emblematic of all people seeking to reinvent themselves. Galvanizing the potential for upward mobility and social acceptanceamong Europe’s immigrant working class, Wong’s ability to embody the ideological contradictions of classical cinema and then subvert them through themedium of dance highlights the contemporary social tensions of people, who,
like her, were grappling with similar issues of race, class, gender, and ethnicity.

454

Ibid.
Judith Mayne, “Lesbian Looks: Dorothy Arzner and Female Authorship,” in Feminism andFilm, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 175.

455

193

Wang Hanlun, a “Successful” Runaway Nora in the
Chinese Film Industry
Yuan Chen
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, China experienced decades ofcritical reform: internal rebellions, continued fighting against Western imperialism as well as Japanese invasions, and the political revolution which resulted in the abolishment of the emperors’ ruling dynastic system and theestablishment of the Republic of China. The change of regime, however, did
not practically resolve the social and economic problems that overwhelmed
China. To ensure Chinese survival in the modern world and promote China
to achieve modernity, Chinese intellectuals realized it was the traditional
culture that shackled the development of China. They therefore endeavoredto nurture new modern culture through all classes of people. Women wereabsolutely essential to this process. The following New Culture Movement
and May Fourth Movement of the 1910s and 1920s, on the one hand, advanced the use of “the less exclusionary vernacular form of the written language” instead of classical Chinese, which was discernible only to the mosteducated, “helping to spread the message of cultural change”;456 meanwhile,
the movement for women’s emancipation was beginning to gain widespread
publicity.
On December 26th, 1923, Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature,
gave a talk titled “What Happens after Nora Leaves Home?” at the Peking
Women’s Normal College. In his response to Henrik Johan Ibsen’s play “A
Doll’s House”, Lu Xun stresses considerations which many critics––whogenerally identified it as the embodiment of the emancipation of women––chose to disregard. “The play ends with the dramatic sound of a door slamming shut. Nora walks away from the security of her household and from all
traditionally sacred values of marriage and motherhood”.457 However, what
will happen after she leaves? Will she become a really free individual? Although Lu Xun sees Nora’s leaving as a disillusion, without an economic
source, he considers her victory useless.458 She has only two alternatives: tosell her body or to return to her husband. “The crucial thing for Nora ismoney,” Lu Xun explained:
456

Jennifer Rudolph, “Chinese Women and Modernity,” ExEAS Teaching Materials & Resources, http://www.exeas.org/resources/chinese–women–modernity.html
457
qtd. in Nicolas D. Kristof, “China's Greatest Dissident Writer: Dead but Still Dangerous,”
New York Times, August 19, 1990.
458“The most painful of one’s life is there is no way to go when you wake up from yourdream. Those who live in illusion are in happiness; if there is no choice for him/her, it is no
better than to keeping him/her in the dream”. Xun Lu, The Talk. qtd. in Nicolas D. Kristof,“China's Greatest Dissident Writer: Dead but Still Dangerous,” New York Times, August 19,
1990.
194

Of course, money cannot buy freedom, but freedom can be sold formoney. Human beings have one great drawback, which is that they often
become hungry. To remedy this drawback, and to avoid making people puppets, the most important thing in society seems to be economic rights. First,
there must be a fair sharing between men and women in the family; secondly, men and women must have equal rights in society.459
On the contrary, if Nora has economic rights and gains economic resources apart from selling her body, can she become an independent, chaste
woman? In the case study of Wang Hanlun, one of the first generation ofChinese movie stars in the 1920s, who divorced her husband and was drivenout by Peng’s family460 because she was not allowed to become a film actress, her example comes to encompass a general refusal to conform to Confucian morality. What happened after her leaving is the embodiment of
women’s struggle against tradition, modernity, and nationalism. Similar tothe situation in early Hollywood, the booming film industry in the 1920s“offered women opportunities that existed in no other workplace”.461 Filmstars like Wang Hanlun could live a decent life in the expensive Shanghai
totally supported by themselves. Having achieved economic independence,
is Wang Hanlun a successful runaway Nora in the Chinese film industry?
Chronologically structured by her career, this essay will begin by analyzing the difficult process of women’s appearance on the screen during theearly period of Chinese film history and briefly account for the movies inwhich she starred. The second part is an examination of the possibilities forher to not only became a film star but also open her own film company at theend of the 1920s in Shanghai, China’s earliest modernized city, in whichurbanization was related to being divided into separated concession territories of Britain, France, America, Japan and other empires. Finally, the question of why Wang Hanlun and her compeers like Yang Naimei, who also
opened a film company under her name, have never been written down asfilm producers other than film actresses in standard Chinese film historiography will be addressed.
Difficulties for Women to Appear on Chinese Silver Screen
Film was first introduced to China no later than August 11, 1896, when adated public screening was exhibited at “Another Village”, a teahouse in Xu
Garden of Shanghai. The audiences only need to spend 0.2 yuan to watch agroup of shows, including fireworks, conjuring and “Western shadow plays”(xiyang yingxi)––this name was derived from the traditional Chinese leather
silhouette shadow play; for the first audiences, these two kinds of shows459

qtd. in Nicolas D. Kristof, “China's Greatest Dissident Writer: Dead but Still Dangerous,”
New York Times, August 19, 1990.
460
Wang Hanlun’s original name is Peng Jianqing.
461
Karen Ward Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2006), 9.
195

were quite similar, since they both used the principle of light to project images on screen. Viewers would enjoy the shows with tea or snacks and carryon conversations. For both teahouse runners and Chinese audiences, film
was only another manner of “magic show”––“the public consumption of avariety of amusing attractions”,462 sharing the stage with opera, acrobatics,
storytelling, and a variety of traditional Chinese performance (quyi), aiming
to entertaining the public, but not a western scientific or technologicalachievement.
The standard historiography of Chinese film begins with 1905’s Conquer
Jun Mountain (Ding Jun shan), the first film made by a Chinese director––
Ren Jingfeng, the owner of FengTai Photo Studio in Beijing. It filmed thefamous Beijing opera actor Tan Xinpei playing a piece of the same nameopera. Differing from the Lumière Brothers’ experiments of recording daily
lives, the earliest Chinese filmmakers or amateurs took Beijing opera episodes as their subject.
In 1913, Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan made the first Chinese feature film, The Difficult Couple.463 It discloses outmoded conventions andcustoms and satirizes traditional Confucian doctrines. Although the film
raises the issue of female social class in China, ironically all the female
characters were played by male actors. In the same year, Yan Shanshan appeared on screen as the first Chinese actress in Zhuang Zi Tests His Wife,
directed by Li Beihai, written by her husband Li Minwei (Li Beihai’s
brother). Nevertheless, Yan just played the minor role of the maid while thedirector acted as the hero Zhuang Zi and her husband played Zhuang Zi’swife. Nevertheless, it was perhaps the first Chinese film introduced to America by Benjamin Brodsky.
During the following ten years, actresses were still rarely seen in films.
Even if there were, they either played minor roles or they were relatives of
those male filmmakers. After the outbreak of World War I, Chinese screens
had been flooded by Hollywood movies. The audience must have alreadybeen familiar with women’s performance in films. However, why was it so
hard for Chinese actresses to get parts in Chinese films? Some relevant clues
can be found in Tsui Hark’s film, Peking Opera Blues (1986), which is set in1913 Beijing.
The crucial impact of Chinese opera performance on Chinese film was
not only displayed by its style and the audiences’ perception of it (both ofwhich were shown in teahouses at first); but was also reflected from themoral tradition it inherited.
The Chinese title of the film Dao Ma Dan translates as Knife Horse Actresses, a name used in Peking opera to refer to male actors playing female
462

Shuqin Cui, Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), 4.
463
The Difficult Couple was photographed by Jewish–Russian–American Benjamin Brodsky.
196warriors. In fact, it is a parody of Chinese opera. The film depicts the adventure of three women from different classes achieving the same commission
both for their friendship and saving the nation together. “The gender roles
are subverted, with the females appearing ’masculine’ while the males appear the opposite.”464 At last, it is the women who become the warriors of thecountry. Pat Neil is the daughter of the owner of a Chinese opera troupe(where the majority of scenes happen) with an all–male cast. Most of these
actors, especially those who play young female characters, behave in a feminine way. Pat Neil, however, learns martial arts by herself, and bravely uses
her skills to rescue her companions. Her biggest wish is to be an actress onstage, but it is unacceptable for her traditional father. “Traditionally Chinese
women had been largely excluded from the public arena…. Women and men
neither were to appear on the same stage, nor allowed to sit together in theaudience, if women were admitted at all”.465 Tsao Wan (starring Brigitte Lin)is the daughter of a warlord who dresses as a man in order to freely attend
the opera theater and other public sites. Her real identity is an underground
patriotic revolutionary. Although the film is “an unlikely concoction of acrobatic action, screwball comedy, and unabashed romanticism,”466 intrigued byreal history and political events, it reflects certain social realities of the
1910s China.
As Zhang Zhen points out, “[b]efore the coming of the cinema only
women from poor or marginal social groups worked as actors, mainly in all–women traveling opera troupes catering to the rural population or lower–class town residents”.467 Previous to the 1920s, the entire Chinese film industry was dominated by foreign investment. “China at that time was very underdeveloped in economy, science and technology, which held back the development of Chinese film”.468 Actually, it was not until the establishment of
the Motion Picture Department of the Commercial Press in 1917––“the earliest Chinese film company financed solely with domestic capital”469–that
Chinese entrepreneurs were aware that cinema was also a commerce and abusiness, not only a plaything. The 1920s witnessed the booming growth of
the Chinese film market. The successive emergence of the three biggest film
studios––Mingxing (Star), Dazhonghua Baihe (Great China/Lily) and Tianyi
464

Kozo, reviewed “Peking Opera Blues” at Kozo. Love HK Film.com.
http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews/peking_opera_blues.htm (assessed on January 16, 2010).
465
Yingjin Zhang, Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943 (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1999), 37.
466
Kozo, reviewed “Peking Opera Blues” at Kozo. Love HK Film.com.
http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews/peking_opera_blues.htm (assessed on January 16, 2010).
467
Zhen Zhang, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937,(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 37.
468
Daoxin Li, History of Chinese Film Criticism ( Zhongguo dianying piping shi), [China
Film Press (Zhongguo dianying chuban she), 2002], 2.
469
Jubin Hu, Projection a Nation: Chinese National Cinema Before 1949 (Hong Kong University Press, 2003), 44.
197

(United)––set up the complexion of tripartite confrontation in the Chinese
film market. “By the mid 1920s more than 180 film companies were set up
in big cities”,470 nearly one third of which were in Shanghai. “And by 1927
there were 151 film production companies”471 in Shanghai.
On the one hand, filmmakers realized that reliance on stage actors,
steeped in classical opera, would not suffice for this new medium. The development of long feature films created a demand for actresses as leadingroles rather than scene fillings. On the other hand, the audience required towatch “a beautiful woman (nüxing) acting in the movie”:
Because movies have no sound and words that might assist in expression,
everything depends on movements and gestures. The performance is completely real and is completely intolerant of disguise. Thus, women must besought out to play the female roles that must be included in movies.472

An Orphan Rescues His Grandpa is the first Chinese feature film which uses
female actors as leading roles. In 1923, Wang Hanlun played the female lead
Yu Weiru, a dutiful wife, in An Orphan Rescues His Grandpa for Mingxing
Film Company. It is a story about a widow who is incriminated falsely ofadultery and driven out by her father–in–law without knowing she is pregnant. Enduring all kinds of hardships, she brings up the son by her own. Finally, her son saves his grandfather from murder. Wang Hanlun’s close–to–life performance deeply impressed the audience. The commercial and artistic
success of the film––it “established a primary structure for the family melodrama genre”473––not only saved the Star film company from bankruptcy,
but also swiftly made Wang Hanlun one of the first generation of Chinese
film stars.
Before Wang Hanlun entered the film industry, she worked as a typist for
the British and American Tobacco Company, where she was discovered by
Ren Xinping, a friend of the director Zhang Shichuan. However, the pricefor her to become a film actress was renouncing the tins to her family.
Wang Hanlun was born Peng Jinqing in a well–to–do family in 1903. She
discontinued her studies at the St. Mary’s Missionary School for Women andarranged to marry a comprador from a Japanese company when she was 16.
Two years later, Peng divorced her husband because she could not bear his
collaborationist, adulterous, and violent conduct. Impecuniously, she taught
in a primary school at first and then became a typist after three months’
470

Beverley Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up (Berkeley; Toronto: Ten Speed
Press, 2005), 104.
471
Jackson, 104.
472
Mighael G Chang, “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Movie Actresses and Public
Discourse in Shanghai, 1920s–1920s,” in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–
1943, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999),128–9.
473
Shuqin Cui,. Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), 7.
198

training. After knowing she signed the contract with Star Studio as an actress, her eldest brother, the clan leader of Peng’s family since her father
died, accused her of “not obeying women’s discipline, violating family rules,
corrupting family morals and insulting ancestors”.474 For this conventionalfamily, where Peng Jianqing was foot–bound when she was a child, her behavior was unacceptable, because they thought to be an actor was no different from being a prostitute. Actually, the term “artist” has an ambiguous
meaning, indicating both the sing–song girls and prostitutes in brothels andactors in the early Chinese language.
At that time, women “could be put to death for violating clan rules”.475 To
be free from the irrational feudal customs, she made a brave decision to relinquish ties with her family. She changed her family name to “Wang”,
which means “king” in Chinese, and adopted her English name Helen as
Hanlun for her given name.
After her début in An Orphan Rescues his Grandfather, Wang starred inanother nine films in the following three years, in which she kept her figureof bitter women, virtuous widows and good mothers. “Most of her films
were stories of romance between a man and a woman, and were called “thestyle of mandarin duck and butterfly.”476 Her characters die or commit suicide in more than half of her films. As what Cui Shuqin points out, “[i]n theearly days of the Chinese film industry, the screen image of woman often
appeared as an oppressed other to be saved or as a modern identity to beemulated.”477
Wang’s favorite film was Divorcée (1924), produced by the Great Wall
Film Studio. The film depicts the story of the wife Wu Zhifang (Wang
Hanlun) in a rich and powerful family being abandoned by her adulterous
husband. Unsatisfied with being in a slave–like position in the family, sheleaves home saying that “I would rather be a bright light in the dark society
than be a serf in the vicious family.”478 She becomes a clerk at a bookstore,
but is insulted by her boss. Suffering from unjust treatment in society, shecannot help but convert to Buddhism in the remote mountains and finallydies from illness in a nunnery. Wang Hanlun liked this film because Divorcée was very close to her life experience.
At that time, Wang earned 140 yuan per month as an actress for the Great
Wall Film Studio. She received another 1,000 yuan bonus after finishing theshooting of Divorcée. Liangyou (The Young Companion), the most popular
474

Ming Jia, “Wang Hanlun”, China Screen No.2 (1988), 30.
Jia, 30.
476
Beverley Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up (Berkeley; Toronto: Ten Speed
Press, 2005), 117.
477
Shuqin Cui,. Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), xiv.
478
Zhongguo dianying ziliao guan. Zhongguo Wusheng Dianying (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996), 77.
475

199

fashion magazine through the 1920s to the 1940s, cost 0.4 yuan per issue.
The increasing social mobility of women in the whole society, the increasing
popularity of film stars and their complete independence in the economy,
however, did not ameliorate their social status nor the attitude that people
treated artists as low as prostitutes. The same comment which stated a yearning for seeing women playing female roles on the screen, reckoned Wang
Hanlun–type of actresses as being “lured by the promise of higher salaries”,
also derided the relationship between women and the fledgling film industry:“[a]lmost all of the women who step onto the stage are the wives of actors,
lowly women, and prostitutes who generally lead the disgusting lives ofstreetwalkers”.479 In conclusion, actresses’ high visibility and various formsof publicity consisted of the biggest conflicts with the traditional Confucian
ethics of virtuous women.
Possibilities to Become Businesswomen in the Modernizing Shanghai
Since 1842, when Shanghai became a treaty port, different imperialistic
powers––Briton, France, America, and Japan––successively establishedconcession territories in the city. “The foreign communities of Shanghai
were not colonies per se of any particular countries or foreign powers.
They were self–governing entities unto themselves.”480 The comparatively
loose political circumstances helped the engendering of a free–market environment in Shanghai. Strongly influenced by foreign culture, Shanghai isthe earliest modernized city and the capital of fashion in China. “By the
1920s imported automobiles––Talbot, Bugatti, Citroen, Renault, Peugeot,
Salmson, and Delahaye––conveyed bankers, brokers, developers, diplomats, gangsters and warlords, their wives and mistresses”.481 Fu Wenhao(a.k.a Ms. AA), the first woman to receive a driving license in the common
concession, played the leading role in one film which was produced by
Shanghai Yingxi Film Company (Shanghai shadow play). Shanghai
Shadow Play was a family enterprise founded by the painter and director
Dan Duyu. His wife Yin Mingzhu played the important role of managing
the company and was also a famous film star throughout the silent film era.
Actually, she was already well known as Ms. FF (Foreign Fashion) for her
stylish guise when she was a student at Shanghai Sino–Western Girl’s
School.

479

qtd. in Mighael G Chang, “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Movie Actresses andPublic Discourse in Shanghai, 1920s–1920s,” in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai,
1922–1943, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 139.
480
Beverley Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up (Berkeley; Toronto: Ten Speed
Press, 2005), 7.
481
Beverley Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up (Berkeley; Toronto: Ten Speed
Press, 2005), 14.
200

The dominance of Hollywood movies served as both a model and a foil fornative filmmakers, regardless of their intellectual backgrounds and ideological persuasion”.482 The first Hollywood–produced “talking picture” debutedin the United States in August 1926 and by early 1927 theatres in Shanghai
were showing Hollywood “talkies.483

Seeing the majority of her profits enter the accounts of film companies anddissatisfied with being controlled by male directors, Wang Hanlun founded
her own independent film company, Hanlun Film Studio, in 1929. She took
part of the directing work, played the leading role, and finished the editing of
the film An Actress’s Revenge (a.k.a Blind Love) by herself. In fact, the film
has nothing to do with the profession of actresses. It the story of a love triangle, in which two colleagues, Yu Runan and You Wen, fall in love with thesame actress, Wang Youlan. But Wang only loves Yu. The angry You beats
Yu to blindness. Wang goes to take revenge on Yu. Unfortunately, she isarrested by him. Wang commits suicide at the end. After finishing the production, Wang Hanlun traveled all around China to promote the film. Each
screening was accompanied with her live appearance onstage. Her efforts on
and off–screen gained her big profits from what turned out to be her laststarring movie. Wang Hanlun then disbanded the company and opened theHanlun Beauty Parlor in the French Concession. As one of the earliest Chinese women to set foot in beauty culture, she was very successful throughout
the 1930s until the Japanese occupied Shanghai. It is quite possible that she
was also the first Chinese businesswoman. First of all, by the 1930s, theirconstrained social status and gender discrimination made it very hard for
women to attend commercial activities, no matter to say being the leader of acompany. Secondly, the emergence of industry in China happened decades
later than in capitalistic countries. And Shanghai was the first modernizedcity in China: “In this sophisticated city, both foreign and Chinese residents
had leisure time and money to spend, commodities not found in the countryside and provincial towns”.484 Around 1894 or 1895, “Japan built the first
factories in Shanghai, which were soon copied by other foreign powers toeffect the emergence of Shanghai industry”.485 If there was no industry before at all, how could there be any female entrepreneurs?
Conclusion: the Struggling Wang Hanlun
Wang Hanlun “ran away” four times, struggling against tradition, modernity
and nationalism through all her life. Her divorce from her husband started
482

qtd. in Beverley Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up (Berkeley; Toronto: Ten
Speed Press, 2005), 103.
483
Jackson, 103.
484
Beverley Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up (Berkeley; Toronto: Ten Speed
Press, 2005), 105.
485
Beverley Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up (Berkeley; Toronto: Ten Speed
Press, 2005), 26.
201

her first adventure into real society. Working hard as a primary school
teacher, she found it was too difficult to cover her spending in the flourishing Shanghai with such a humble income. In her memoir she states that “itwas the time when feminist activities were expanding; women and men are
equal, both of whom can work in society.”486 In the series of movements for
women’s emancipation raised by male intellectuals, they thought that“women had to become more independent if China were to become more
independent. Women’s fate was tied to China’s fate”.487 The requirements
for “modern women” as “an embodiment of national enlightenment implying
the rejection of sociocultural traditions and the acceptance of the advent ofmodernity”488 were highly advocated. Nevertheless, Cui Shuqin, in her book
Women through the Lens, proposes a similar problem to Lu Xun’s: “thequestion of what a woman can become after she flees the patriarchal household and signals the call for a modern nation remains unanswered”.489
Her second departure, driven out of Peng’s family, seems to have been themost successful one. Achieving fames and success in one night, she not only
obtained her own economic rights; through opening her company, she alsobegan to control the economic resources of others. However, in public discourse, under the shadow of feudal doctrine about gender discrimination, herendeavors did not separate her from a prostitute. Would Lu Xun regard her
as a body–seller to the screen? “The modern woman as a self, however, istorn between the given identity and a problematic reality”.490 Mahar claims
that it cannot be assumed that because the field of filmmaking was new, it
was ungendered. “All work emerges from some previously gendered context, and the film industry is no exception”.491 The earliest movie industry in
China also emerged within an already masculinized context. In Chinese culture, masculinity is always equal to patriarchy, symbolizing the prerogativeof absolute domination in the economy and politics. Money secured her independence; in addition, wealth even drove her to want to be above men.
Although filmmaking has been gendered as masculine, actors, no matter
whether male or female, have been gendered as feminine.
Subsequently, she retired from the film industry because she saw amoral decline in Chinese national films. Like some other filmmakers, she
486

Hanlun Wang, Gan Kai Hua Dang Nian.(Beijing: Zhongguo dian ying chu ban she: Xin
hua shu dian fa xing, 1984), 107.
487
Jennifer Rudolph, “Chinese Women and Modernity,” ExEAS Teaching Materials & Resources,
http://www.exeas.org/resources/chinese–women–modernity.html
488
Shuqin Cui,. Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), xiii.
489
Shuqin Cui,. Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), xiii.
490
Shuqin Cui,. Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), xiii.
491
Karen Ward Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2006), 9.
202

realized the educational significance of national films. “Wang Hanlun’s
early retirement may have been due to eye problems caused by working under the charcoal lamps used on silent film sets”.492 She says in her memoirthat she wished she could have made some patriotic films, but as a tiny
woman, she was too weak to achieve it. During the Japanese occupation of
Shanghai, Wang Hanlun refused to cooperate in any collaborative motion
pictures or radio broadcasts. Her resistance soon led to the shutting down ofher salon.
At last, she was cheated to marry an alleged member of the literati whoturned out to be a vulgar alcoholic. Does her move back home signify her
final failure? She moved out again very soon. Without obtaining the windy
promises of decent betrothal gifts, Wang was forced to sell off her furnitureand other personal possessions to survive.
Has she ever been a successful runaway Nora? Her patriotic conduct did
not bring her success, but the shutdown of her business to some extend led
her to be trapped in another unfortunate marriage. However, because of thechange in polity, since the Chinese Communist Party took over the government there have not been any businesswomen in the film industry for nearly
half a century. At least, she is a successful runaway Nora in Chinese film
history.
The lack of documents is always a big problem when doing research on earlyfilms. A widespread electronic version of the list of “the Top 100 of the Firstin Chinese Film History” indicates that the first Chinese female screenwriteris Pu Shunqing, the wife of Hou Yao (the director of Divorcée), who wrote
Cupid’s Puppets in 1925, directed by Hou Yao, produced by Great Wall
Film Studio; and the first Chinese female film director is Xie Caizhen, who
directed and starred An Orphan’s Cry (1925) for Nanxing (Southern Star)
Film Company in the same year. Although their name can be testified in thecredits information collected in the three–volume Zhongguo wusheng dianying juben (Scripts of Chinese Silent Film), edited by Chinese Film Archivein 1996, the academic research on these Chinese woman film pioneers isnear zero.
Another question we need to pay attention to is why in standard Chinese
film historiography Wang Hanlun, or her other compeers such as Yang Naimei, have never been written down as filmmakers or the early businesswomen in film industry. Part of the reason is that “in the past researchers hadvery limited access to extant material due both to inadequate management of
the archive and tight government control of material from the Republican

492

Beverley Jackson, Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up (Berkeley; Toronto: Ten Speed
Press, 2005), 117.
203

period”.493 On the other hand, ideological considerations are hardly negligible. In Chinese film scholarship, Cheng, Jihua, Li Shaobai, and Xing Zuwen’s Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi (The History of Development of Chinese Cinema), first published in Beijing in 1963, has been recognized as themost influential standard Chinese film history. Zhang Yingjin classifies it as
the history of film politics: “Cheng’s history is fundamentally a history of
the leftist film movement because all historical and textual materials arearranged according to this ideological orientation”.494 In this two–volume
monograph, actually, Wang Hanlun is not even introduced as an actress.
Like many other film stars, her name only appears in the parentheses after
the name of the roles she played. The few actresses mentioned with a threeor four line introduction were those girls born in working–class families,
such as Ruan Lingyu, whose father was an “engineering worker”495 andWang Renmei, whose father was a “primary school teacher”.496 Film actors
from other classes, such as Wang Hanlun, who came from a bureaucraticfamily, are ideologically neglected.

493

Zhen Zhang, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 353n3.
494
Yingjin Zhang, Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943 (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1999), 8.
495
Jihua Cheng, Shaobai Li, and Zuwen Xing. Zhongguo Dian Ying Fa Zhan Shi Chu Gao(Beijing: Zhongguo dian ying chu ban she, 1963), 253.
496
Jihua Cheng, Shaobai Li, and Zuwen Xing. Zhongguo Dian Ying Fa Zhan Shi Chu Gao(Beijing: Zhongguo dian ying chu ban she, 1963), 253.
204

On the Stage and on the Screen: Actresses as one of the
Symbols of the Turkish Modernization Project
Selin Tüzün Gül
An Overview of the Socio–Cultural Context of Ottoman Empire in the firstyears of Cinema and the “woman issue”
In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire went through radical political andcultural changes. Military defeat and the international political context forced
the Ottomans to acknowledge Western superiority, and to gain diplomatic
acceptance from the West. Thus important structural reforms in administrationand the legal system were adopted in order to modernize Ottoman society. In
1839 the Tanzimat (reorganization) firman was declared, which signalled thetransformation of a theocratic sultanate to a modern government.497 This firman had three significant consequences: it increased the interference of foreign countries in the internal affairs of the Ottomans, gave some degree of
autonomy to the central bureaucracy, and increased the liberty of non–Muslim
communities, particularly in commerce.498 Moreover, the 1839 reforms had
some direct consequences on the lives of elite women living in Istanbul. The
increased cosmopolitan character of the capital, the active intellectual andpolitical life after the reforms, and the emergence of the idea of citizenshipamong some segments of the Muslim community as well as the non–Muslim
community had important repercussions on the lives of a few upper–class
Muslim women in Istanbul.499 For instance, the missionary schools founded
after 1839 enabled some Muslim women to acquire a modernist education,and some of those––among whom we can mention Halide Edib, Bedia Muvahhit and Neyyire Neyir (Ertuğrul)––played an important role in future Turkish cultural life.
The progress and education of women became closely related to the progress of the nation, particularly owing to women’s role as the mothers of the
future generations and the demands of the era.500 Meanwhile Ziya Gökalp’s
Turkish nationalism, which tried to make connections between Western civilization and Turkish national culture, became influential, and pre–Islamic culture became a reference point to justify the reforms concerning women.501 The
male intellectuals who emerged owing to the reforms of the 19th century gavepriority to the position of women to prove the harmony of Islam and modernization. Those intellectuals prioritized the “woman issue,” and in Nermin
497

Feroz Ahmad, Modern Türkiye’nin Oluşumu, 6th edition (İstanbul: Kaynak, 2007), 37–38
Emre Kongar, 21.yy’da Türkiye –2000’li yıllarda Türkiye’nin Toplumsal Yapısı (İstanbul:
Remzi Kitabevi, 2000), 66
499Ayşe Durakbaşa, Halide Edib Türk Modernleşmesi ve Feminizm, 3rd edition (İstanbul:İletişim, 2007), 131
500
Durakbaşa, 97
501
Durakbaşa, 121–123
498

205

Abadan’s words launched “the mild revolt of man against the Ottoman patriarchy”.502 By the end of 19th century, upper class educated women joined thedebates about women which had been launched by men. Between 1895 and1908, ten women’s magazines which brought up the social and political critiques of women were released; between 1913 and 1921, twenty–two other
women’s magazines came up, and women’s associations with different social
concerns emerged.503
The Turkish Republic, founded on 29 October 1923, also gave priority tothe position of women in society. The reforms concerning women were seen
as an important aspect of the grand modernization project. Atatürk always
spoke for women’s right to have the same education opportunities as men
because he believed that women had to have different missions in all aspectsof social life next to men. On the other hand, he saw an entire structural transformation as a target, and he wanted women to promote national ideals as the
future mothers who would bring up future Turkish generations.504 Thus legal
reforms concerning women went into effect. Turkish civil law, a direct copy of
Switzerland’s civil law, aimed to provide the legal base for women to become
equal citizens. The new republican ideology aimed at a remarkable mentalitychange about the position of women. Thus different arrangements in social life
were made. For example, in secondary school books the restrictions imposedon women during Ottoman times were explained in detail.505 In harmony with
the new republican ideology, Atatürk selected some female figures next to him
as leading symbols of modernization. For instance, during the reforms concerning women, he always had his wife Latife Atatürk (Ussaki) next to him.
During their marriage, she symbolized the new face of Turkish women as afirst lady who was very active in public life. Afet Inan, a young girl eager tolearn a foreign language and continue her education, was sent to Switzerland,
and after having graduated, she stayed next to Atatürk. She became one of thefounders of the Turkish History Foundation, and played an important role inshaping the Republic’s official ideology. Moreover, Atatürk’s adopted daughter Sabiha Gökçen, being the first female pilot soldier, implied Turkish nationalism, and became part of the common consciousness of Turkish people, atleast the educated ones living in the cities.506 Just like Latife Ussaki, Sabiha
502

Woman issue” refers to the debates launched by the Westernization advocates on the position of women in Ottoman society after the second half of the 19th century see Nermin
Abadan Unat, “Söylemden Protestoya: Türkiye’de Kadın Hareketlerinin Dönüşümü,”in
75.yılda Kadınlar ve Erkekler, ed. Ayşe Berktay Hacimirzaoğlu (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, 1998), 324–326
503
Abadan Unat, 324
504
Durakbaşa, 125505
Leyla Kırkpınar, “Türkiye’de Toplumsal Değişme Sürecinde Kadın,” in 75. Yılda Kadınlar
ve Erkekler, ed. Ayşe Berktay Hacimirzaoğlu (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, 1998), 17
506Yeşim Arat, “Türkiye’de Modernleşme Projesi ve Kadınlar,”in Türkiye’de Modernleşme ve
Ulusal Kimlik, ed. Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba trans.:N. Elhüseyni (İstanbul: Tarih
Vakfı Yayınları, 1998), 84
206

Gökçen, and Afet Inan, the pioneers of Turkish cinema and theatre Neyyire
Neyir(Ertuğrul), and particularly Bedia Muvahhit, became the symbols of theTurkish Republic’s modern women.
The debates about the Presence of Women on Stage and the screen
Like other monotheistic religions, Islam has severe restrictions on women andfemale sexuality. The Koran, establishing the normative practices of Islam,
represents uncontrolled female sexuality as leading to social chaos (fitna).
Thus, in order to prevent chaos, all aspects of social life are arranged around
segregation. Men and women are strictly separated in most public areas. Public space belongs to men, and private space belongs to women.507 However,religion is always in interaction with the economic and socio–political structures in a community. Thus Islam may be interpreted differently at a particulartime, in a particular geography. Particularly by the end of the 19th century, theeducated, nationalist, and mainly male reformists in Ottoman society tried toprove the harmony of Islam and modernization. They brought up polygamy,
women’s education, and segregation as the main problems concerning
women’s rights.508
Theatre and cinema entered Ottoman society in such a transition period.
The first tentative beginnings of a Westernized theatre started in 1868 by an
Armenian, Güllü Agop, and finally in 1871 the first Muslim actor, Ayyar
Hamza appeared on stage.509 Unlike Western–type theatre, which was introduced to Ottoman society quite late, the cinema entered Ottoman society just ayear after the very first film exhibition in Paris in December 1895. However,filmmaking started much later. The Demolition of the Russian Monument in
Ayastefanos, filmed in 1914 by Fuat Uzkınay, is regarded as the beginning of
Turkish Cinema by many film researchers. Afterwards, some other movies
like the Claw (Pençe, Sedat Simavi, 1917), Binnaz (Ahmet Fehim Efendi,
1919), The Governess (Mürebbiye, Ahmet Fehim Efendi, 1919), Bican Efendi
triology (Şadi Fikret Karagözoğlu, 1921) were made. In 1922, the era of
Muhsin Ertuğrul started, which coincides with the first years of the Turkish
Republic. Muhsin Ertuğrul, the actor and theatre director, had a monopoly on
Turkish cinema until 1939, and stayed as the only director for 17 years.
In Ottoman society as well as in the newly born Turkish Republic, theatre
had a more privileged position than cinema. For the male intellectuals who
emerged owing to the reforms of the 19th century, theatre was as an indispensable part of Western civilization. The potential of theatre to transform themasses and its educational aspect was underlined by intellectuals like Mehmet
Rauf, Kemal Emin, and İbnürrefik Ahmet Nuri in different magazines of the507

Unat Abadan, 323
Deniz Kandiyoti, Cariyeler, Bacılar, Yurttaşlar (İstanbul: Metis, 1997), 87
509
Muhsin Ertuğrul, Benden Sonra Tufan Olmasın, 2th edition (İstanbul: Remzi, 2007), 22–24
508

207

period, particularly in Temasa and Theatre.510 In the first years, theatre audiences were mainly composed of non–Muslim audiences and Muslim male
intellectuals. For Muslim women, who could not even be among the theatre
audience, being on the stage as an actress was impossible. For instance, in1909 in Izmir women as well as men were called to come to the play by anewspaper announcement. However, the conservatives surrounded the theatre
and threatened any woman who attempted to enter the theatre. Thus, the attempt failed. Despite some attempts after the Second Constitutional Era in
1908, it did not become common for Muslim women to be among the theatre
audience until the foundation of the Turkish Republic.511 In such a context,
Afife Jale, a pioneering Muslim woman, took part in a play called Yamaçlar in
1920, but she was subject to many legal and social pressures.
Contrary to the Ottoman officials, most of the intellectuals of the period
saw the presence of women on stage as a sign of progress. When we look at
the articles of the intellectuals, we can see that the newly emerging Turkish
nationalism played an important role in justifying the presence of women on
stage. For instance, in an article called Tradition: The Devil That Wipes Away
All That Is Positive (Örf, O Her Makul Şeyi Yutan Ejder) published in Temaşa
in 1918, Muhsin Ertuğrul underlined that the most important problem of thetheatre was the lack of native Turkish speaking actresses, and he also claimed
that theatre with non–Muslim actresses was strange to the audience in terms oflanguage, emotion, and taste. He saw being dependent on minority actresses asa fatal risk for the national theatre as one day or the other they would leave for
their national theatre.512
In a censored interview published in Temaşa magazine in 1918, Mehmet
Rauf, a well–known writer of the period, gave Japan as a model, and told thatthe progress of Japan could only be possible when the interdiction of womenon stage was cancelled. In the censored part of the article, Rauf said that theatre was life, and neither a perfect life nor theatre could be possible without
women in Ottoman society.513 In another article published in Temasa magazine, Muhsin Ertuğrul claimed that Turkish theatre did not exist because of thelack of Muslim Turkish women actresses, and he added that in Caucasus the
Turkish women had been on stage without becoming immoral, and this was inharmony with Islam, which obliged progress.514 The opinions of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), the founder of modern Turkey, on the presence of women on
the stage were similar to the intellectuals of the period. In a personal meetingwith the theatre players who were on tour in Izmir, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk)
510

Metin And, Meşrutiyet Döneminde Türk Tiyatrosu(1908–1923)(Ankara: Türkiye İş
Bankası Yayınları, 1971), 26
511
Ertuğrul, 2007, p. 33
512
Efdal Sevinçli, Meşrutiyet’ten Cumhuriyete Sinemadan Tiyatoya Muhsin Ertuğrul (İstanbul: Broy, 1987), 56
513
And, p. 36
514
Sevinçli, p. 59
208

mentioned the urgency of seeing Turkish women on stage not to leave themdevoid of theatre, and underlined the pitiful use of the Turkish language by theminority actresses. During this meeting he asked Bedia Muvahhit, then accompanying her actor husband, to act in a play in his presence in Izmir, which
was already under the control of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), unlike occupied
Istanbul.515 In his memoires, the actor Vasfi Rıza Zobu mentions that on 11
August 1923 Bedia Muvahhit acted in the presence of Mustafa Kemal in the
Palace Cinema in Izmir, and he explains this historical event with sentences
implying Turkish nationalism: “Muslim Turkish women achieved their cause”,
taking possession of the Turkish stage with the “national will.”516
Unlike theatre and opera, cinema did not receive much intellectual attention
during its childhood years, and it was not directly subject to the Turkish Republic’s national cultural policies. Thus, some cinema researchers criticize thisby qualifying cinema as the “adaptive child” of the Turkish Republic.517 Another researcher, Nilgün Abisel, analysed the magazine articles and the
speeches of politicians between 1928 and 1938 on cinema. After comprehensive archive research, she came to the conclusion that even though the propaganda aspect of cinema was mentioned quite often, there was no attempt toconstruct a national cinema. Thus she came up with the conclusion that theforeign movies might have been preferred for Westernisation.518 However,according to Engin Ayça, the Republic nationalized the cinema by placing it
under the custody of theatre.519
The reasons behind the government’s lack of cinema policy are open to debate. However, we can definitely say that cinema as an art was closelybounded by and dependent on theatre until the end of the 1930s. The era of
Muhsin Ertuğrul (1922–39) is also called “the era of theatrical influence” because of the heavy influence of theatre on cinema. Ertuğrul’s inability to createa cinematographic expression, and his long lasting monopoly on Turkish Cinema, have been criticized by different researchers.520 The cinema researcher
Nijat Özön claims that Muhsin Ertuğrul had a simple formula concerning cinema:

515

Gökhan Akçura, Bedia Muvahhit Bir Cumhuriyet Sanatçısı (İstanbul: İstanbul Büyükşehir
Belediyesi Kültür İşleri Dairesi Yayınları, 1993), 35
516
Vasfi Rıza Zobu, O Günden Bugüne Anılar (İstanbul, Milliyet Yayınları, 1977), 85
517
Alim Şerif Onaran, Türk Sineması, Volume 1 (Ankara: Kitle, 1994), 102518
Nilgün Abisel, “1928–1938 Dönemi Türkiye’sinde Sinema Üzerine Düşünceler,” in Türk
Sineması Üzerine Yazılar (Ankara: Phoenix, 2005), 70
519
Engin Ayça, “Yeşilçam’a Bakış,”in Türk Sineması üzerine Düşünceler, ed. Süleyman
Murat Dinçer (Ankara:Doruk,1996), 131
520
Giovanni Scognomillo, Türk Sinema Tarihi, 3rd edition (İstanbul: Kabalcı, 1998), 92–94
and Özön Nijat, Karagözden Sinemaya Türk Sineması ve Sorunları, Vol:1(Ankara: Kitle,
1995), 236–239
209

When the theatre season was closed, he used to take the Municipality’s theatre actors in front of the receiver, and make them repeat a play they had already acted in. Or take any foreign movie, and make an adaption.521

Despite all the negative aspects, it is also the period when many firsts in Turkish
cinema history were witnessed, such as the first sound movie, the first Muslim
women actresses on the screen, etcetera.522 According to cinema researcher Giovanni Scognamillo, Muhsin Ertuğrul continued his cinema activities next totheatre, mainly for commercial reasons. Indeed, he utilized many resources in
his movies. He used the examples of foreign theatre and cinema. In the meantime, he turned towards domestic work and sometimes to original scenarios. In
fact, more than a particular choice, it was a commercial concern––the repetitionof what was liked.523 He decided to adapt Halide Edib Adıvar’s Independence
War novel The Shirt of Flame and asked for her authorization. Bedia Muvahhit,
the principal actress of The Shirt of Flame, explains the story like this:
They wanted to film Mrs. Halide Edib’s novel. Halide Edib told them that
only a Turkish woman could perform this role. Ertuğrul Muhsin was a goodfriend of Muvahhid and me. He came to Muvahhid and asked him if his wife
would play. I was very happy. Acting in a movie all of a sudden was something that I did not expect…I said yes. We filmed the movie. They gave me aconsiderable amount of money for that time, and they liked my performance,
they gave me 50 lira more.524

Halide Edib Adıvar, being one of the elite women who received private tutoringat home, and a modernist education at a missionary school, was born in Istanbul
in 1882. She is not only a prominent Turkish writer, but also a recognized social
activist. Particularly after World War I, she became an important political figure,and she provided support to the national movements, particularly through her
writing. After the occupation of Izmir by the Greek army on May 16 1919, Adivar delivered a speech at a rally in Sultanahmet, Istanbul. This event established
her reputation as a national hero and an advocate for national liberation. As theAllies occupied Istanbul in 1920, she fled to Anatolia with her family to become
one of the key female heroes of the national struggle. Despite having divergent
ideas with Mustafa Kemal later on, during the war years she was present onvarious fronts alongside Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and she wrote about her firsthand war experience in her book called The Shirt of Flame.
While many Turkish cinema history books give credit to Muhsin Ertugrul forthe encouragement of Muslim women on the stage, the testimony of the principal actress Bedia Muvahhit in a documentary shows that Halide Edib insisted on521

Özön, 1995, 22
For detailed information about the period see Şükran Esen, Türk Sinemasının KilometreTaşları, 2nd edition (İstanbul: Agora, 2010), 22–31
523
Scognomillo, 59524
Akçura, 28
522

210

the presence of Turkish actresses in the cinema version of her novel. (Simurg
Gerçeğin Peşinde 30 Yolcu, Samih Rıfat, 1994) The spreading of Turkish nationalism made The Shirt Of Flame the ideal novel to justify the presence of
Turkish women on the screen. Unlike the femme fatales of the previous silent
movies Mürebbiye (The Governess,Ahmet Fehim Efendi, 1919), Istanbul’da Bir
Facia–ı Aşk (A Love Disaster in Istanbul, Muhsin Ertuğrul, 1922) and Binnaz(Sedat Simavi, 1917), The Shirt of Flame’s female characters sacrificed themselves for the national mission. The movie is not available today. However, The
Shirt of Flame is the story of a woman, Ayse, who decided to join the Turkish
National Movement “Kuvayi Milliye” in Anatolia who rebelled against the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by the Allies in the aftermath of the Treaty ofMondros. Other than being a War of Independence story, the movie was about
two men who were in love with the same woman. Yet as the story developed,
the War of Independence became the leading actor of the story. 525
It was the first movie about the War of Independence, and the novel, The
Shirt of Flame, had created deep effects at that moment. According to the theatre
and cinema actor and director Ercüment Behzat Lav, the movie documented theunforgotten pain, and the joys of the War of Independence, which were still very
fresh in people’s memories at that time.526 Another researcher believed that themovie had such instances as in a documentary.527 The movie achieved a highlevel of success. It received good reviews in terms of its artistic qualities, as wellas commercial success. The audiences had to pay for two tickets in order to see
the whole movie, which was divided into two parts for commercial reasons.528
The profile of pioneer actresses: Bedia Muvahhit and Neyyire Neyir(Ertuğrul)As mentioned above, Neyyire Neyir(Ertuğrul)and Bedia Muvahhit were among
the few women who had the opportunity to receive a modernist education at
missionary schools at some time during their education. They spoke at least one
Latin language, and they were married to men who were active in cultural andsocial life.
Bedia Muvahhit was born at the turn of the 20th century. She came from awell–off family. She grew up with governesses until the death of her father. She
learnt French and Greek at a very young age. Selim Sırrı Tarcan, the founder of
the Turkish National Olympic Committee, and an intellectual of the period,
discovered the brilliance of the young girl, and volunteered to give her private
courses. Tarcan explains how he became the private tutor of Bedia like this:
They were living on the island in winter as well as summer as we did. One
day her mother came to visit us with her son Fuadi and daughter Bedia. That
day the manners and the attitude of that child did not slip my notice. I saw it
525

Erman Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız (İstanbul: Ahmet Sarı Matbaası, 1970), 38
Scognomillo, 68527Şener, 39528Özgüç Agah. Türk Filmleri Sözlüğü, II. Edition, Vol:1(İstanbul: SESAM, 1998), 27
526

211

as my duty to give a hand to that girl who just turned the age of school, andasked her mother’s authorization to serve the development of her intellectualand physical capacity, and told her that Bedia had the capacity to be a good
child for her country. Her mother was pleased with my offer…529

Bedia had her first stage experience when she was just a little girl. She andsome other schoolgirls read poems during the interval of a play called “Sultan Cem” which was staged sometime after the beginning of the Second
Constitutional Era. Young Bedia read a French poem, and her pronunciationand her calm manners were acclaimed.530
After the Second Constitutional Era, the women’s associations were
founded, and they demanded more rights for women. Owing to their efforts
and Mr Osman Mazhar’s, seven young women were employed in the French
Telephone Company, and one of them was Bedia Şekip (Muvahhit). She was
14 years old, and still a student at that time, but as the communication was inFrench, and Bedia was fluent in French, she became one of the first Muslim
women who entered the business world at such a young age. (Bilgeler ve
Ustalar, Yücel Çakmaklı, 1983) What is more, it was technically impossible
to answer the phones with a veil at the telephone company, so the womenstarted to work without the veil.531 Bedia was friends with the intellectuals of
the period like the well–known writers Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Yahya
Kemal Beyatlı. An anecdote about her first years as a young woman with her
friends can be found in Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’s book, Youth andLiterature Memories. In the book she is described as a free–spirited, humorous young woman.532After graduating from high school, Bedia Şekip (Muvahhit) became a teacher at a high school for girls, and she attracted attention with her daring behaviour, particularly about the veil. She took her veil
off at the high school she worked in, despite the legal and social restrictions.
Her marriage with Muvahhit Refet, a famous actor of the time, put her inclose contact with the theatre milieu and nightlife, and facilitated the start ofher career as an actress. In 1930, she acted as a guest actress in Othellostaged by a Greek theatre group led by Gavrilidis. Her performance as Desdemona in Greek was so acclaimed that she was invited to Greece with theTurkish Prime Minister Ismet Inönü by the Greek officials. In a magazine
called Artist published in 1931, Bedia Muvahhit qualified herself as the representative of Turkish women and the Turkish theatre in Greece.533 In 1933
she married Ferdi Statzer, an Austrian who was a composer and a pianist,and stayed married to him for 18 years.
529

Akçura, 13
Akçura, 19
531
Akçura, 23
532
Kadri Yakup Karaosmanoğlu, Gençlik ve Edebiyat Hatıraları, First edition (Ankara:
Bilgi,1969), 179–182
533
Akçura, 61
530

212

In the documentary Bilgeler ve Ustalar, Haldun Dormen, one of the leading figures of Turkish theatre, qualifies Bedia Muvahhit as a revolution on
her own because she became an actress overnight due to a single word from
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. (Bilgeler ve Ustalar,Yücel Çakmaklı, 1983) During
her long career she acted in classics like The Cherry Orchard and The
Imaginary Invalid as well as in several adaptations like Deli Saraylı. According to the poet and critic Cevat Çapan, despite her capacity to act in all
types of plays, her most remarkable performances were with actor Vasfi
Rıza Zobu in Ahmet Nuri VIII’s adaptations from French vaudeville andcomedies. (Simurg Gerçeğin Peşinde 30 Yolcu, Samih Rıfat, 1994) As well
as being an actress, Bedia Muvahhit also translated and adapted many plays.
Being one of the two first Muslim actresses, she must be seen as a historicalfigure in Turkish cinema as well as in Turkish theatre. Until 1969, she acted
in a considerable number of movies. Yet The Shirt of Flame was exceptional
for her as she thought that she had fulfilled a nationalist mission. (Bilgeler ve
Ustalar, Yücel Çakmaklı, 1983) Like many other intellectuals of her time,
Muvahhit preferred theatre to cinema for different reasons. For instance, as
an actress, she disliked the editing principle of cinema. What’s more, shethought she was underestimated in cinema, and cinema was unfaithful to her.
She gave an example to clarify the issue: despite performing one of the principal roles in a movie called Ateşten Çingene filmed in 1968, her name was
not mentioned on the poster, and it was written very small in the credits.
(Simurg Gerçeğin Peşinde 30 Yolcu, Samih Rıfat, 1994) Bedia Muvahhit,
had a long lasting career and died in 1994 after being honoured as a stateartist by the Turkish Republic in 1987.
Neyyire Neyir, the other female pioneer of Turkish cinema and theatre,
was born in 1903 in Istanbul. Her father, who was close to Sultan Abdülhamid, died when she was two years old. Her mother remarried with Manizade Mehmet Tahir, who was a teacher in Medresseh. When she was 15, hermother also died. She started to attend Teacher Training School (Darülmalumat) at the age of 13. In 1921, she graduated and got her diploma as ateacher. However, she wanted to continue her education to learn a foreign
language, and she registered at the American Girl’s College all by herself. In
1922, they were looking for the second Muslim Turkish woman to act in The
Shirt of Flame through newspaper advertisements, when she was still a student at the American College, and she was the only one who applied. Her
talent for fine arts and creative writing was striking even when she was at
high school, and owing to her beautiful voice she used to recite the Koran toher friends and teachers. A friend of her, and a famous theatre player of theera mentions that she often used to repeat the well known poet and intellectual Tevfik Fikret’s saying “A nation who leaves its women devoid of education convicts its boys to be spiritually orphaned,” and she used to try to explain the meaning of these words. Tevfik Fikret was among the intellectuals

213who used to claim that the Turkish theatre could rise only if the Turkish
women got on the stage.534
Neyyire Neyir was married to Muhsin Ertuğrul, the leading figure of
Turkish theatre and cinema. Neyyire Neyir’s birth name was Münire. However, after becoming an actress, she preferred being called Neyyire Neyyir,
and after the marriage she started to be known as Neyyire Ertuğrul.535 Neyyire Ertuğrul was the founder of the cinema and theatre magazine Curtain &Stage (Perde ve Sahne). She used to prepare the magazine with her husband,Muhsin Ertuğrul. In the first issue of the magazine she explained why theydecided to release such a magazine which gave important clues about her
approach to cinema and theatre. According to her, the cinema had such an
impact on shaping the tastes and the thoughts of the public that it became
impossible to ignore it anymore. It was more effective than any other art.
She called the cinema as “the art of the public” not because it originatedfrom the public, but as it had such an influence on the public, and she qualified theatre as “the representative of humanity”. What is more, according to
her the cinema replaced the novel, and the book in terms of its educational
aspect, and invaded the world in just 45 years.536 Neyyire Ertuğrul believedin the educational aspect of cinema and theatre, and she thought they could
be used to inform the public. However she died at the age of 40 in 1943 before realizing many of her projects.
Conclusion
In the second half of the 19th century Turkish nationalism became influential
through its attempts to make connections between Western civilization andnational culture. The male intellectuals who emerged owing to the reformsof the 19th century gave priority to the position of women to prove the harmony of Islam and modernization. The Turkish Republic, founded on 29
October 1923, also gave priority to the position of women. The progress andthe education of women became closely related to the progress of the nation
particularly owing to women’s role as the mothers of the future generations.
The women as well as men were charged with missions as citizens of therepublic. In such a context, the pioneering actresses, particularly Bedia Muvahhit, owing to her long life and career, became leading symbols of modernization. Thus, we can claim that the newly emerging Turkish nationalism
in the 19th century served to justify the presence of women in public space aswell as on stage, and on screen.

534

Vasfi Rıza Zobu, “Ölümünün Yıl Dönümü, Çocukluğu, Sahne Hayatı ve Son Günleri,”
Perde ve Sahne 14 (February 1944), 4.
535
Zobu, 1944, 18536
Muhsin Ertuğrul, Perde Tekrar Açılırken…Neyyire Bir Meşale Yarışında öldü, Perde ve
Sahne 22–25 (3rd Year), 1, 18
214Performing “Femininity”

215

I Get Lifted? Delineating Uplift’s Restrictions uponBlack Female Desire in Silent Era Race Films
Nina Cartier
Introduction
At the turn of the twentieth century and well beyond, the vast majority of
African– Americans still struggled to secure the legislative, economic andhuman rights granted to them during Reconstruction. As such, they began todevelop mass strategies to assist them in demanding those rights and to aid
them in coping with the demoralizing effects of second–class citizenship. In
the early decades, ideologies of uplift became crucial aspects of those mass
strategies, and they formed the basis of many theories purported by the primary agitators of the time: W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus
Garvey, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells.
Though all the black leaders who led the struggle against the prohibitive,
racist practices agreed that ideologies of uplift were essential to the struggle,
they disagreed as to how those ideologies should be conceptualized and utilized to the greatest advantage of black people. Dubois conceived of an uplift
ideology that insisted on white acceptance of blacks as equal human beings
in a desegregated society. In addition to protesting the legal barriers of Jim
Crow, he argued for black access to higher education and for blacks’ development of the cultured arts: music, literature, visual arts, etc. His essay, “The
Talented Tenth,” epitomized his uplift ideology.537 In contrast, Washington
conceived of an uplift ideology that insisted on white recognition of blacks
based on merit earned though hard work and uprightness regardless of segregation practices. He scoffed at the development of the cultured arts, preferring that blacks be trained in agriculture and service so that they could earn aliving. His autobiography, “Up From Slavery,” best exemplifies his uplift
ideology.538 Espousing what many considered a radical viewpoint, Garvey
conceived of an uplift ideology based on black solidarity, economic self–

537

W.E.B. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth," in The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of to–Day, ed. Booker T. Washington (New York: James Pott,
1903). Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race transplanted through thecriminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here
they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are thelevers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by the right ideals and guided
by intelligence. Education must not simply teach work — it must teach Life. The Talented Tenthof the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among theirpeople. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race,
like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.
538
Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 261.
216

sufficiency, political freedom and separatism.539 He refused both Duboisianand Washingtonian tactics, agitating for a return to Africa and the fulfillmentof black demands by military force, if necessary. “The Declaration of theRights of the Negro People” makes explicit his uplift ideology.540
Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells, all clubwomenand daughters of slave women, mobilized black women’s clubs in order topurport their various ideologies of uplift.541 While they all agitated for
women’s suffrage, Cooper primarily rallied for increased access to educationand the protection of black women’s virtue.542 She espoused many of what
later became characterized as DuBoisian views, as she lobbied for black
attainment of higher education, not just industrial education.543 Terrell espoused many of Washington’s views regarding uplift, until their dissenting
interpretations about government response to the Brownsville riot eroded heralliance to him.544 She led clubs, held various offices and rallied for women’s
rights and political reform. Finally, Wells espoused many of DuBois’s views
regarding uplift, and spent her career doing race work by lecturing, teaching,
and writing.
In theory, all the above–mentioned leaders felt they advanced the cause of
all black people, regardless of sex, with their uplift ideologies. In practice,
however, they dissented regarding the status of women in the work of uplift.
In doing so, they limited the free expression of black women’s sexual desires
according to their particular interpretations of uplift. As uplift ideologies
continued to flood black mass media, they eventually infiltrated the politics
of race films, both in front of and behind the camera.
Critics in the black mass media––newspaper journalists in particular––censured the preponderance of malicious black stereotypes purported as
black representations in cinema.545 As they rallied for increased black accessto the means of film production, whose efforts they hoped would counter the
racist and exoticized images onscreen, several filmmakers answered the call.
However, black discourse surrounding cinema cannot be reduced to purerefutation of negative black representations. Many pioneering black filmmakers, as well as white–owned production companies, sought to capitalizeon the great profits they deemed possible in the film industry.546 The buying
539

Deborah G. White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–
1994, 1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 112.
540
Ibid.
541
Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in
America (New York: Perennial, 1984), 87.
542White, Too Heavy a Load, 49.
543
Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 105.
544
Ibid., 104–07.
545
Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser, eds., Oscar Micheaux & His Circle:
African–American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2001), 34–37.
546
Stewart, Migrating to the Movies, 189.
217

power of the black dollar held special interest for them, as these filmmakers
and companies became keenly aware of the rise of black urban populations
due to the Great Migration and the increasing (although still limited in comparison to whites) discretionary income and leisure time urbanization and thecontinuing industrialization of the American workplace had now afforded
many new migrants.547 Race films, then, participated in a complex negotiation: simultaneously depicting positive images of black life, countering
stereotypes, inculcating migrants with urbanity, and conveying the ideologies of uplift. In the process, race films’ transfer of these themes onto thescreen teemed with paradoxes, as filmmakers struggled to make profits andto satisfy audiences who increasingly demanded aesthetically pleasing andpolitically accommodating images.548
Focusing on representations of uplift reveals traces of the competing theories put forth by DuBois, Washington and others. In some instances, thefilms blatantly evoke one camp or the other with a photograph or painting of
the theorist prominently featured in the mise–en–scène.549 Other films proveless direct, preferring to use intertitles, characters’ occupations, or narrative
actions to suggest their uplift messages. However, the repression of black
female desires becomes apparent as the cinematic devices of uplift acrossfilms are compared to each other, and the dialogic relationship this repression has to ideologies of uplift comes into sharp relief.
Taking cues from film theorists, film historians, and black feminist theorists, one can begin to construct a useful methodology with which to understand silent era race films and their relationships to uplift. Delineating thecinematic structures of signification of uplift ideologies comprises the essential task toward this aim. The goal, ultimately, remains to show how thesecinematic structures of uplift ideology “uplift” the entire black race while
they paradoxically suppress black female desire. In particular, this study
concentrates on three silent era race films: Within Our Gates (Oscar
Micheaux, 1920); Body and Soul (Micheaux, 1924); and Scar of Shame(Frank Perugini and the Colored Film Players Corporation, 1927).
Theoretical Paradigm
In his theoretical essay “System of a Fragment” (on The Birds)550, Raymond
Bellour describes how a fragment, or small portion of a film, can be understood by examining its stylistic methods. Particularly, he focuses on the alternations between repetition and variation within the fragment, and how
547

Ibid.
Ibid.
549
Here I am specifically recalling the portrait of Frederick Douglas on Alvin’s wall from
Scar of Shame, and the images of various black leaders on Martha Jane’s wall from Body andSoul. Micheaux scholars have theorized his connections to the uplift strategies of Washington.
550
Raymond Bellour and Constance Penley, The Analysis of Film (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2001), 28–67.
548

218

symmetry and asymmetry order these alternations. Bellour then proceeds to
subdivide the fragment into shots and group them according to the categories
of his analysis, governed by the motifs the shots repeat and how they rhyme
with one another. To aid him in analysis, he utilizes sketches, shot descriptions, and frame enlargements. Bellour’s approach to close shot by shot
analysis ultimately identifies the system of the particular film.
In his article “Race Movies” as Voices of the Black Bourgeoisie: The
Scar of Shame, Thomas Cripps engages the cultural and social discourses of
uplift as evidenced in Scar and across the entire genre of race films.551 He
heralds Scar of Shame as an exemplar of the genre due to its focus on classstrife as an obstacle to racial uplift. Cripps describes the manners in which
Scar of Shame constructs uplift and its polar opposite, degradation. He argues that race movies were really not about intraracial racism at all, but
about class clashes, and that scholars continue to read them in this incorrectmanner. The crux of Cripps’ argument rests upon his analysis of the film’sintertitles and the actions of the plot, coupled with a reinterpretation of E.
Franklin Fraser’s sociological work Black Bourgeoisie. He argues that theblack middle class, like those characters of “higher aims” from Scar, valued“eclectic criteria” when composing their uplift morals and strategies.552
Cripps concludes his argument by presenting the production details thathighlight the film’s emphasis on class distinction, not color distinction, todifferentiate the aims of the characters and the film’s uplift message.
Like Cripps, Jane Gaines also addresses uplift in Scar of Shame, both inher article “The Scar of Shame: Skin Color and Caste in Black Silent Melodrama” and in her book, Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent
Era. In her article, Gaines engages Scar’s stylistic devices and aesthetic conventions and critiques the cultural and social discourses of uplift.553 She too,considers Scar paradigmatic among race films, and like Cripps, dissects theintertitles. However, Gaines attacks the film’s (and the genre’s) implicit intraracial hierarchies through an extended analysis of its uses of melodrama,
mulattas, style as a space for subversion, and the convention of happy endings.554 In Fire, Gaines’ also addresses Body and Soul, and Within Our
Gates, considering the disjunction apparent in the final scene of Body andSoul, and providing an extended analysis of the attempted rape scene, thelynching scene, and skin–color coding depicted in Within Our Gates.555

551

Thomas Cripps, "Race Movies as Voices of the Black Bourgeoisie: The Scar of Shame," inRepresenting Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, ed. Valerie Smith, Rutgers Depth of Field
Series (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 47–61.
552
Ibid.
553
Jane Gaines, Fire and Desire: Mixed–Race Movies in the Silent Era (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 2001).
554
Ibid., 143, Chapters 5 & 6.
555
Ibid.
219

Jacqueline Stewart’s work, Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black
Urban Modernity, provides much needed complexity to the discourses surrounding early black filmmaking, early black audiences, and early black
spectatorial practices. Stewart correctly refutes several long–standing notions that 1) all early black cinematic representations were unfavorable; 2)
all early black audiences resisted all early black cinematic representations,especially the unflattering stereotypical depictions, and did not patronize themovies in any significant masses; 3) black independent filmmaking came inresponse to furor over Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.556 Additionally,
Stewart examines the complex negotiations early black filmgoers and filmmakers may have performed while consuming, celebrating, creating, rejecting, or remaining ambivalent to various black representations in cinema. Herconcept of “reconstructive spectatorship” posits a method to interrogate early
black audiences’ possible responses to cinema.557
bell hooks’ work, “The Oppositional Gaze”, provides another concept
with which to interrogate black audiences’ possible responses to cinema, but
her model focuses specifically on black female spectatorship. She posits the“oppositional gaze,” a restructuring of looking relations that enables black
women to critically engage the filmic text by resisting the hegemonic, patriarchal systems inherent in many films.558 Black women can also read“against” the film, reconstituting the erasure of black female representations
and thereby producing a pleasure in creating an authorized gaze that is independent from white male, black male, and white female constructed subject
positions.559 Importantly, hooks opens the discourses surrounding black female representations in cinema to black women outside of the academy,
creating a needed platform upon which all black women can discuss theirrelationships to films, and validating their long–silenced opinions, thoughts,
and criticisms.560
Patricia Hill–Collins provides a theory of black feminist thought, as purported in her work of the same title. In a move similar to hooks, Hill–Collins
extends her critical paradigm to include the insights of women not in theacademy, but whose thoughts and efforts still afford them the label “intellectual.”561 She conceives of the intersecting oppressions black women face—ofclass and gender or of race and sexuality as examples—as forming a matrixof domination.562 This matrix theory enables black women to place shiftingemphasis on various oppressions instead of always foregrounding race or
556

Stewart, Migrating to the Movies.
Ibid., 94.
558
Bell Hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992),
118.
559
Ibid.
560
Ibid., 125–27.
561
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics
of Empowerment, Rev. 10th anniversary ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 14.
562
Ibid., 18.
557

220

gender as the primary one. In other words, black women should not have tosuffer gender inequity while working toward racial uplift, nor should they
have to choose between fighting for equal American citizenship or securing
medical insurance for same sex marriages. She purports that efforts to control black women’s sexuality lie at the heart of black women’s oppression,and she offers new ways for black women to conceptualize their own ideas
about their sexual politics.563
Insights gleaned from these six scholars, along with the historical contexts
of uplift ideologies as described earlier, form the basis of the methodology
used to analyze the cinematic structures of signification of uplift ideologies,
and to interrogate the manner in which those structures restrict black female
desire.
Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates depicts the travails of Sylvia Landry, a young schoolteacher from the North. She endeavors to raise funds to prevent the closingof the small Southern school where she works in order to bring much needed
education to poor black rural families. In telling Sylvia’s story, Micheaux
weaves a tale of Sylvia’s woeful past, riddled with near rape and lynching;her present, heavy with the school’s financial troubles and an engagement
gone sour; and her future, holding the promise of new love and achievement.
A mulatto figure, Sylvia becomes the site of competing discourses surrounding the events of her life, and her characterization enables Micheaux to explore the rich tapestry her complex life presents.
Micheaux was very outspoken about the purposes of his films, stating that
he wanted to depict “truth,” or the Negro as he “really was.”564 Gates typifies
his cinematic style in pursuit of this truth, which led him to depict disturbing
scenes of multi–generational and multi–gendered white lynch mobs, black
female rape at the hand of white gentry, and the struggles of black sharecroppers in the South after Reconstruction alongside images of successful
black doctors, military men and righteous schoolteachers. Before Micheaux,
the treatment of such material in the hands of white filmmakers had continued to distort or deny the “truth” of these situations, in the eyes of many
blacks. The black press complained that white filmmakers most often preferred to depict the history of black/white race relations as dependent on thetight control of a population of lascivious black beasts and infantile black
servants who lacked both history and the means to contribute productively to
American society, despite the preponderance of black creativity, scientificachievement, and military heroism.565 Ever one to exploit sensationalism
563

Ibid., 81, 128.
Bowser, Gaines, and Musser, eds., Oscar Micheaux & His Circle, 45.
565Anna Everett, Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909–1949(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 57.
564

221

when it suited his narrative or marketing purposes, Micheaux seemed to
expose the tensions emanating from the conflicting discourses of race relations that inhere in the depiction of his particular brand of truth.566 Authorial
intention aside, with Gates Micheaux presents a story very much engaged
with uplift strategies, and a closer look at its opening scene helps delineate
the formal and stylistic devices that comprise uplift’s contours.
The first scene opens with an intertitle, which reads: “At the opening ofour drama, we find our characters in the North, where the prejudices andhatreds of the South do not exist— though this does not prevent the occasional lynching of a Negro.” On the surface, the title conveys a wry joke thatblack audiences in the North would immediately recognize since their lived
realities were evidence of the very real prejudices and hatreds they still suffered in the North.
Immediately following the intertitle, the film irises out from black to along shot of the heroine Sylvia reading while seated at a table in an elegantly
appointed parlor. Although the shot functions to visually introduce us to ourmain protagonist, its proximity to the intertitle provides commentary on oneof the film’s markers of uplift, recognition. At its core, the opening intertitle
serves many functions: 1) it connects Sylvia to a history of lynching, recognizing the argument many black scholars purport is intimately bound with
the imagined history of white female rape at the hands of black men, even as
the large population of mulattoes with slave ancestry bespeaks a lineage
more in line with actual black female rape at the hands of white men; 2) itcollapses the perceived cultural distance of the North from the South, inrecognizing that Negroes can get lynched up North, too, not just in the “uncultured” South; 3) and it foreshadows the narrative presentation of the
flashback scenes in which Sylvia’s adoptive family is lynched. Since all
uplift ideologies concern gaining recognition of the history and humanity of
African–Americans, Micheaux’s flat announcement of prejudice and lynching would indicate to black audiences a move towards acknowledging thathumanity by acknowledging the actuality of that particular black history
which has been hidden from the screen and disregarded by white civil society. The scene continues, cutting to another intertitle, which reads: “Sylvia
Landry—a schoolteacher from the South visiting her Northern cousin—is
typical of the intelligent Negro of our times. –Evelyn Preer”
As the first shot has already established Sylvia’s prosperity and middle–
class standing through its depiction of her in the home’s elegantly appointed
interior, this intertitle serves to underscore that depiction. Where in the first
shot, the sumptuous cushioned sofa and chairs, the elegant tables and lamps,
and the luxurious draperies all serve to connote black prosperity and class, inthis intertitle, Sylvia’s intelligence connotes her inclusion in this class. Sylvia’s access to the level of education that would enable her to become a
566

Stewart, Migrating to the Movies, 225.

222

schoolteacher also connotes her class, for at that historical moment, it was
still difficult and expensive for African–Americans to attain higher education. Calling Sylvia “typical” suggests that many Negroes possess intelligence despite their sometimes limited access to this education, and it functions as a gesture of recognizing this fact while undercutting popular, whiteracist theories that blacks were dumb and uneducable.
The scene then cuts back to a medium close–up of Sylvia still in the parlor engrossed in her reading. Similar to the first shot and preceding intertitle,
this shot connotes middle–class standing by depicting Sylvia’s pastime asreading, further underscored by the other books on the table beside her. That
she has leisure time, and that she spends it reading further connote her classstatus. However in this shot, due to the framing and even lighting, we canassess Sylvia’s physical beauty. Sylvia’s fair complexion, one marker ofblack beauty, had been apparent from her first shot. This shot accentuates thebeauty her complexion had only suggested in the first shot.
Though scholars continue to debate the use of fair–skinned characters as
dramatic leads in early race films as problematic, Sylvia’s fair complexion
still directly points to the actuality that the black middle class was largely
composed of fair–skinned African–Americans.567 This, in turn, points to thegreater accessibility to better education and better career opportunities fair–skinned blacks often enjoyed due to their skin color. As sometimes self–
appointed leaders of the race, these fair–skinned blacks often represented the
public face of uplift.568 Theoretically, uplift strategies benefited all blacks,
regardless of skin color or class, since its “lifting as we climb” motto suggested that those blacks who had made any strides in education, economics,
or legal rights were duty–bound to assist those others of the race who had
not yet advanced as far.569 In practice, such egalitarian notions often smothered under the weight of nepotism and intraracial prejudice stemming fromclass and color biases. Thus fair–skinned blacks sometimes helped just fair–skinned blacks, so that the cycle repeated to keep those few privileged ones
ahead and to further buttress the skewed belief that only the fair–skinned
blacks were capable of making any progress, for uplifting themselves individually or for uplifting the race as a whole. Sylvia’s skin color, therefore,
acts as a code that transmits this disparity between uplift strategies in theory
and in practice. And even as other characters of various skin tones are represented, Micheaux refuses to resolve the ambiguity with which he has presented the relationship between skin color and uplift.
The scene continues for thirteen more shots, primarily even–paced medium close–ups, during which Sylvia and her cousin talk and read her letter;
567

White, Too Heavy a Load, 79.
It is interesting to note that DuBois, Washington, Terrell, Cooper and Wells were all fair–skinned; Garvey was dark–skinned.
569
White, Too Heavy a Load, 54–55.
568

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and one intertitle, which introduces Sylvia’s cousin Alma. It reads: “Alma
Pritchard, a divorcée, is secretly in love with Conrad and ready to give marriage another try. –Flo Clements.”
In addition to the often cited argument that Alma diametrically opposes
Sylvia due to Alma’s darker skin color—which here can also be coded as
lesser beauty—and her costume of darker colors instead of Sylvia’s lighter
colors, Alma and Sylvia contrast in another way related to uplift: marital
status.
On the surface, it would appear that Sylvia and Alma share a common
marital status, that of being single. However, even though they are both single, they are not single in the same way nor for the same reason. Since she isengaged, Sylvia’s single status is coded as acceptable because it is temporary. Further, even though we do not know exactly why Sylvia is single, we
can effectively rule out one reason: she is not divorced. And, in an oblique
nod to her beauty, Sylvia’s desirability as a wife is underscored because she
is not a former wife, hence she could still be chaste and virginal, which inthis narrative serve as markers not only of female virtue and attractivenessbut also of uplift.
Reminiscent of the uplift tenets of DuBois, Washington, Garvey, Cooper,
Terrell, and Wells, black women’s roles, marital status and uplift were inextricably bound. While DuBois and Garvey rallied for black women to fulfill
their duties as mothers and wives, Cooper, Terrell and Wells lobbied for theprotection of black women’s virtue by their men.570 Thus, unmarried black
women were both threats and threatened. In the eyes of DuBois and Garvey,
the threat single black women pose was the annihilation of the black race by
not marrying and thus not creating future generations: race suicide. In theeyes of the black women’s club movement, single black women were at aneven greater disadvantage then married black women, since when their virtue was threatened, they had no one to defend their chastity and honor. It is
important to note that in this era in white society, black women were still
regarded as highly sexualized beings, unable to be raped and thus available
for the unprovoked sexual advances of white men.571 Additionally, unaccompanied women, also coded as single women in this diegesis, were often
prey for the unwanted sexual approaches of all men. Marriage, then, was anintegral part of black women’s uplift strategy.
To confine black women’s desires to the institution of marriage was toindirectly suggest that unattached black women who preferred their single
status were threats to the black patriarchal order. Since these desires wereunsanctioned, they remained outside of the patriarchal order, and thus, unchecked, could weaken marriage’s stronghold on women’s mobility, theexpression of their ideas, and the rights of their reproduction. In order for
570
571

Ibid., 68.
Stewart, Migrating to the Movies, 230.

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black women to wield any political power, uplift ideologies of this time dictate that black women must marry.
In sharp contrast to Sylvia, Alma’s single status as a divorcée codes her as
undesirable and dangerous in this narrative. For even though her status as asingle woman could change with her marrying anew, since the dissolution ofher previous marriage, Alma will always have been a divorcée. As the narrative offers no motivation for her divorce, we are not able to judge her accordingly—for instance if she was presented as an adulteress, she would be
evil. However, evaluating Alma on this basis is not necessary, since it isquite enough narratively to leave ambiguous her reasons for divorce. We
merely know from the intertitle that Alma has “tried” marriage, and presumably, failed. Connecting Alma to divorce effectively conjures notions ofpossible infidelity, impropriety, or other unsuitability for the woman’s rolein a marriage according to the Victorian standards of gender economy in thediegesis.572 In all, Alma is not a desirable woman for a wife.
The threat Alma poses to the gender economy of uplift in the narrative
becomes evident in the intertitle as well, through her desire for Conrad, Sylvia’s fiancé. Shots of Alma’s heaving chest, leering eyes and snarling mouth
connote her jealousy of Sylvia’s impending happiness with Conrad. Her
intense reactions to Sylvia’s engagement letter foreshadow the duplicitous
schemes that follow as she tries to steal Conrad from Sylvia later in the narrative. Although her plans to win Conrad fail, Alma does indeed thwart Sylvia’s plans to marry, as Conrad refuses Sylvia. In this manner, Alma cannot
be recouped in the gender economy of uplift, unlike Sylvia who does eventually marry at the end of the narrative. Alma’s threat comes then, not onlyin the form of destroying one marriage, but also in destroying the entire institution of marriage by being unable to successfully participate in it or abide
by its rules of conduct. As marriage functions as one device by which black
women participate in and are affirmed by uplift strategies, Alma’s irreclaimability into the institution of marriage further contrasts her with Sylvia, anddiminishes any positive association to uplift Alma can have in the diegesis.
In asserting her desires for Conrad, and taking actions as the pursuer instead of the pursued, Alma violates the Victorian standards of propriety espoused by all of the uplift ideologies. As such, she must be punished in the
narrative for her transgressions. However, as Alma tries to atone her wrongs
to Sylvia, and to reinscribe herself into those Victorian standards, the narrative does not seem to punish her. Instead, her atonement motivates aflashback explaining Sylvia’s turbulent past, and Micheaux leaves ambiguous how to deal with Alma.

572

Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 47.
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Body and Soul
Body and Soul chronicles the nightmares of Martha Jane, a pious Southern
woman. Following a phantasmagorical distortion of her own repressed desires for Rev. Jenkins, her pastor, during which he rapes and brutalizes herdaughter Isabelle and steals Martha Jane’s savings, she feverishly awakens
to allow her daughter to marry Sylvester, the man she desires. In telling Martha Jane’s story, Micheaux spins a complex web of pathos–filled flashbacks,
never clearly demarcating where the nightmares end and the present begins.
A morally righteous figure, Martha Jane becomes the locus of contradictory
discourses surrounding her desires, her fears and a black woman’s place inthe narrative, and her characterization enables Micheaux to scathingly assessthe damaging effects of religious zealousness on the black psyche.
As stated earlier, Micheaux was adamant about publicizing his intent
when creating a film; he sought to uncover truths about black life. However,Micheaux was not as vocal about his specific intent when creating Body andSoul. So many scholars utilize his personal history, culled from his novels oreven as socially created by Micheaux for promotional purposes, in order to
speculate about the meanings of his films.573 Scholars suggest that Micheaux
had an antagonistic relationship with religion in general, and black preachers
specifically.574 Although this notion informs much of the criticism surrounding Body and Soul, it does not adequately account for the collisions withuplift strategies and the race work of black male clergy this film presents.
Nor does this notion of Micheaux’s antagonism elucidate the specific structures of uplift in this film in relation to characters beyond the clergy represented.
However, in analyzing two scenes from Body and Soul, we can uncover
how its film system signifies uplift. Just as marriage figures prominently in
uplift strategies for women in Gates, so too does it loom large in Body andSoul. However, in two particular scenes from this film, marriage figuresquite differently.
In the first scene from Body and Soul concerning marriage and uplift
strategies, Martha Jane flatly refuses to let Isabelle marry Sylvester. It openswith an intertitle, the first of five, which reads: “Tatesville—other fish in the
sea!“ The title may refer to an earlier instance when Martha Jane forced Isabelle to join one of the reverend’s male friends for a walk after church. In thenext shot, a close up which fades in from black, Isabelle happily rides with agleeful Sylvester, refusing her potential “other fish” in favor of him.
For the remainder of the scene, comprised primarily of close–ups andmedium–long shots totaling twenty–eight shots, the setting reveals Martha
Jane and Isabelle’s sparse home. The film characterizes Isabelle as a timorous girl, pausing and stuttering as she asks her mother for permission to573
574

Bowser, Gaines, and Musser, eds., Oscar Micheaux & His Circle, 3–50.
Ibid., 103.

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marry Sylvester. Dispersed among ten shots, the next three intertitles read:“Syl–Sylvester and I –we” “Would like—to—to marry.” “Mayn’t we?”
The form of Isabelle’s question—may not we—indicates not only her timidity in asking but also her possible foreknowledge of her mother’s negative response. Overall, Micheaux takes eleven shots, nearly half the scene, todepict Isabelle asking Martha Jane for permission, which heightens the suspense of the answer and the gravity of the rejection.
Similar to Alma, Isabelle assumes the role of pursuer in this scene, but
this is due to Sylvester’s lack of agency, not deceit. Additionally, she speaks
for Sylvester, since his meekness renders him mute. This places Isabelle inan unnatural role, according to the dominant ideologies of uplift, where theman dominates and navigates the marriage process. Sylvester should be theone asking Martha Jane for her daughter’s hand. Since the scene undermines
this, Martha Jane’s refusal becomes highly imminent, even before she
speaks.
The film blocks the characters so that Martha Jane dominates the frame of
the medium shots, with Isabelle and Sylvester’s visual impact barely noticeable at the center and right of the frame. During the close–ups, Martha Janesometimes seems to spill out of the frame, her ample body cropped awkwardly so that the frame does not fully contain her. In sharp contrast, Isabelle’s slight, waif–like figure barely impacts the edges of the frame during
her close ups, for she is also shorter than Martha Jane. Isabelle’s personality
also seems diminutive compared to Martha Jane’s self–assured, obdurate
disposition. And although Sylvester is taller than the both of them, his
meekness, characterized by his inability to speak or to confront Martha Jane,and his blocking at the far right rear of the frame, present him as the most
unassuming character in the narrative.
Before further discussing how Soul signifies uplift, it appears useful toquickly elucidate the other manners in which the film appears to resist thedominant uplift ideologies. Since Soul marks such a departure from Gates
and the cinematic structures of signification therein, tracing Soul’s departure
delimits the dialogic relationship between the films.
First, uplift strategies in Soul concern neither women’s virtue, nor protection, nor chivalry. Although Martha Jane is pious, her virtue remains ambiguous. Not only do she and other churchwomen lust after the reverend, shetreats Sylvester harshly and disregards her daughter’s amorous feelings forhim. Further, Sylvester still accepts Isabelle, even after she has been rapedby his brother, and thus robbed of her virtue. In the diegesis, her virtue does
not symbolize importance for him for it is given no visual primacy in the
narrative. Despite her best efforts, Martha Jane fails to protect Isabelle from
rape, starvation, and an untimely death. Sylvester lacks interest in protecting
Isabelle and in asserting any chivalrous characteristics. He fails to protect
her from his brother; he fails to rescue her from accompanying the reverend’s friend; and he fails to speak on his and her behalf to Martha Jane. Vir227

tue, protection and chivalry were the hallmarks of black clubwomen’s uplift
ideologies, so to depict them here as lacking narrative import contests theirvalidity. On the surface, this would seem to open up a space for the expression of black female desire, as evidenced by Isabelle’s quest for marriage
permission and Martha Jane’s own desire for Rev. Jenkins. However, since
Martha Jane refuses Isabelle’s request, and the reverend eventually getscoded as evil, the film effectively closes of this possible space as soon as it
has opened.
Second, uplift strategies in Soul concern neither manners, nor education,
nor a bourgeois notion of race work.575 In response to Martha Jane’s use of
the word ’niggah,’ Isabelle chastises her, calling the word “vulgar.” Martha
Jane responds with a mocking “oh,” a verbal indication of her physical lackof manners and restraint. Like the churchgoers who, when filled with the“holy ghost” whoop and dance, Martha Jane thrashes about, pulling at her
breast at the mention of Rev. Jenkins possible lack of piety.576 In the diegesis, Isabelle depicts the only character who does not speak in slang. And, thefilm depicts no one attending school or reading a book; thus, along with theheavy use black Southern vernacular, the film seems to place no importanceon education. Accordingly, the film does not depict anyone in the diegesis
who seems concerned with race work and the educational or legal aspects
therein, as typified by Gates. There are no doctors, no schoolteachers, and nofair–skinned saviors of any kind. The film depicts practically no one spending leisure time doing anything but drinking, gambling, gossiping or attending church. No literature–loving composers seem to inhabit this town. Manners, education and race work also loomed large in uplift ideologies. Women
who did not desire to acquire manners and education or perform race work
were considered unworthy anomalies. This closed off spaces for the expression black female desire of many working class women, of whom Martha
Jane as a washerwoman represents, since they often could not afford school
nor did they necessarily concern themselves with bourgeois notions of manners when day to day living was often very difficult to maintain.
Finally, uplift strategies in Soul do not concern romantic love. To be certain, Martha Jane and friends idolize Rev. Jenkins, but their feelings characterize obsession or lust, not romantic love. Rev. Jenkins and his cohort
Curley Hinds both desire Isabelle, but their feelings characterize sexual lustand sadistic notions of depraved power. And even though Isabelle and Sylvester appear to enjoy a romantic love, Martha Jane stifles the cultivation of
their relationship, crushing their hopes under the heel of her callous disregard for their dreams of marriage. The film and the uplift ideologies converge in dismissing romantic love. Terrell and others felt it frivolous for
women to marry solely for love and to overemphasize the development of575
576

White, Too Heavy a Load, 70.
Ibid., 72.

228

one’s beauty as the primary source of pride. Additionally, they frowned upon
women seeking their fulfillment in acquiring a mate, even as Terrell andmany other female leaders married.
Ironically, as Soul appears to be unconcerned with romantic love, the film
completely concerns itself with marriage. And the topic of marriage forces
the cinematic structures of uplift, as coded in Soul, back to the forefront ofanalysis. Eschewing love altogether, Soul ties marriage to uplift through theuse of economics. Even as Martha Jane idolizes the reverend and wants Isabelle to marry him, she seems much more concerned with the nest egg she
has saved so that Isabelle can begin a comfortable married life. Diegetically,
the film codes this emphasis by giving narrative and visual primacy to thebig bible where Martha Jane hides the savings. An intertitle, still from thefirst scene of analysis, emphasizes Martha Jane’s views about marriage. It
reads: “What’s that niggah got tu marry on?”
Since Sylvester lacks the piety and appeal of his evil twin Rev. Jenkins,
and his mysterious invention produces no income, Martha Jane cannot consider him a possible suitor for Isabelle at all. So intense are her feelings
against Sylvester and his financial lack, Martha Jane turns her back to him––and Isabelle’s hope of marrying him––for the remainder of the scene.
The last scene of the film, and the last in this analysis of Soul, appears to
be an anomaly, at best, and a trite gesture toward positive narrative closure atworst, according to the devices by which the film signifies uplift. In a vast
move away from the nonchalance with which it primarily considered uplift,
and in a complete reversal from its evaluation of marriage as a financial endeavor, Soul marries Sylvester and Isabelle, and happily unites them bothwith Martha Jane. Even given the tangled flashback structure of the film, thediegetic coupling at the close seems too contrived. A closer look at its formal
structures hints at these contrivances.
The scene, comprised of fifteen shots of which about half are long shots,
opens with a fade in from black to a long shot of Martha Jane seated in an
elegantly appointed parlor. The room contains fringed lamps, a sofa, a chair,a grand piano and decorated windows and walls. The shot features Martha
Jane, dressed in an elegant blouse and skirt, seated reading. The mise–en–scène sharply contrasts with the meager, uninviting, dilapidated furniturefrom her former home. Her new costume contrasts with the frumpy sackdresses and country–checked aprons she formerly wore as well.
As the scene continues, Isabelle and Sylvester enter, returning from theirhoneymoon. Everyone smiles and laughs, while Isabelle bounces around theroom, touching and marveling at the exquisite surroundings. She is dressed
elegantly as well, and after she sits down to play the piano, Martha Jane andSylvester stand arm in arm, grinning. The scene presents almost an inversionof the scene in which Isabelle asks for permission to marry. Not only is everyone gay, but the meek ones display confidence, and the obstinate one displays acceptance. Both Isabelle and Sylvester can now engage Martha Jane,229

looking her directly in the eye and holding her gaze. Martha Jane, once therancorous matriarch, smiles and welcomes their affections.
This scene seems to be an attempt to recuperate the uplift ideologies heretofore aggressively questioned. In allowing Isabelle to marry Sylvester, it
provides the necessary coupling to reinscribe Isabelle back under black patriarchal control. She can marry Sylvester now, since the basis of that marriage is no longer romantic love but his financial windfall. Further, Sylvester
becomes an attractive suitor because the film depicts him actively engaging
Martha Jane, assuming his rightful role as controller of looks, as he can now
look Martha Jane directly in the eyes and hold her gaze as he was unable to
do before. However, Micheaux complicates these looking relations as Martha Jane keeps the power of her gaze; it may no longer completely cripple
Isabelle and Sylvester, but it still commands some authority, as she often
looks at Isabelle or Sylvester first, and she is never completely subordinatedby their looks as they had previously been to hers.
Scar of ShameScar of Shame presents the woes of Louise Howard, a troubled young
woman terrorized by her alcoholic stepfather Spike and his abusive friend
Eddie, as she seeks to escape their treacherous plans to kidnap her. In tellingLouise’s story, Perugini and the Colored Film Players recount her daily horrors, dashed hopes and tragic suicide. A battered soul, Louise becomes aliminal figure where antithetical discourses surrounding her high aspirations
collide with her humble origins, and her characterization enables the film totransmit a cautionary tale to those women tempted to attain the luxurious life
by any means necessary–– and those men who fall prey to their desires.The
scene opens with an intertitle, which reads: “One half the world doesn’tknow how the other half lives.”
Unlike the intertitles in Gates and Soul, some of the intertitles in Scar of
Shame contain images. This intertitle depicts images of stormy clouds in thesky. The scene then fades in from black onto a close up of Louise’s hands
scrubbing cloth against a washboard in a tub. The shot then dissolves into a
close up Louise’s head and shoulders, looking down with her shoulders
bouncing with the washing motion, then raising her head to look in the distance, dreamily. These motions echo Alvin the hero’s similar motions while
playing the piano, and connects their dreams to each other through the rhyming of their actions. The shot frames her body against deep black space, abstracting the background.
Since the shot immediately preceding the intertitle depicts Alvin in his
elegant boarding room, one can infer that Alvin composes one of the halvesto which the intertitle refers. And since the film depicts Louise immediately
following the intertitle, one can infer that she composes the other half. However, storm clouds separate the two, so the shots suggest that Alvin andLouise’s relationship will be a troubled one.
230

Further, Alvin’s preceding shot depicts him in a long shot; the film presents his whole body. In contrast, the film first depicts Louise in parts; hands
first, then head and shoulders. Depicting Alvin whole suggests the completeness of his world: he has his room, his piano, and everything he needs
to become the “leading composer of the race.” In contrast, the film presents
Louise as an abstraction. She lacks completeness, as her hard work as awasherwoman suggests she lacks financial stability. The film underscores
her abstraction by presenting her head and shoulders against deep black
space, which, unlike the concreteness of Alvin’s room, suggests an unsettling uncertainty about Louise’s place in time and space. The scene continues as the film cuts to an intertitle: “Louise Howard, a Rose of Sharon whosemusic was all discords.––Lucia Lynn Moses”.
The film depicts this intertitle over an image of bleak terrain with spiky,
crumbling structures and some type of evil flying monster swooping down,claws bared over her last name. This intertitle strengthens Louise’s connection to Alvin, by evoking the term music in its description. However, it also
underscores their doomed relationship, for Louise’s discordant music evokes
sadness and disharmony. The intertitle could also foreshadow Louise’s tumultuous relationship with Eddie, whose intertitle states that his music “wasnot of the same school” as Alvin’s music; the film intimates that Louise’s
discordant music might be the equal partner to Eddie’s music. Also, comparing Louise to a Rose of Sharon evokes a biblical reference to her beauty.
Since the film contrasts her beautiful face with her hard working hands, itsuggests that her class status will hinder any mobility her beauty may afford
her.
Interestingly, this pattern of hero’s shot, intertitle, woman’s shot, repeats
much later in the film with Alvin’s star pupil and future wife, Alice Hathaway. This time, intertitle explicitly states her love for Alvin, and the imagery
depicts lovebirds locked in a cage on a deserted island. In stark opposition to
the depiction of the Louise and Alvin coupling, the depiction of the Aliceand Alvin coupling suggests their successful romance. Hence, from thefilm’s inception, the film presents Louise’s desire for Alvin, and the life herepresents, as not only impossible for her to achieve, but dangerous for her toattempt. Depicting Louise as the fractured product of her labor also has theeffect of distancing her from the affluent lifestyle Alvin leads, and places
Louise again in relief to Alice, whose establishing shot depicts her leaning
against a piano with a candelabra prominently featured. Whereas the film
presents Louise as an abstraction, first arms then head almost floating indeep black space, it depicts Alice in a concrete space, giving her body asense of tangibility Louise’s body lacks. The scene continues as the film
repeats a close up shot of Louise’s head and shoulders. She sighs, purses herlips and looks off into the distance. The film then cuts to another intertitle,
which reads: “Day dreams”

231This intertitle repeats the same stormy sky as the first intertitle that linked
Louise to Alvin as two halves of a whole. The film cuts to repeat the close
up of Louise’s head and shoulders, but varies the editing from a cut to thenext shot to a fade to black and dissolve to the next shot. This next shot dissolves into a medium long shot of Louise reclining on a fancy bed of pillows, in an elegant nightgown, smoking. The shot dissolves again, framing
Louise closer in the frame as a maid in uniform adjusts her blanket and pillows. Since Louise’s bed does not appear to need any adjusting, the maid’s
actions seem overly attentive and frivolous. The scene then cuts to a longshot of the maid attending to articles on the table beside Louise. Her parlorin full view now, the shot depicts the room containing fancy fringed lamps,
large windows, an elegant rug, and it appears to be draped in fabric. This
shot, a long take as well as a long shot, continues as described here:
A butler in uniform enters, bows to Louise and extends a calling card.
Louise motions for the maid to get the card with a flick of her hand, andcontinues to read her paper. The maid takes the card from the butler, who isabout 4 steps away from the bed, and hands it to Louise from right next toher bed. Louise takes the card, reads it, tosses it to her side table, and nods tothe maid. The maid tells to butler to admit the caller, and goes back to fluffing Louise’s pillows. The butler announces the gentleman caller, and heenters with flowers, kissing her hand while the butler leaves. She smells theflowers then lets them fall out of her hand to the floor, nonchalantly. The
gentlemen, in a plain medium colored suit, falls to one knee, taking her hand.
Dissolve.
The actions of the long take seem completely frivolous, with the maid andbutler appearing to cater to Louise’s every whim as she lay in he bed like aqueen on a throne. Further, the manner in which Louise flicks her hand at
her maid and butler, and then drops the flowers to the floor, characterizes her
as someone aloof and extravagant, spoiled and lazy.
The shot dissolves into the last shot of the scene, in which the film repeatsagain the close up of Louise’s head and shoulders, with her sighing andslightly smiling. The repetition of Louise’s head and shoulders serves tounderscore the sense that the film is exploring Louise’s psyche. The daydreams announced are her daydreams, and present a stark contrast to her
reality.
This shot also foreshadows the scene depicting Alvin’s sumptuously appointed music studio, whose walls are also lined with fabric. More forcefully, the shot rhymes with a later scene in which Louise, now rich due toillegal schemes with Eddie, reclines on her sofa, reading news of Alvin’s
escape from prison. In foreshadowing this scene, the film implies that a manwith illegal schemes provides the only way for a woman of Louise’s class to
become upwardly mobile.
There are several implications for black female desire in this scene thatrun counter to the ideal of the uplift ideologies. First, the film codes Louise’s232desires for class mobility as deviant and antithetical to the ideologies ofworking hard to attain one’s fortunes, or the “bootstrap” theory purported by
Washington. Second, Louise clearly demonstrates lack of manners andbreeding as she attempts to assert her will as a rich woman while the film
undermines that will as the frivolity of a spoiled diva. Third, Louise lacks
modesty and possible chastity, as she receives gentleman callers in her
nightgown. As stated earlier, hard work, manners and virtue were tenets heldin high regard by both the men and women who purported uplift ideologies.
The last scene of my analysis proves to be the longest. Due to its length,
spanning over one hundred shots, only a few key shots will be discussed.
The shots occur after Alvin has received the fake telegram summoning him
to his mother’s home.
Over the course of several shots, mostly medium framed, the film reveals
that Alvin has not told his mother of his marriage to Louise, since Louise does
not belong to their “set,” here coded as their class. After Alvin leaves her,Louise smashes the picture of Alvin’s mother, tearing it to pieces. She thenangrily rifles through the dresser drawer, discovering the letter Alvin’s mother
had written to him. Rhyming with the first time the film presents the letter, thescene depicts an alternation between extreme close up of the letter and close
up of Louise reading the letter. Only Louise’s reactions do not mirror Alvin’s.
Taking offense the letter, particularly at the lines which hint at Alvin’s possible infidelity with a woman’s of his own set of whom his mother approves,
Louise’s becomes very angry. The film alternates shots of her anger with matted shots of the letter, paying special attention to highlight the lines that cause
Louise the most distress. Similar to her actions with the picture, and filmedwith the same framing and repetition, Louise angrily tears the letter. Delving
further still into the drawer, Louise unfolds their marriage certificate. Alreadyprimed for her to tear it, the film again repeats her framing and anger; the shotsthen depict her tearing the certificate. Finally, the film depicts Louise twisting
her band, and then removing her ring, with the same pattern of framing andediting as the previous shots. Interestingly, the reading of the letter first signaled Alvin’s marriage proposal to Louise, since it was during his reading of
the letter that he rescued Louise from Spike again. The second reading of theletter performs a similar function only this time it motivates Louise to leave
Alvin, dissolving the marriage. In between the letters, the fake telegram draws
Alvin away from Louise and toward his mother. In each instance, however,the communication of the mother, who represents the epitome of bourgeois
uplift ideologies, functions to suppress Louise’s desire, either through her
image, her feelings about caste, or her invocation of her “set.”
These shots have been intercut with scenes of Alvin first driving away fromLouise, and then driving back to her. Narratively, the film has already set upthat whenever Louise is alone, she is in danger of harm from Spike or Eddie.
So Alvin’s choice to leave her alone rather than take her to meet his mother
underscores the importance he and his mother place upon class. His hesitation
233

at the stairs may suggest his discomfort with leaving her alone, since he has
already saved her three times, yet the pull of his mother and his caste proves
stronger than his concern for Louise. And even though the close ups ofLouise’s face which register her anger towards and disappointment with Alvininvoke sympathy for her plight, the narrative still underscores greater sympathy for Alvin. The film depicts this greater sympathy through Alvin’s couplingwith Alice at the end of the narrative, thanks in part to Louise’s sacrificial
suicide.
Indirectly, these scenes underscore the class tensions evident in uplift ideologies, for “lifting as” one “climbs” necessitates that someone has to be on
the top to pull up, and someone has to be on the bottom to be pulled. In theory,
all blacks should have benefited from the various uplift strategies; but in practice, inequities abounded. DuBois’ talented tenth theory posited that only one
tenth of the black population was fit to lead; this notion often led to the lightest– complexioned tenth, sometimes regardless of ability, gaining greater access to class mobility. Washington’s bootstrap theory tended to ignore that themasses of lower class blacks needed boots to “strap on” before they could
utilize their own resources to help themselves out of their own plights. Cooper,
Terrell and Wells agitated for group change among the masses of black
women, but were often accused of being out of touch with the needs of working–class women, since they were upper middle–class women. Figuring Alvin’s mother prominently in this scene, as well as her letter, evokes these uplifttheories since she and Alvin must have already successfully utilized one ofthese methods to secure their place in the “set”.
Louise presents a danger to those various uplift ideologies. By consortingwith people above her class status, Louise threatens to drag them down to herlevel, as evidenced in Alvin’s descent to a brawler, gunman, convict, and thenfugitive. The film only restores Alvin once Ralph Hathaway, as representativeof the Law, agrees to give Alvin his daughter Alice anyway, since the “problem” of Louise has ended with her death.
The narrative cannot contain Louise, a woman who has achieved her
dreams of luxury through ill–gotten means and threatens to secure Alvin as ahusband through blackmail. Since Louise clearly operates in excess of the lawof the diegesis, which the film binds with uplift ideologies such as Victorian
womanhood, chastity, modesty, and femininity, she must either accept the law
or be punished. Unlike Micheaux’s Alma, who similarly transgresses, Louisemust pay for her transgressions with her life. Also, unlike Eddie, who ignores
Louise’s last dying wish as put forth in her suicide note, Louise must pay forher past sins. The film gives no indication that Eddie will right his wrong, thelie that sent Alvin to jail. In fact, as Eddie tears her suicide note, the film suggests that he may have just escaped his due.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be inferred that while silent era race films seem to open
up a space for black female desire, mainly by allowing black women in the234diegesis greater freedom to assert their desires and greater access to classmobility, they promptly contain that space. Instead of fully exploring any
benefits such freedoms might afford, these films re–inscribe black female
desire under one of the acceptable rubrics of uplift; or they quash that desire
under the patriarchal law the various uplift ideologies espouse, albeit it indifferent manners. The cinematic structures of signification of uplift ideologies, while not always crystal clear about which ideologies they depict, support adherence to these structures, rather than rebellion to them. For in thesethree films, adherence paves the only way to happiness, while rebellion
surely leads to death.

235

Josephine Baker and Pierre Batcheff in La Sirène destropiques (1927)
Phil Powrie
with Éric Rebillard
La Sirène des tropiques/The Siren of the Tropics (1927) was the first of Josephine Baker’s four feature films, made as result of the extraordinary success of La Revue Nègre in Paris in 1925. Baker’s co–star was Pierre
Batcheff, at the height of his career as one of France’s young leading men.
Both Baker and Batcheff were very different from other stars of the 1920s,
their common feature, despite many differences, being their Otherness. The
focus of this article is the exploration of that Otherness.
Much has been written about Josephine Baker, but few capture the electrifying nature of her performance in La Revue Nègre better than the eyewitness account of American poet e e cummings:
She enters through a dense electric twilight, walking backwards on hands andfeet, legs and arms stiff, down a huge jungle tree–as a creature neither infrahuman nor superhuman but somehow both: a mysterious unkillable Something, equally non–primitive and uncivilized, or beyond time in the sense thatemotion is beyond arithmetic.577

Baker was the star of La Revue Nègre, which had taken Paris by storm for a
few short weeks in October and November 1925. This was due in large partto Baker, whose more than half–naked body gyrated and jerked in what appeared to be a combination of carefully worked out dance steps and expansive, loose movements, accompanied by comical contortions of her facial
features. These included the trademark crossing of her eyes, which, as thefollowing comment indicates, suggested elements of parody and knowing
self–irony: “The cross–eyed, goofy, stereotypically blackface grin would
become a kind of signature, even when––most effectively when––she wasglamorously dressed, so that it seemed a parodic comment on her own
beauty, on conventions of beauty, on the culture that had made her famous.”578 She was one of the most iconic figures of the 1920s, synthesizing“Americanism, dance–mania, hedonism, feminism.”579

577

Cited in Bryan Hammond and Patrick O’Connor, Josephine Baker (London: Cape, 1988),411.
578
Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time (New York: Doubleday,
1989), 15.
579
Jean–Claude Klein, “La Revue nègre,” in ed. Olivier Barrot and Pascal Ory, Entre deux
guerres: la création française entre 1919 et 1939 (Paris: Éditions François Bourin, 1990),
371.
236

After a brief European tour, Baker signed up in 1926 at the Folies–
Bergère. A number of films were released in 1927, capitalizing on Baker’s
success. Part of the Folies–Bergère performances was captured in a film
entitled La Revue des revues/The Review of Reviews (Joé Francys, released
December 1927); it contained selected routines, including Baker’s number’Fatou’ with the belt–skirt of bananas. A seven–and–a–half–minute film wasreleased at about the same time, Le Pompier des Folies–Bergère/The Fireman of the Folies–Bergère (director unknown), in which a fireman, enthusedby the Folies–Bergère, fantasizes that the people he meets in the street are
naked women; Baker dances the Charleston briefly in an underground Métro
station. The major film of this period, and Baker’s first feature film, was La
Sirène des tropiques, based on an original idea by the popular novelist Maurice Dekobra, well known for his travelogues and adventure stories. The film
was directed by the veteran actor–director Henri Etiévant, and Mario Nalpas.
Etiévant’s career had started in 1911; he and Nalpas had co–directed La Finde Monte–Carlo/The End of Monte–Carlo (1926). Baker was contracted by
La Centrale cinématographique in early June 1927; Batcheff was contracted
a month later, just before the start of production at the recently constituted
Studios Réunis in rue Francœur, which brought together Bernard Natan’sgroup and the Union Française Cinématographique in the best–equipped
studios in Paris, refurbished and opened in January 1927. Location shoots
included the studios at Épinay for the tropical village; an ill–disguised Fontainebleau forest580 for the scenes in the hills of the “tropics;” Le Havre forthe scene where Papitou becomes a stowaway; the Place de la Concorde,
where Papitou is discovered by a promoter; and the Mogador theatre for
Papitou’s stage performance. Production took place from early July to earlyNovember 1927, and the film premiered on 21 December at the Théâtre desChamps–Élysées. We shall consider reactions to the film by reviewers below.
La Sirène des tropiques is the first of four feature films starring Baker.
Her two next films date from the 1930s: Zouzou (Marc Allégret, 1934) and
Princesse Tam–Tam (Edmond Gréville, 1935). In each of these three films, a
simple plot line imitates Baker’s meteoric rise, featuring “protagonists thatlong for love but get stardom instead of domestic bliss,”581 or, as Phyllis
Rose less charitably put it: “An innocent girl from the tropics goes to Paris,
where she dances and is transformed into an elegant woman by beautiful
clothes;”582 indeed, La Sirène des tropiques incorporates part of her Folies–
Bergère routine. It is also her best film, according to a recent commentator,
because she was able (at least partly) to improvise, articulating a very per580

As Baker herself pointed out in an interview a few years later; see Marcel Sauvage, “LesSouvenirs de Joséphine Baker (entretien),” Pour vous 104 (1930), 7.
581
Terri Francis, “Embodied Fictions, Melancholy Migrations: Josephine Baker’s Cinematic
Celebrity,” Modern Fiction Studies 51 (2005): 829.
582
Rose, 120.
237

sonal gestural space quite at odds with those of her time, and close in its
specificity to a ritual: “Her almost mechanical savageness, her childlike
grimacing, the Chaplinesque side of her character, gave her dancing thestrangeness of a ritual, sketching out a radical break in the body language
and the behaviour of her time.”583
La Revue Nègre played into an early–twentieth–century fascination with
“blackness.” This had started with painters such as Picasso prior to the Great
War, and had extended into the other arts, with jazz and dance being the
focus in the mid–1920s.584 Much of the discourse focusing on blackness
tended to contrast nature with culture, blackness being seen as a marker ofthe primitive. This was something to be applauded and cultivated for thoseseeking new types of “authenticity,” and a connection with an eroticism
eroded by the Great War. We should perhaps say reconnection rather thanconnection, as the fascination with blackness, and Baker in particular, is aversion of a well–rooted Orientalism, articulated in the mid–nineteenth–century figure of Baudelaire’s Black Venus, whose thick hair evokes “languorous Asia and burning Africa” for the poet, as some commentators
pointed out at the time.585 Indeed, Baker was called the Black Venus in thecaption for the cover of Cinémagazine (February 10, 1928).
However, Baker’s persona is somewhat more complex than the nineteenth–century representations of the black female body analyzed by Denean
Sharpley–Whiting, “a body trapped in an image of itself, whose primitivity,
exemplified in a childlike comedic posture, sexual deviancy, degradation,and colonization, is intimately linked with sexual difference.”586 This is because she embodies, as the comment by Klein on the contemporary focus onblackness above might suggest, far more than the primitive side of the simple binary between nature and culture. Rather, she is a complex combinationof both nature and culture, which makes her hard to pin down. As Elizabeth
Ezra points out, Baker was geographically impossible to locate: “Baker was
so popular […] because she was so hard to place; a floating signifier of cultural difference, she represented many different things to different people.
[…] She could evoke Africa, the Caribbean, the United States, and France,by turns or all at once as the occasion required.”587 And she is equally impossible to pin down in cultural terms, as Carole Sweeney says: “Baker’s per583

Patrick Bensard, “Joséphine Baker: La Sirène des tropiques,” text dated August 1994 in
the programme for La Cinémathèque de la Danse à la Cinémathèque française (January 15),
“Rythmes et continents noirs,” 6.
584
See Klein 373–4 and Carole Sweeney, From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism, andPrimitivism, 1919–1935 (Westport, Connecticut/London: Praeger, 2004), 11–33.
585
See Klein, 370.
586
T. Denean Sharpley–Whiting, Black Venus: Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in
French (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 10.
587
Elizabeth Ezra, “A Colonial Process: Josephine Baker’s French Films,” in Elizabeth Ezra,
The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), 99.
238

formances, literally, rehearsed a variety of texts of difference. She could
appeal to the modernist artist as much as to the colonial lobbyist, the jazzlover, or the negrophile writer. Her performances provided a locale wherecolonial fantasy and ideological discrepancy could be played out yet contained.”588 The complex combination of ideologically loaded “primitive”
pastness with a paradoxically almost postmodern modernity is well exemplified in Baker’s brilliantined Eton crop:
In Baker’s era, choosing to process one’s hair helped to signify a break with“country” and older ways, because it involved being serviced by another person, engaging a chemical process and reconstructing the self in order to playa public role, usually within white society. What was at stake in hairstyle was
Baker’s public identity as a modernized American woman, which was layered over the Africanist dancing she performed.589

It is a combination that also emerges in comments made at the time, such as
this anonymous location report from Épinay: “Josephine Baker does a vintage
Charleston, a Josephine vintage, and the Negroes [sic] haunted by rhythms
from the depths of time begin to wiggle around in time with the music.”590 We
can note that in this comment, Baker is presented as modern, embedded, as it
were, in layers of the past. Similarly, in the following report a month earlier,Baker is presented as resolutely modern, interested in cars, speed and movement, emblems of modernity: “Chat with her and she will talk about all manner of things […], automobiles, automobiles, her joie de vivre, her desire formovement on the wide open road.”591 An anecdote from the studio encapsulates temporal, geographical and cultural contrasts, as Gaston Ravel and Tony
Lekain were directing Madame Récamier (1928) in the same studio, leading
Cinémagazine to comment on how Baker was entertaining a group of revolutionary sans–culottes with a Charleston,592 an incident recalled by Baker a few
years later, who drew out the paradox: “Under huts with bright new yellow
straw roofs we watched princesses and marchionesses gaily being led to thescaffold […]. The conjunction was curious to say the least. Negroes [sic] andsans–culottes drank like brothers in a corner of the studio.”593 Baker’s exotic
primitivism, therefore, essentially faced both nostalgically backwards, as well
as utopianly forwards, offering “a reconnection with the past, while pointing
out a path through to the future.”594 A similar tension between past and future
was part of Pierre Batcheff’s star persona.
588

Sweeney, 38.
Francis, 836.
590
Cinématographie française, “La Sirène des Tropiques: un village nègre à Épinay,” La
Cinématographie française 467A (1927), 2.
591
Jean Marguet, “Du music–hall au studio: Joséphine Baker,” Ciné–Miroir 130 (1927): 282.
592
News item in Cinémagazine 40 (1927): 11.
593
Marcel Sauvage, “Les Souvenirs de Joséphine Baker (entretien),” Pour vous 105 (1930): 7.
594
Sweeney, 20.
589

239

The major points to recall in relation to Batcheff are as follows.595 First,
he was a major star by 1927, with eleven films to his credit. Four of these
had appeared in 1927 prior to La Sirène des tropiques; while he only had asmall role in Abel Gance’s Napoléon, premiered in April 1927, he was thelead in both of the following films: Éducation de prince/A Prince’s Education (Henri Diamant–Berger, June 1927), Le Bonheur du jour/The Writing
Desk (Gaston Ravel, trade presentation July 1927, although not on generalrelease until February 1928). Second, he was one of a small group of youngstars called jeunes premiers, young romantic male leads, fragile and relatively impotent figures on screen; in Batcheff’s case, many of his characters
are dominated by older and/or stronger women, and we shall see that this isvery much the case with Baker. Third, the passivity evidenced in so many of
Batcheff’s characters can be seen as a nostalgic throwback to a period ofstability prior to the horrors of the Great War, and the domestic arena untainted by extreme physical violence. Fourth, Batcheff’s characters are frequently passive and immobile, quite different from Baker’s excitable animation. Unlike her, he is almost never a dancer in his films, oddly, given his
well–attested love of dancing. Fifth, his characters often seem disconnectedfrom what surrounds them, looking away, or into the far distance, even whenwith his female partners on screen.
Unlike Baker though he may have been in many respects, Batcheff sharedwith her a key trait: that of the exotic Other, making him much less likeother French jeunes premiers, and much more like American matinee idols,
such as Rudolf Valentino and Ramon Novarro. Batcheff’s characters are
frequently exoticized. At the time of La Sirène des tropiques his otherness
was more associated with the Slav. He had played Slav characters in two
films in 1927: a Russian prince in Raymond Bernard’s Le Joueurd’échecs/The Chess Player, released in January that year, and a Silistrian
prince six months later in Henri Diamant–Berger’s Éducation deprince/Education of a Prince. There were frequent references in the popularpress to his Russian origins, and it is more than likely that his films for theRussians of Montreuil, Films Albatros –– Jean Epstein’s Le Double
amour/Double Love (1925), and Marcel L’Herbier’s Feu Mathias Pascal/The Late Mathias Pascal (1926) –– would have intensified this association; in the former he played opposite Natalie Lissenko, and in the latter
opposite her husband, Ivan Mosjoukine. Ralph Schor’s sketch of French
attitudes to the Russians shows the eastern–associated difference of the Russians in French eyes of the 1920s: “They were both ascetics and hedonists,
fatalists and enterprising, tender and violent; the eyes of these disconcerting
beings, full of an exquisite sensitivity, could be shot through with flashes ofAsiatic savagery. This was why the Slav soul was so mysterious and charm595

For more details see Phil Powrie with Éric Rebillard, “Pierre Batcheff, the Surrealist Star,”
Studies in French Cinema 8 (2008): 159–77.
240

ing.”596 One of his interviewers describes Batcheff’s well–bred elegance,
Romantic appearance, and especially “his wonderful eyes with their Slavsensitivity and glimmers of an alert and intelligent mind.”597 His wife at thetime, Denise Tual, frequently talks of his fantastical nature in her memoirs,
and of his “Russian atavism.”598
We therefore find a complex set of factors with the pairing of these twostars: both were connoted as exotic, but in very different ways. One was an
excitable and animated American Black woman; the other was a languorous
French White man. That contrast is neatly encapsulated in the account given
by Denise Tual of Baker’s tantrums: “She was unbearably capricious, stamping on her glass necklace G–string, demanding a chinchilla cape without
which she refused to act. Pierre watched impassively as a young assistantrushed to pick up the false pearls.”599
The synopsis of the film is as follows. The Marquis Sévéro wants to divorce his wife and marry his stepdaughter Denise, who loves an engineer in
Sévéro’s employ, André Berval. Sévéro sends Berval to prospect his territories in the Antilles, instructing his man there, Alvarez, to ensure that Berval
does not return. Berval saves Papitou from being raped by Alvarez, who
subsequently ambushes Berval and leaves him for dead. Papitou, who has
fallen in love with Berval, saves him, and the two of them catch Alvarez
stealing gold from Sévéro’s mines. Meanwhile, the Marchioness and Denise
have come to the Antilles, realizing that Berval is in danger. The three ofthem return to Paris; Papitou, desperate to be with Berval, follows them as astowaway on a liner. In Paris, she works as a governess, but is spotted dancing by the director of a music–hall who persuades her to join him, promisingthat he will make sure she can meet Berval. The director tells his friend
Sévéro about this, who realizes that he can use it to his advantage. He engineers a meeting at his house, where Denise sees Papitou in Berval’s arms,
allowing Sévéro to break off the engagement. The men agree to fight a duel.
Sévéro fires first but misses; Berval fires into the air, but Papitou shoots
Sévéro from her hiding place at just that moment. Realizing how much Berval loves Denise, however, she sacrifices herself, explaining to Denise themisunderstandings, and returning to the Antilles.
Baker was such an unusual performer that she overshadowed both thestoryline and the other actors in La Sirène des tropiques. This was not helped
by a very conventional storyline which was criticized by one reviewer for
not being more adventurous: “The story is somewhat predictable, and we
596

Ralph Schor, Histoire de l’immigration en France, Paris: Armand Colin, 1996), 114; seealso Yves Lequin, “‘Métissages imprudents?’,” in ed. Yves Lequin, Histoire des étrangers etde l’immigration en France (Paris: Larousse, 1992), 388.
597
Mireille Sannier, “De l’autre coté des sunlights: Pierre Batcheff va faire de la mise en
scène,” Cinémonde 104 (1930), 665.
598
See for example Denise Tual, Au cœur du temps (Paris: Carrère, 1987), 112, 132.
599
Tual, 98–9.
241

would have liked to see more unexpected twists.”600 The reviewer for Le
Figaro commented that he “could only remember Mademoiselle Josephine
Baker,” who was for him “a real revelation […] vivacious, touching and so
amusing that the audience were shaken by uncontrollable laughter.”601 For
Cinémagazine’s reviewer, “the whole point of the film is Josephine Baker’s
very personal performance […]. She astonishes and delights.”602
The complex ideological and temporal layering of Baker’s persona, noless than the radical break that her performance marks in contemporary acting, clearly impacts on Batcheff’s persona, who was also connoted as Other
through his exotic “languorous” Slavism. Our aim in exploring La Sirène destropiques, then, is to understand what happens when two very different Others work in the same imaginary space.
The film
The best example of this in the film is the sequence occurring after the apprehension of the villain Alvarez, when André and Papitou search Alvarez’s
office. Papitou sits on Alvarez’s bookcase throwing documents away haphazardly, while André finds the letter from his prospective father–in–law
Sévéro asking Alvarez to kill him. They occupy very different parts of theset, Batcheff at the desk, Baker higher up perched on the bookcase. The
much–reproduced publicity still is slightly misleading, as there is no such
shot in the Kino DVD version of the film, although the still nonethelessmanages to suggest different spaces: Baker poses ostentatiously for the camera, looking not at her leading man, but at the papers on the desk, while
Batcheff gets on with the matter in hand. But this contrast is far less marked
than the principal contrast between very different geographical locations.
The film is structured in such a way that the “tropics” (as the intertitle hasit) and everything they represent are contrasted with Paris. There are threebroad sections lasting about 20 minutes each: 20 minutes establishing thetwo locations and the plot; 28 minutes in the tropics; 24 minutes in Paris,
with a comic transitional fourteen–minute section devoted to Papitou’s
transatlantic voyage prior to this last section.
There are clear and stereotypical echoes between the two locations. Bothhave their lecherous villain who attempts to rape the damsel in distress; inParis it is Sévéro, in the tropics it is his henchman Alvarez. Both locations
have a communal space –– the village in the tropics, and the Place de laConcorde in Paris –– and in both cases we see Papitou with children. Bothlocations have performance spaces in which Papitou dances, the difference
between them being one of spaciousness. The village performance space is
600

Madeleine Orta, “Joséphine Baker dans La Sirène des tropiques,” Cinéa–ciné pour tous
100 (1928): 31.
601
Robert Spa, “La Sirène des tropiques,” Le Figaro (December 24, 1927), pagination
unavailable.
602
Lucien Farnay, “La Sirène des tropiques,” Cinémagazine 52 (1927): 588.
242

small and crowded, and the onlookers surround Papitou. The Olympic Palace, on the other, is large and airy, and the spectators are in serried ranks ofseats, while Papitou is isolated on stage. Finally, both locations have a violent confrontation between André and the forces of evil, in which André isshown up, only to be rescued by Papitou, who observes what is going on inboth cases. In Monte Puebla, André is set upon by Alvarez and his thugs
when he confronts them as they steal minerals from Sévéro’s mine, and is
rescued by Papitou, who calls the police. In Paris, André is challenged to aduel by Sévéro; he refuses to shoot at Sévéro, who is killed (inexplicably for
André, who knows he shot his gun into the air) by Papitou hiding in a nearby
tree.
Such parallels serve to emphasize the deeper binary between nature andculture on which the film appears to rest. Parisian spaces are large and airy,
with straight lines, as we have already noted where the theatre is concerned.
The other main interior, the Sévéro apartment, has tall columns used asframing devices together with door frames, and the panelling has distinctively straight lines and sharp angles. The tropics, on the other hand, aredominated by circular or natural lines, such as the round village huts, thecommunal space and its round well into which the village boys throw thecat, or the S–shaped tree in which Papitou plays before going to the river tobathe.
However, even if the geographical locations seem to suggest a strong binary, we would contend that the neatness of the binary is undermined. The
section of the film located on the transatlantic liner on which the love–struck
Papitou stows away to follow André to Paris, serves to link the two locationsin the most obviously geographical sense, but equally it disturbs the distinction between culture and nature. The liner itself, as the word suggests, follows a linear trajectory across an unbounded ocean. Moreover, Papitou’s
antics make the travellers mill around anarchically through the liner’s ordered spaces; she literally “disorders” the crowd, and their perception of thesubaltern, by changing her skin colour. What might have seemed a relatively
conventional slapstick routine blurs the boundaries established by the colourof skin, and functions to parody the sophistication of white westerners. Papitou over–determines her blackness by rolling in coal, only to whiten herself
with flour in a reversal of black–face, before emerging from her bath like
Botticelli’s Venus. The sequence also engages with a central paradox: thecrowd seek her, but, as the captain’s averted gaze suggests when Papitou
emerges naked from the bath, they do not want to see her; we shall return tothe issue of the gaze in our next section.
What began as a simplistic binary between nature and culture therefore
turns into a more complex set of relations as a result of this transitionaltransatlantic sequence. It also retrospectively sheds a different light on whatmight have seemed to be one of the key markers of “nature” in the nature/culture binary: Papitou’s relationship with animals.
243

Papitou’s dog Bamboula saves her from Alvarez’s lecherous advances,suggesting the witch’s relationship with her “familiars.” Shortly after this,she rescues a cat that the village children have thrown into the well, as we
mentioned above. Returning to her hut, she encourages Bamboula to lick thecat clean, and ends the scene by drawing her father’s attention to “Little
Kat,” saying that it will bring her happiness. Neither of these animals is essential to the plot. It would have been just as easy for Papitou to break freeof Alvarez and run off without Bamboula’s help; and the scene with the cat
is a rather long and maudlin two–minute diversion. It is therefore worth asking ourselves what its purpose might be. A first view could well be thestereotyped correlation between “primitive” peoples and animals, a parallel
frequently drawn where Baker was concerned.603 The sequence with her pets,
however, articulates a different perspective, which is less “primitiveness”
than “innocence;” this is because the point of the sequence is to demonstratefirst Papitou’s protective instincts (the cat is defenceless so must be saved),second to demonstrate what might be called a utopian view of nature, in thatthe dog ends up licking the cat protectively. The sequence is therefore muchless about the correlation between Papitou and the animal kingdom, andmuch more an expression of utopian spaces where normal animal reactions(dogs chase cats) are transcended in a non–violent utopian space of reconciliation between opposites anchored in Papitou’s innocently childlike viewof the world, where her desires rule (her greediness for fruit, or her love for
André).
This allows us to read what might have seemed like a straightforwardly“colonialist” review in a different light. Cinéa–Ciné pour tous’s reviewer
speaks of Baker’s “impulsive nature, fiery and tender,” or of the way inwhich “her face can reflect mischief or childlike seriousness, joy or suffering, with equal ease.”604 A review in Cahiers du Sud rather more luridly fostered a similar simplistic binary: “Her postures are those of an anxious andentertaining monkey, she grimaces, yells and threatens with teeth bared […].
You bring us the charms and shameless innocence of black virgins dancing
under a full moon in a forest full of blood and savage lust.”605 These views
apparently articulate the key binary of nature versus culture, unregulated
impulsiveness being the opposite of sophisticated manners based on self–
restraint. But the story–line where Papitou is concerned is much more about
her loss of innocence as she becomes more westernized. This is partly demonstrated in a continuation of the “animal theme” which returns in the final
scenes where Papitou wears a very ostentatious animal fur collar.

603

See Ylva Habel, “To Stockholm, with Love: The Critical Reception of Josephine Baker,
1927–35,” Film History 17 (2005): 128.
604
Orta, 31.
605
Quoted in Emmanuel Bonini, La Véritable Joséphine Baker (Paris: Pygmalion/Gérard
Watelet, 2000), 40–1.
244

Its purpose is partly to differentiate her from André’s fiancée, Denise,dressed in white, and to underline the moral of the story. But it also stresses
that Papitou has to some extent lost her roots, been tamed, and in so doing
must learn that she cannot do exactly as she pleases. She asks Denise for amemento to remember André, and is given the prayer–book belonging to hismother, which he had showed her when she cared for him on the Monte
Puebla. An intertitle spells out the fate of all of Baker’s characters: “Sacrifice is our purest source of joy on earth.” We wish to explore this sacrifice
and its association with the gaze in our final section.
The moral
We might wish to argue that her “sacrifice” shows that she is being punished
for two reasons. First, she is being punished for her attempt to take away
André from Denise. Second, she is being punished for attempting to becomea more sophisticated westernized woman; in doing so, she is to some extent
betraying Rousseauesque and Orientalist stereotypes of the Noble Savage,
not least by her parody of “whiteness” in the transitional sequence on theliner. While both of these arguments are quite plausible, we would wish toargue that her punishment is directly related to issues of performance andagency, and that these are connected to her relationship with Batcheff. Put
simply, she is punished for taking control of the gaze. She does this in two
ways.
Both Baker and Batcheff are objects of the gaze, but they are misaligned.
We as spectators watch Baker watching Batcheff, who watches Baker in turn(as is made very clear in the long sequence in the village when Baker dances,
watched by both André and Alvarez). Batcheff’s character, crucially andtypically, does not gaze back at the spectator as Baker’s character does. As isthe case with many of his films, Batcheff characteristically looks “off,” as
we mentioned above. The first way in which Baker takes control of the gaze,then, is the way she draws the audience’s gaze from Batcheff to herself,
thereby weakening Batcheff as object of the gaze. Second, she turns Batcheff
into an even weaker object of the audience gaze by dominating him in termsof the narrative and the mise–en–scène.
Baker draws the gaze away by being more “Other” than Batcheff; she isblack rather than white, and her acting style––by turns excessively comical
or excessively tragic––is completely at odds with Batcheff’s considerably
more understated style. She is also more obviously active; in so doing sheneutralizes his exoticism as the languorous Slav. She constantly moves, darting to and fro across the set, nimbly shinning up trees and furniture, effortlessly scaling rocks; she is protean (parodically white with flour, as well as
overdeterminedly black with coal). Batcheff, on the other hand, is relatively
static; we tend to see him sitting (with Denise, with Sévéro, at Alvarez’sdesk), watching (Papitou dancing, Alvarez stealing). He is vacantly statuesque when contrasted with Baker’s sinuously mercurial kinetics. One ex245

ception is the Monte Puebla sequence, although here his laboured movements across the rocks, due to his injuries, are pointedly contrasted with
Papitou’s lithe agility. Batcheff is Other by his passive immobility whichturns him into the fetishized pin–up; while Baker is Other by excessive mobility, but also, crucially, by her ability to shift across multiple boundaries so
as to play into fetishization, while at the same time interrogating it, for example in the coal and flour sequence. While both of them bare their chest,
Baker’s breasts “trump” Batcheff’s open–necked shirt, a familiar device forthe male pin–up. Both her breasts and his chest are objects for the gaze ofthe spectator, but Baker moves around constantly, escaping that gaze, while
Batcheff, passive and immobile, lets himself be pinned down. That immobility is a ploy for capturing the gaze of the spectator, of course; but it fails,
because even though Baker’s movements on the one hand suggest an escape,they also fascinate in ways that Batcheff’s immobility cannot.
Not only does Baker draw the gaze away from Batcheff through aspectsof her performance, then; she also dominates him in the narrative and themise–en–scène. Papitou controls André: she cares for him when he is hurt onMonte Puebla, in a masochistic–submissive trope familiar in Batcheff’s
films. She stands over him again when she promises to help retrieve thecompromising situation at the end of the film, and she, rather than Andréshoots Sévéro in the duel. These events conspire to undermine Batcheff’s
agency; he comes across as impotent and not infrequently effeminate. Whenhe arrives in the tropics, for example, he uses a lady’s fan because of theheat; in the fight with Alvarez in the caves of Monte Puebla, André ends up
on the floor, saved in the nick of time by the mounted police; and, most tellingly, at the end of the film, when Papitou shoots Sévéro from her hiding
place in a tree, the last we see of André is his comical incomprehension that
it is he who he has apparently but inexplicably shot Sévéro while shooting
his gun in the air.
Finally, by having two Others working against each other, Baker emphasizes not just Batcheff’s effeminacy, but more crucially his status as passive
melancholic, anchored in post–war trauma. While “Baker represented theunfettered frenzy of libidinal urges breaking through the nihilism of despair,”606 a supremely mobile and indeed upwardly mobile reaffirmation oflife after the 1.38 million dead of the Great War, correlatively Batcheff’s Sad
Young Man, static in the face of Baker’s “frenzy,” is caught, much more
obviously than he would otherwise have been, in masochistic melancholia.
Her “blackness” emphasizes his “whiteness,” so that it becomes more thanwhite; it becomes drained, lifeless, the pallor of a ghost, death contrasted
with Baker’s spontaneous and frenzied vitality. Baker plays at being a ghostin the sequence on the liner; indeed, the English woman she startles calls her
a ghost in an intertitle. Batcheff’s ghostliness is all the more poignant for not
606

Sweeney, 50.

246being named. By being placed next to Baker, he becomes a representative of
all Sad Young Men dead on the battlefields, and those alive but shell–shocked, the alienated and traumatized younger generation; in a word: survivors. Her “whiteness” is just ludic make–up, an over–determined whitenessthat interrogates her skin colour, and in so doing positions her blackness as athoroughly modern blackness, helped in this by the fact that her skin colour
is not as deep as many.
The film therefore cleverly articulates a cultural transition from Old
Europe, represented by Batcheff, to Modern America, represented by Baker;
from the melancholic, traumatized and effeminate male, to the brashly innocent and desiring female. The final images of Baker are key in this respect:
her fur collar exteriorizes her presumed “animal” nature, turning her into awesternized woman whose purpose is the sacrifice of her desire. She haschanged from the Black Venus to the fetishized Venus in Furs, object ofadoration for the masochistic male; but object rather than subject nevertheless.607

607This chapter is a modified version of an article first published in Studies in French Cinema
8 (2008): 245–64. Part of it was also published as chapter 5 of Pierre Batcheff and Stardom in
1920s French Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2009). Our thanks to both for allowing us
to republish the material here.

247

Critical Absences: The Function of Swooning in G.W.
Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl
Miya Tokumitsu
In his 1929 film, Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen), G. W.
Pabst curiously has his heroine, Thymian Henning (played by Louise
Brooks), become unconscious during three important plot events: her discovery of her father’s affair with their housekeeper, her seduction at age
fifteen by her father’s assistant, and her initiation into prostitution. Thymian’s unconsciousness absents the protagonist from pivotal moments in her
own history and seems to confuse the narrative by making her personalagency ambiguous, particularly since the story is revealed through her pointof view. In fact, these scenes signal to the viewer a variety of cultural tropes
more important to the spectatorial experience than narrative clarity. Focusing
on the latter two episodes, I will examine how Thymian’s unconsciousness
yields a series of reflexive statements—about the potential perversity of film
spectatorship, about the questionable conflation of actor and character, andabout both the performance and expectations of femininity.
The film is adapted from the 1905 novel, Diary of a Lost Girl. Of a Dead
Girl. (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen. Von einer Toten.) by Margarete Böhme,who also assisted in writing the film’s screenplay.608 Although there are fundamental differences between the novel and the film, both tell the story of ayoung woman who is seduced and impregnated by her father’s assistant,subsequently sent to a reformatory, and later employed as a prostitute. In thefilm, she finds personal fulfillment as a prostitute, though she ultimately
leaves the brothel to live with an older count as his adopted niece. (In thenovel, she remains a prostitute, and dies alone and heartbroken). In his presentation of the story, Pabst secures the spectator’s participation in it by activating several sexually perverse gazes though which to observe Thymian’s
tribulations. Throughout the film, the spectator engages with both actressand protagonist in the various roles of voyeur, masochist, sadist, and necrophile. With the exception of a possible masochistic identification with Thymian, these perverse gazes transport the spectator to ever more extreme
forms of domination over both the actress, Brooks, and her character.
The swooning spells implicate the spectator in Thymian’s sexual misfortunes at moments that seem to rupture the narrative. This is because the unconscious body on the screen becomes a visual and metaphorical blank space
onto which both spectators and other characters within the narrative can
608

For further analysis on Böhme as both a novelist and screenplay writer, see Margaret
MacCarthy, “The Representation of Prostitutes in Literature and Film: Margarete Böhme andG. W. Pabst,” in Commodities of Desire: The Prostitute in Modern German Literature, ed.
Christiane Schönfeld (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000), 77–97.
248

inscribe their own meanings. That this body nonetheless retains the physicalappearance of a famous actress, allows the spectator to see or choose to see
the fainting victim as either Brooks, Thymian, or a composite of the two. In
the latter two fainting scenes, this conflation of Brooks’s body with Thymian’s is crucial for the spectator’s visual pleasure and problematic in that
this doubling of identity temporarily breaks his or her absorption in thefilm’s diegetic world. These are scenes in which the spectator witnesses theinscription of Thymian’s body with meanings not of her choosing (as apregnant, unwed mother and as a prostitute) by a physically dominant, malecharacter. However, the spectator acts as not just witness to, but as participant in these acts, ultimately embodying the sexual perversions above.609
In the scene of Thymian’s first seduction, she meets Meinert (played by
Fritz Rasp), her father’s assistant, in the pharmacy on the ground floor of thefamily’s house. Earlier that day, Meinert had purloined her diary (a confirmation gift) and wrote in it, instructing her to meet him there, promising to
divulge the circumstances surrounding the death of Elisabeth, the Hennings’
first housekeeper. (The audience already knows the sordid truth that Elisabeth, pregnant by Thymian’s father and cast out of the house, has committed
suicide). Earlier that day Thymian had glimpsed Elisabeth’s corpse, and run
into the house, only to find her father embracing Meta, the new housekeeper,
the sight of which made her faint. This incident establishes the swoon as
Thymian’s self–removal from sexual knowledge, either concerning others,or as we shall see, concerning herself.
That same evening, Thymian meets Meinert in the pharmacy, and heagain promises to reveal the circumstances of Elisabeth’s death. “I’ll tell you
everything!” he says. Thymian never learns the details, however, for after
Meinert puts his hands on her shoulders, she buries her face in his chest. The
two sink to the floor together and Meinert kisses her, causing her to faint. He
then carries her up to her room where, after staring down at her unconscious
body on the bed, he climbs over her as the camera fades to black (mimicking
the fading of Thymian’s own subjectivity). Thus rather than communicating
Elisabeth’s history with Henning verbally, Meinert stages a reenactment of it
onto Thymian’s completely pliant body. Thymian is therefore physicallypresent for her seduction and first sexual encounter, but mentally absent. Asa character, she appears completely denied any subjectivity, converted into apassive venue in which Meinert, and, as we shall see, the spectator, can perform their desires.
However, the swooning female body presents a number of problems forthe spectator at exactly the same moment that it appears most sexually available. The gesture contains its own paradox: either Thymian is overwhelmed
609

Heide Schlüpmann, “The Brothel as Arcadian Space? G. W. Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl”
in The Films of G. W. Pabst: An Extraterratorial Cinema, ed. Eric Rentschler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 88.
249

by the erotic sensation brought on by contact with the Meinert and thenyields to him, or else she is horrified at what is about to happen and protests
by removing her conscious self from the situation. Therefore, she gives her
body either all too willingly, or not at all. Expanding the question into thespectator’s realm raises issues of identity. If the character onscreen isdrained of any subjectivity, the spectator is left to view an insentient bodywith Brooks’s features. Who exactly is the spectator viewing here: Thymian,
Brooks, or some unstable conflation of the two? What exactly does this uninhabited shell of a body represent? The swooning gesture not only encourages and enables the visual enjoyment of the swooner by setting the spectator in a position of power over the object of his or her gaze, but also has thepotential to frustrate the spectator and collapse the separation between theworlds of the diegesis and the spectatorial space.
This mental absentia adds another layer of eroticism of this scene by proposing the possibility that both Meinert and the viewer are fulfilling a masochistic wish by Thymian610––and by extension, spectators who identify with
her––to be dominated. Such rape fantasies have been discussed as internalizations of a patriarchal ideology that insists upon female submission andonly legitimizes forbidden desires by making them acceptable as punishment
rather than pleasure.611 The premise of an unconscious participant in a sexual
act also channels the violence inherent in Freud’s ’primal scene,’ in which
the child either imagines or witnesses, but does not comprehend, the parents’intercourse, and considers it an act of aggression on the father’s part. For thechild, this misunderstanding of the sex act binds arousal with anxiety as well
as shifting identifications with either parent.612 Just as the actual identity of
the woman onscreen fluctuates in these scenes, so do ways in which thespectator identifies with her. On the one hand, by presenting a sympathetic
character who is subjected to a series of emotional and sexual crises, Pabst
encourages this masochistic gaze––precisely because it holds a promise of
perverse visual pleasure while at the same time implicating the spectator in
Thymian’s story.
At the same time, Meinert’s complete physical domination over Thymianand his necrophilic desire for a de–animated body are sadistic, and the spectator is implicated in his actions. Two shots during the scene of Thymian’s
seduction clarify this point. In the pharmacy, when Meinert is speaking toThymian, the camera zooms in to an extreme close–up Brooks’s face in profile, with her creamy white skin occupying almost half of the frame, and a
610

Thymian’s masochism is explicit in the novel; for instance, she contemplates the younger
Count Osdorff’s white hands, and wistfully imagines them beating her. Margarete Böhme,Tagebuch einer Verlorenen. Von einer Toten (Berlin: F. Fontane, 1907), 59.
611
Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril:” Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in
Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 21.
612
Edward Baron Turk, Child of Paradise: Marcel Carné and the Golden Age of French
Cinema (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 303.
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glint of light reflecting off her lower lip. Meinert’s face is behind hers, parallel to the screen, filling the rest of the frame. Thus the spectator mirrors
Meinert as he moves in on Thymian, and the proximity of the close–up
firmly and tightly sandwiches her between Meinert and the spectator. Laterin the bedroom, the camera cuts from a shot of Meinert looking down at
Thymian’s unconscious body on the bed, to a point of view shot from his
position, the high camera angle reinforcing the physical domination unfolding in the scene. By having the spectator both mirror and mimic Meinert’s
gazes of Thymian, Pabst binds the spectator’s very act of looking to the perverse acts perpetrated against Thymian’s body by other characters in thefilm.
In positioning the spectator as dominant observer of the unconscious
Thymian, Pabst draws upon the well–established phenomenon of fetishizing
unconscious or dead women in literature and art. For example, Elisabeth
Bronfen’s analysis of Thomas Hardy’s 1891 novel, Tess of the
D’Urbervilles, shows how a key function of Tess’s unconsciousness during
her first sexual encounter with Alec is the reduction of her body to meresign. Only when her character is denied subjectivity through her body’s de–animation, can she be a metaphor for Alec’s inscription: “…this beautiful
feminine tissue, sensitive as a gossamer, and practically blank as snow as
yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed toreceive.”613 In similar fashion, Thymian is reduced to a figural sign, onto
which Meinert traces his own coarse pattern. This scriptorial nature of her
seduction is foreshadowed earlier in the film, when Meinert picks up her––still unused––diary and is the first to write in it.614 Going forward in theirrespective narratives, both Tess and Thymian re–enter the world as signs
forced to bear another’s inscription.615
As we have seen, however, Meinert is not the only one to dominate thebody onscreen. Before our eyes, Meinert depletes Thymian of her subjectivity. In these moments of Thymian’s unconsciousness, Pabst presents Brooks,
the star actress and celebrity, to the spectator as a metaphorical blank slate
for his or her own inscription. The violence of the action on screen is therefore doubled. Parallel to Meinert’s inscription onto Thymian’s body is the
spectator’s onto Brooks. Pabst thus fashions the ultimate commodification of
his star actress by presenting her as completely submissive and sexuallyavailable to the spectator. The mental absentia of the body on the screen also
creates a mental distance between subject and object that allows the body to613

Elisabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1992), 235–36; Thomas Hardy, Tess of the
D’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912), 91. Hardy is also quoted
in Bronfen.
614
Gerald Koll, Pandoras Schätze: Erotikkonzeptionen in den Stummfilmen von G. W. Pabst(Munich: Diskurs–Film–Verlag Schaudig und Ledig, 1998), 343–45.
615
Bronfen, 236.
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function as a fetish object. At the same time, this possession of Brooks isfrustrated by her de–animated state. Because she is not conscious, she cannot
express her consent to being gazed upon and consumed by the spectator. The
paradox of the swoon has come home to roost: Brooks, as well as Thymian,
give themselves both willingly and not at all.
The filmic embodiment of this paradox also crystallizes around the commodification of the spectator’s gaze. In one shot of a comatose woman,
Pabst suspends the narrative progression in order to linger on one of its mosterotically charged moments for extended visual enjoyment; he rests the camera on Brooks’s face and body, prolonging the spectator’s fetishistic view of
the actress. However, by lingering a bit too long on this woman, and giving
the spectator too much of what he or she wants, the illusion of Brooks as
Thymian begins to unravel. The spectator wants lasting moments of eroticism; he or she has also paid to see Louise Brooks. Pabst is able to fulfill
both desires in these swooning scenes. However, as soon as the spectator
recognizes Brooks herself and not as Thymian, his or her absorption in the
narrative is ruptured.616 In recognizing Brooks as herself, the spectator cannot avoid acknowledging his or her position as such, and accepting the factthat the actual woman, Louise Brooks, is elusive to him or her in the realworld, and that Thymian is merely a fictional character, unpossessible forjust this reason.
Thymian’s third swoon more explicitly layers the necrophilic gaze onto
the other sexually perverse gazes activated by Pabst and Brooks. In fact, sex
is bound to death throughout the film. The love–affirming, life–creating possibilities of sex are vigorously denied; Elisabeth’s out–of–wedlock pregnancy causes her to drown herself; the sexual union of Thymian and Meinert
produces a weak child who dies in a wet nurse’s care; the second housekeeper’s pregnancy by Thymian’s father is not a joyous occasion––her swollen belly serves only a as a sign of sexual knowledge and her children arepresented merely as economic burdens. The only way that sex serves any
positive function is when it can be harnessed as a commodity through prostitution and traded on the subject’s own terms. Hence, as Siegfried Kracauernotes, within the film, the brothel appears as a kind of haven, especiallycompared with the poisonous bourgeois home and morally hypocritical reformatory.617 If one reads Thymian as the elder count’s thinly–disguised
616

Miriam Hansen discusses this paradox of filming star performers in her discussion of
Rudolph Valentino. See Miriam Hansen, Babel & Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent
Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 246. Thomas Elsaesser has also
discussed the disorienting unease between spectatorial space and diegesis in Brook’s performance in Pandora’s Box. Thomas Elsaesser, “Lulu and the Meter Man,” Screen 24 (1983): 18.
617
See Schlüpmann, “Brothel as Arcadian Space?” Kracauer says that in the film the brothel
is like a “health resort” compared to the immoral middle–class space of the home and pharmacy. Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German
Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947), 179.
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mistress at the end of the film, then she has made the ultimate sexual trade:giving up control of her body for economic and social advantage.
After she escapes from the reformatory, Thymian arrives at a decadent salon, filled with dancing, drinking pleasure–seekers. After drinking somechampagne and changing into a cocktail dress, she is encouraged by amadam to dance with one of the men. As the other couples disappear into
separate bedrooms, Thymian, dancing with the same man, begins to go limp.
Eventually, her partner leads her to a bedroom, and turns out the light. The
scene cuts to the following morning, when Thymian awakens, alone. Only
when the madam enters and presents her with an envelope full of cash, does
Thymian realize that she has sold her body. Again, at a pivotal point in her
own history, Thymian is not mentally present. Again, her body is de–animated, reduced to a metaphor for another’s inscription.
The rhetoric on swooning is closely linked to discourses on female hysteria, orgasm, and death (hysteria having already co–opted the other two by
the twentieth century). Swooning was considered to be a specifically female
reaction to overwhelming sexual passion, as well as the final stage of an
hysterical episode according to the nineteenth–century physician, Jean–
Martin Charcot.618 The swoon marks a denial of knowledge, and the hystericas well as the orgasmic woman supposedly experienced it as a split between
the physical ordeal of the orgasm and the knowledge of it619 (in Thymian’scase, simply a split between sex and her knowledge of it). However, theswoon was originally conceived of as a frightening, repulsive moment. Believers in hysteria since antiquity endowed the womb with the capacity of
movement, and its least animation (or sexual stimulation) was consideredjust as horrific as the swooning it produces.620 The fundamental misogyny ofhysteria is exemplified by the comments of the Renaissance doctor andwriter François Rabelais in his tale of Gargantua: “I call [the womb] animal…by [its movements] is ravished from woman every other sense andmovement, as if it were a lipothymy, a swoon, epilepsy, apoplexy, and a real
semblance of death” [emphasis added].621
This “real semblance of death” returns the discussion to the relationshipbetween women and death. Why is swooning a female phenomenon? The
618

Anthea Callen, The Spectacular Body: Science, Method, and Meaning in the Work ofDegas (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 57. See also Natasha Ruiz–Gómez,“Morceaux D’Amphithéâtre: Science and the Sculpture of Auguste Rodin” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2006), 160.
619
Georges Didi–Huberman, Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière, trans. Alisa Harz (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 150.
620
Didi–Huberman, 68.
621
François Rabelais, “The Third Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of the Good Pantagruel,” in The Complete Works of François Rabelais, trans. Donald M. Frame (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1999), 356. Rabelais is also quoted in Didi–Huberman, 68–69.
See also Laurinda Dixon, Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre–Enlightenment Art
and Medicine (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), especially 93–129.
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answer to this question lies in woman’s historical status as object of the malegaze, male imagination, even male medical experimentation. Women,
whether fictional characters such as Tess and Thymian or the real–life casestudies of Charcot who were on view in his medical theater, are all figures
reduced in agency and intellect in order that their bodies be inscribed withmeanings not intended by them. The violence inherent in this inscription
ultimately results in the object’s death. According to Bronfen:
As each heroine’s body is gazed at, deciphered, imitated, and ultimately replaced by something else, as physical inscription passes into metaphorical inscription or vice versa, the troping involved either engenders the protagonist’s death or results from it.622

Still, it is the very inscription, or imbuing of her body with additional meanings (facilitated by the object’s unconsciousness), that provides the erotic
pleasure of these scenes. If these viewings, decipherings, imitations, andreplacements ultimately kill the female protagonist, then necrophilia, themost extreme form of sexual domination, is thoroughly satisfied by the gazesystem that Pabst establishes in Diary.
This point is further enhanced by the resemblance of Thymian’s second
swoon to the final death scene in Pandora’s Box (Pandoras Büchse) of 1929
also directed by Pabst and starring Brooks. In that film, the femme fatale
Lulu gets her recompense in the final scene, when she is stabbed to death by
the psychosexual killer Jack the Ripper. Both in the film, and in Frank
Wedekind’s “Lulu” plays Earth Spirit (Erdgeist) and Pandora’s Box (Pandoras Büchse) which the film adapts, this death is the fulfillment of Lulu’s
own masochistic desires. Early in the play, Pandora’s Box, Lulu says,“Every few nights I’d dream that I’d fallen into the hands of a sex maniac.”623 Therefore the stabbing is the single moment in which Lulu is allowed subjectivity and expression of her desires, and is paradoxically, themoment of her death.624 However, in the film, the spectator does not see theknife enter Lulu. Instead, Pabst shows Jack grabbing the knife and then cuts
to a close–up shot of Lulu’s hand and arm. As the arm goes from tense tolimp, the spectator understands that Lulu is dying. In Diary, the camera
zooms in on Thymian’s gradually limp arm while she is dancing in thebrothel to indicate the onset of the swoon.

622

Bronfen, 226.
Frank Wedekind, “Pandora’s Box,” in Five Tragedies of Sex by Frank Wedekind, trans.
Frances Fawcett and Stephen Spender (London: Vision, 1952), 242. Also quoted and discussed
in Mary Ann Doane, Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York:
Routledge, 1991), 161. Brooks (quoted in Doane, note 41) herself interprets the ending as Lulu
receiving the “gift that has been her dream since childhood. Death by a sexual maniac.”
624
Doane, 161–62; note 41. Doane does not entirely agree with this assessment, and reads
Jack’s appearance in the film as a coincidental event.
623

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Therefore within Pabst’s visual vocabulary, the sign for swooning andsexualized death are identical. And, as the statement by Rabelais and theconclusions of Charcot demonstrate, the swoon, the female orgasm, anddeath have been long intertwined in Western thought. Thymian’s two
swooning spells and Lulu’s death all signify the eradication of the female
character’s subjectivity during sexual encounters. Even if a character’s desire is truly masochistic, like Lulu’s (though Lulu does not revel in her
masochism), the woman is not even allowed to enjoy her partner’s cruelty;
her subjectivity must be eliminated in the course of the sexual encounter.625
Bronfen has discussed this phenomenon as it appears in works of literatureand the visual arts, but it has special implications for cinema, especially as it
relates to spectatorship and star performances.
Pabst and Brooks maintain the sign of the limp arm for the swoon/deathacross two films. This continuity not only reaffirms the potency of this sign
but also strengthens Brooks’s on–screen persona, by reaffirming her gestureas the sign not just of a narrative event, but also as the index of her performance of that same event across different films. The double meaning of
Brooks’s arm, symbolic of a psychosexual event within the narratives andher performance, again pleases and frustrates the spectator’s gaze. The spectator can recognize both the narrative event and the performance of it, but
the more he becomes conscious of the latter, the more threatened is his potential absorption in the diegeses of the two films.
Finally, Brooks is not just performing the swoon or death in these scenes,
but she is embodying femininity itself. The necrophilic look moves beyond
sexual perversion, an excess of dominance; it reaffirms objectification as
feminine. The necrophile loves the corpse itself, the de–animated surface ofthe objectified body, and the unconscious body on the screen demonstrates
precisely the unstable status of femininity in Western representation. According to Teresa de Lauretis, Woman is the foundation of representation, its
object and support, its telos and its origin. Such representations work as texts
disclosing the story of male desire by “performing the absence of woman
and producing the woman as text, as pure representation.”626 In Diary, in fact
in cinema at large, a double–absenting is required, of both character andactress. However, in Diary, Pabst more than fills the vacancy of meaning inThymian’s unconscious body.

625

In fact, Gilles Deleuze claims that the sadist and the masochist are destined never to meet.
Although they seem, at first, to be perfectly suited, the sadist requires that his or her partner
suffer their cruelty. By definition then, the masochist, who enjoys victimization, can neverprovide the sadist the satisfaction of inflicting pain on an unwilling object. Gilles Deleuze,
Masochism, trans. Jean McNeil (New York: Zone Books, 1989), especially 37–46.
626
Bronfen, 208; Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), 13.
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Edna “Billy” Foster, the Biograph Boy
Laura HorakIn 1914, two “Biograph kids”—sisters aged fourteen and sixteen—sat down
for an interview in Motography:
Flora folded her hands in her lap and offered “Billy’s real name is Edna.”
Billy answered the turn of Flora’s head with the explanation, “They always
give me boy parts and I like them better than just being a girl. They got a series of boy pictures ready and asked me what name I wanted to have in themand I said ’Billy.’ So the series was named ’The Adventures of Billy’ andI’ve been called ’Billy’ ever since that by everybody.”627

Edna, or rather, Billy, Foster acted in over twenty short Biograph films––
mostly directed by D.W. Griffith––between 1911 and 1914. In at least fifteen of these films, she played a male role. As the Biograph Company refused to reveal the identity of their actors during this period, reviewers took
the plucky young actress for a boy—a review of The Baby and the Storkeven praised “the appealing and lifelike presentation of the little boy.”628
Foster’s boy performances occurred in the midst of a momentous transitional era for American gender norms and the burgeoning film industry. During this period, feminists continued their decades–long struggle for suffrage
as well as dress reform—advocating new styles of bloomers for sporting
activities and rejecting the restrictive corset. Women joined men in the urban
labor force, earning economic independence. In response to the allegedly“feminizing” effects of industrialization, Teddy Roosevelt called for a rejuvenated boy culture, promoted by the international spread of the Scouting
movement. Yet in the early teens, the boyish flapper fashions popular after
the First World War were still on the horizon. Cinema too, was transitioning
from the one– and two–reelers that had sustained the early industry to serials
and feature–length films. Acting styles were changing rapidly (and inconsistently) from older melodramatic to newer verisimilar styles.629 In the midstof these cultural and stylistic changes, what can we make of Foster’s corpus
of “boy” performances? Edna Foster’s Biograph films defy current theorizations of cross–dressing in film. They reveal that the conventions of gendered
performance in film required a process of standardization as the medium
distinguished itself from theatrical traditions. Furthermore, the ease of Fos627“Biograph Kids Are Wonderful Girls: Chicago Exhibitor’s Daughters.” Motography, July4, 1914, 3–4.
628
Review cited by Ben Brewster in his entry on The Baby and the Stork in The Griffith Project: Volume 5, Films Produced in 1911, edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai (London: BFI and Le
Giornate del Cinema Muto, 2001). Brewster doesn’t include the original citation source.
629
See Roberta E. Pearson, Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in
the Griffith Biograph Films (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)
256

ter’s crossing hints at a broader horizon of cross–gender casting during thisperiod that has received little attention.
Although Foster describes acting in a handful of films with various studios in her Motography interview, only the films caught up in the D.W. Griffith archive fever have been preserved. She first appears in Griffith’s Biograph films at the age of eleven as “Newsboy on the street” in Bobby the
Coward (1911). The set of “Billy” films appeared later that year––first A
Country Cupid in July, then The Ruling Passion in August, The Adventuresof Billy in October, and Billy’s Stratagem in February the next year. Meanwhile, she appeared in dozens of other films, often in smaller parts as “theyoung son” or a similar role. Although other film studios began publicizing
their stars by name during this time, Biograph held out. This ultimately
short–lived policy enabled Foster to pass on–screen as a boy quite thoroughly and completely. This makes Foster quite a special case, for later actresses cast in male parts, regardless of the persuasiveness of their cross–gender performance, would surely be “outed” by the credits or publicknowledge of their identity.
The existing scholarship on cross–dressing in film focuses almost exclusively on gender disguise within a narrative.630 In what Chris Straayer calls“the temporary transvestite” genre (such as Some Like It Hot, Victor/Victoria, and many more) a character must disguise him or herself as the
opposite gender to get work, to inherit money, to escape the law or even the
Mob. A key convention of the genre is that the disguise is always convincing
to the characters within the film but never convincing to the film audience.
This unpersuasiveness highlights the audience’s superior knowledge, theskill of the performer, the pleasures of reading the multiple levels of masquerade, and intimations of homosexuality. Annette Kuhn and Chris
Straayer, in line with gender theorists Judith Butler and Marjorie Garber,celebrate the transgressive possibilities of these performances that challenge
the naturalized relationship between the body, sex, and gender. However, thecharacter’s and the actor’s “real” sex is rarely in question. These theories
never address a case like Foster’s—a case of genuine passing—in which theaudience is never aware that the perceived gender and the sexed body of theactor are at odds. Usually, these cases are by their very nature invisible. Yetwith the belated revelation that the boy in these Biograph films is played bya girl, we can read these performances and their reception retroactively. Although the audience at the time may not have experienced a moment of gender trouble, these performances can denaturalize for us what it meant to perform a naturalized masculinity in the past.
630

The two major essays are: Annette Kuhn, "Sexual Disguise and Cinema" in The Power of
the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1985) and Chris Straayer, “Redressing the ‘Natural’: The Temporary Transvestite Film” in
Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re–Orientation in Film and Video (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)257

Cross–gender casting has a long history in theater. Although men played
women more often than the opposite, women too performed their share ofmale parts—from the “breeches” roles of the 16th through the 19th century, tothe male impersonators of the vaudeville stage and the “principal boys” ofBritish Christmas pantomime. As film, like theater, is a medium in which
performers routinely adopt personalities, ages, nationalities, and ethnicities
at odds with their own, when and why was it established that, in film, men
must be played by male–bodied actors and women by female–bodied actresses? Jacqueline Stewart has described the way early American films
troubled over representing blackness—as, for example, when one white actor
in blackface signified a white man in disguise while another signified a“real” African–American in the same film, A Close Call (1912), or when ablackface white actor appeared beside an African–American actor, as in The
Birth of a Nation (1914).631 These inconsistent conventions continued evenlonger in depictions of Asians and other ethnicities. However, the conventions of gender performance (and the requirement that actors stick to theirown gender) appear to have been worked out with greater ease—or were
they? If we look in the right places, we see that some of the polymorphous
performance traditions of theater did in fact survive into the first few decades of film—and that the conventions of “natural” gender performance
were not standardized in film for quite some time.
One of Foster’s films in particular, As in a Looking Glass (1911), reveals
how naturalized Foster’s boyish masculinity was by situating her within afilm about imitating and altering adult masculinity. The film is a temperance
melodrama along the lines of A Drunkard’s Reformation, but instead ofwatching the evils of drink play out on stage, the alcoholic father sees his
own son, played by Foster, parody his licentious, brutal behavior. First we
see the father stumble drunkenly home, aggressively flirt with the maid, andthrow a tantrum at the dinner table while the young son (Foster) watches.
Later, the son sets up the family’s living room like a stage. He recruits his
sister to play the maid and two neighbor girls to be the audience. The son
parodies his father’s drunken flirtations with the maid and violent scenes.
The actors and audience break into boisterous laughter. When the father
catches sight of his own abominable actions performed by his son, he reforms his ways. The final shot of the film shows the family, happily gatheredaround the now–gentle father, in front of the hearth.
The father’s initial manner—broad, violent gestures, insatiable lust, and aquick temper—are not, Griffith argues, a “natural,” inevitable male embodiment. Male behavior can be retrained into the bourgeois ideal of the
gentleman, characterized corporeally by smaller, slower gestures and con631

Jacqueline Stewart, “Mixed Colors: Riddles of Blackness in Preclassical Cinema” in Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)258

strained movements. Adult masculinity, in this film, can be learned and imitated (by the young son) and relearned and altered (by the father). The son’s
performance of drunken adult masculinity is marked in many ways as a performance—by the audience of neighbor girls, by being bracketed by laughter, by the hyperbolic gestures—while Foster’s performance of “boyness”—
conveyed by her clothing, hairstyle, lack of make–up, and energetic, unrestrained movements—remains unmarked, such that it is unnoticeable as a
specifically gendered “performance.” Foster’s maleness is represented aseffortless and natural, whereas the father must think about the kind of masculinity he acts out.
Perhaps in response to an increasing suspicion that girls ought not beplaying boys, Foster and her sister Flora assert through the 1914 Motographyinterview that Billy, née Edna, “really is just like a boy.” Billy, says Flora,
likes baseball and rugby and drives a “big Packard.” Flora, who claims she“can’t do any of those boy things,” prefers to read and study and “sew on theveranda.” At Flora’s prompting, Billy flexes her arm for the interviewer,
who admits that “It was a muscle that a boy of more than Billy’s age would
be proud of; round and hard as the proverbial rock.” While the burgeoning
star industry of 1914 made it normal for stars to assert a continuity between
their on–screen roles and their own lives, Foster’s insistence on her natural
masculinity contrasts with the way athletic serial queens of the period insisted on their real–life femininity. Perhaps Foster, as a young girl, was permitted to act the tomboy, while these twenty–somethings had to dodge accusations of mannishness. Or perhaps Foster’s admission of boyishness was atactical misstep on her part, as she disappears from the record this same year
(although her disappearance could also be due to any number of things: hitting puberty, Griffith’s departure from Biograph, the transition to serials andfeature films, the war).
The question remains: was Foster alone in her cross–gender performances? Was there a wider horizon of practice during this period that would
make Griffith’s decision to consistently cast Foster in boy parts somethingother than an individual, eccentric one? Although the record is incomplete, it
seems that there was. According to Richard deCordova, one of the first actors promoted by the Edison Company was stage actress Cecil Spooner in
The Prince and the Pauper (1909). The Edison Kinetogram advertised:Miss Cecil Spooner was especially employed to enact the difficult role of
Tom Canty, the pauper boy, and Edward, the boy prince of Wales in MarkTwain’s celebrated story, The Prince and the Pauper.632

632

The Edison Kinetogram, August 1, 1909, 14, as quoted in Richard deCordova, Picture
Personalities (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 42.
259

Here Spooner’s skill in both gender and class impersonation is trumpeted. It
is a clear example of theatrical cross–gender casting practices being adopted
in the new medium. Spooner also appeared as Hansel in a film production ofHansel and Gretel that same year. Although the theatrical convention of casting girls in the roles of young boys became less common in later film, it
continued to appear sporadically, as when Mary Pickford played Little Lord
Fauntleroy in 1921 and in the various film adaptations of Peter Pan. The
breeches role—such as Charlotte Cushman’s and Sarah Bernhardt’s famous
turns as Hamlet—was revived in film by Asta Nielsen in 1920. Furthermore,
Twelfth Night had often provided an opportunity for temporary transvestism
on stage, but a 1910 film confused things even further by casting Edith Storey as Sebastian, the long–lost brother who impersonates his sister Viola(played by Florence Turner). Whereas on the Elizabethan stage a boy would
have played Viola pretending to be her brother, in this film, Edith Storey
played Sebastian pretending to be his sister. Although I don’t consider male–to–female cross–casting practices in this essay, it is worth noting that men
also appeared—sometimes uncredited—in comedies cast as old maids, suchas female impersonator Gilbert Sarony as An Old Maid Having Her Picture
Taken (1901) and James T. Kelly as a female customer in Charlie Chaplin’s
The Pawnshop (1916).
Foster was not the only actress who specialized in boy parts. In 1912, The
New York Dramatic Mirror praised the young Kalem actress Marin Sais as“particularly good in Indian and boy parts.”633 The lack of further commentsuggests that readers would have been familiar with girls playing “boyparts.” (Interestingly, Sais’s first film was Edith Storey’s Twelfth Night, so
perhaps the girl got inspiration or mentorship from the older actress.)
Throughout the teens, Edith Storey played a series of roles in which she impersonated men and boys. In Vitagraph’s Billy the Kid (1911), released in
the midst of Foster’s Billy series, the advertisement proclaims “’Billy’ is agirl but the boys on the ranch don’t know it until she is sixteen, then she
marries her pal.”634 The ad provides a picture of Billy on a horse that allows
the reader to determine if his or her gender detection is more savvy than the“boys on the ranch.” Three years later, Storey plays a wealthy young woman
who swallows a magic seed that changes her gender in A Florida Enchantment (1914). Siobhan Somerville notes that Storey’s male impersonation
was “reinforced by numerous profiles in which she was described as an adventurous, tough tomboy affectionately known as ’Billy.’”635 So, it seems
that Foster was not even the only “Billy” around at this time. Although many

633

“Ten Famous Kalem Beauties,” New York Dramatic Mirror, January 31, 1912, 53.
Billy the Kid Advertisement, New York Dramatic Mirror, August 9, 1911, 23.
635
Siobhan Somerville, Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in
American Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 56.
634

260

of Storey’s parts fall into the “temporary transvestite” genre, her insistenceon her off–screen boyishness aligns her in many ways to Foster.
The short career of Billy Foster at the Biograph Company suggests that inearly film, as in theater, the actor’s bodily sex need not anchor the actor’s orcharacter’s perceived gender. Her unique example opens the door to a wider
set of actresses associated with boy roles during this period. These performers trouble the assumption that gender could be represented on film naturally—instead, these conventions were consolidated through a process ofexperimentation. So far, these cross–gender practices in silent film havereceived little attention and I welcome any suggestions of additional examples of girls and women playing at masculinity during the first several decades of cinema. Though marginal, these performances can show us how
gender became “natural” in the medium of film.

261

“The Malicious Woman”. On the Character of Irma Vep
in Les Vampires by Louis Feuillade
Hélène Fleckinger“If […] one wanted at all costs to give a mythicalmeaning to Fortunio, wouldn’t Musidora, whose curiosity indirectly caused the death, be a modern Psyche,without the virginal purity and the chaste ignorance?”– Trouble Théophile Gautier, Prelude to Fortunio.636

Summer 1915. In the midst of World War I, Louis Feuillade was demobilized
and started shooting Les Vampires (The Vampires), a great “ciné–roman”(“film–novel) or “serial” in ten episodes, typical of silent films, that Gaumontcommissioned him to face the competition from Pathé. Jacques Champreux,
grandson of the filmmaker and project manager of the restoration of films for
the French Cinemathèque in 1984637, evokes the atmosphere of desolation thatpervaded at Gaumont at that time:
There was no coal to heat the studios, no film, no staff––all the men were
mobilized––with the result that Feuillade stood before a ruined Gaumontcompany and before Pathé, which had always been linked to the UnitedStates and that announced amid a blaze of publicity the release of Mystèresde New York.638

Louis Feuillade improvised day by day. In the difficult context of the war, thenarration became chaotic and the filmmaker conceived an action–packed plotthat revolved around violent deaths, mysterious disappearances and fierce battles. The film tells of the perilous fight of reporter, Philippe Guérande, and his
associate Mazamette, a criminal turned informer, against the “Vampires”, acriminal conspiracy. Feuillade, who wanted to uncover the same success that hehad known before the war with Fantômas (1913–1914), had a great plan: making a woman, the dangerous Irma Vep, the movie queen. It was an immediate
636

T. Gautier, Prelude to Fortunio, in Œuvres (Paris: Robert Lafont, 1995), 480.
This study focuses on the film the way it was restored by Jacques Champreux from the rare
written pieces that he owned (a notebook containing a hundred lines approximately and several versions, and the serial novels published by George Meirs and Louis Feuillade in fascicules). Indeed, only one copy of the film without titles or archive footage was kept at the
French film archive. Although the actual copy is probably very close to the original, one
should nonetheless view the restored titles with caution.
638
Testimony of J. Champreux in Le Temps des restaurations (1989, Vamp Production, 6min). Musidora also underlines the large part of improvisation that came into the elaborationof the film: “The script is only ever written in your head. Sometimes, mostly rarely, you takea little piece of paper and with your nice, slanting, and regular hand–writing, you take cryptic
notes…” Musidora, “Dialogues de jadis”, Cahiers du cinéma 160 (November 1964), 40.
637

262

success and the vision of the actress Musidora in a hood and black silk stockings
designed by Paul Noiret after the uniforms of hotel thieves639, made a deep impression on the audience. “Her naked body, tightly sheathed in black, swayedback and forth in the nights of our adolescence like an enormous and delicate
butterfly. We were all, out of breath, hunting this butterfly. We did not even lacka net because we had our dream”640, wrote Pierre Loiselet.
But who is Irma Vep and what role does this disturbing character play in theconstruction of the narration? To what extent does Irma Vep, in the image of
Fantômas, become “a mysterious and fearsome being”?641 How does she contribute, by her evil actions, to creating a fantastic effect based on the “brutal anddramatic rupture with daily reality”?642
If the character of Irma Vep, a diabolical woman, seems to refer to the historyof fantastic literature and to the myth of the femme fatale, between horror andfascination, the first vamp of French cinema, through its ambiguities, paradoxically follows the paths of transgression, if not of the subversion of establishednorms. What if Irma Vep, as the surrealists suggested, was above all an embodiment of freedom––of wild love and rebellion?
Irma Vep, a diabolical woman
In Louis Feuillade, Maître du cinéma populaire, Patrice Gautier and Francis
Lacassin wrote:
The daring in Les Vampires, that Feuillade may not have been fully aware of,lies in the fact that Fantômas is in this case a woman. The work is a hymn to
the Witch, to her deadly beauty and to her satanical seduction that enslaves
men or the persons she possesses.643

Irma Vep, although she only appears in the third episode, Le Cryptogramme rouge (The Red Cryptogram), is indeed the true inspirer of the
Vampires, those kings of darkness who walk “not towards Evil…/ TOWARDS THE WORSE”.644 In fact, the actress Musidora acted as a modelfor the promotional poster that announced the film’s release in November
639

A “hotel thief” is a person who breaks into hotel rooms to rob the rich clients.
P. Loiselet, “Les pionniers du cinéma: Musidora”, Le Soir, August 30, 1930. (BibliothèqueRichelieu, Cote 8–RK–18999 I).
641“Our era must make a record of the mysterious and fearsome being that the authorities andthe public voice have long already named 'Fantômas'!” P. Souvestre and M. Allain, Fantômas,quoted by R. Jeanne et C. Ford, in Paris vu par le cinéma (Paris: Hachette, 1969), 85.
642
J. Marigny, “Réflexions autour de la notion de fantastique”, Les Cahiers du Gerf 1 (1987): 9.
643
P. Gauthier and F. Lacassin, Louis Feuillade Maître du cinéma populaire (Paris:
Gallimard, 2006), 71.
644“Vampires / WHO ARE THEY? / WHERE ARE THEY HEADED? […] / Of moonlessnights they are the kings, / The shades of death are their empire, / Carrying Death, spreading
Fear, / This is the black flights of Vampires. / Soaked with blood, slimy and heavy / They areheading, those sinister Vampires / With velvety wings/ Not towards Evil… / TOWARDS
THE WORSE!” Promotional leaflet of November 1915, quoted by F. Lacassin, in Louis
Feuillade, maître des lions et des vampires (Paris: Pierre Bordas, 1995), 206.
640

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1915:645 a woman’s face, hidden behind a black hood, big black eyes
framed with long eyelashes and, as if encircling the neck of this mysterious
face, a red question mark along with the words that follow: “Who? What?
When? Where…?” The tone is set: a woman will be the heroine of the serial.
Never the official leader, but always the lover or the privileged accomplice of the leaders that succeed one another, Irma Vep asserts herself as an“agitator of ’pretty bad boys”.646 In fact, her name is the anagram of“Vampire”, which makes her a sort of metonymical character, because she
is both “all” and “part of” the group. In this manner, it is after having revealed her as a singer at the Chat Huant cabaret that Philippe Guérandefinds the hideout of this secret criminal conspiracy. 647At the café–concert,after her turn onstage, while other women are dancing, she is summonedby the Great Vampire to be filled in on the “business” in hand. And when
she comes back to Paris, after that she is believed to be dead, it is with aturbulent ovation that she is welcomed by the criminals.
Thanks to an irresolute identity, Irma Vep plays a crucial role in the different actions that the Vampires take, and she shows herself to be at theorigin of most of the new developments. A true “versatile traitor”,648 Irma
takes on various personalities: she becomes, according to the way thingsdevelop, Anne–Marie Le Goff––the little Breton maid who breaks into the
Guérande’s home to steal the red notebook in which are recorded the Vampires’ crimes; Miss Juliette Berteaux––banker Renoux–Duval’s shorthandtypist who organizes the assassination of her senior bank executive Métadier so as to seize 300000 Francs; rich baron of Mortesaigues’s grand–daughter––a chaste young girl of twenty who, after having put to sleep her
hosts of the Parisian high society, robs them of their money and jewels; theyoung Viscount of Kerlor who goes in search of 200000 Dollars stolen by
an American couple; Marie Boissier, the representative of the universal
company of Phonographs, then Noémie Patoche, the cousin of switchboard
operator of the Parc–Hôtel, with the intention of cheating multimillionaire
645

The shooting, which started in summer 1915, ended in April 1916 and the broadcasting,very irregularly spaced out, started on November 13th 1915 and ended on June 30th 1916.
646
Musidora, L’Écran français (February 13, 1950), quoted by A. and O. Virmaux, in Coletteet le cinéma (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 315.
647
When wondering around in the Paris inner suburbs, Philippe Guérande “suddenly foundhimself in front of a poster of a young singer. Under the portrait were the words: Irma Vep.
[…] In the blink of an eye, he noticed that the letters of those two words could also spell'Vampire'. There was only one step to take to conclude that the pretty singer was one of theiraccomplices and he took that step almost immediately. Convinced that he would find thosethat he had been looking for for so long, he went into one of the buildings and he was notdisappointed.” (BIFI, Fonds L. Feuillade, Dossier 7: Les Vampires, “Synopsis et traitements”,épisode III).
648
C. Torquet, Mon Ciné 30 (September 14, 1922): 11. However, Irma is not the only one
who disguises herself. The other characters themselves cannot stop dressing up and wearing
toupees to manipulate their enemies.
264

Géo Baldwin; or then again Aurélie Plateau, Philippe Guérande’s fiancée’sand her mother’s neighbour, in charge of keeping on eye on her enemies649.
In that way, Irma Vep reveals herself to be the brains and the acting handof the Vampires.
Beyond the simple contingency that forces Feuillade to regularly kill his
male protagonists according to the happenings, she constitutes a link between the different episodes of Les Vampires. In fact, it is only after her
death, at the very end of the tenth and last episode, Les noces sanglantes(The Bloody nuptials), that the Vampires vanish forever. Irma Vep is theultimate criminal one must resist: as long as she is alive, the group, although without a male leader, may be born again. But after she is gone,“Guérande and Mazamette the conquerors find peace and happiness again”,
for good.650 Therefore, Michel Cadé may write: “[…] It matters little thaton her arm great Vampires such as Moreno, Satanas and other Venenos
follow one another. It is she who is at the centre of the action, she whopulls the strings.”651
The character of Irma Vep is crucial to the story of Les Vampires. The
fantastical effect, based on the “paradoxical combination of the convincing
and the irrational”652 and the expression of a brutal intrusion of mystery
into the frame of real life,653 mainly stems from the eventful narrative styleof Louis Feuillade whose imagination is unbridled and inventive. And yet,it truly is Irma who represents, better than all other characters, the disruptive element, the bizarre and the fierce. She takes a particular responsibility
in the genesis of the feeling of “the uncanny”, “this category of the frightening that relates to things that have long been familiar”.654 The vision ofher provokes fear and becomes a source of anxiety. So is it from her first
appearance at the Chat Huant cabaret, in her singing and mime act, withblackened eyes, sharp teeth and a threatening glare under her black shawl.

649

In the ciné–roman, Philippe admires Irma’s transformations: “How did she manage toexchange that accent so typical of the suburbs when singing at the Chat Huant for another thatmakes it seem as though she has never left her Breton village? What humour! And how admirably does this woman play these two different roles I have seen her in.” G. Meirs and L.
Feuillade, Les Vampires 1, La Tête coupée (Paris: Jules Tallandier, 1916), 162.
650
BIFI, Fonds L. Feuillade, Dossier 7: Les Vampires, “Synopsis et traitements”, épisode X.
651
M. Cadé, “Le grand observateur”, Cahiers de la Cinémathèque 48 (Winter 1988), 62.
652
J. Marigny 1987, 12.
653
According to G. Lenne, “fantastic cinema requires for a framework a world in which thelaws are rigorously unchanging, where the impossible crops up without warning.” Thus, “the'fantastic' is born from the clash of the imagination (the unknown, the horrifying) with the realworld and […] this brutal rupture provokes a dizziness of the conscience, which expressed
itself through fear and terror.” Le Cinéma “fantastique” et ses mythologies (Paris: Henri
Veyrier, 1985), 28, 91.
654
S. Freud, “L’inquiétante étrangeté” (1919), Essais de Psychanalyse appliquée (Paris:
Gallimard, 1971), 165.
265

Enigmatic and undividable, Irma Vep comes across as the “malicious
woman” in the film. Indeed, Musidora tells how the filmmaker asked her tochoose between two roles described in the following terms:
One day, Feuillade asked me: “I’m doing an adventure serial, would you
like to play the malicious woman or the martyr woman?” I answered without hesitation: “the malicious woman”.655
Musidora turns out to be the one who “murders the innocent victim in each
episode”,656 in contrast with the other (non–Vampire) women, on the“Good” side, virtuous, sometimes even ingenuous: thus the “excellent Mrs.
Guérande” (the reporter’s mother), the sweet and loving Jane Brémontier(Philippe’s fiancée and future Mrs. Guérande), or then again the superstitious and gullible Augustine. Irma Vep embodies a female Fantômas,amoral and unscrupulous. A “[T]errible female bandit”,657 she has an incalculable number of crimes to her name. In the sixth episode, Les yeux qui
fascinent (The eyes that mesmerized), while she is under hypnosis, shedraws up the awful list to Moreno:“I, Irma Vep, admit to having been a part of the band of Vampires and tohaving taken part in the following crimes:– The murder of the notary of Fontainebleau.
– The murder of Mr. Métadier, senior bank executive of the Renoux–Duval
Bank whom I killed with my own hands.
– The murder of dancer Marfa Koutiloff.
– The murder of Doctor Nox.
– The murder, in Anvers, of the Van Koecker family […]”.658

The list goes on off screen and calls to mind “the sad enumeration/ Of all theunspeakable crimes, / Tortures, violence/ alas still unpunished! / Of Fantômas
the criminal.”659 If vampires display some common characteristics with supernatural creatures––they act at night and commit bloody murders––these characters are not dead beings who come out of their graves to suck the blood of theliving but merciless murderers who spread terror and multiply thefts and crimes.
Nonetheless, the film truly is, metaphorically, the story of a vampire–woman.
“A ghost”, “living on borrowed time” after having survived the explosion of theship that was to bring her to the penal settlement of Oran, Irma Vep ends up
becoming “the ghost–woman from up above, seductive and lethal”660 that Roger

655

Cinémagazine 27 (July 22, 1921), 7.
Musidora, “Mes projets: être la méchante femme”, Le Film (January 15, 1920)(Bibliothèque Richelieu, Cote 8– RK– 18999 I).
657
Newspaper cutting that appears as an insert in episode VIII.
658
Pieced together by J. Champreux.
659
R. Desnos, “Complainte de Fantômas” (1933), in Fortunes (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), 101.
660
R. Caillois, Images, Images: Essais sur le rôle et les pouvoirs de l’imagination (Paris: José
Corti, 1966), 38.
656

266

Caillois describes. “The mesmerizing eyes” are in fact Irma Vep’s more thanMoreno’s, as the ciné–roman661 suggests explicitly:
He [Moreno] had thought he was only taking a hostage and now, it was he
who was a prisoner…A prisoner of those big and pretty black eyes, of thosefascinating and unsettling eyes that he had never crossed without feeling turmoil, even when an inflexible hostility darkened their marvelous glare.662

The character of Irma Vep refers to one of the female archetypes of Fantastic
literature of the nineteenth century: “the evil femme fatale”, the other side to the“young disembodied, unfortunate beauty”,663 two archetypes of which Michel
Viegnes underlines the “gynophobia”:664 “Unless she is a victim, the woman is
criminal; passivity is the price to pay for her literary innocence. She can hardly
convert to being an active subject without running the risk of being demonized.”665
Irma Vep, oscillating between a figure of fear and of attraction, recalls thefigure of the demon–woman, a fantastic version of the femme fatale. The pretty
Irma, like all vampire–women, “conceals her monstrous facet under an illusory
beauty”:666 she embodies dangerous––even lethal––seduction because she provokes, directly or not, the death of all the Vampire leaders. Thus, with her own
hands she kills the Great Vampire come to liberate her from Moreno. Moreno isarrested and executed after having joined the Vampires out of love for Irma,
Satanas is imprisoned because he took risks by saving Irma from deportation to
Algeria and Venenos dies during their nuptials. Like in Fantastic literature, thewoman, embodied by Irma Vep, and death are closely linked. By bringing Erosand Thanatos together, the woman becomes both life and death because, in maleimagination, as underlined by Simone de Beauvoir, the woman is “the chaosfrom where everything takes its origins and where everything must one day goback to; she is Nothingness. […] That night, when man is threatened to besquandered, and that is the other side to fecundity, terror.”667

661

Although the volumes published by G. Meirs and L. Feuillade bring interesting extra film
elements, one should use them with caution at the risk of over–interpretation: “The adaptation, clumsy, sometimes unfaithful to the plot, padded out the most fugitive image in two or
three pages and lent the characters an interior life and past actions that only an experienced
medium could have known”, wrote F. Lacassin. Louis Feuillade (Paris: Seghers, 1964), 66.
662
G. Meirs and L. Feuillade, Les Vampires 3, Les Yeux qui fascinent (Paris: Jules Tallandier,1916), 168–69.
663
A. Richter, Le Fantastique féminin, un art sauvage (Tournai: La Renaissance du Livre,
2002), 47.
664“Phobia, hatred – and sometimes fear – of women, an individual psychological feature, that
one can distinguish from misogyny, more collective and culturally institutionalized”. CLIO, Les
Mots de l’Histoire des femmes (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2004), 45.
665
M. Viegnes, “ Gynophobia. La peur du féminin dans le récit fantastique”, Les Cahiers duGerf 6 (1999): 84.
666
L. Soubeyran, “La femme dans le cinéma d’horreur”, Les Cahiers du gerf 6 (1999), 100.
667
S. de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe I (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), 247–48.
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Ambiguities and contraventions of a vamp
In playing the character of Irma Vep, the actress Musidora became the first“vamp” in the history of French cinema.668 For that is indeed the role that Louis
Feuillade intended to assign her in Les Vampires: “Ah! You know how to seduce men…That is why I need your precious help for my vampiresque wild
imaginings in which you personify the femme fatale…irresistible!”669 The film
makes Musidora a “world–famous star”670 and the myth is born, mistaking theactress with her character Irma.
The same things are remembered about the actress in all the books in which
she is mentioned: her daring appearance “in a bathing suit and a black silk hood,worse than being naked, one could say.”671 Evocations of Musidora–Irma Vep
abound and are all the same: her slim brunette beauty, her great big velvety eyes
made her, for a while, the idol of Paris which hummed: “A silk bathing suit hugs
her ivory shapes!”672 People cannot stop praising complacently her “perfect andperturbing anatomy”,673 her deep eyes and her photogenic skills. Even Colette,
although she underlines Musidora’s “brave humour”, stresses her “beautifuleyes, her long and perfect legs, her striking black and white beauty predestinedfor cinema”, and describes her as a “brunette fatale”.674 Photographs of Musidora all emphasize the big black eyes that made her reputation.
In reality, Musidora built herself this vamp image before Les Vampires, as
the choice of her stage name shows. It was borrowed form Théophile Gautier, as
advised by writer Pierre Louÿs. Her real name being Jeanne Roques, she decided to “take for godmother” the heroine of the short story Fortunio, a young
courtesan who kills herself out of love for the handsome and mysterious eponymous character. After Les Vampires, Musidora extends her success on film tothe stage with sketches: La Cambriole by Léonce Paco, Le Maillot noir¸ the fruitof her collaboration with future novelist Germaine Beaumont, and Danse desVampires, written by her father. Although Musidora did play up this vamp char-

668

Musidora often claimed that the word “vamp” had been created for her role as Irma Vep.
In reality, the term (from the word “vampire” or more precisely the word “Vampir”, a German
word of Slavic origins) was created in the United States that same year, in 1915, when Frank
Powell released A Fool there was, an adaptation of a Rudyard Kipling short story entitled The
Vamp, the diminutive for vampire. See M. Azzopardi, Le Temps des vamps 1915–1965 (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 1997).
669
Quoted in Musidora 1964, 40.
670
Musidora, L’Écran français, February 13, 1950, quoted in A. and O. Virmaux 2004, 315.
It is indeed Les Vampires that made Musidora famous. Her fame was then consolidated by the
success of Judex.
671
R. Jeanne, Paris 1900 (Paris: Flammarion, 1965), 191.
672
R. Jeanne and C. Ford, Les Vedettes de l’écran (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,1964), 14–15.
673
Article from the magazine Pie Ouit! quoted by F. Lacassin, in “Musidora”, Anthologie ducinéma (Paris: Avant–Scène, 1971, tome 6), 456.
674
Colette quoted in A. and O. Virmaux 2004, 306.
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acter in order to boost her career,675 she ended up being a prisoner of this image
that she had maintained but that also overtook her.676
Yet, this vamp image, indissociable from Musidora, paradoxically rubbed off
on the character of Irma Vep herself, from whom one only retains the furtive
image of her in black stockings (which accounts for less than eight minutes outof approximately six–and–a–half hours of film) and forgets her transgressive
nature. For Irma radiates something more than just lethal seduction. She is anefarious character, at the opposite extreme of the naïve and reassuring blond
Pearl While, the “pitiful victim”677 whose ingenuousness and virtue are nevergiven a rough time in Les Mystères de New York. She is also opposed to thecharacter of Diana Monti which Musidora played in another of Feuillade’s serials, Judex (1916).
A painting by Romero de Torrès678 represents Musidora in a languorous poseand recalls Jaque Catelain’s words about his meeting with the actress:
One evening, L’Herbier asked me to pick him up at this star’s home […]. A
little intimidated, I rang the doorbell; someone opened and I discovered,wide–eyed, giving directly on the landing, a room hung with crimson velvet
in the middle of which was, face to the door, a large divan covered with theskin of black bears. Even better, lying down on this divan, entirely naked, as
white as marble which would have made Canova’s Pauline Borghese or
Manet’s famous Olympia blush, was the mistress of the house, motionless,her eyes closed. At her side, there was no Negress, no flowers like on thepainter’s canvas but a sombre man who read aloud some passages from thedramatic “Miracle” he is currently writing…679

True, the actress does play a sort of femme fatale again but with more
discreet eroticism and for a bourgeois function: Diana Monti “is looking
for a respectable ending by marrying the unworthy and rich banker. Her
hatred for Judex stems from the hero’s opposition to her wedding
plans”.680

675

The letters from her fans, from when she was a penfriend to soldiers during the war, showthat the actress always kept alive the myth of her being a femme fatale. She became “thewoman from the Croix–Rouge for the wounded and depressed”, as Feuillade said (quoted in
F. Lacassin 1971, 454), and sent fetishes to her adoptive sons (photos, silk stockings…). See
BIFI, Fonds Musidora, Boîte 2, “Lettres d’admirateurs”.
676
F. Lacassin wrote: “She dreamed […] of playing wounded, blond, fragile ingenues, dysfunctional women and no longer men–eaters clad in funerary silk as if to celebrate their lovers’ deaths.” ( F. Lacassin 1971, 463). But the press, the public and after that the film historians often only remembered that image of the vamp at the expense of her life as a filmmaker, awriter and a painter.
677
P. Lejeune, Le Cinéma des femmes (Paris: Éditions Atlas, 1987), 40.
678This painting is kept at the Buenos Aires Museum.
679
Jaque Catelain présente Marcel L’Herbier (Paris: Éditions Jacques Vautrain, 1950), 25.
See also the Henri Fescourt’s evocation in La foi et les Montagnes (Paris: Paul Montel, 1959),
93–96.
680
F. Lacassin 1971, 462.
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It is thus possible to see in Irma Vep “the women with eyes thatlive”,681 above all the incarnation of “unashamed freedom”, as Emile
Breton suggests: “This feline character, naked under her stockings…Do
we really understand today what message this image sent about women
wanting to have a non–“ornamental” role in society?682 What if Irma
Vep’s scandalous audacity reflected an autonomy that was more disturbing than the suggestive revelation of her nudity? Irma kills but she also
takes initiatives and decisions, goes from roof to roof –agile and athletic–, drives cars, knows how to work the phonograph, slides along the walls,
dresses up as a man… She is an active subject, never a victim.
Irma Vep obeys only her drive and controls her destiny and her bodywith great ease. She chooses to love freely the men whom she desires. In
fact, it is love that guides her, as suggests the scene in which her seals herunion with Moreno, at first a rival of the Vampires. In the ciné–roman,when Moreno confesses his love to Irma and asks her to stay with him,she first remains silent, and then declares matter–of–factly: “Why not”.683
She does not hesitate to kill the Great Vampire herself, probably herlover and also her adoptive father,684 just after the latter has negotiated
her ransom with his rival. Moreno and Irma’s love thrives on this crime.
The obvious loving gestures between the two lovers multiply on screen
and, later, we see Irma nearly fainting when she learns of Moreno’s execution and refusing physical support from those who caused her loss.
More than a femme fatale, Irma Vep is an adventuress who refuses
bourgeois moral standards. More than a “malicious woman”, she is a
“woman with wrong morals, in that she goes against the rules of the established order. She embodies contravention of the norms in a society
based on repression and that is precisely what makes her a criminal or ademon: she becomes, in her own way, a “witch”.685 Both intelligent andbrave––she outwits most of the traps set for the Vampires by their enemies and she invents dreadful stratagems to get rid of them––Irma Vep
comes across as a feminist.686 In fact, it is what Musidora later calls her681

A. Kyrou, Le Surréalisme au cinéma (Paris: Ramsay, 2005), 49.
É. Breton, Femmes d’images (Paris: Messidor, 1984), 20.
683
G. Meirs and L. Feuillade 1916, volume 3, 168.
684
See BIFI, Fonds L. Feuillade, Dossier 7: Les Vampires, “Synopsis et traitements”, épisode
VI: “Enrique, sat beside Irma Vep who has not yet woken up from her hypnotical sleep, orders his prisonner to tell him about her life and, on a piece of paper, the young woman writes:“I am a child who has been found. I was named Irma Vep because it is the anagram of Vampire. The man who raised me taught me how to steal and kill. Formerly, I was utterly under
his influence. Now, I am no longer afraid of him. Irma Vep.”
685
Term that the feminists of the seventies appropriated to themselves to describe a rebellious
woman in a world dominated by men.
686
The actress Musidora was herself closely linked with feminism. Her mother was a great
militant for equality between the sexes and for women’s right to vote and she stood for thelegislative elections in May 1898, for the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Musidora’s first appearance on screen was in 1913 in Les Misères de l’aiguille, a film directed by Armand Guerra
682

270

self in the sixties, in the midst of the women’s liberation movement, asmall group of “women filmmakers, women in movement, women in
revolt”687 which aims at encouraging women’s voicing of opinions and of
the image. They were at the origin of the first women’s film festival organized in France in April 1974. On the campaign poster, the organizers
posed in stockings and black hoods, in tribute to this “beautiful and intelligent woman”: “We had nothing against these two things! It actuallyamused us that they were both an erotic symbol and something else.”688
This is how, in spite of himself, Louis Feuillade distinguished himself
from his predecessors. Because the “exaggerated simplifications of thecharacters […] characterized most of the silent cinema”,689 underlined
Pierre Chemartin and Nicolas Dulac. The film industry, in its early days,
very often resorted to stereotypes and was full of “simplistic and set
feminine figures”.690 As early as then, it fetishized women by castingthem in predefined roles and by representing them according to predetermined types: the naïve and romantic female lead, the unscrupulous
seductress, the perfidious shrew, the big–hearted soubrette, and so on.
Irma Vep, on the other hand, escaped the male representation of thewoman compelled to be passive and solely seen as a sexual object. Neither sweet nor submissive, the character of Irma supplants the myth offemininity, according to Simone de Beauvoir’s formulation: she concretely asserts her independence, even though she does not easily manage
to “live fully her condition as a human being”.691“You exist, the only way you know how to”692
Strangely, Irma Vep manages to escape Louis Feuillade’s moralizing discourse,
whose views were quite conformist, even reactionary.693 “In his conscious life,
Feuillade was attentive to the public opinion and very respectful of the estabwithin the context of the Coopérative du Cinéma du Peuple, of anarchiste allegiance, which
denounced the exploitation of female domestic workers. Furthermore, Musidora became agreat friend of Colette’s, whom she called her “godmother” or her “Great Protector”.
687
Brochure of the association (1974).
688
N.–L. Bernheim (co–founder of the association), “Musidora… un cinéma en mouvement”,
in P. Cazals, Musidora, la dixième muse (Paris: Henri Veyrier, 1978), 208.
689
P. Chemartin and N. Dulac, “ La femme et le stéréotype vecteur narratif dans le cinéma
des attractions”, Cinémas 16/1 (2005): 143.
690
P. Chemartin and N. Dulac 2005, 139.
691
See S. de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe II (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 9.
692
A. Breton, Nadja (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 159.
693
See J. Champreux, “Louis Feuillade poète de la réalité”, L’Avant–Scène 271–272 (1–15
July 1981): 10. After Les Vampires, Feuillade’s moralism and patriotism became morevirulent. He then wrote in the Manifesto for La Nouvelle Mission de Judex (1917): “[…]
Cinema, far from being a school for crime and vice, can and must, on the contrary, whileremaining above all the favorite amusement of the crowd, propagate the moral and healthyideas and move away from anything that could strike a blow at the soul of the youth andadults.” Quoted in J. Baldizzone, “La destinée critique de Louis Feuillade”, Cahiers de lacinémathèque 48 (winter 1988), 12.
271

lished order that he only scorned, unbeknownst to him, in the screenings in his
own dreams––that is in his films”,694 noted Francis Lacassin. Indeed, in Les
Vampires, all is in order again: all is well that ends well, the moral is intact, theVampires are all killed and their hunters find peace again. However, Irma Vep
and her accomplices, all along their epic, blow a wind of freedom over the film
and, when all is said and done, “fantasy and imagination break the fetters ofclassical narration”.695
In Les Vampires like in Fantômas, the criminal and not his “loyal enemy” isthe one designated to win the audience’s sympathy: it is Irma Vep who retains
our attention and not Philippe Guérande, the after–all quite smooth character.
Through her character, the narration focuses on the forces of “Evil” and not on
the supposed heroes of “Good”: “the initiative is left to the anti–social forces”696
and the triumphs of their destroyers are precarious and momentary. Like
Fantômas, Les Vampires “reaches a paroxysm of anti–bourgeois frenzy”697 andone also finds the same “anarchistic heresy”698 that Irma Vep carries with her.
The adventure she represents challenges the distressing unchanging nature of theworld and the Vampires’ “anarchistic and critical violence”699 reveals the political power of the Fantastic. The Fantastic is no longer an approach to the supernatural but to reality, whose representations it defies. The world of Les Vampires
is one in which dramatic changes can occur anytime, in which it is possible totake one’s own life in one’s own hands, individually and collectively, and totransform it, as shown by Irma Vep’s own journey. In Les Vampires like inFantômas:[…] Feuillade accentuates the confrontations and sharpens the antagonisms
until they are reversed. All of the reversals are virtual and ready to happen.
The frequent use of make–up and disguises expresses the imminence of sudden social, moral and emotional changes. […] everything is possible differently, immediately.700

This impertinent demystification of the established order is precisely what
explains the surrealists’ interest for Les Vampires, and in particular for thecharacter of Irma Vep.701 In Le trésor des jésuites (The Jesuits’ treasure),694

F. Lacassin 1995, 69.
J. Baldizzone 1988, 14.
696
F. de la Bretèque and M. Cadé, “La petite bourgeoisie dans les films de Louis Feuillade”,
Les Cahiers de la Cinémathèque 50 (May 1989): 20. The Prefect Lépine, unhappy to see thepolice ridiculed, banned the screening of the film for two months.
697
A. Vogel, Le Cinéma, art subversif (Paris: Buchet–Chastel, 1977), 301.
698
D. Païni, “Apparition et disparition: Louis Feuillade”, in Le Cinéma, un art moderne(Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1997), 95.
699
F. Lacassin 1995, 76.
700
D. Païni 1997, 96.
701
Testimonies of their admiration abounded. One evening in July 1917, Breton threw a greatbouquet of red roses to Musidora on the scene of Bobino, after a performance of Maillot noir.
And in 1919, Aragon coined for her the expression “tenth Muse”. “Du sujet”, Le Film 149(January 22, 1919).
695

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written in 1928 at the height of the success of serial films, Breton andAragon have the character of “Eternity” declare: “We will soon understandthat there was nothing more realistic and more poetic at the same time as theciné–feuilleton that formerly delighted strong spirits. It is in Les mystères de
New York, and in Les Vampires that one will have to look for the great reality of this century. Beyond trends, beyond tastes.”702
The meeting of the surrealists with Les Vampires is neither fortuitous neither trivial: they find in silent cinema analogies with their own research.703“Indifferent towards “avant–gardists”, a definite enemy of film intellectualities”, Louis Feuillade takes the path of a “conscious surrealism”, wrote Ado
Kyrou: “Like poisonous flowers, the images of his films fill daily life withthe fragrance of complete freedom.”704 The surrealists, equally hostile toFrench avant–garde films of the time,705 discovered in Les Vampires “a direct translation, quite informal, an unusual reality.”706 Indeed, the film mixes
two realities: daily reality, “life as it is”,707 and fantasizing, the Fantastic, thatindisputably agreed with the fabulous surrealist. Les Vampires represents“the future resolution of these two states, seemingly as contradictory as
dream and reality, in a sort of absolute reality, a surreality”.708 “The precursor of fantastic realism”––according to George Franju––Louis Feuillade
impregnates Les Vampires with “black, white and silent magic”, “orthochromatic magic, poetry, aestheticism unchanging through time”.709 The
film, “a masterpiece born from a stroke of luck and instinct,”710 makes the
director one of the inventors of automatic writing for the screen.
The ambiguous and ghostly character of Irma Vep, by adopting the only
“morale of such implacability: that of the criminals”,711 inspired surrealism
when setting out to destroy. Two revolts met through her: “that of young
people just come home from the trench warfare for whom surrealism was tobe the gateway to revolution, and that of women proud of being free from all
constraints.”.712 In a beautiful text entitled “Les Vampires”, this is how
702

L. Aragon and A. Breton, Le Trésor des jésuites, quoted in A. and O. Virmaux 1976, 114.
“The first years of surrealism correspond to the last years of silent cinema. And there is not
only a conformity of the dates but also of the research.” G. Neveux, “De Judex à L’Étoile demer”, Études cinématographiques 19–20 (2000), 46–47.
704
A. Kyrou, Le Surréalisme au cinéma (Paris: Ramsay, 2005), 52.
705
The surrealists opposed the formal and almost abstract variations. According to them,“cinema is not a sophisticated clockwork toy but it is the terrible and magnificent flag of life.”
P. Soupault, “Le cinéma U.S.A.”, in Écrits de cinéma 1918–1931 (Paris: Plon, 1979), 42.
706
G. Sadoul, “Souvenirs d’un témoin”, Études cinématographiques 19–20 (2000), 20.
707
Title of a serial by Feuillade in 1911.
708
A. Breton, “Manifeste du surréalisme” (1924), in Manifestes du surréalisme (Paris:
Gallimard, 2005), 24.
709
Quoted in J. Baldizzone 1988, 14.
710
F. Lacassin, “Louis Feuillade”, in Anthologie du cinéma ( Paris, Avant–Scène, 1961, tome2), 245.
711
A. Breton quoted in M. Bonnet, André Breton, naissance de l’aventure surréaliste (Paris:
José Corti, 1975), 152.
712
É. Breton 1984, 22–23.
703

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Aragon evoked those young people’s state of mind, in the midst of the horrors of the war:
What attracted us was everything that morale forbade us: luxury, parties, thegreat orchestra of vices, the image of the woman as well but a heroized one, agreat adventuress. […] An entire generation of young people fell in love with
Musidora in Les Vampires. […] At this surprising point of moral confusion,
where men lived, like these young ones, did they not identify themselves withthese splendid bandits, with their ideals and their excuses? […] Yes, they ran
where CRIME called them, the only sun that was not yet soiled.713

The future surrealists, especially Aragon and Breton, thus saw in Irma Vep asymbol of provocation and eroticism. She resembled the feminine figuresthat they would later draw: beautiful, young, versatile, surprising, desirable,
desired, adulated, who let themselves be approached but who always escaped, inaccessible. Like Mirabelle, the heroine of Anicet or Le Panorama
by Louis Aragon published in 1921:
One can only ever get a glimpse of her. She escapes at the most unexpected
moment those who would like to take a closer look at her beauty but who, by
an inexplicable spell, had been too mesmerized to notice it all the time she
was there. She then retains this prestige linked to seeing only a brief glimpseof her shapes. One never knows, just as she has disappeared, when she will
let herself be approached again.714

In Les Vampires, the future surrealists discovered the structure that theywould later propose between freedom, rebellion and wild love. As Vincent
Gille wrote, “with its consequence: freedom, and its expression: poetry, it
could be that love, here included in all its components: the carnal, poetic,
human and social, philosophical, spiritual…, says by itself all of the surrealist ambition to change life.”715 For the surrealists, it is in love itself that rebellion is born and the image of the free woman is inseparable from feelingsof anger and indignation. Also, Irma Vep could be the one who brings theconscience to a revolutionary surreality. In Les Vampires, like in surrealist
thought, desire––as embodied by Irma––has a criminal power, violently
subversive. The pretty criminal, by her “convulsive beauty”,716 reveals that“there is in love an outlawed principal, an irrepressible sense of crime, disre-713

L. Aragon, “Les Vampires”, in Projet d’histoire littéraire contemporaine (Paris: Digraphe,1994), 7–8.
714
L. Aragon, Anicet ou le Panorama, roman (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), 86.
715
V. Gille, “Si vous aimez l’amour…”, in Le Surréalisme et l’amour (Paris:
Gallimard/Electa, 1997), 16.
716
See A. Breton: “Beauty will be convulsive or will not be” (Nadja 2005, 161); “Convulsive
beauty will be erotic–veiled, explosive–set, magical–adverbial or will not be” (L’Amour fou,Paris: Gallimard, 2004, 26).
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gard for bans and a taste for destruction”.717 The character of Irma Vep anticipates the surrealist vision of wild love, her “harmful shadow” and her“mysterious perversions”,718 mixing eroticism and contravention.
Irma Vep, a free woman, devoid of moral prejudices, mistress of her destiny, cruel and perverse, embodies the surrealist woman, passionately inlove. Through her, Feuillade offers a vision of the woman who is “loved andcelebrated like the great promise”719 of emancipation:“Glory […] to hysteria and its procession of young and naked women who
slide along the roofs. The woman’s problem is, to the world, what is mostmarvellous and unclear. And this inasmuch as faith has it that an uncorrupted
man must be able to contribute, not only to the Revolution, but to love.720

Musidora herself was conscious of the extraordinary impact of her character
Irma Vep in Les Vampires: “Long after I am gone, my youth and my flame
will remain printed on screen”.721 The films based on Les Vampires that followed were numerous, up until Irma Vep (1996) by Olivier Assayas. The
actress “gave to the femme fatale a new poetic tone, summarized Ado Kyrou. Musidora was a body hugged by the black suit of vampires and twoeyes, two eyes of lovers of another world looking down on a very human
female body”.722 The character of Irma Vep represented the intrusion of theunexpected and imposed to the world the revolutionary idea that anything ispossible, because “each image, everytime, forces you to rethink the whole
Universe.”723
But if Irma Vep is the first French vamp, she is not only a dangerous
seductress. She is above all a dazzling representation of freedom and subversion, as the surrealists correctly perceived through a both poetic and materialistic reading. The character of Irma Vep invites us to rethink the Fantastic
as a questioning of reality:
Reality is the apparent lack of contradiction.
The fantastic element is the contradiction that appears in the real.
Love is a state of confusion between the real and the fantastic element. […]The fantastic, the beyond, dream, survival, paradise, hell, poetry, all words todefine the concrete.724

717

L. Aragon, “Le passage de l’opéra” (1924), in Le Paysan de Paris (Paris: Gallimard,2001), 65.
718
A. Breton, L’Amour fou 2004, 136.
719
A. Breton, “Du surréalisme en ses œuvres vives” (1953), in Manifestes du surréalisme
2005, 169.
720
A. Breton, “Second Manifeste du surréalisme” (1930), in Manifestes du surréalisme 2005,
129.
721
Quoted in P. Gauthier and F. Lacassin 2006, 70.
722
A. Kyrou, Amour–érotisme et cinéma (Paris: Le Terrain Vague, 1966), 264.
723
L. Aragon, “Le Passage de l’Opéra” in Le Paysan de Paris 2001, 82.
724
L. Aragon, “Le Songe du paysan”, in Le Paysan de Paris 2001, 248.
275

Irma Vep contravenes the norms of the fantastic like those of femininity. She
escapes the set models and female stereotypes and becomes the incarnationof the surrealist woman––rebellious and passionate. “A traveller/ a ballerina/[…] revolutionary/ intelligent”725, Irma Vep represents the possibility of an
emancipation that takes root in wild love.
I would like to pay tribute to Vicki Callahan’s vast amount of fascinating research.
My contribution and suggestions are very modest in comparison with her work,
which had a great influence on mine.
Thanks to my translator, Céline Dewaele.

725

F. Kahlo, Le Journal de Frida Kahlo (Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 1995), 259.

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Studio Branding and Comic Personas

277

“Studio Girls”: Female Stars and the Logic of Brand
NamesCharlie Keil
Most studies of early film stardom feel compelled to invoke the near–
apocryphal account of how Carl Laemmle helped engineer the enticement of
Florence Lawrence away from Biograph to garner publicity for his fledgling
IMP Company, with historians typically seeing Laemmle’s manoeuvre as asignal development in the industry’s creation of a star system. In this essay, I
will not resist the lure of the Laemmle/Lawrence saga, though my reasons
for recalling the campaign point to a different conclusion than that which isusually offered. First, let me revisit the campaign to draw forth the requisite
details: after securing a new contract for Lawrence, Laemmle made headlines by intimating that her former employer had circulated untrue stories
about Lawrence dying in a streetcar accident. (In fact, it was Laemmle himself, likely via his publicist Tom Cochrane, who had planted the false accounts of Lawrence’s untimely demise.) He disproved those rumours inspectacular fashion in a series of ads declaring Lawrence to be not only verymuch alive, but now IMP’s preeminent star. “We nail a lie!” the ads
screamed, and in the process turned Lawrence’s phony death into a springboard for publicizing her new status as an IMP acquisition. But Lawrence
was reborn in another way as well, and that is why I have chosen to return tothis well–known campaign one more time. In luring Lawrence from Biograph and finding a way to turn a simple case of a new contractual arrangement into a cause célèbre, Laemmle also inaugurated a novel methodof promoting actresses: as named commodities that could be traded among
companies and peddled to the public as more than just anonymous extensions of the company’s own identity. In killing off “the Biograph Girl,”
Laemmle helped usher in a new era of stars with names, at the same timethat he ensured those names would increase the economic value of the actresses that bore them.
According to Richard de Cordova’s influential formulation, the picture
personality dominates during the transitional era, giving way to the starsometime around 1913.726 The former depends primarily upon the on–screen
persona of the performer, while the latter derives its effectiveness from all
manner of extra–textual supports, including the publicity generated by interviews, profiles, and the like. Maintaining the anonymity of their performers
during the early years of the transitional era allowed the film companies toreap the benefits of fan appreciation of strong performances while limiting
the market value of the actors as named (or even nameable) entities. As I
726

Richard de Cordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).
278

have argued elsewhere in relation to Florence Turner, the emphasis inevitably falls on the picture personality’s demonstration of acting ability whenlittle more than the actress’s performance can serve as the basis of stardom.727 But once the various production companies started to name theirperformers outright, the potential for the actors’ identities outside of theiron–screen personae to play a role in how the public might respond to themcame to the fore. Laemmle’s intervention is of particular interest because it
deliberately lifted Lawrence out of a diegesis controlled and defined by Biograph and allowed her to possess a life off–screen, even if the point wasproven by threatening that life with its own mortality. By insisting that Florence Lawrence’s identity exceeded the parameters imposed by her branding
as the “Biograph Girl,” Laemmle opened the Pandora’s box of stardom.
Controlling actors proved a relatively straightforward proposition as long as
they remained exclusively picture personalities: their existence did not extend beyond the screen. That is why the designations of “Biograph Girl,”“Vitagraph Girl,” “Thanhouser Kid,” and the like were so apt. Much like theliteral studio brands that appeared affixed to the walls of the sets during
these years, the studio monikers attached to the actors signified that they
were company property, a mechanism for distinguishing the output of one
studio from another. Confined to their roles and strongly identified with asingle company, actors during the early years of the transitional period became recognised for the power of their roles, forced by necessity to focus onallegiance to their employer over contract negotiations and promotional ad
campaigns.
Laemmle’s exploitation of the Lawrence name represented one of the firstsignificant shifts in that policy. Clearly, she could no longer be the “Biograph Girl” once she switched companies, which accounts in part for theelaborate lengths Laemmle went to eradicate her past persona (symbolicallykilling it while laying responsibility for its death at the feet of her former
employers). But it also complicates our notions of how the picture personality functioned after she ceased to be merely a brand but wasn’t yet a star. I
use the pronoun ’she’ deliberately, because a disproportionate amount ofeffort was devoted to the fostering of female stars. If, as I hope to demonstrate, the development of screen stardom was an uneven and sometimes
contradictory process, spurred and stalled in equal measure by the economic
and social anxieties harboured by a still–nascent industry, it was largely agendered phenomenon as well. As revealed by the scenario of threat andrescue played out in the Lawrence campaign, transitional era stardom wasbuilt disproportionately upon the image and persona of the actress, whosepaternalistic control by a largely male industry realized itself in the tenacityof the branding logic.
727

Charlie Keil, “Acting Like a Star: Florence Turner, Picture Personality,” in Screen Acting,
Theory, and Philosophy, ed. Aaron Taylor, forthcoming.
279

The star image both revealed and resisted the limits of studio control. Reproducible photographs of screen actors, though produced by film manufacturers, had the potential to circulate much more widely than images limited
to the exhibition space for moving pictures. The example of the stage offereda precedent for the potential power of these forms of star imagery to spuraudience interest. Photographic reproductions of theatrical actresses had
been prevalent throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, as exemplified by inexpensive cartes de visites that fans could purchase readily, resulting in the phenomenon of “cartomania”, which crested in the late
1890s.728 Renewed interest in the photographic likeness of stage actors became apparent around 1910, spurred by its use in advertising. This coincides
with the acceleration in the circulation of photographs of film performers.
Kalem famously made lobby card photos of its stars available in 1910, andfrom that point onward, the photographic likeness of the star, named or not,began to become more prevalent. The photograph is an integral feature in theestablishment of a star system, for numerous reasons: most importantly, it
detaches the image of the star from its cinematic manifestation. Much likestage performances, the film performance was evanescent. Though possessed of a materiality that stage performances lacked, the filmed performance only existed as long as the spectator’s time in the theatre. Once photographed, the actor occupied a timeframe more elastic than that allowable in
the filmic moment and this extended the possibility for contemplation of thestar image beyond what was allowed by the film text proper. Moreover, thephotograph extended the star persona beyond the confines of any film’s
given diegesis. On film, stars were duty–bound to be a character, whereas in
the photograph, they could be ’themselves,’ or at least a representation of apersona not restricted to one dictated by a single role. Photographs of film
stars soon began to feature them ’out of character,’ realigning the emphasisso that the film star was no longer simply the function of a host of roles, butrather possessed the potential to become someone with an identity separate
from what had been demonstrated on the screen.
Even so, the link of photo to name was not consistent in the early years of
the period. It was not unusual for a photo to appear without any name attached to it, a holdover of the anonymous branding approach companies had
adopted at the outset of the transitional era. The famous Kalem lobby card,for example, featured only a roster of actors, no names, except for that of thecompany that ’owned’ them. Ironically, one even sees this in the early ads
promoting Florence Lawrence’s move to IMP. Employing a photo of Lawrence prominently positioned in the upper corner, the ad copy declares
728

Marlis Schweitzer, “’The Mad Search for Beauty’: Actresses, Cosmetics, and the Middle–
Class Market,” in Testimonial Advertising in the American Marketplace: Emulation, Identity,
Community, ed. Marina Moskowitz and Marlis Schweitzer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2009), 124.
280

“She’s an IMP!” even while she remains unnamed. As much as Laemmle’s
stunt depended on the naming of Lawrence, he still seemed to wish, on somelevel, for fans to think of Lawrence as the Imp Girl now that she no longer
belonged to Biograph. One should note that Laemmle pursued the same
strategy when he lured Mary Pickford to his company in 1911, and that
American also ran ads that year featuring actors’ unnamed photos. Other
companies, such as Essanay, featured names and photos in their advertisements, while also reminding readers of the roles such actors as Dorothy Phillips and Gladys Field had played in the past, helping to cement the connection between the actor’s name, image, and screen–based picture personality.
It was at precisely this time, in fact, that some companies began to provide
the names of the players as part of the credits of the films. As exhibitors
writing to Moving Picture World pointed out in July of that same year:
Wouldn’t it be a good idea for the manufacturers to each put out a reel introducing individually their company to the public, telling who they are andsomething about them? We are sure the public is anxious to know these people[…] We think the day is coming when the public will not only want toknow who these people are, but will want a program with the cast of the picture just as they do to–day of the stage drama.729

Soon, Lubin would go one step beyond this by having two of its stars, Ormi
Hawley and Edwin August, appear on–screen as themselves prior to the beginning of the narrative proper. Standing before a generic background thathas no relation to the subsequent diegesis, the two actors share the screenwith their names, which appear superimposed over their bodies, the emulation of the theatrical curtain call indicating again the influence of stage
precedents.
Why did both the trade journals and the movie companies demonstratesuch ambivalence and/or uncertainty in the advancing of star images andnames conjointly, and how does this relate to the sustained investment instudio branding during this period? Arguably, studios both feared the economic repercussions of acknowledging in print that stars helped to sell films(The New York Dramatic Mirror said as much in a 1911 article)730 and also
were not yet sure that sufficient numbers of fans would recognize their favourites by name. And with some players moving amongst companies, itwould not be in a studio’s best interest to invest heavily in promoting thename of the star, only to find that that actor had then decamped to anothermanufacturer. For that reason especially, perhaps, producers preferred thatthe chief name recognition be the studio’s rather than that of any individual
star. Moreover, the production and distribution logic of the pre–feature era,
which entailed the selling of a program of short films through a service, ar729
730“Naming the Cast,” Moving Picture World, July 29, 1911, 216.
“’Spectator’s’ Comments,” New York Dramatic Mirror, March 8, 1911, 29.
281

gued for the primacy of a studio’s production qualities over the appeal of any
individual actor. All of this would change, of course, with the introduction offeatures, and stars would become much more prominent in advertising once
films were marketed on a per–title basis. In other words, once producers
could rationalize the expense stars entailed, by incorporating larger star salaries into a calculation of profitability, the relative resistance to encouraging
stars’ popularity seems to have receded. Certainly one can note increasingly
pronounced emphasis on the value of the star in film advertising from 1915
onward, precisely the moment when feature filmmaking (and such star–dependent strategies as block–booking) begins to take hold.
But during the transitional years, the palpable fear that a star’s popularity
might translate into unreasonable salary demands, driving up the cost of
production, found expression at various points within the trade press. For
example, in 1912, The New York Dramatic Mirror wrote:
Discussion of the apparent tendency toward a policy of exploiting stars inmotion pictures continues to command attention of producers, many of whomlook upon the drift as to a rock ahead that may mean great danger to the art.
Those who see trouble in the undue featuring of star players have in mind theexperience of the theatrical stage, where the exploitation of stars has admittedly proved a handicap and a great deal of nuisance. The craze for stage stars
has caused the artificial making of regiments of near stars, whose only claim
to special distinction may have been good looks, a scandal, or a “pull”. Deserving and faithful workers in the ranks have been made to suffer thereby,
for the reason that the fortunate stars were able to command such munificent
rewards that there was little left for their equals or betters.731

While the primary aversion to unbridled star promotion might have been
economic, one can note in the Mirror’s comments the sentiment that faninterest would not always follow talent, allowing more superficial appeals,such as attractiveness or aspects of the star’s personal life, to overshadow
dramatic abilities. As long as film stars remained “picture personalities,”
primarily a function of their performances within films produced by theiremployers, their fame was tightly circumscribed and easily controlled by the
producers themselves. The more individuality the producers accorded stars,
the more those producers risked stars becoming unmanageable, to the point
where the star might even become an autonomous economic entity. Thisaccounts for the repeated insistence on the consonance between the on–screen persona and the off–screen character of actors in transitional–era profiles of picture personalities. (Mabel Normand, for example, is described byMoving Picture World as being “just the energetic, enthusiastic, fun–loving
girl [in private life] that she typifies each time she appears on the screen.”)732
731“ ‘Spectator’s’ Comments,” New York Dramatic Mirror, January 24, 1912, 32.
“Mabel Normand, Key to Many Laughs in Keystone Comedies,” Moving Picture World,
July 11, 1914, 239.
732

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But it also explains the revelation that a screen actor’s life is primarily one of
discipline and restraint––as when Florence Barker reminds her interviewer in
Photoplay that her schedule involves rising at 6am and being in bed before
10pm, following a rigorous diet, and abstaining from alcohol. As she puts it,“That doesn’t sound much like the life of an actress, does it? … If your girlreaders contemplate becoming motion picture artists, tell them to make up
their minds to one thing, first of all, it means work and more work, few
pleasures, no dissipations, no late hours, and small pay at the beginning. If
you feel you are an artist and must express your art, go in with that determination and if you stick to it, you are sure to win out. But remember, you cannever become a star in a day.”733
One of the primary reasons for the emphasis on female stars in the early
promotion of the picture personality was the knowledge that such stars werea key to building an audience of female spectators. (Whether true or not,Moving Picture World felt compelled as early as 1910 to declare that “nothing pleases us so much as to learn that [our publication] is very largely readby women—women who are interested in the picture from all of its principal
aspects.”734) But coupled with that acknowledgement is a recurring emphasison the innocence, the lack of guile, and, ultimately, the pliability of femalestars. In other words, by asserting the femininity of such stars, producers(either directly through advertising, or by proxy through trade press profiles)
seemed to insist on the need for a type of paternal control. The qualities ofthe female stars—their youth, their diminutive stature and, ultimately, their
girlishness—define them as fragile entities in need of protection. (Photoplay,for example, refers to Mary Pickford as a “child creature”,735 to Helen Martin
as “one of those pink–and–white, fluffy girls”,736 and introduces a profile of
Florence Lawrence in the following manner: “From every corner of the cozy
blue and white room with its colonial rag rugs and flowered cretonnes there
was an echo of the girl–woman so many of us have laughed with and cried
over.”)737 This insistence on femininity as a form of arrested development
permits the studios to continue exercising control, even as the fame of its
young female charges expands. (Hence, as late as 1914, an ad in Moving
Picture World can declare that “Florence La Badie—the world’s most famous motion picture player [is also] a Thanhouser star”.)738
Ultimately, the stars’ marketability would outstrip both the efforts to keep
their personae contained within the limits of the child–woman formulation
733

C. Johnston, “Interview with Florence Barker,” Photoplay, January 1913, 95.
“Mrs. Clement and Her Work: Boston Influence in the Picture Field,” Moving Picture
World, October 15, 1910, 859.
735
Estelle Kegler, “The Charm of Wistfulness: An Interview with “Little Mary” Pickford,“The Good Little Devil”,” Photoplay, August 1913, 35.
736
F. Marion Brandon, “An Éclair Beauty: Something Personal About Charming Helen Martin,” Photoplay, August 1913, 64ds.
737“Florence Lawrence,”Photoplay, November 1912, 105.
738
Moving Picture World, December 15, 1914, 1319.
734

283

favoured during the picture personality era and the studios’ preference forthe branded star. The rhetoric of ownership receded as stars gained increased
autonomy (witness the formation of many semi–independent production
companies constructed around the talents of a female star, such as early efforts like those by Marion Leonard and Helen Gardner, who in 1913 were
advertising their own multi–reel productions). As Adolph Zukor would concede a few years later, “a star is more important than the play [the narrative],for the people know the star and do not commonly know the play.”739 The
model of the star system established within the theatrical world emerged as a
useful template for developments within moving pictures. Though initiallyfilm production companies sought to replicate the star power of the stage
simply by borrowing names from the other medium (resulting in unsuccessful attempts to reproduce the stardom of such theatrical luminaries as Pilar
Morin and Cecil Spooner), the true influence of the stage proved to be inshowing how star power could be linked to consumerism. For years, stage
actresses had helped establish fashion trends that their fans would emulate,and by 1913, one sees the motion pictures adopting such a strategy, thoughstill retaining the brand name designation, with Our Mutual Girl, wherein
Norma Phillips wears “the smart clothes of smart people”. Moving Picture
World makes the link between on–screen example and fan influence explicit:“While it is not the purpose of the Mutual folks to boost the dressmaker billsof our wives and daughters, they believe that no harm will come to us, andnot a little pleasure, if they show us in pictures, what it means to be welldressed from the standpoint of a woman.”740 As the advertising bible
Printer’s Ink would assert in 1917, female consumers exhibited an “emulative eagerness” that stage actresses tapped into by promoting a wide range offashion and beauty products.741 Female theatrical stars had paved the way forfilm actresses by participating in testimonial advertising during the late 19th
century. Testimonials experienced another surge of popularity beginning in
1910. (Ironically, and perhaps not coincidentally, manufacturers of consumer
products had shifted to brand identification through trade characters, such as
the Campbell Soup Kids, in the intervening years.) The same factors thatwould elevate the stage star– endorsed testimonial at this time (including
professionalization of acting as a vocation, promotional efforts on the part of
the trade press, and increased interests by fans in the personal preferences
and lifestyle choices of favoured stars), eventually led to film stars assuming
equivalent roles within the realm of product advertisements. Once the namevalue of film actresses was firmly established, their usefulness in the promotion of everything from Red Cross Shoes to Ingram’s Milkwood Cream be739

Adolph Zukor, “Pleasing Most of the People Most of the Time,” System, October 1918,
481.
740“Mutual Girl Series,” Moving Picture World, December 27, 1913, 1525.
741
Philip Francis Nowlan, “Warding Off Saturation Point by Changing Advertising Appeal,”
Printer’s Ink, September 20, 1917, 27–28; cited in Schweitzer, 129.
284

came apparent, and soon film stars would usurp those from the stage as thepreferred focus of testimonial ad campaigns.742
At the same time, the overt control of picture personalities by their homestudios ceased as well. Though stars continued to be managed by production
executives and saw their personae carefully crafted in the pages of fan
magazines, their newfound economic autonomy changed the terms by which
they were promoted. Ironically, as female stars capitalized on their liberationfrom the strictures of studio–brand anonymity, their bodies increasingly became the site of their fame. To end where we began, we can examine a laterad campaign featuring Florence Lawrence’s return to the company Carl
Laemmle built (now Universal Film Manufacturing) in 1915. Using a simple
play on words (“Who’s Back?”), the double page ad focuses on the bared
back of Lawrence, stating the terms of her value to Universal much more
starkly than the first campaign––now named, the female star exerts an appeal
both individualized and sexualized, two qualities that will persist for decades
to come, relegating the era of the studio girl to a distant past.

742

For more on actresses and testimonials, see Schweitzer.
285

From Pratfalls to Glamour: Gloria Swanson Goes to
Triangle
Tricia Welsch
Although by 1918 she was established as a comic actress with Mack Sennett’s Keystone Film Company, and had made funny pictures with Charlie
Chaplin, Bobby Vernon, and her first husband Wallace Beery, Gloria Swanson always felt herself unsuited to comedy. She yearned for the chance tomake “serious” films—by which she meant melodramas. Thus, with theboldness that would characterize her entire career, Swanson essayed the firstof her many transformations. She asked to be released from her Keystone
contract and went across town to the Triangle Film Corporation, where she
begged a job from an old friend. What she could not have known was thather private ambitions would fit so easily into her new studio’s needs. This
paper considers Swanson’s transition from Keystone comedy performer toleading lady at Triangle in 1918, a time when she learned her trade as a dramatic actress in feature–length productions. Swanson’s Triangle year was aperiod of experimentation at her new studio as well. An early proponent ofefficiency in business operations, Triangle’s production team would work to
make Swanson as marketable as possible as quickly as possible. For theeight films Swanson made at Triangle, the company ran test screenings, conducted in–house research, and puzzled out how—or whether—to market
Swanson’s reputation for comedy even while crafting a glamorous new persona for her.
That Swanson proved a good candidate for such a makeover was in partdue to the kind of Keystone experience she had had. Despite her negative
impression of studio head Mack Sennett (who disgusted the rather proper
young actress by spitting cigar juice too near her feet), the eleven films
Swanson made under his supervision were mostly milder and more restrained than the classic Keystone comedies.743 There was little in the way ofpunishing acrobatics to injure her dignity, and she would never—not once—
take a pie in the face. Instead, in nine popular two–reelers directed by Clarence Badger, Swanson and juvenile actor Bobby Vernon attracted a wide
audience while playing at teenage courtship. They literally played: games oftennis, musical numbers at the piano, at cooking in a kitchen where dishes
exploded, games of fetch and chase with the big Great Dane, Keystone
Teddy, who was their frequent co–star. The Danger Girl (1916) shows thepattern of Swanson’s Keystone shorts. Bobby gets distracted, and she has toregain his attention, but without compromising her girlish virtue. She firsttries pouting, which is adorable but doesn’t work. Then she gets angry and743

Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson (New York: Random House, 1980), 48.

286

comes up with a plan to get even, which is even more adorable. With a striking economy of gesture, Swanson communicates a feisty determination torecapture her beau’s wandering attention. Whether she is whacking Bobby
over the head with the flowers he tries to give her or hauling off and punching a villain who gets in her way, she flirts with but never quite crosses theline to vulgarity. She can dress like a man and drive a motor car like a speed
demon, but it’s all in the service of true love. And she always needs thenear–oblivious Bobby to save her from the trouble she’s gotten into along
the way.
Swanson would later term these films “light” comedies, and was eager toexplain what she meant: “I mean that there were no big fat people or cross–eyed people or skinny people and there were no bathing girls in the picture.”744 No fat people (like Roscoe Arbuckle). No cross–eyed people (like
Ben Turpin, who was rumored to carry insurance in case his eyes ever cameuncrossed). And definitely no bathing girls: Swanson probably spent morebreath disavowing any connection to the Sennett Bathing Beauties than she
denied any other story told about her professional life.745
Why was Swanson so insistent on this apparently small point? The answer may have something to do with what it meant to be a film comedienne
in the second decade of the last century. Such women were often viewed as
morally dubious. Miriam Cooper, Griffith actress and wife of director Raoul
Walsh, remembered that “All those girls who did comedy were tough.”746
They were certainly the subjects of endless gossip. The sheer physical exertion of their labors, according to Alan Dale, provoked speculation: physicalcomedy was “associated with sexual activity and independence and all kindsof out–of–bounds traits that indicate[d] a girl [wasn’t] nice enough tomarry.... [P]ratfalls [implied] that the heroine [was] altogether too physicallyavailable.”747 Beyond this, the women who starred in slapstick comedy often
possessed only average looks and would likely not have been offered romantic leads or other opportunities to do anything dramatic or glamorous. Simon
Louvish observes that Keystone at least offered these actresses options beyond what conventional roles provided: “Neither child–women nor femmes
fatales, they could muck in, indulge in the rough stuff with the male of thespecies, hammer people over the head and be hammered, giving as good as
744

Transcript of Kevin Brownlow’s interview with Swanson. Part of this interview appearedin Hollywood, Thames Television 1980; the transcript is held at George Eastman House.
745
She admitted only to having a photo taken with them on the set of A Pullman Bride. Swanson insisted that she could not swim and was afraid of the water—as if their swimming prowess was the main qualification the Beauties possessed. For his part, Sennett professed amusement at the way actresses who had moved on after working for him were eager to deny theirroots. Swanson on Swanson, 78.
746
Miriam Cooper, Dark Lady of the Silents: My Life in Early Hollywood (New York:
Bobbs–Merrill, 1973), 181.
747
Alan S. Dale, Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 100–101.
287

they got.”748 Skilled Keystone comedienne Louise Fazenda would just haveto settle for reading a description of herself as “double–jointed from the neckdown” in the papers.749 It was already easy to be typecast. Then, too, Sennett
claimed that mothers were not funny and could not be made to be funny,which further restricted the roles open to women (and set the respectability
quotient a bit lower as well). Last but not least, funny women were unimportant. They were in pictures but the pictures were seldom about them. Buster
Keaton (who cast his own wife in his films) was famous for saying that heused “three principals—the villain, myself, and the girl, and she was neverimportant.”750
Sennett would later describe much of Keystone’s early output dismissively: “The pictures I made then were not much. They were quick, fast
comedies with thin plots, and they were immediately consumed, the reels
actually worn out, scratched and destroyed, in the grind of the small movie
houses.”751 The demand for this fare was intense; of the 10,000 reels of film
produced across the American industry in 1913, one tally suggests that 3,000
were comedies.752 This steady call for funny movies created in turn a working atmosphere which prized speed and crazy inventiveness over all else.
Again, Sennett: “We had to make our short funny pictures fast in order tomeet the demand of the theaters, which were increasing by the hundreds
every week, and the pictures were sold like gingham for girls’ dresses—at somuch per yard. This meant that if we hit the doldrums on account of weather
or lack of imagination, we had no money coming in to meet the payroll.”753
With this in mind, Sennett craved a steady supply of what he called “roaring
extroverts devoted to turmoil” as his players.754
Swanson never considered herself adept at comedy, and quickly tired ofthe limited options open to her as half of Gloria and Bobby. But when Mack
Sennett hit a rough patch financially, things got worse for the young actress.
Sennett responded to his fiscal crisis by trying to cut as many corners as
possible. He dropped players from his roster and issued instructions to monitor the productivity of those remaining on staff. He directed the studio’s
general manager to “prepare all companies for immediate production ofcheap and speedy stories regardless of quality” and to “try to stretch all sin-

748

Simon Louvish, Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett (New York: Faber andFaber, 2003), 107.
749
Chicago Tribune, March 7, 1920; quoted in Louvish, 105.
750
Buster Keaton with Charles Samuels, My Wonderful World of Slapstick (New York: Doubleday, 1960; New York: Da Capo, 1982), 130. Citations are to the Da Capo edition.
751
Mack Sennett, King of Comedy (New York: Doubleday, 1954, San Francisco: Mercury
House, 1990), 75. Citations are to the Mercury House edition.
752
Kalton C. Lahue, World of Laughter: The Motion Picture Comedy Short, 1910–1930(Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), xiii.
753
Sennett, 99.
754
Ibid, 91.
288

gle reelers possible into two reelers,” again “regardless of quality.”755 Anyplayers who balked at being downgraded to one reel status were to be let go.
The atmosphere at Keystone, never tranquil under the best of circumstances,
now became positively fraught.
Swanson survived the purge (Bobby Vernon did not), and was immediately rushed into A Pullman Bride opposite Mack Swain and Chester Conklin, veritable institutions of slapstick by 1917 who were also inveterate scene
stealers. Swanson plays a girl hustled into marriage with Swain by her
mother, who is convinced that the big man is a successful capitalist. Her
rejected suitor Conklin refuses to take no for an answer and accompanies thepair (and Mama) on the honeymoon, which takes place aboard a train. They
race through the train, falling in and out of compartments, and staging a foodfight in the dining car. A shortage of berths means that Mama has to share a
bed with her daughter, and that both men are trying to get in. Desperado
Oklahoma Pete is also on board, and his effort to rob the passengers leads tomayhem and gunplay. The action is rougher and faster than Swanson’s
Badger–Vernon pictures. Swanson at one point even takes a pratfall, which
she executes perfectly. Looking directly ahead, her mouth a small O, shefalls straight backward, her timing and self–control exquisite.
She may not have liked slapstick; she may have clamored to try her handat more dignified and developed roles on screen. But clearly Swanson was
making a success of this rough and tumble work. For one thing, she waslittle enough to be hauled around and hoisted up with ease, and small played
well in many comic situations. For another, she had the kind of unruffledpersona that also provoked laughs. Swanson later observed that she was aserious young woman with an undeveloped sense of humor, even claimingthat she did not get all the jokes in these funny films. She also believed that
she could never get the tempo of comedy right (she was wrong about that).756
But she would later put her finger squarely on one part of what made her
Keystone performances successful: “I played all my light comedy likeDuse,” adding, “The fact that I was so serious made it twice as funny.”757
Without the size and middle–aged stodginess that Margaret Dumont brought
to her Marx Brothers pictures, Swanson also had something of Dumont’s
straight man sensibility. She was—however inadvertently—a hoot.
But she was also wretched. A Pullman Bride played havoc with Swanson’s idea of herself as a budding romantic lead, and the chaos off the screen
755

Sennett telegrams quoted in Louvish, 140–41.
As early as her time at Essanay in Chicago, Swanson had claimed she felt like “a cow
trying to dance with a toy poodle” when working opposite Charlie Chaplin in His New Job.
Swanson, 40. She also believed slapstick was not “respectable,” and said she “hated the vulgarity that was just under the surface of it every minute.” Swanson, 78.
757“I played”: Brownlow interview; “the fact that I was so serious”: unpublished early draft ofSwanson’s memoirs, held in the Gloria Swanson Collection at The Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, 38.
756

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at Keystone made it clear that there would be more where Conklin and
Swain came from. She later groused to anyone who would listen: “I [had]never worked with people like this and they started throwing soup and pies
around. I didn’t like it at all... You could kill yourself, get concussion. I
wasn’t a tumbler. I’d never practiced any of this sort of nonsense.”758 The
actress thought she had an understanding with Sennett that she was to befeatured in more refined comedies, expecting that she would somehow be apart of Keystone without being defined by the studio’s anarchic sensibility.
Under the pressure of his tightening belt, however, Sennett was likely in nomood to accommodate what he would almost certainly have seen as Swanson’s pretensions to gentility. When she went to him complaining about her
latest picture, he offered to free her from her contract. To hear Swanson tellit, Sennett wanted to make her another Mabel Normand, an idea she rejected
imperiously: “’I’m sorry, Mr. Sennett,’ I said, ’but I don’t want to be anotheranybody.’”759
Swanson could probably see the limited value of Sennett’s offer. Despite
her youth, she was by the age of nineteen a seasoned player who had beenfeatured in films at two different studios—three, if you count a single short
she made at Universal–Victor in 1917. What’s more, Swanson had negotiated all her own contracts. Always a shrewd and close observer of her environment, Swanson would not have missed the writing on the wall at Keystone. In fact, according to at least one source, she had been angling for a
new opportunity for some time. As early as February 1917 a Los Angeles
newspaper carried a story titled “Ingenue Peeved Because She is Not a
Vampire”:
Out at the Mack Sennett–Keystone Studios is a little girl who bewails the factthat it is her mission in life to make people laugh. She yearns to be a vampire—at least on the screen.... Because she is little, pretty and wears all sortsof dainty costumes to perfection, Miss Swanson... has been inexorably cast as
a fun maker.... Probably Mack Sennett knows what he is doing when hekeeps Gloria in parts in which she has scored such huge successes. But could
you convince the lady that this is wisdom? Not in a million years....Miss
Swanson will never be satisfied until she has, for once at least, been a screen
vampire and wrung some hero’s heart. In The Nick of Time Baby..., it will be
noted that Gloria’s hair is loose and curly, her eyes a–sparkle with merriment,
and her frock girlish and dainty. That is because Mr. Sennett has ordained itso, but in the accompanying picture you see Gloria as she best likes to be—afull–fledged vampire with hot, glowing eyes that stir your soul.760

The Witzel photo shows Swanson with chin up, hair slicked back, deep décolletage, and bare shoulders. Her lips are stained a dark color; her brows are758

Brownlow interview.
Swanson on Swanson, 79.
760
Unnamed newspaper, Gloria Swanson Collection, scrapbook 61.
759

290

thin and dark against her very pale face. The photographer Albert Witzel
immortalized many a screen star, but at this point in his career he was alsoshooting inexpensive portfolio shots for aspiring actors. It seems likely that
Swanson produced the money for a session with him out of her own pocket,
styling herself as audiences would soon know her, and unlikely that Sennett
would have been too pleased to see his little comedienne doing so.761 On thecontrary: Sennett’s in–house newsletter publicized the release of The Nick ofTime Baby with a picture of Keystone Teddy carrying Gloria and Bobby’s
baby out to lunch at the studio cafeteria. Bobby, in this picture playing Gloria’s hapless husband, has forgotten to feed his child. This is hardly the stuffof which glamour stars are made.762 When the newsletter did deign to run a
picture of Swanson looking a bit more soulful than usual, the writer (often
Sennett himself) poked gentle fun at her: “Gloria isn’t always tragic but she
can be on occasion. The Director has just given [her] a 7:30 call.”763 Soonenough, however, Gloria Swanson would be finished playing opposite aGreat Dane.
She considered her options, knowing there was little chance that she
could get cast in dramatic pictures. “In those days,” she would observe,“once you were a villain with a black moustache you were branded. Onceyou played butlers you played butlers for the rest of your life.”764 Swanson
determined that she would have the best chance if she approached a studiowhich had both a comedy troupe and a dramatic section; at least she would
be nearer to her ambition. So she went to see her old friend Clarence Badger,
who had landed (as had Bobby Vernon) across town at Triangle. The Triangle Film Corporation, founded to take advantage of the special talents ofD.W. Griffith, Thomas Ince, and Mack Sennett, had survived the departureof its three main directors (Sennett was operating Keystone as an independent venture during Swanson’s tenure there). Film production was hummingsteadily along at Triangle. Badger graciously offered Swanson a small partin his current short picture. But she was after bigger things—features preferably—and more reliable work than the one–reelers Badger was in a position to provide.
Nonetheless it was because of her comic experience that Jack Conway, an
old hand with ten years’ experience in the film industry, offered Swanson thelead in his new Triangle picture. He had seen her in The Danger Girl, hesaid, and knew that he needed just such a spitfire for the lead in his newfilm.765 You Can’t Believe Everything is the story of a feisty young woman,
Patria, who is forced (literally) to fight off unwanted suitors, and later falsely
761

Swanson was just beginning to be pictured in the press wearing the elaborate gowns she
favored. See Motion Picture, April 1917 and Motion Picture Classic, March 1918.
762
Mack Sennett Weekly, March 19, 1917, Gloria Swanson Collection.
763
Ibid.
764
Swanson, unpublished manuscript, 38, Gloria Swanson Collection.
765
Swanson on Swanson, 83.
291

accused of spending the night with one of them. She cannot clear her namewithout betraying the confidence of another man, her crippled friend Jim,
whose long illness has left him so despondent that he attempts suicide. It is
Jim’s momentary despair—and her part in his rescue—that Patria will notreveal. Patria’s courageous effort to prevent Jim’s suicide meant that Swanson—a non–swimmer who was terrified of the water—would have to diveinto deep water one dark night to save her co–star. The stunt would at least
give her a chance to look good while she behaved heroically: the action
called for Patria to see her friend go into the water, at which point she was torip off her evening dress. Under it she would be wearing only a skimpy chemise known as a “teddy bare.” A fifteen foot jump off a dock in the black ofnight might make for some fabulous lighting opportunities, but the young
actress had to screw up all her courage to leap off what felt like the edge of
the world. When she came sputtering up from the depths, she felt she had
passed her first real acting test.766
The excitement generated on the Triangle lot by the film made the front
office take a greater interest in the studio’s new acquisition. They decided tohold back the release of the Conway picture until they could build up interestin Swanson through some strategic casting and publicity.767 She was hurried
into her second and third films opposite two of Triangle’s most reliable leading men. William Desmond played her opposite number in Society for Sale,an improbable piece about an American model who tries to buy her way into
British society by paying a poor aristocrat to introduce her as his intended
bride. Of course the impoverished man falls genuinely in love with her. Everyone is scandalized when the American (Swanson) then runs off with Lord
Sheldon, a much older divorced libertine, before the wedding. After a terrible car crash in which the older man dies, Swanson’s character reveals that
Sheldon was really her long–lost father. She is of noble birth after all, andhas boatloads of money to boot. All ends happily for the couple, who can
now marry. Leading man William Desmond was a Triangle stalwart who
was featured in ten or eleven pictures a year; he was forty to Swanson’snineteen when she became his leading lady. But he would have to put up
with the star treatment the studio was beginning to give the young actress,
and to pose or wait around endlessly for the glamour shots they needed ofher. Swanson remembered feeling that both Desmond and her next leadingman, J. Barney Sherry, were unenthusiastic about her gobbling up so muchtime and attention.768 Sherry was another workhorse for the studio, and in
Her Decision he would play the husband Swanson takes in order to support
her pregnant–and–abandoned sister. Because Swanson’s character, a stenographer, loves another man, the noble Sherry offers to live platonically with
766

Ibid, 86–88.
Ibid, 89.
768
Ibid, 89–92.
767

292

her (though he too is mad with love for her). Eventually Swanson comes toher senses, rejects her faithless beau, and realizes that she loves the selflessand devoted Sherry, who is also her boss. Both Desmond and Sherry were
essentially being used in support of the new studio acquisition rather thanvice versa.
With three pictures prepared, the studio began what was for Triangle apublicity blitz. Society for Sale was released in late April 1918, and Her
Decision a mere three weeks later. In a time when pictures played for only a
few days or at most a week, there was a need for constant turnover to filltheater seats. But even by these standards, Triangle was willing to gamble
that Swanson would find—or better yet, create—an audience. Mentions ofSwanson in the trade press and fan magazines at this time note that she is “acomedy queen” being introduced in her first dramatic role.769 But the studio
did not seem eager to proclaim Swanson’s earlier incarnation as a Keystonestar, lest audiences reject her in more serious roles. So they took a middle
course: they would identify her for the benefit of anyone who might recognize the name or the face, thus capitalizing on what good such recognition
might do the actress, without belaboring the comedy connection. The formulation “comedy queen” seems to have helped bridge this gap, suggesting thatroyalty was not too far from the case when describing Swanson.770
But by the time of her two June 1918 releases, Station Content and the delayed You Can’t Believe Everything, the studio appeared to be feeling more
confident about the young star’s reception. Now they began claiming her
comic background in order to highlight her multiple talents: “Though Gloria
Swanson was known to be a very clever comedy actress in Keystone comedies,” one press release states, “very few suspected that she possessed theemotional depth and histrionic power to perform roles of a serious order.
[With her last pictures] she immediately sprang into the good graces of metropolitan critics and picture lovers.”771 Exhibitors were encouraged to post
pictures of Swanson in their lobbies to show off her beauty, which (theywere told) “merits decided attention.”772
That attention was arriving almost before the studio could figure out what
to do about it. Station Content, Swanson’s fourth feature, had been produced
quickly and inexpensively, before the studio had much sense of the actress’
value, and almost everything about it dismayed Triangle’s Reviewing Board,
especially in light of the Conway film’s favorable reception. The Reviewing
Board was an in–house group that previewed the films and planned advertising strategy. Individual reviewers ranked the various attractions of the film,
and divided their numerical rankings by the number of attractions considered
769

Motion Picture Classic, March 1918.
Publicity materials for Swanson’s first three Triangle features explicitly use the phrase“comedy queen” to refer to her. See scrapbooks 35, 61, and 79, Gloria Swanson Collection.
771
Scrapbook 79, Gloria Swanson Collection.
772
Ibid.
770

293

(which were idiosyncratic but generally included story, setting, acting, andphotography). This generated a number—a grade, if you will—for each picture. Based on its grade, the studio would put more (or less) effort into promoting the film. Station Content, the reviewers felt, had dreary sets and ameaningless title (the picture had originally been called The Prodigal Wife,
which the Board liked). They gave the film grades ranging between 34 and61 on a scale of 100. The only thing the members uniformly approved was
Swanson’s performance. “This little girl is going to make good,” the Board
chair wrote enthusiastically. He continued by saying, “The Board seemed toconsider this an ordinary Triangle program picture. However, all the members graded Gloria Swanson’s acting very high... She should be featured, andreference to her splendid acting in Her Decision [the picture she had madewith J. Barney Sherry] could be made to great advantage. Box office value islabeled medium and so are the advertising possibilities.”773
Intriguingly, what the studio highlighted in the end was a last–minuterailway rescue scene, a scenario that was literally familiar to Swanson fromher Keystone days. If in Teddy at the Throttle she had been tied to the train
tracks and rescued by a dog, at least now Swanson was playing the active
one, the heroine with choices to make. Once again, the studio would advertise her beauty, but the publicists for this film also found a productive use forher comedy past: they applauded her physical courage. “Miss Swanson is
supposed to dash out of a telegraph office in a stormy night, ride down thedark railroad track on a gas tricycle and flag ’Special No. 14.’ Any studioactress would have quailed” (italics mine), they continued, “at the thought ofoperating the tricycle and then pitching herself over a cliff after standing in
the glaring light of the locomotive to stop its headlong flight to destruction.
But Miss Swanson has a record for gameness and daring which she... acquired during her connection with Keystone comedies in which death–defying feats were an ordinary occurrence. She lives up to her record mostcommendably in this picture.”774 The studio also prepared paper throwaways
printed with the catchline “Nights with Gloria Swanson, Triangle star, at thethrottle.”775 They seem to have been hoping that viewers would hear the echoof the popular Keystone film’s title and recall Swanson’s attractions.
As early as midsummer of 1918, however, Swanson was finding her timeon the “Triangle treadmill” exhausting, and much less glamorous than she
had expected.776 The studio released a very busy program of eighty–four
pictures in 1918; Swanson was featured in almost a tenth of Triangle’s programming. She would make four more films (for a total of eight), repeatedly
playing a brave and faithful woman, before her Triangle year ended. Trian773

Triangle Collection, Cinémathèque Française.
Triangle press sheets, Gloria Swanson Collection.
775
Triangle Collection, Cinémathèque Française.
776
Swanson on Swanson, 96.
774

294

gle’s promotional campaign advertising “Clean Pictures for Clean People”
was part of Hollywood’s belated response to the conflict playing out in
Europe.777 By the summer of 1918 the United States had been at war withGermany for a year, but the clash had not much affected the content of films
released to American audiences. Aside from some early “preparedness”
films, Hollywood had not made many pictures dealing directly with the hostilities. This was in part due to the government’s initial reluctance to exempt
the film industry from heavy wartime duties by giving it the privileged statusof a vital industry. The results of this policy soon became clear. War taxes
drove admission prices up steeply, and the enormous pressure on average
Americans to save their money for war stamps and bonds conflicted with theself–indulgence necessary to procure them an evening’s escape at the movies. The movies began to seem an unthinkable luxury. This led in turn totheatre closings: in the summer of 1918 a third of the ninety–three picture
houses in Los Angeles was shuttered because of poor ticket sales.778 Increasingly, however, as news of the bloody battles fought throughout France
made its way across America and families started mourning their casualties,
the studios began to produce war pictures for the domestic market, encouraged by the government’s change of heart regarding the industry’s status asessential. Relatively few films made during the war itself featured combat
scenes; however, tales of spies and secret agents were told in scores of pictures. These pictures were seldom subtle and often a good deal worse thanthat, the most rabid heralded by names like The Claws of the Hun, The Kaiser’s Shadow, or The Prussian Cur. A great many featured women caught up
in espionage plots, often against their will, and coming to heroic grips withthe enemy. The most popular films were those that demonstrated that the
average American could have a role to play in the conflict: as Kevin
Brownlow has observed, “Audiences preferred propaganda about themselves. The films they went to see suggested that individuals determine thecourse of history. It was ordinary men and women, as portrayed by well–known players, who caused vast armies to be defeated, spy rings to be exposed, armadas to be destroyed at sea.... Most audiences were aware of thelurid exaggerations, but they loved the actors and actresses who convinced
them that it was they, the ordinary members of the public, who held history
in their hands.”779 Triangle’s newest featured player would be quickly positioned as one of these courageous citizens in a trio of melodramatic propaganda pieces.
Those next assignments paired her with director Albert Parker. A transplanted New Yorker who had been a stage actor before he found his place
777

Ibid. 92.
Kevin Brownlow, The War, the West, and the Wilderness (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,1979), 130. The virulent influenza sweeping the nation in fall 1918 would again close theaters, and be responsible for 600,000 deaths.
779
Brownlow, 131.
778

295

behind the camera, Parker had already made several films that were typicalof Triangle’s wartime output. From Two to Six featured a set of stolen submarine plans competing for attention with the romantic trials of a young man
who must marry before a deadline or lose his inheritance. (He will marry theyoung woman who helps him catch the spy and recover the plans.) For Valour told of an unselfish young woman who made it possible for her brotherto go off to fight and become a war hero while obscuring her own heroic
sacrifices for the cause. Self–sacrifice was in fact a major theme of wartime
movies. Even if the films themselves had nothing to do explicitly with thewar effort, notions of sacrificial glory, altruism, and selflessness were popular and drew audiences to the pictures.
Parker’s two war pictures with Swanson, Shifting Sands and The Secret
Code, would be competently produced dramas of self–sacrifice, blackmail,and personal redemption through patriotism. Both offered Swanson a chance
to play a young wife who must resolve her domestic problems even as her
actions have larger, international implications. In Shifting Sands she is awoman with a secret which she dares not reveal to her wealthy philanthropist–cum–diplomat husband: that she is an ex–convict, wrongly imprisoned
for—as studio publicity would have it—“the crime of the shamelesswoman.”780 (Actually, she is framed for robbery by a rejected suitor, but thevaguely “shameless” crime played better on advertising posters.) When theman whose lie sent her away reappears, he is no longer simply a lustfulGerman: now he is a lustful German spy.781 He tries to blackmail the young
woman into giving him state documents in her husband’s possession. Swanson’s character can only unmask Von Holtz by coming clean to her husband
about her own past.
Triangle evidently thought it had a sure winner with Shifting Sands,
which combined matrimonial and patriotic causes while allowing Swanson
to move from prison garb to the beautiful gowns expected of a society matron. Sexual blackmail was an inordinately popular motif in movies madeduring this decade, and the studio was confident that women would recognize the dilemma in which the young wife found herself: “How many homes
are standing on SHIFTING SANDS because the husband and wife fail to tell
ALL when they are wedded?”782 A dividend was that Swanson’s character
meets her husband while she is volunteering with the Salvation Army, whichmeant that religious organizations could be targeted by exhibitors as well as
the “patriotic protective leagues” in the community.783 There was a little
780

Triangle press sheets, Gloria Swanson Collection.
Studio publicists recommended using caricatures in theater lobbies to emphasize the German’s “clutching hand” and “fiendish expression.” When the film was reissued after the war
ended, a few quick changes turned the German villain into a British counterfeiter, giving thefilm a longer shelf life. Triangle press sheets, Gloria Swanson Collection.
782
Triangle press sheets, Gloria Swanson Collection.
783
Ibid.
781

296

something for everyone here. Yet the studio wanted to make sure that exhibitors did not turn patrons away by an imprecise promotional campaign: “Thisis not a war picture,” they cautioned. “Emphasize the fact that there are noneof the horrors of war embodied. Simply, we have here a vital story of awoman’s soul, crucified by the villainous bestiality of a pitiless persecutor
who sank so low as to be treacherous to the country that harbored him, and
who finally paid the penalty for his treachery.”784 Audiences thrilled to see
topical themes explored on screen in a way that did not disrupt their enjoyment of such melodramatic staples as the revelation of a young woman’s
sexual past to her husband.
The studio continued to laud Swanson as a “Triangle discovery” into thefall with the release of The Secret Code, which puts her in the role of a Senator’s wife who must navigate the choppy waters of wartime diplomacy when
her husband’s female adviser turns out to be (inevitably) a spy for the Germans. This jealous woman persuades the Senator that it is his own wife who
is passing state secrets to the Kaiser via encoded messages in the stitching ofher crocheting! The ludicrous plot is unraveled when Swanson turns out tobe nest–building for the baby she is expecting. The real spy, billed by Triangle publicists as the “Oriental sorceress of Washington,” is especially harrowing because she has infiltrated an American marriage.785 Of course, it
was precisely that threat that made the film appealing to female viewers,
who might not otherwise see a clear connection between their lives and thewar effort. But everyone could presumably imagine a “female tool of theGermans” in the form of a romantic rival.786 Publicity campaigns for films
like this one were necessarily schizophrenic: on the one hand theater patrons
were encouraged to make the screening a “knitting event” by bringing theirneedles to the show. On the other, xenophobic feelings were roused to fever
pitch: “Are you a patriot? Do you hate the subtle machinations and vile
schemings of the Huns? Does your blood boil when you think of how German treachery runs through the very marrow of our great body politic? Then
you will surely want to see Gloria Swanson as the wife of a U.S. Senator in
The Secret Code.”787 One shudders to think of a coterie of women shouldering lethal knitting needles coming upon an innocent German–Americanneighbor on a night out at the movies. Studio advertising consistently suggested that patronizing movies with war themes was a way to display one’s
support for the war effort.788
Swanson was by turns amused and disgusted by such cinematic fare. She
observed that the declaration of war had seemed to authorize grown ups to
784

Ibid.
Ibid.
786
Ibid.
787
Ibid.
788
The Reviewing Board felt pretty confident about this film, which they awarded an overall
grade of 79. Triangle Collection, Cinémathèque Française.
785

297

act “like children just let out of school. The war became the excuse for doingor not doing anything. People went crazy with foolishness…as if somebody
pulled a switch [and] gave them a signal.”789 She especially rejected theclaim that all Germans were evil: “What was I supposed to do, wake up one
April morning and start hating my great grandfather, or turn him in to thepolice?”790 Her new director Albert Parker delighted Swanson by poking fun
at the patriotic scripts the studio provided; she recalled the two of them as
having “a perfectly marvelous time.”791
The armistice of November 1918 ended the war, and soldiers slowly began returning home. The film industry was left, however, with a backlog ofwar pictures to push into the re–opened theaters. Business was touch and go
for a time. Furthermore, European governments had seized a chance to impose quotas on the importation of American films, and this was a blow thatdestabilized all but the biggest Hollywood studios. Triangle, never on very
firm footing, wobbled. Swanson found herself cast in a last–minute war picture which she later felt was the nadir of her Triangle work. She had a senseof déjà vu: when Keystone got in trouble, it started pumping out shorter,
cheaper pictures even faster than usual, with little care for quality. Such was
the case with Wife or Country, which was directed by an old acquaintancefrom Essanay days: E. Mason Hopper, also known as “Lightning” for his
speedy economy. Hopper was unfazed by the more–than–usually–
convoluted plot of the film, in which Swanson played a stenographer whoseboss is married to a German agent. Swanson’s character leaves her job when
she realizes she is in love with her employer, and is promptly hired by thehead of the German spy ring. She exposes the spies; the boss’ remorsefulwife (who has earlier saved her husband from Skid Row and helped him turn
his life around) swallows poison and dies; and Swanson marries the man she
loves. Chalk up another patriotic triumph to the average working woman. In
her memoirs Swanson wrongly remembered herself as the character who
took poison, but by this point in her Triangle career she may well have felt
like it. Hopper led the cast through these shenanigans, as he had back in Chicago, by “scream[ing] himself hoarse,” and his leading lady had only disdain
for the film’s “overacted, overdirected, overpatriotic nonsense.”792 The company barely bothered to advertise these last, tired war pictures, and Swanson
could see that Triangle was failing.
All the same, when the company manager let her know that the studiowould not be able to exercise its option on her contract, offering Swanson
the chance to end her work a few months ahead of schedule, the actressbalked. Several months earlier, Cecil B. DeMille had tried to hire Swanson
789

Swanson, unpublished memoir, unpaged, Gloria Swanson Collection.
Ibid.
791
Swanson on Swanson, 97.
792
Ibid, 98.
790

298

away from Triangle, and the studio had refused to release her from her contract. Swanson had been angry and humiliated: after the company had
thwarted her opportunity with DeMille, she was not inclined to release Triangle from any portion of its obligation to her. Bankruptcy may be threatening, but they still owed her several months’ salary, she observed tartly. Thenthe manager explained that DeMille had several times asked to borrow
Swanson from Triangle, and offered to let Famous Players–Lasky know that
she would soon be available. Her old hopes reviving, Swanson agreed tomove on.793 She was in a better position to do so, as an assessment of her
Triangle year makes clear. Her pictures had been enjoyed by audiences, andgenerally received by critics without scorn if without great enthusiasm. Variety found Shifting Sands, for instance, a “good average attraction.” While
Swanson’s role did not require unusual talent, the reviewer noted that theactress “gets all she can out of the part.”794 In later years, she would realizethat the door that had closed on her first effort to join DeMille was the bestthing that could have happened to her: “It gave me another year and a half ofexperience. I grew up in that year and a half in leaps and bounds.”795 With
the move to Famous Players–Lasky, Swanson would move from Triangle’s
norm of “good average” to a higher plane entirely. Better yet, the picture forwhich DeMille had wanted her had not been especially successful at the box
office: “I might never have been heard of [again] if I’d been in the [first]
picture.”796 As it happened, she joined DeMille as he was hitting his stride.
Swanson had only one more picture to complete for Triangle before she
was free. Everywoman’s Husband is strikingly similar to the films she would
soon be making at Famous Players–Lasky, and Triangle may well havelooked to DeMille for hints about what he intended to do with Swanson as
Triangle’s own war projects dried up. In Everywoman’s Husband a young
wife follows her mother’s advice and keeps her new husband on a very shortleash, nagging and correcting him constantly. It is not long before he finds alovely model to keep him company. When the wife learns that her own father took a mistress to escape her mother’s harsh rule at home, she is aghast
at what she has done, and sets out to regain her husband’s love. “Handle
with care! Fragile! Husband Within!” ran the publicity posters: “A husband
is a highly breakable and delicate article....There is always some other
woman to make things comfy and attractive for friend husband when wifey
paints home sweet home a dull gray color, and runs her husband according

793

Ibid. 98.
Variety, August 30, 1918.
795
Swanson, unpublished memoir, 47, Gloria Swanson Collection. Swanson recalls the lengthof her stay at Triangle as a bit longer than it actually was.
796
Swanson, unpublished memoir, 47–48, Gloria Swanson Collection. It seems likely that the
picture for which DeMille first wanted Swanson was Old Wives for New, which Famous
Players–Lasky brought out in summer 1918.
794

299

to the rules in the book.”797 The film, which offered many opportunities for
Swanson to deck herself out in the latest, most luxurious gowns, espouses amore conventional morality than the similar DeMille pictures in which shewould soon appear: the errant wife does recapture her spouse, despite somefierce competition. Everywoman’s Husband also presents an up–to–the–moment consumerist perspective on what keeps a partner attracted and attractive: the most fashionable clothes and most current hairstyles.
In fact, Swanson’s last Triangle feature seems little more than a dress rehearsal for the more sophisticated films she would make with DeMille. Her
new director valued Swanson’s ability to play an ordinary young woman
who could wear clothes beautifully; this pairing of the average with the lavish and luxuriant is one the two would perfect in their time together. But the
groundwork had been laid during Swanson’s stint at Triangle, in a way thatserved both her plans and the interests of the studio. In her one busy year at
Triangle she had successfully made the transition from rough–and–tumble
comedienne to elegant leading lady, a move the studio endorsed and designed. Her first few pictures for Triangle had shown her as capable of stopping a runaway train and diving off a darkened pier into deep water, physicalfeats that recalled her Keystone knockabout days, while the studio gingerly
assessed her potential as a featured player. Swanson’s ability to look the parthelped determine Triangle’s course. Within a few months of signing her
contract it seemed the studio was paying more attention to her costumes thanto anything else about her films. Triangle’s Reviewing Board members
agreed that she was being “held in leash” by “unsympathetic” roles and“slow” stories in which was she given “no opportunity to do anything” except look beautiful.798 But they seemed unable to devise any other roles forher, and as the studio’s financial pressures deepened, more inventive stories
were less and less likely. Further, as the studio learned just how well Swanson wore clothes, all mention of her comic skill or physical prowess disappeared from her films and their advertising. Even in her war films, despitewhatever international crisis is afoot, she is always shown beautifully
garbed. In fact, cocooned in increasingly fabulous dresses in film after film,
the actress moved less and less.
Swanson’s first day of work for DeMille was the day the Armistice wassigned, and she may well have felt that she had won her own private battle tobe taken seriously. Yet—though she could not have known it in her 20s—for
the rest of her long and restless career, she would do her best work in films
that allowed her to wear fabulous clothes and to caper like a Keystone
comic. Whenever she managed both to parade and to romp, Gloria Swanson
was in her element.

797
798

Triangle press sheets, Gloria Swanson Collection.
Triangle Collection, Cinémathèque Française.

300

“Ever on the Move”: Silent Comediennes and the New
Woman
Kristen Anderson Wagner
When a 1917 magazine article wanted to know “who is the most strenuous[woman in] the photoplay?” the obvious answers of serial queens such as
Pearl White and Helen Holmes were quickly dismissed. “No, no, no! You’re
all wrong,” the writer insisted.
Diving out of a balloon and flicking a speeding freight train isn’t at allstrenuous as Polly Moran knows the word. And Polly, we venture, is the moststrenuous thing in or out of skirts. If you want to see the wild, wild woman of
the screen, you want to see Polly.
She rides a horse with the reckless abandon that would make Bill Hart
look like a nursery jockey. Upstairs, downstairs, over cliffs, from one towering ledge to another—that’s the sort of horse tricks she executes. And she canwield her fists as fast and as effectively as any man you ever saw. She has noaversion to leaping head foremost into a crowd of some twenty gangsters andthen cleaning out the entire set. And she can handle a lariat with dexterous
skill. Does she rope one object at a time? She does not! She ropes twenty andthirty with one movement, and just to demonstrate her strength, she pulls
them all through the city streets and lodges them in jail.799

Looking past the tongue–in–cheek hyperbole of this article (almost certainly
written by a studio publicist) one finds a description of a very modern
woman. Polly Moran is figured here as strong, assertive, independent, intelligent, and athletic, and able to hold her own alongside men. Her character,
Sheriff Nell, was a working woman holding a traditionally masculine job,and Moran herself was known as a gifted and hard–working comedienne.
Like serial queens, girl spies, cowgirls, and other action figures of the 1910s,
Moran, and comediennes more generally, in many ways were the personification of modernity, with its speed, thrills, energy and vitality. Whether performing wild and dangerous stunts or embracing athletics and automobiles,
comediennes’ activities both on–screen and off– linked them to the thrilling
and lively modern city and to the iconic figure of the New Woman, and they
provided a highly visible example of women who successfully negotiated themodern world, with its constantly changing landscape. These women were
often progressive and forward–looking, breaking with the past as they gave
female spectators a model for modern femininity. Just as Louise Fazenda
was said to have “clubbed her path–way to success, leaving behind her apallid mass of shocked and bleeding traditions”,800 comediennes showed
799

Unidentified magazine clipping, ca. 1917, Polly Moran clipping file, Billy Rose Theater
Division, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL).
800
Willis Goldbeck, “Stuff of Gold,” Motion Picture Magazine, November 1921, 95.
301women that they didn’t need to be demure and conventionally feminine tosucceed—in fact, comediennes seemed to suggest that just the opposite
qualities were needed for the modern New Woman to engage fully with themodern world.
The New Woman, of course, was as much cultural construct as lived reality. Originally figured as an antidote to the Victorian–era True Woman, the
New Woman came to embody the complex changes taking place in women’s
lives in the early 20th century. She was fashionable, young, healthy, attractive and vivacious when figured by Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chandler
Christy and Ziegfeld’s chorines; she was mannish, overbearing, sexuallyambiguous, dangerously over–educated and inexcusably neglectful of her
husband and children when represented by anti–suffragists and social conservatives. She was, in short, a catch–all symbol for the anxieties and fears
that many were feeling as women increasingly made their mark on the publicsphere, holding jobs, mixing in heterosocial company, and making ever more
vocal demands for equality and enfranchisement. The character types that
comediennes played on–screen often mirrored these divergent images of
New Woman, from light comediennes and slapstick–ingénues such as Colleen Moore and Mabel Normand, to unruly knockabout types such as Marie
Dressler and Alice Howell. However, rather than simply confirming popular
stereotypes about New Women, comediennes defused their perceived threatthrough their comic portrayals. Furthermore, unlike action heroines who
typically portrayed one type of New Womanhood—active, young, and attractive—comediennes portrayed a wide range of femininities, from comically overbearing or gawky, to young, pretty and effervescent. As such, they
helped broaden the popular conception of New Womanhood, and showed
audiences that “New Woman” was a much more inclusive category thanmany believed.
As a site of struggle over changing gender roles the New Woman was, as
Ben Singer describes her, “a particularly striking example of modernity’s
characteristic cultural discontinuity.”801 Comediennes, like the image of the
New Woman, stood as visible symbols of the changing gender roles of theearly 20th century. By simply engaging in comic performances female comedians were crossing gender boundaries, claiming for themselves a trait—humor—that was typically considered exclusively masculine. Many believed—and still believe—that comedy and femininity are mutually exclusive, because of comedy’s inherent aggressiveness and the reliance of muchhumor on intellect over emotion. And yet in many ways comedy, modernity
and New Womanhood are strikingly similar. Comedy is aggressive. It’s alsobold, active and assertive. The comedy found in motion pictures and on the801

Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2001), 294.
302

vaudeville stage of the 1910s is tantamount to performed modernity, full of
speed and thrills.
Just as the icon of the New Woman was gaining prominence in the early
20th century, a new type of comedy was similarly displacing older forms.
This so–called “New Humor” was, as theater historian Susan Glenn describes it:
a visceral, fast–paced, direct, physically demonstrative and sometimes violent
style of comedy. In contrast to more cerebral, thoughtful and didactic formsof narrative humor, the new humor created joking and laughter for its own
sake.802This new style of comedy found its way into vaudeville and motion picture
theaters in the form of slapstick and eccentric comedy, which was violent
and anarchic and concerned with disorder and inversion. Rules of acceptablebehavior were acknowledged and then broken, as comedians, both male andfemale, pushed the limits as far as they could. This new type of comedy isperfectly illustrated in a routine performed in the Ziegfeld Follies by comedienne Eva Tanguay, described by a reviewer as “a mimic ball game inwhich she and the audience pelt each other with soft balls, and for a few
minutes the fun is fast and furious.”803 Comedy of the 1910s, just like comediennes, New Women, and the modern world itself, demanded attention; it
was not content to sit quietly and demurely on the sidelines.
In many ways, comediennes were uniquely equipped to confront themodern world. Armed with a new style of humor (and perhaps a few softballs), comediennes engaged in and ultimately triumphed over the shocks
and thrills of the modern landscape. As Ben Singer, Jennifer Bean, and others have argued, the turn of the twentieth century was a time of tremendous
anxiety, as rapidly changing technologies, expanding cities, and increasing
immigration brought about a displacement of 19th–century lifestyles andculture.804 The big city, it seemed, was fraught with peril. In the city, Singer
points out, there was a “sense of a radically altered public space, one definedby chance, peril, and shocking impressions rather than by any traditional
conception of continuity and self–controlled destiny.”805 Crossing the street
could mean risking one’s life, as out–of–control trolleys collided with horse–
drawn carriages, and the brand–new menace of automobiles mowed down
everyone and everything in their way. Horrible accidents were breathlessly
802

Susan A. Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 41.
803
Pittsburgh Leader, 21 March 1910, Eva Tanguay clipping file, NYPL.
804
Singer, Melodrama and Modernity; Jennifer M. Bean, Bodies in Shock: Gender, Genreand the Cinema of Modernity (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1998); Leo
Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz, eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995).
805
Singer, Melodrama and Modernity, 70.
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reported in the popular press, adding to the sense of danger from all sides.
Headlines such as “A Falling Man Kills a Boy,” “Horse Smashed Cable Car
Window,” and “Child Choked by a Transom” reinforced the ubiquitousness
and unpredictability of violent death in the city.806
Anxieties about modern urban living, including fears of bodily peril andsudden and brutal deaths, are frequently acted out in comedies, especiallyslapstick comedies, with their violent and chaotic situations. In fact, earlycinema in general had what Bean describes as a “unique capacity for giving
aesthetic expression to the very crisis of which it is a part; that is, to embrace
disruption and discontinuity as a premise for titillation.”807 While a numberof early genres—especially action and chase films—embraced disruption
and discontinuity, comedy foregrounded these tropes and played them forlaughs. A comparison can be drawn between the expression of modernity inaction serials and in slapstick comedies. In action series and serials, thecommonly used devices of runaway trains, careening cars, and malfunctioning telephones and telegraphs point to the instability and unreliability ofmodern technology, “its potential to backfire, to generate a world of blindchance.”808 The restoration of order, however temporary, at the end of eachfilm/episode provides reassurance to the audience that the problems of themodern world are fixable. These films allow audiences to revel in the shocks
and thrills of modernity at its most chaotic, and then safely return to normalcy.
By contrast, in slapstick comedy unreliable technology is just one ofmany unstable factors to be reckoned with. The volatility and disorder atplay in slapstick is presented as a fundamental element of the larger world.
In the comedy universe everything is unstable, including technology, industry, institutions such as marriage and family, the government (particularly
the police), and even the laws of physics and physiology. Nothing is restored
at the end of a slapstick comedy, because there is no “normal” world to return to. The comedy universe is, indeed, one where the breakdown of machines, order, and society itself are regularly occurring events. As such,
comedy is the perfect generic parallel to modernity. As much as audiences
might like to believe that the restoration of order and stability found at theend of action films was possible in real life, the change and upheaval begunin the late 19th century instead continued unabated throughout the 1910s and
20s.
The language used in the popular press to describe comediennes—
volatile, topsy–turvy, impulsive, impudent—was similar to the language
used to describe the modern experience. Comediennes were in many ways
806

Quoted in Singer, Melodrama and Modernity, 74–89.
Bean, Bodies in Shock, 55.
808
Jennifer M. Bean, “’Trauma Thrills:’ Notes on Early Action Cinema,” in Yvonne Trasker,ed., Action and Adventure Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2004), 20.
807

304

the embodiment of modernity, with their frantic pace, limitless energy andunbounded optimism. In a 1915 review of Eva Tanguay’s act, for example, awriter claims that she “admirably personifies the American ideals of hurry,
assurance and impudent disregard for conventions,” and then goes on to say
that:
The songs are, after all, inconsequential. They are merely lines upon which
the electricity travels…. Miss Tanguay, we have said, is the spirit of the subway rush. But she’s more than that. She is Personality tearing through theline of Art for a touchdown. She is Excitement knocking a homerun in the
ninth, with Hysteria on third. She is a Krupp howitzer of Restlessness hurlinga 42–centimeter shell into Poise. She is—Eva Tanguay.809

Both stage and screen comediennes, as New Women, were icons of the newmodern world. The traits that made a successful comedienne—pep, vitality,
energy, an effervescent personality—were ascribed both to the New Woman
and to the modern city. And so Dorothy Gish is described as “a little dynamo
of energy” and “a rag–time comedienne, with all the pep of a jazz band,”810
Mabel Normand is “a dancing mouse, whirling madly all the time, but without purpose,”811 and Dorothy Devore is “a ’Go–Getter’ of the real kind.”812
Likewise, Constance Talmadge is “the female exponent of pep, so delightfully and naughtily sophisticated, so pretty, so charming, so approximate tomere man’s idea of a mate to lay his slippers out for him at night; but thenConstance Talmadge would never lay out his slippers—no, she’d be dragging him off to the theater, then to supper, cabaret, and all.”813 Along withlanguage indicating energy and effervescence, writers frequently used electricity as a metaphor to describe comediennes. Regarding Colleen Moore,
one writer claimed that “Her conversation kind of sizzles. She gives a remarkably good imitation of an electric spark.” Another wrote that “Colleen
has always been about as calm and reflective as electric current. She goesrushing around all the time you are talking to her and her conversation sizzles. There are no cobwebs in her mind.”814 A newspaper illustration fromaround 1927 pictures Moore as a live wire, her body coursing with so much“pep” and energy that three large and gruff–looking women have to hold her

809

Dramatic Mirror, January 6, 1915, Eva Tanguay clipping file, NYPL. Italics in original.
“Boots” review, Wid’s Daily, 2 March 1919, and “The Hope Chest” review, Wid’s Daily,
12 January 1919, Dorothy Gish clipping file, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS).
811“Mabel in a Hurry,” Motion Picture Magazine, November 1918, Mabel Normand clipping
file, AMPAS.
812“The Song and Dance Girl,” unidentified magazine clipping, Dorothy Devore clipping file,
NYPL.
813
Picture–Play, April 1920, Constance Talmadge clipping file, NYPL.
814“A Captivating Colleen,” Pictures and Picturegoer, October 1924, 41, and Helen Klumph,“Flapping Her Way to Fame,” Colleen Moore scrapbook #2, AMPAS.
810

305

down until the director is ready for her.815 Comediennes are closely alignedwith modernity in these examples, as they are said to be infused with thesame energy, electricity, and excitement as the modern world. A typical article describes Constance Talmadge, who was perhaps closest of all the screen
comediennes to the ideal of the pretty and vivacious New Woman in the late1910s and early 1920s, in this way:
A saucy, inconsequent little baggage, ever on the move, is Constance, andpossessed of an illusive fascination that’s quite irresistible. She races her car
like mad—only last week she killed a Ford—and she takes long walks
through the Hollywood hills, swims like a fish, sails a boat like an old salt,
dances like a nymph—anything as an excuse to be forever on the move.816

Just like the thrilling modern city and the lively and adaptable New Woman
who inhabited it, Talmadge is “forever on the move”, her restless energy aperfect companion and complement to the comedies she appeared in.
Far from being threatened or made vulnerable by the dangers of the modern world, comediennes epitomize the spirit of modernity with their energy
and activity, and revel in the sheer joy of their physical interaction with theworld around them, engaging their surroundings with physical abandon.
They are not refined or reserved. They venture into the city with its inherent
shocks and dangers, and they connect with and conquer their surroundings.
Their ability to successfully negotiate these spaces is indicative of their ability to negotiate the modern world in general. In Hold Your Breath (1924),
Dorothy Devore plays Mabel, an aspiring reporter who ventures out into thecity in search of a story. Her first few attempts fail—she chases a fire engine
only to watch it return to the station, and when she races back to her editor
with news of a plane crash on Broadway she discovers that another reporterhas beat her to the story. Finally, Mabel is assigned to interview a wealthycollector about his acquisition of a $50 million bracelet. While inspecting theitem in the collector’s hotel room, an organ grinder’s monkey darts into thewindow and swipes the bracelet. The collector accuses her of theft, prompting her to duck out the window and scale the side of the building in pursuitof the monkey. As Mabel climbs from ledge to ledge she encounters a variety of obstacles, and several times she slips, only to have her falls broken byawnings, flagpoles and other protrusions. Mabel ultimately catches the monkey, returns the bracelet to its owner, and clears her name, and then immediately renounces her career as a reporter in favor of marriage to her long–suffering beau.
While the ending of this film is somewhat unsatisfying, as the scrappy
and resourceful Mabel declares of her fiancé, “I guess I’ll let him do the815

Unidentified clipping, Colleen Moore scrapbook #2, AMPAS.
Grace Kingsley, “The Wild Woman of Babylon,” Photoplay, May 1917, Constance Talmadge clipping file, AMPAS.

816

306

reporting—and I’ll do the wife–ing,” the audience is still treated to the spectacle of Mabel fearlessly taking on the city. After her first failed attempt tofind a story, a dejected Mabel tells her boyfriend, “I guess I’ll never be areporter, dear. Perhaps it’s better that we get marri—“. Before she can finish
her thought she sees an airplane fall from the sky, and she immediately
dashes to the scene of the accident, leaving her beau behind. As she tries tofight her way through the crowd she is pushed over into a baby carriage,
which gets hooked onto the back of a car. Mabel is pulled down the street
and then thrown roughly from the carriage as the car turns. Undaunted, sheleaps to her feet, runs back to the plane crash, interviews the pilot, and runs
to her editor to tell him the story. Interestingly, she is scooped by anotherreporter who phoned in the details of the accident while Mabel was heading
to the office on foot. Mabel’s link to modernity doesn’t come through technology, especially passive devices such as the telephone. Instead, she embodies the rush and excitement of the city. She runs from story to story, evenwearing out the man her boyfriend had hired to follow her and keep her outof trouble. When she decides to chase the bracelet–stealing monkey, shedoesn’t rely on elevators, stairs, or ladders; instead, she chooses the mostphysically demanding route, pulling herself up by her fingertips and swinging her legs up and over ledge after ledge. The policemen following her are
unable to keep up with her acrobatic and fearless pursuit, and instead continue their chase from the interior of the hotel. Mabel embodies modernity,
and therefore she is able to connect with the city in a way that other characters cannot.
The athleticism, personality and daring ascribed to female comedians
showed up in their films in the form of daring stunts and perilous gags. Slapstick and some light comediennes engaged in on–screen stunts and acrobatics that rivaled the exploits of action heroines, including scaling buildings,
diving off piers, racing cars, flinging pies, and chasing, and being chased by,
all manner of animals. Press accounts of their off–screen physical accomplishments such as swimming, running, driving and dancing were received
along with films that included their daring on–screen stunts, with the resultthat fans understood many comediennes to be exceptionally gifted and courageous athletes.
Jennifer Bean has described how discourses surrounding action heroines
worked to “enhance the believability of real peril to the players’ body”817 by,among other things, emphasizing the very real risks the stars took when executing their stunts. Similarly, press reports and studio publicity pointed outthat comediennes, too, did their own stunt work, and that they were very
often put in peril and even injured. The press let readers know that “Miss[Alice] Howell’s art is not of the make–believe kind,” and that Gale Henry

817

Bean, Bodies in Shock, 98.
307

was working closely with a live bear in a 1920 film.818 As with action heroines, stories about broken bones and other on–set mishaps were widely reported. In 1919, Photoplay reported that, “After stopping stove lids, runaway
flivvers, rabid motorcycles and fire engines with various parts of her anatomy for two years without even sustaining a bruise, Polly Moran, Keystone
comedienne, has finally reached the hospital,” after falling off a horse andbreaking her arm while performing a stunt.819 Another press item told fansabout an on–set accident involving Mabel Normand: “You will be glad toknow that this clever little comedienne has recovered from a severe accident.
A blow from the heel of a shoe, thrown in a comedy rehearsal, fractured her
skull, and for a time threatened to prove fatal.”820 In discussing action stars,
Bean argues that articles that draw attention to on–set accidents and the very
real dangers inherent in stunt work posit the star as an “exceptional subjectof modernity.” The action star and, I would argue, the comedienne, “not only
experiences accident but, more importantly, survives and, better yet, thrives
on it—her persistence in the face of ceaseless catastrophe raises the threshold of commonly held psychical, physical, and conceptual limits of humanmotility.”821 In making a career out of performing stunts that the public knew
to be dangerous, and succeeding, both physically and financially, these stars
were providing a powerful and highly visible counter–argument to those
who claimed that modernity brought about a rise in neurasthenia, shock,eyestrain, nervous stimulation and other physical and mental disorders.822
The idea that modern life was draining the populace—and especially thefemale populace—of energy, virility, strength, and mental abilities wasforcefully disputed by films that showed women scaling buildings and riding
horses over cliffs. That comediennes were risking life and limb in the service
of comedy added an element of playful flippancy—not only were these
women willingly putting themselves in harm’s way, they were doing so for alaugh.
In fact, despite the various broken bones and run–ins with wild animals,
comediennes were said to cheerfully take on the wildest stunts, a logicalextension of the good humor required to succeed in comedy. Dorothy
Devore, then, “neither balks at dancing on the ledge of the 27th floor of theParamount Building, nor hesitates in jumping off a fast–moving train”,823
818“Alice Howell of L–Ko Makes a Tackle,” 15 August 1916, Alice Howell clipping file,
NYPL; Dorothy Faith Webster, “The Bear Facts About Gale Henry,” Photoplay, January
1920, Gale Henry clipping file, NYPL.
819
Untitled, Photoplay, January 1919, Polly Moran clipping file, NYPL.
820
Photo caption, ca 1915, Mabel Normand clipping file.
821
Jennifer M. Bean, “Technologies of Early Stardom and the Extraordinary Body,” in Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra, eds., A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2002), 424.
822
For a discussion of nervous disorders associated with modernity, see Singer, Melodramaand Modernity, 59–99, and Bean, Bodies in Shock, 38–71.
823
Unidentified photo caption, Dorothy Devore clipping file, NYPL.
308

Fay Tincher “never balks nor protests no matter how difficult her Komic
comedy assignment may be,”824 and readers are told of Mabel Normand that
“Fearlessness is one of her characteristics. When a thrill is required in a picture nothing daunts her.”825 One reviewer even admitted that “one is forced
to admire the nerve of Marie Dressler. For a woman as large as she is andone who has lost the resiliency of youth she takes some risks that are thrilling and nerve wrecking to say the least.”826 This is certainly evidenced in
Tillie Wakes Up (1917), in which Dressler’s Tillie is thrown unceremoniously around the rides and attractions of Coney Island like a rag doll, but
gamely submits to the inevitable bruises to her body and dignity.
A 1916 description of Constance Talmadge reveals the characteristics thatwere essential to the New Woman as personified by the screen comedienne:
She is decidedly athletic, splendidly built and has the grace and freedom of
movement that comes from muscles in perfect condition. She can run like adeer, dive and swim, and handle her own car, and she is as quick of wit as she
is of movement.827

The inclusion of “quick wit” among the standard list of New Woman qualities of athleticism, daring and grace highlights the fact that a sense of humor
was an important trait for the comedienne–as–New Woman. In other articles
Connie is described as having “the comedy spirit and the rare facility of
spoofing herself,”828 and possessing “never–failing wit and delightful good
humor.”829 In fact, humor is seen as a specifically modern trait: “The Perfect
Flapper of 1924 is exactly what her grandmother would like to have been,
could she have dared to laugh as heartily at her sweetheart’s whiskers as they
deserved.”830 The freedom to laugh, then, is seen as the difference between
the modern girl of 1924 and her grandmother. Dorothy Gish’s sense of humor also linked her to the modern world, as her pep and vitality are attributed to her good humor: “Perhaps Lillian Gish appropriated a trifle morethan her share of girlish beauty, but Dorothy sure did get even by grabbing a
big piece out of the family funny–bone and keeping it for her very own. It
runs all through her anatomy and just won’t let her arms or legs behave.” 831
824“Fay Tincher Game,” unidentified newspaper clipping, June 1915, Fay Tincher clipping
file, NYPL.
825
James R. Quirk, “The Girl on the Cover,” Photoplay, August 1915, 40.
826“Feature Films of the Week,” New York Dramatic Mirror, 6 October 1915, 28.
827“Norma’s Sister Constance,” Chicago News, 7 September 1916, Constance Talmadge
clipping file, NYPL.
828
Walter Vogdes, “Twenty Minutes with Constance,” Select Pictures Magazine, Vol IV,#11, ca. 1918, 5, Constance Talmadge clipping file, AMPAS.
829
Unidentified magazine clipping, ca. 1922, Constance Talmadge clipping file, NYPL.
830“Colleen Has Definitions For Flapper,” Los Angeles Examiner, July 1924, Colleen Moore
scrapbook #2, AMPAS.
831“The Hope Chest” review, Wid’s Daily, 12 January 1919, Dorothy Gish clipping file,
AMPAS.
309

When describing the personality traits important to a comedienne, Louise
Fazenda understandably included humor, but the rest of her description of an
ideal comedienne is strikingly similar to the popular conception of the“ideal” New Woman:
Beauty is not essential in a comedienne, it is merely an asset. Personality,
adaptability, quickness to grasp the situation, keen insight and a sense of humor to me appear to be the principal requirements, and, of course, a girl has
got to take lots of chances, especially in “slap” comedy, and must be a pretty
good athlete.832

It’s certainly understandable that a sense of humor would be among the traits
required of a comedienne. That humor would be an essential trait of themodern woman is perhaps not surprising, either. Given the frantic pace ofthe modern world and its ubiquitous shocks, anxieties and nervous ailments,
the ability to laugh at oneself and the world at large would be a singularly
effective coping strategy.
Some writers even saw humor as a trait unique to the specifically American New Woman. A Boston writer, defending comedienne Charlotte Greenwood from charges of vulgarity in her vaudeville act, argued at length that
Greenwood’s humor, far from being vulgar, is in fact distinctly and proudly
American:The quality in American girls which makes Europeans eye them askance istheir chummy “open–faced” manner. … [The American girl] is not a snob;
she is as willing to be chummy with a count as with a cabby. To her, anyone
who enjoys a joke needs no introduction; she takes the whole world into her
confidence, thanks to her sense of humor, yet never loses her individuality
and her underlying dignity. Her mother would have been gracious to the men
she met and excoriated them behind their backs; she tells them what she
thinks to their faces. She is not at all the typical “summer girl,” who is athletic and “free” as a ruse to attract men. Still less is she the “mannish” girl,who slaps young men on the back and calls them “Old Sport.” She is, rather,
the girl who, when she discovers that the family expects her to be the same
fudge–making little miss that she was in short dresses, goes out and finds a“job,” and keeps it, makes all men respect her, and those few who she cares
about love her. Her frankness is amazing; it is one of her chief assets.833

Frankness, athleticism, affability, good humor—these are the traits of theAmerican New Woman and the American comedienne, as interpreted by the
popular press.

832“Norma’s Sister Constance,” Chicago News, 7 September 1916, Constance Talmadge
clipping file, NYPL.
833“Miss Greenwood’s Comedy,” Boston Transcript, ca. 1914, Charlotte Greenwood clipping
file, NYPL
310

Comediennes were further linked to modernity and typed as New Women
through their hobbies, as reported in the press and through studio publicity.
Many of the comediennes’ reported hobbies involved sports, travel, dancing
and driving, all of which emphasized women’s increased presence in the
public sphere, and also took advantage of the technological and social advances brought about by modernity. Stories about comediennes dancing thenight away, swimming for exercise (most likely in controversial one–piecesuits), and enjoying the mobility provided by their cars, reinforced the notionthat the modern woman could, and did, mix freely in heterosocial society
without fear of reproach or reprisal. A tremendous amount of press wasgiven to comediennes’ love of fast cars and reckless driving, a parallel to theearlier icon of the New Woman and her bicycle. A 1914 article titled “Movies’ Speed Queens Hurl Auto Defis” declared that Mabel Normand andMarie Dressler would settle a rivalry by means of a car race, with Normand
in her Stutz and Dressler in her Fiat, and “each claim[ing] her car is fasterthan that of the other.”834 The article reports that when Normand proposed
the race, Dressler “laughed joyously and accepted the challenge,” a response
which highlights the comedienne’s humor as well as her love of thrills. Other
comediennes also were said to enjoy the speed and excitement that camewith driving, and the press discourses invariably described them as reckless
thrill seekers. Constance Talmadge reportedly “races her car like mad—only
last week she killed a Ford,”835 and Louise Fazenda sped about town in a carcalled “the coop,” one that “travels at an incredible rate of speed for so ancient and battered a car, and Louise manoeuvers [sic] it through mazes of
intricate traffic in a fashion which must be cited as masterly.”836 Of course,
these driving habits would eventually catch up with some of them: Bebe
Daniels was reported to have spent ten days in jail after being arrested forspeeding, although vast numbers of visitors and many comforts from home
no doubt helped to ease her time behind bars.837
Comediennes were also said to be avid swimmers, hikers, dancers—
anything involving speed, energy and athleticism. Marie Prevost was “a daring and skilled athlete, particularly in water sports like swimming and surfboard riding,”838 and Louisa Fazenda claimed, “I’m fond of swimming, dancing and driving a car, and when I’m fifty I’ll still be enjoying dance–music,

834“Movies’ Speed Queens Hurl Auto Defis—Marie Dressler and Mabel Normand to Clash in
Big Race Duel,” Los Angeles Evening Herald, 8 May 1914, Mabel Normand clipping file,
AMPAS.
835
Grace Kingsley, “The Wild Woman of Babylon,” Photoplay, May 1917, Constance Talmadge clipping file, AMPAS.
836
Adela Rogers St. Johns, “The Most Versatile Girl in Hollywood,” Photoplay, June 1925,
Louise Fazenda clipping file, AMPAS.
837
Regarding Bebe Daniels in Jail,” The Morning Telegraph (New York), 1 May 1921, Bebe
Daniels clipping file, AMPAS.
838
H. C. Carr, “Where Does Mack Sennett Get ‘Em?” Motion Picture Classic, October 1918.
311

sea–bathing and automobiles—or maybe air–planes!”839 Constance Talmadge “is the best ballroom dancer, according to masculine report, among
the screen stars. She plays a rattling good game of golf and swims like afish,”840 and “is one of those slim, clean–limbed girls who can ride a horse,
drive a car, sail a boat, and do everything else a good, healthy, out–of–doorgirl can do,”841 while Charlotte Greenwood “is an athlete from every point ofview…. She drives her own touring car, wins her own tennis matches andswims, dances, golfs and bowls.”842 Colleen Moore was said to swim year
round and “claims that the only objection she has to motion pictures is thatthey interfere with her outdoor life.”843
The emphasis on female stars’ athleticism and love of speed and thrills
was certainly not unique to comediennes, nor were all comediennes described in these terms (some were said to prefer more traditional activities
such as sewing, cooking, and keeping house). However, these discourses
firmly aligned comediennes with both the New Woman and modernity. As
in their films, comediennes engaged in energetic, exciting activities (with the
exception of Alice Howell, who obstinately replied to a fan magazine’squestionnaire by saying that her hobby was “not filling in questionnaires.”)844 The activities that comediennes were said to enjoy—swimming,
dancing, driving, even surfing—were the same as those enjoyed by thestereotypical New Woman and Flapper. In fact, Colleen Moore’s descriptionof “The American Girl of Today” is indistinguishable from a typical fan
magazine description of a day in the life of a movie star:
Getting up late, they begin the day with the lip stick. Afterward they play around of tennis or golf or ride horseback. After lunch they read the latest
books and get a thrill out of them. In the afternoon they may sit in on a gameof Mah Jongg or bridge. Then have tea and converse freely on psycho–
analysis and love. Possibly a drink now and then but that’s just a pose. Being
able to order a dinner for two or a brunch. Dance the latest dances all night
without getting tired. Drive a car and be up–to–date on all the latest styles.
Believe me—it’s not easy!845

839

34.

“What They Want to Do When They Are Fifty,” Motion Picture Magazine, October 1925,

840

Unidentified magazine clipping, ca. 1922, Constance Talmadge clipping file, NYPL.
“Convalescing With Constance,” unidentified magazine clipping, Constance Talmadge
clipping file, NYPL.
842
Unidentified newspaper clipping, Charlotte Greenwood clipping file, NYPL.
843“Movies Spoil Her Outdoor Sport,” ca. 1923, Colleen Moore scrapbook #1, AMPAS.
844“Alice Howell,” Moving Picture World, 29 September 1917, Alice Howell clipping file,
NYPL.
845
Colleen Moore, “The American Girl of Today,” ca. Jan. 1925, Colleen Moore scrapbook#2, AMPAS.
841

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Mary Pickford also understood the link between an active lifestyle and themodern woman. In a published plea to her fans to let her trade her famous
curls for a more practical bob, Pickford argued that:In these outdoor days of swimming, golf, and motoring, a woman is relievedof that constant nagging anxiety of how her hair is standing the strain. Her
hair, so to speak, is no longer on her mind to the exclusion of possibly more
important matters… We are more mobile, more active and alert. Short hairfits our new character as gracefully as long hair crowned the more dignified
behavior of our ancestors.846

In this view, the revolutionary trend of bobbing hair goes hand–in–hand withan active lifestyle; in other words, letting go of past fashions and, presumably, conventions, is an important precursor to engaging in many of the comediennes’ favorite activities. But these activities were not only associatedwith the New Woman; they were also activities that, like the comediennes
themselves, epitomized modernity. Comediennes didn’t just drive cars, theydrove fast and recklessly. Their physical activities put them in close contact
with men (dancing) or on public display (swimming), and emphasized the
speed, energy and mobility that were essential elements of the modern
world.
The intense changes taking place in the 1910s and 1920s were no doubt
unsettling to a great many people. As cities expanded, immigration increased, and women became increasingly visible in the public sphere, it was
clear that social and political roles would be redefined. Comediennes played
an active role in redefining women’s place in and relationship to the modern
world, as their activity, energy and vitality, both on–screen and off–, were
the perfect parallel to modernity. When comediennes embraced daring anddangerous stunts in their films and engaged in thrilling activities off–screen,
they provided an example of how women could successfully navigate themodern city, and turn its dangers and threats into fun and excitement.
Ultimately the question of whether we can classify comediennes as New
Women is far less important than how audiences at the time read these performers. Whether they saw the athleticism, frankness, humor and daring in
the performances of Mabel Normand, Louise Fazenda, Constance Talmadge,
Marie Dressler, and others and understood them to embody this new type offemininity is unknown, but highly likely. Not only did comediennes resemble the New Woman as imaged by Gibson, Christy, and Ziegfeld, they also
recalled the mannish and overbearing type that represented cultural fears
about women’s growing presence and power. Like serial queens, girls spies
and cowgirls, comediennes give us an insight into how some of these issues
played out on the silent screen.
846“Please May I Bob My Hair?” Liberty Magazine, 30 June 1928, Mary Pickford clipping
file, AMPAS.
313

Humorous Reflections on Acting, Filmmaking and
Genre in Comic Film Productions by Adriënne Solser,
Musidora, and Nell Shipman
Annette Förster
The Dutch actress and filmmaker Adriënne Solser used to produce exclusively
farces; her French colleague Musidora and their Canadian–born colleague Nell
Shipman each made one comic film that mocked their ambitions and careers as
actresses and filmmakers. In addition to such humorous self–reflexivity, thethree productions that I will discuss in this article have in common that they
were produced at the margins of the regular film production of their country at
the time. To my knowledge, moreover, very few woman filmmakers directed,
wrote and produced comic films in the 1920s, which is another reason for calling
special attention to these three productions: Bet naar de Olympiade [Bet goes to
the Olympics] (Adriënne Solser & Theo Frenkel Sr., The Netherlands 1928), La
Terre des taureaux [The Land of the Bulls] (Musidora & Antonio Cañero,Spain/France 1924), and Something New (Nell Shipman & Bert van Tuyle, USA
1920).
In my PhD dissertation “Histories of Fame and Failure. Adriënne Solser,
Musidora, Nell Shipman: Women Acting and Directing in the Silent Cinema in
The Netherlands, France and North America”847 I have argued that each filmmaker in her own way took advantage of the marginality of the production toreflect with a wink on her career and her position as a popular stage and film
actress and a filmmaker. In this paper I further explore their humorous reflections on their metiers, and on the options and choices for actresses and filmmakers in the 1920s.
The examination of professional options and choices is central to my researchon the careers and oeuvres of the three actresses and filmmakers. To adequately
reassess such options and choices, I have developed a three–dimensional approach that allows for thorough historicization as well as for a considerationfrom interdisciplinary and intertextual perspectives.848 I have proposed to callthis three–dimensional approach careerography, as it consistently moves
847

PhD diss., Utrecht University 2005
The sources of inspiration for developing this approach include: Michael Bakhtin, Rabelais
and his World Trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1968); Robert
Stam, Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism and Film (Baltimore and London:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), Giuliana Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map:
Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993); Heide Schlüpmann, “Asta Nielsen and Female Narration: The Early
Films” in A Second Life: German Cinema’s First Decades ed. Thomas Elsaesser (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 1996), 118–22; Thomas Elsaesser, “General Introduction. Early
Cinema: From Linear History to Mass Media Archaeology” in Early Cinema: Space, Frame,
Narrative ed. Thomas Elsaesser with Adam Barker (London: British Film Institute, 1990), 1–
10.
848

314

through disciplines, media and genres and permanently zigzags between the
personal, the professional and the discursive. Careerographies examine careers,
oeuvres, and films not as self–contained texts, but for their intertextual permeability, for how they display and substantiate the personal, professional and discursive conditions of their historic existence. Within this framework, each “utterance” may document professional options and choices and versatile ambitions
and experiences.849
When I speak of the oeuvres of Adriënne Solser, Musidora and Nell Shipman, I do not just refer to the corpus of films they produced, directed and acted
in for their own production companies. Rather, I broaden the scope to include
the parts they played in films made by colleagues, to the performances theycreated on the stage, and to the texts they wrote for publication or for delivery inperson. For the actresses and filmmakers in question, such interdisciplinary references were self–evident effects of their professional versatility, and, withineach comic production under scrutiny in this paper, a rich source for creating
humour and irony. For this reason, my discussion of each film production will
be preceded by a select overview of options and choices referred to.
Adriënne Solser: reflections on acting and on genreAdriënne Solser’s career spanned over five decades, from the mid–1880s to
the mid–1930s. Around the turn of the century, Solser worked as a comicstage performer in what in the Netherlands was called “variété”, in France“music–hall” and in the US “vaudeville”, that is to say varied stage programmes offering a range of acts, such as animal acts, acrobat acts and performances by singers, humorists, illusionists and musicians. Such popular
stage programmes often additionally included a series of short films, one or
two sketches, and a short revue.850 In the course of the 1910s, these sketches
and revues expanded to evening–long performances and in the process incorporated the singular acts, while the film programmes, as is well known, became an autonomous mode of entertainment. However, in the Netherlands
many cinema programmes included live acts by highly popular Dutch comic
performers up until the end of the 1910s, while film remained a staple elementof the popular stage programmes and revues. Of these shifts, Solser can beconsidered an exponent: as soon as music hall acts became incorporated in therevue and humorists began performing in cinemas, Solser went along. Her
next career move, from comic stage performer to film actress, could likewise
849

Robert Stam speaks of “utterance” in his discussion of the relevance for film analysis of
Bakhtin’s translinguistics, in which texts are considered discursive rather than signifying
practices. “And every utterance, for Bakhtin, is tied to an object (e.g. a theme…), to other’s
speech about the theme (other films or other discourses treating the same theme, i.e. the filmic
and extrafilmic intertext), to a reader, listener, or spectator (its addressee), and to its context.”
Stam, Subversive Pleasures, 44.
850
Comic sketches and revues differed from the other acts in that they offered narratives andthematic threads, respectively. Both often drew from topical matter and from common socialand cultural knowledge.
315be seen as an adaptation to domineering trends. In the specific Dutch context,
however, such a move was unusual, because film production was hardly consistent, and within that production hardly a comic tradition.851 More than that,the films which Solser made for her own production company between 1924
and 1928 constituted exceptions if set against the ambitions cherished by mostproductions accomplished in Dutch cinema. This was by virtue of the genre
Solser chose and the idiosyncratic form of presentation that she created.
The genre was called the “Jordaan–genre”, a nationally specific, comicstage genre that could take on various formats, such as solo acts, sketches,
revues, folk plays and films.852 Its name derived from the Amsterdam folkneighbourhood the Jordaan, whose inhabitants it allegedly portrayed and parodied. Adriënne Solser played on film the character of the Amsterdam woman,be it a fishmonger at the market or the wife of a baker. With this character she
transferred to the screen the stage persona that she had developed in solo actsin the revue and between films in cinemas since 1914. In her own films, shespun around this bossy folk woman and her inevitable hen–pecked husband an
episodic narrative structure that basically offered a series of comic situations
loosely motivated by a topical issue––which was pretty much the structure of
the sketches created on the stage by her younger brother Lion Solser in theearly 1910s. The form of the presentation in which Solser brought the character and the sketches to the screen, moreover, was idiosyncratic in that she not
only played the main character in the film, but additionally used to re–enact it,
during the screening, live on the stage, while speaking the dialogue, cracking
numerous jokes and singing several sing–a–longs. In such performances, Solser maintained traditions of mixed programming still common in Dutch entertainment in the 1920s, most notably in comic stage acts that made use of film,
and in the exhibition of comic films that were accompanied by commentary
spoken live on stage by a lecturer. Adriënne Solser, however, was more than alecturer, as she actually doubled her on–screen character in her live performance.
Humorous self–reflection was a staple ingredient of the stage persona of the
Amsterdam folk woman, and became an inextricable constituent of the film
character that Adriënne Solser played time and again. As her stage texts reveal, she utilized her hefty physique for creating comic situations and making
humorous comments.853 In her films she turned it into the core motif of the851

The most successful Dutch film production company had been the Filmfabriek Hollandia,
which, however, had to cease production in 1922. It produced primarily gloomy dramas,
hardly any comedies, while comic film in the 1910s was rather intertwined with music–halland revue. See Geoffrey Donaldson, Of Joy and Sorrow: A Filmography of Dutch Silent
Fiction (Amsterdam: Nederlands Filmmuseum, 1997).
852
My PhD dissertation offers for the first time a history of the Jordaan–genre, its various
formats, its main authors and stage directors, as well as its shifting reception (Förster 2005,
60–80).
853
The stage texts are preserved at the Nederlands Filmmuseum, Archief Adriënne Solser en
Lien D’Oliveyra (1904–1952).
316

comic action, as in her Bet naar de Olympiade, in which it fuels the character’s self–promotion as the female representative from the Jordaan neighbourhood to the Olympic Games. Whether wrestling or dressing for swimming,
Solser spoofs the character’s heftiness, for instance through filming her image
in a distorting mirror. The supposedly masculine sports in which Bet appears
can be read as an ironic comment on topical matter: the Amsterdam Olympic
Games of 1928 were the first in which women were allowed to take part, but
only in athletics.854 Bet’s husband, moreover, is always a scrawny fellow, andthe physical contrast between the two emphasises the female character’s robustness. Bet also performs the tasks of a sailor or a fire fighter. In such capacities, the actress shows off her agility, which was quite astonishing for thefifty–five year old woman Solser was at the time and which reveals the physical training that acting demanded. Intertextually, such scenes can be read asreferences to the American serial queen melodramas, the cinematic subgenrefeaturing intrepid heroines in modern women’s professions. The film also
includes a scene which humorously comments on the requirements for women
to dance in the revue. We see Bet on the staircase, which was a fixed elementof the apotheosis of the revue, in which its star used to descend flanked by aline up of sparsely dressed chorus girls. In one of her stage texts, Solser remarked that for the revue her legs were too plump. In the film, she staged herself in an on–screen parody of the revue that defied her unfitness for the genre.
As the texts with her live commentary to the film are lost, we cannot know forsure if she added to the imagery some remarks to this effect, but given the factthat she used to do so in her stage texts, she might well have done so in her
texts for accompanying the films. This scene, much like the distorting mirror
scene, is long in comparison to the overall editing pace of the film. To mymind, these are not flaws, but intentional stretches of screen time that allowed
Solser to crack additional jokes in her live performance.
Solser’s ambition was to make people laugh with the means she had at her
disposal: her generic stage and film persona, her live performance skills, andthe complementary use of film for the sake of expanding her field of activity.
With this choice of genre, style and presentation, Solser initially placed herself
at the margins of Dutch film production, but precisely by doing so carved out aniche where she could do what she wanted and do what she was good at. In
contrast to most Dutch film producers in the 1920s, Solser managed to makefilms and was pretty successful with audiences as well. And in contrast towhat Dutch film histories for long have maintained, Solser’s productions canbe considered to have been at the heart of Dutch film production of the 1920s,
and central to a practically overlooked native comic film and stage tradition in
The Netherlands.

854

I learned this information from the Dutch historical television magazine Andere Tijden,
broadcast on August 3, 2008.
317

Musidora––reflections on performance and perception
In terms of the shifts in the swiftly changing landscape of popular entertainments around the turn to the 20th century, Musidora belongs to the generationof female performers succeeding that of Adriënne Solser, or rather, succeedingthat of her French colleagues Polaire and Mistinguett, who had begun performing in the café–concert in solo acts, but had modified their stage presence
to the new requirements of the music–hall and the revue and who additionallyused to act in films.855 On stage, Musidora was versatility and ingeniousness
personified: a comic performer who could sing, dance and act the most diverse
characters, from a literary figure like Virginie (from the popular novel, Paul etVirginie, by Henri Bernardin de Saint–Pierre) to a social archetype like themodern tango maniac.856 But also in the films in which she acted concurrently,
her roles were extremely diverse and ranged from parts in historic dramas tocrime series and comedies. In addition, Musidora expressed her views in theform of caricatures that were published in contemporary papers, and in theform of short stories and fictionalisations of her perception of her metier.857 As
an actress of the 1910s, then, Musidora brought to the screen a style of performance and a form of perception rather than a clear–cut stage persona or
genre. This style of performance implied a playful reference to the act of acting, while the form of perception assumed a knowledgeable appraisal of thegenre in which she appeared.858
Musidora ’s stage acting career ran from 1910 to roughly the mid–1930s,
while she acted in films from 1914 until 1926. Until the end of 1916, she wasaffiliated with Gaumont, where she acted not only in the famous crime series
by Louis Feuillade, Les Vampires and Judex, but also, and this is far less
known, in at least fourteen medium length comedies, that contributed to her
popularity with audiences no less than the crime series. In 1919, she established her own film company and produced, co–directed and starred in threedramatic feature films: Vicenta (1920), Pour Don Carlos (1921) and Soleil etombre (1922). Aesthetically, these films were rather ambitious, and they fit inwith the then emerging ideals of cinematographic style. But they were also
ambitious in terms of audience appeal: Musidora aimed at attracting the mass855

For an overview of these shifts in France see also Kelley Conway, Chanteuse in the City:The Realist Singer in French Film (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California
Press, 2004).
856
Throughout the 1910s, Musidora played in at least 17 revues, in illustrious music–halls
such as the Bataclan, the Folies Bergère, La Scala and Concerts Mayol, as well as in famous
cabarets such as Le Perchoir and La Pie qui chante. She maintained her stage career alongside
her work in cinema.
857
Published in, among others, the daily for the performing arts, Comoedia, the satirical
weekly Fantasio, and the film periodical Le Film.
858
I derive this insight from the observations of contemporary music hall critics, most notably
Curnonsky in Comoedia and Louis Laloy in La Revue Musicale SIM. Both were particularly
concerned to explain to their readership the high level crafts that were indispensible in orderto mount revues that were at once spectacular, witty and cultured, as were the requirements inthe early 1910s.
318

public that she had won with her bad women roles, as she used to refer to thefemale criminals Irma Vep and Diana Monti in the aforementioned crime series.859 Although the female protagonists in Musidora’s productions were noless adventurous and unconventional, none of them had an impact that could
be compared to the prototypes that she had created with Feuillade. The film
press, moreover, hardly noticed Musidora’s input as a producer and a co–director, mesmerized as critics still were with her star presence. Musidora’s
fourth and farewell production to filmmaking, La terre des taureaux of 1924,
graciously and ironically reflects upon these failed ambitions and the receptionof her films. Against the backdrop of her career and oeuvre, I consider it significant that she chose a form, a style and a tone that completely deviated fromthe three dramas that she had made so far.
The form Musidora envisioned for La terre des taureaux was a mixed presentation of live acts and screened film parts.860 Quite in contrast to most notably Soleil et ombre, a film likewise set in Spain and telling a story of a woman
in love with a bullfighter, La terre des taureaux was not a drama, but a mix ofsemi–factual, comic and romantic adventure sequences. Basically, it lampooned every topic which the earlier film had presented in a dramatic tone andin elaborate and graphic images, from the aesthetics of bull fighting to the fatal
connection of love and death. Because of the involvement of Musidora’s thenlover, the bullfighter Antonio Cañero, as her co–star and co–director, somefilm historians have taken the production as an autobiographical reverie.861 In
my opinion, however, it is less about Musidora’s romance with the torero thana humorous reflection on the state of her career: about her star image and acting in cinema and on stage, and about making films with adventurous
women’s roles.862
According to the synopsis in Musidora’s handwriting, the live scenes weremeant to be set in a Paris theatre, whereas the filmed scenes were set in Andalusia. In the live scenes, Musidora planned, for instance, to talk to journalists
about the film which she intended to make and to the public to which she
meant to recount her experiences. The staged part thus seems to have provided
a kind of narrative framing, to which the film parts were used as an expansionof the illusory space of the stage (as was common in mixed stage and film acts
in music–hall and revue in the 1910s). The film part is divided in chapters,suggesting that they could be interspersed with live scenes.863 But because the859

Musidora, “Mes projets: être la méchante femme”, Le Film, January 1920.
Musidora stated this in a handwritten and incomplete scenario that is now held at the Bibliothèque du Film in Paris, Fonds Musidora.
861
See Francis Lacassin, Musidora. Anthologie du Cinéma 59 (1970): 489.
862
Also Vicki Callahan addresses the issues of stardom and performance in the film, but pays
little attention to its humorous tone and to the ways in which it refers to Musidora’s own
career. Neither does she consider the stage parts. See Vicki Callahan, “Screening Musidora:
Inscribing Indeterminacy in Film History”, Camera Obscura 48 (2001), 108–28.
863
My analysis is based on the print from the Cinémathèque de Toulouse preserved at theCentre National de la Cinématographie in Bois d’Arcy, France.
860

319

synopsis does not clearly distinguish between stage and film scenes and only
contains a few scenes that do not appear in the print, it is unfortunately difficult to reconstruct with certainty the presentation as it was meant and enacted
by Musidora. For that reason, I prefer to discuss the film print and the staged
scenes apart from each other.
The first chapter of the print consists of semi–factual shots documenting the
day before the bullfight and introducing the protagonists of the event: thebulls, the horses, and the various kinds of bullfighters. The second chapter
shows the fight and its public, and introduces the female first person narrator,
who announces that she is looking for an actor to play in her film about bullfighting. She presents herself as a filmmaker vain enough to believe that thebullfighter of her choice will jump at her proposal right away, but has to face
his refusal. In this scene, Musidora ironically comments her status as a filmmaker. The third chapter relates her response and refers to both her star image
and her comic film acting. She arranges to meet the bullfighter again, but disguises herself for the occasion as the most ugly, unattractive and clumsy
would–be actress imaginable. The chapter is hilarious for its slapstick moments and for the obvious pleasure with which Musidora enacts the opposite
of her star image, the dark beauty. The next chapter contains a romantic adventure plot and emphasises the playfulness of adventurous woman’s roles.
One shot directly refers to a scene in Les Vampires, in which Irma Vep hid
underneath a train that started running (on the shooting of which scene Musidora wrote one of her stories).864 In her film, she is shown standing on the noseof the locomotive, while it frontally approaches the camera. A last filmed
chapter is set in the theatre. A title card explicitly refers to “La loge de Musidora” [Musidora’s dressing room] and there are shots of Musidora dancing on
the stage. The epilogue is set in Andalusia again: Musidora has decided to staywith Cañero and to learn bullfighting, a performing art which, as Vicki Callahan has suggested, shares a lot with acting, and as I would like to point out,
perhaps more with popular stage performance than with film acting, because it
depends on the viewer’s knowledgeable appraisal of the genre of performance.
The live acts described in the scenario allowed Musidora to thank her devoted stage public and to mock the film press. One act goes as follows: at thetheatre, the director and the public are waiting for Musidora, who is late for the
performance. The director fears that she will not come at all. The public keeps
waiting patiently, and a woman makes a favourable remark on her live performances: “I like to hear the sound of her voice. The screen and the stage arevery different things.”865 After Musidora has arrived, she offers the public her
excuses and recounts her adventures. In the second live act, she receives aninterviewer from the film press in her dressing room. He begins talking to her,864

Musidora, “Comme j’ai passé sous un train”, Le Cinéma et l’Écho du cinema réunis, July21, 1916.
865
Musidora, scenario La Terre des Taureaux, BIFI, Fonds Musidora.
320while she changes behind a folding screen. He does not ask any questions, butembarks on a long monologue. His parting words are: “My article along theselines will appear tomorrow. It is a revelation for our readers. It is utterly interesting.”866 It seems to me, that Musidora worked some of her experiences into
these live acts. That is to say, while her stage public waited to learn her stories
and views, the film press was only interested in its own.
In sum, I consider La terre des taureaux Musidora’s professional and ironic
settlement with a film world and a film press that overlooked her filmmaking
aspirations, as well as with a public that ignored the films that she loved to
make. The production can be considered marginal in terms of production values as well as in its mixing of live and stage performance. But this marginality
offered Musidora the freedom to reflect with gracious humour and without agrain of bitterness on her film acting and directing career, bidding farewell to
it in favour of the popular stage that she had never abandoned.
Nell Shipman––reflections on melodrama and on self–promotion
Nell Shipman likewise had a career as an actress on stage and in cinema prior
to her film producer– and directorship in the 1920s. Between 1908 and 1910,
Shipman worked on the stage as an actress with stock companies in cheap
melodramas and in American vaudeville. It was in one of those plays that she
discovered her affinity with the genre of Northwest drama, that until then wasa genre only in popular theatre and literature, not yet in the cinema.867 In 1912,
Shipman turned to the cinema, initially venturing into screen writing and by1915 also into acting in front of the camera. She became a noted Vitagraphactress, and developed a strong skill in self–promotion to establish her screen
persona of the outdoors girl in Northwest drama. She also novelised a series
for which she had written the scenario, Under the Crescent, that was bothfilmed and published, including fifty–eight production stills, in 1915.868 Thisillustrates Shipman’s professional versatility, but the novel is also interesting
because Shipman reworked one of its narrative devices in an independent film
production.
The production in which she did so was the five reel comic subject Something New, one of the first projects for her film company Nell Shipman Productions. She would further write, produce, direct, edit and star in two ambitious Northwest dramas and several shorts. Shipman marginalised this film, inher memoirs, as being made “in between pictures”.869 I am certainly not thefirst scholar to say that Something New is much more interesting than that, but
866

Ibid.
Nell Shipman, The Silent Screen and My Talking Heart: An Autobiography (Boise, Idaho:
Hemingway Western Studies Series, Boise State University, 2001), 24.
868
Nell Shipman, Under the Crescent (New York: Grosset and Dunlap 1915). The film series
with the same title was produced by Universal and released under the prestigious Gold Seal
brand.
869
Shipman 2001, 87
867

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my focus upon how Shipman used the comic mode to ironically reflect on her
professional ambitions in acting, writing and genre may be new nonetheless.870
The comic in this semi–feature length film emanated from a meta–
discourse on genre, types and plotting, which textually materialized in a framing device of a woman presenting and writing the story. The film opens andends with shots of a woman sitting behind a typewriter, beneath a huge tree inthe open air. This writing woman is said to be searching for “an inspiration” towrite “something new”, and she is shown seeing things as if they were happening before her very eyes. She sees two men, one on a horse and one in acar, putting up a wager about the speed of their respective means of transportation. These men do not notice the woman observing them. The effect of themise–en–scène and the editing in this scene is that the writing woman is situated outside the diegesis, and that she conveys her thoughts directly to thespectators who watch her ponder and find her topic. In the set–up of the scene,
we find two of Shipman’s production concerns from other work––the use ofoutdoor settings and of observation to create fiction, which was a motif in her
novel Under the Crescent. With this in mind, it is as if Shipman were encouraging spectators to identify the pre–diegetic writing woman with herself as awriter, a scenarist and a producer. More than that, the extra–diegetic writing
woman reappears in the final shots, bending over the typewriter, laughing herhead off, beaming and looking straight into the camera, conveying to spectators in the direct address mode both her pleasure and her pride in her work.
In the sequences following the opening scene, a shift occurs, which further
specifies the writing woman’s interest in the plot she is concocting. She now
enters the diegesis as The Writing Lady, that is to say a woman writer on theroad in search for “atmosphere”––a term which, in the Shipmanian universe, isconnected to impressions and occurrences observed at a remote and roughlocale. The Writing Lady selects and presents a series of generic elements andtypes. These elements are listed, in capital letters and underlined, in the title
cards, by which the meta–discourse proceeds and addresses the spectators
through the graphic design. We learn that the Writing Lady needs, in consecutive order, a remote setting, the hero and an old father figure, that she craves
atmosphere “real, red and raw”, including danger provided by a gang of ban870

For discussions of the film from various angles see: (in chronological order) Paolo Cherchi
Usai and Lorenzo Codelli, eds, Sulla via di Hollywood, 1911–1920 (Pordenone: Edizioni
Biblioteca Dell’immagine, 1988), 514–515; Annette Brauerhoch, “La Belle et la Bête”,
Frauen und Film 47 (1989): 36–45; Annette Förster, “Nell Shipman: A Career Like a Serial
Queen – or: “None of It Ever Happened!””, paper presented at the Screen Studies Conference,
Glasgow, United Kingdom, June 28–30, 1996; William H. Drew, “Speeding Sweethearts oftheSilentScreen1908–1921”,
Welcometothe
SilentMovies,http://www.welcometosilentmovies.com/features/sweethearts/sweethearts.htm; Kristen Whissel, “On Something New: Nell Shipman, New Technologies and the New Woman in Motion”,
paper presented at the conference Women and the Silent Screen II, Santa Cruz, California,
United States, November 2–4, 2001; Kay Armatage, The Girl from God’s Country: Nell
Shipman and the Silent Cinema (Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press,
2003), 121–60.
322

dits, and last but not least, that she hopes that “Old George Fate will take ahand”, in short: the generic constituents of sensational melodrama.871 Once theplot is unfolding, moreover, the Writing Lady repeatedly draws the spectators’
attention to her presence by commenting upon the action in an ironic tone, as,for instance, after she has made the Hero fall in love with the Girl, she comments: “Nothing new about that, but who would change it?”, or, when introducing the bandits and their leader: “He doesn’t look dangerous, but look at
his gang”. Graphically such comments are placed between brackets, so thatreaders/viewers are supposed to distinguish them from the dialogue, which isset between quotation marks, or from the statements made by the implied narrator, which are rendered without any additional signs.
At the point when the Writing Lady, in a second twist, turns into the Girl ofher own tale, and is about to be caught in a perilous situation conjured up in
the plot, she self–mockingly tells the dog: “I wanted atmosphere and I’ll say I
am getting it”. Whereupon the Writing Lady vanishes behind the story’s character of the imperilled girl and the victorious heroine. But, as noted afore, thewriting woman reappears at the very end of the film, thus suggesting to be thefigure who singlehandedly constructed the melodramatic plot and its types,
and, in an auto–referential spiral, assumes responsibility for the scenario andthe production of the very film. All of these roles and functions in the makingof Something New were performed, in both senses of the work, by Nell Shipman in person.
The writing woman can be seen as Shipman’s reworking of a figure she introduced in her 1915 novelisation of the series Under the Crescent. This figure
appears in the foreword to the novel, a first person narrator posing as a reporter interviewing the protagonist of the story that she will tell. Here is another fictional narrator controlling the story within the story and employing
direct address in order to engage readers–spectators in its fabrication. The taskof the reporter in the novel’s foreword, however, is to lend authenticity to thenarrative; she neither keeps up the meta–discourse nor appears in the story.
The writing woman in the film, in contrast, performs as the Writing Lady setting up the plot, and then turns into a character in her story. Present as thetale’s instigator, composer, and protagonist, her textual task is not to authenticate the fiction, but rather to emphasize its fabrication as well as to satirize
generic elements and fictional characters, her own included. Her self–
confident direct address, as well as her entrance into the diegesis and her apparent loss of authorial control, effectively represent, and provide, the dual
pleasure which readers–spectators were expected to derive from sensational
stage melodrama, as analysed by Ben Singer, that is to say an appreciation of
the artificiality of the presentation alongside absorption in the story.872 With
871

Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and its Contexts (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2001).
872
Singer 2001, 176–7
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Something New, Shipman invites us to share her witty appreciation and jocular
perception of melodramatic plot devices and narrative elements, including
devices and elements familiar from Shipman’s previous work as a scriptwriterand a novelist.
The production may be considered marginal within Shipman’s oeuvre andin relation to Hollywood film production to the extent that it was a car commercial turned into a comic subject. The film’s real heroine is indeed theMaxwell car that wins the wager after an incredibly rough ride through thedesert. On the other hand, with a budget of over $28,000 it was not the shoestring production that some film scholars have taken it to be.873 What Shipman––as she wrote––“blushed to recall” was the film’s ending, in which not
the car was featured prominently, but the writing woman. Through the comicframing device of the writing woman and her various transformations, Shipman effectively turned Something New from a film promoting the enduranceof a car into a humorous self–promotion as a writer, a producer, and an actressin multiple roles. Precisely the marginality of the production, or rather the
independence from the pressures of ambition, may have inspired her to do it at
the time, and embarrassed her in retrospect.
Conclusion
Producing and directing comic films was not a common option for women in
the 1920s. In so far as Solser made the choice consistently, it was idiosyncratic, not just in the Netherlands, but internationally as well. As if she wasaware of this, she included a Chaplin–imitation in her Bet naar de Olympiade.
Both Musidora and Shipman chose the comic mode to make a statement about
their careers: Musidora to bid farewell to styles and forms that had brought her
fame and failure in French cinema, Shipman to promote herself as a screen
writer, an actress and a filmmaker in Hollywood. The humorous reflections
engendered by these choices differ according to context, but have in common
that they occurred in the margins of the national film production in which eachof the actresses and filmmakers worked. Being professionals in the entertainment field, Solser, Musidora and Shipman were keen to make the most of theopportunity.

873

See, most notably, Kay Armatage, who does not specify the budget, but assumes that it
was “extreme low–budget” because Shipman “stretched the budget for a commercial into afeature–length narrative” (Armatage, The Girl from God’s Country, 153). The figure of$28,000 stems from an undated clipping from the Los Angeles Times in the Marjorie Cole
File, Nell Shipman Archive, Albertsons Library, Boise State University (Mss 99, Box 8,
Folder 5). An illuminating comparison may be that, at Universal, in 1921, a five–reeler could
be produced for a bit over $34,000. See Richard Kosarski, An Evening’s Entertainment. The
Age of the Silent Picture 1915–1928 (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California
Press 1994), 111–3.
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Fashion and Fandom

325

Film, Fashion and Female Movie Fandom in Imperial
Germany
Andrea Haller
Film, fashion and modernity
In many contemporary writings about the changes modernity brings into theeveryday life and experience of people and to the bourgeois social order,
cinema and fashion are two of the most prevalent examples used to illustratethese changes. Cinema and fashion are considered as models of the experience of modernity that help to practice the modern way of living by challenging the prevalent notions of acceleration and mobility. Besides, they areboth deeply rooted in the present time and are both ephemeral media basedon an element of transience. Cinema and fashion epitomize the cultural implications of modernity such as rapidity, diversification, and commercialization as well as the ability to appeal to the masses and the ability to constantly
reinvent themselves. Emilie Altenloh writes in her 1914 study of German
cinema audiences that “both the cinema and those who visit it are typical
products of our times, characterized by constant preoccupation and a state ofnervous restlessness. […] Certainly of reason for this [people’s interest forcinema dramas] is the devotion to and the immersion into the present.”874 On
the other hand, the German sociologist and economist Werner Sombart relates the “wild tempo of changes in fashion” 875 to the psychic disposition ofmodern men and to his extended mobility: “What is even more important is
the fact that with the changes in technology and in the outward living condition […] a new type of men has evolved. Men that wanted to express theirinner restlessness and unstableness in the constitution of their outward appearance. We want the change of our articles of daily use. It makes us nervous if we have to wear the same piece of clothing all the time.”876 Considering this discursive relation between cinema and the fashion system, it seems
to make perfect sense to have a look at the actual intersections between earlycinema and fashion.
Hence, I would like to explore these connections and try to link that toearly practices of female movie fandom, since women were perceived to be874

Emilie Altenloh, “A sociology of the cinema and the audience,” Screen 42, no. 3 (2001):
249–293. Original: Emilie Altenloh, Zur Soziologie des Kino. Die Kino–Unternehmung unddie sozialen Schichten ihrer Besucher (Jena: Diederichs 1914), here 258.
875
Werner Sombart, Wirtschaft und Mode. Ein Beitrag zu Theorie der modernen Bedarfsgestaltung (Wiesbaden 1902), reprinted in Die Listen der Moden, ed. Silvia Bovenschen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1986), 81 – 104. Only partly translated into English as “Economy
and Fashion: A Theoretical Contribution on the Formation of Modern Consumer Demand,” in
The Rise of Fashion: A Reader, ed. Daniel Leonard Purdy (Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P,
2004), 313.
876
Sombart, Wirtschaft und Mode in Bovenschen, 89. Translation is mine.
326more interested in fashion than men. Therefore I intend to explore, on the
one hand, the role fashion and fan magazines played in turning the ordinary
female movie–goer into a devoted movie fan, and on the other hand, the roleof film stars in popularizing fashion. Therefore I am going to examine fashion magazines like Die Dame (The Lady) or the Elegante Welt (Elegant
World) and the Illustrierte Kino–Woche (Cinema–Week Illustrated), the only
fan paper of the pre–war era.
Movie stars and the female fans in Imperial Germany
Around 1911 the longer feature film, the “one–hour–film” as it was called
then, was implemented in the cinema programme. By the end of 1912 thelonger feature film had become the main attraction of the programme which
now presented a mixture of short films and longer so–called Kinodramen(cine–dramas). These cine–dramas, that were often labelled as social dramas,
sensational dramas or Sittendramen (dramas of manners), were extremely
popular with female movie–goers as they largely told stories from the real of
female experience and mostly displayed the fate of a woman. These cine–
dramas offered the female moviegoers the unique chance to “see herself”, hereveryday–life, her milieu and her experience, as Heide Schlüpmann has
pointed out.877 This “female experience” was mediated by the female actresses
who embodied the female characters on screen. And with the longer featurefilms these screen actresses, who had been mostly uncredited before, became
genuine movie–stars. Asta Nielsen and Henny Porten might have been themost noted and popular at that time, but there were numerous others like
Wanda Treumann, Lissy Nebuschka, Dorrit Weixler, Erna Morena, Hanni
Weisse or Maria Orska, Hella Moja, Maria Carmi and Fern Andra.
So, along with the growing interest in cinema–going that was fostered by
the cine–dramas, an active participation of women in the process of reception
outside the cinema can be established. Women began to play an important role
as movie fans, and they demanded information about films, about the movie
business in general and, above all, about the movie stars. The first movie fanmagazine, Illustrierte Kino–Woche, was launched in 1913.878 The make–up of
the magazine, with its numerous reports on fashion, serialised novels, andespecially the “letters to the editor” section, as well as the character of the ads,
indicate that the majority of the readers were female.
The magazines covered all aspects of the film business, but from its first issue the readers not only passively consumed the latest news about the stars andthe films, but they also became active themselves: they sent in letters asking
for addresses of actors and actresses to get into personal contact, and theymassively participated in polls about the most popular stars (1913 and again
877

Cf. Schlüpmann, Heide, Unheimlichkeit des Blicks. Das Drama des frühen deutschen
Kinos (Basel, Frankfurt a.M.: Stroemfeld, 1990).
878
In 1916 the name was changed to Illustrierte Filmwoche.
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1918). In 1913, the most popular actor was the Norwegian star Waldemar
Psilander and Asta Nielsen was the most popular female star. In 1918, Henny
Porten was the most popular actress.879 As the readers, predominantly the female ones, increasingly demanded more information about their favourites, themagazine began to provide them with more information about certain stars.
And although they still did not communicate much about the private life of theactors and actresses they tried to appease the hunger of their reader for nearness to “their” stars with anecdotes, reports from the film set and so on. Richard DeCordova stated that the picture personality turns into a real “star” when
information about his or her private life is provided in other media, i.e. a secondary, intermedial image is created. This transformation can be observed in
the Illustierte Kinowoche.880 And one might add that the female movie fanswith their numerous inquiries to get to know more about their favourite actresses act as a kind of catalyst for this transformation of an actor into a star asa multimedia Gesamtkunstwerk that represented a special way of living anddressing.
In contrast to the United States, where film fan magazines mushroomed in
the nineteen teens, the Illustrierte Filmwoche stayed the only film fan magazine until the end of the First World War. But fashion and women’s magazines
increasingly began to provide women with information about films and theirstars, too. The most popular fashion journals of Imperial Germany were Die
Dame and the Elegante Welt. Both were founded in 1912, at the high peak of
the cine–drama. But due to its status as a more “bourgeois” mass communication medium, Die Dame did not report much about film and film stars in the
beginning. It had only provided its readers with more information and images
about the business since 1915. The Elegante Welt reported from the beginningabout film and the stars––but only to a rather moderate extent. But, as readersmore and more demanded information about stars and their work, both magazines increasingly turned their attention to cinema and especially film stars
around 1915.
The Elegante Welt from the beginning considered cinema as being appropriate to a sophisticated and modern lifestyle. A visit to the cinema was presented as an everyday occurrence for the upper classes that went to the cinema
just as they went to opera houses, theatres and nightclubs. The column “Areyou still talking?“, for example, showed that cinema going had become a fashionable leisure activity by then. “Are you still talking?“ presented fictitious
telephone conversations about the latest social events, theatre premieres, celebrity gossip, shopping tips or the latest fashion dances, and it always in-

879“Unsere Preisfrage: Wer ist die beliebteste Filmschauspielerin?”, Illustrierte Filmwoche,no. 6 (1918).
880
Cf. Richard deCordova, Picture Personalities. The emergence of the Star System in America (Urbana/Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1990).
328

cluded some paragraphs about the cinema: about its latest first releases, about
the stars, etcetera.
But this en passant cinema gossip was not enough for the female readers:already in 1913 we can find numerous requests for more information and pictures of movie stars and countless inquiries how one can get in contact withthe stars. And again, Waldemar Psilander and Asta Nielsen were especially indemand. Therefore, the Elegante Welt in 1914 published an accumulative
answer to all fans of Asta Nielsen: “Asta–Nielsen–devotees: You can send
letters to the cinema–diva to our desk. We are afraid we can’t send you all
pictures of her.”881 From 1916 on the Elegante Welt increasingly reported
about film and the stars. For example, Maria Orska gave an account of her
work in film,882 and the “cinema–king” Max Mack was portrayed working in
his studio.883
Besides, it turned out that female movie stars increasingly became fashionand lifestyle role models. The magazines often illustrated their articles about
beauty, lifestyle and society topics with images of movie stars which served as
the perfect embodiments of all that was fashionable, up–to–date and modern.
The Elegante Welt, for example, illustrated an article about vanitory units withpictures of the actress Maria Orska,884 and an article about billiards was illustrated with photos of Gunnar Tolnaes.885 Film stars started to become styleicons. Even though, Die Dame at first stayed sceptical about real elegance andfashionability in film. In a 1915 article author Ludwig Kainer mocked about
the eclectic mixture of all styles, bad copies and fake glamour of the filmic
interiors as well as the unsuitable costumes of the actresses. He hence expressed the then common attitude that film was not art but “fake”. 886
However, the readers of the magazines demanded to know where the costumes of the actresses came from. And thus the magazines increasingly published film stills and discussed these costumes. In June 1917, for example, areader asked the Elegante Welt where the dresses Erna Morena wore in her
new film Der Schal der Sünde came from.887 In the same issue, “the wonderful
dresses from Mannheimer” which the actress Erika Gläsner presented in her
new film were the topic of conversation.888
Film producers very soon realised that women were eager to see beautiful
dresses and they designed their films accordingly. But even before the fiction
film started to become a “life fashion–journal”, fashion was present in thecinema.
881“Puzzle”, Elegante Welt, no. 7 (1914).
“Maria Orska”, Elegante Welt, no. 7 (1916).
883“Max Mack. Der Filmregisseur”, Elegante Welt, no. 11 (1916).
884
Elegante Welt, no. 20 (1916).
885
Elegante Welt, no. 18 (1917).
886
Ludwig Kainer, “Eleganz im Film”, Die Dame, no. 4 (1915).
887“Korrespondenz”, Elegante Welt, no. 12 (1917).
888“Sprechen Sie noch?”, Elegante Welt, no. 12 (1917).
882

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Fashion films
Newsreels from Pathé and Gaumont or the Éclair Revue always incorporated
footage of the latest Paris fashions.889 The female audience loved these fashion films, as the trade paper Der Kinematograph reported in 1912.890 In 1913
Der Kinematograph noted that film was the perfect medium to present fashion as it gives a good haptic impression, but it regretted that these fashion
films were always too short to really get an impression of the clothes on
display. So, it suggested that the producers should trade on the specific advantages of film and present the dresses “in motion”: fashion films should
show women entering an automobile or a streetcar, or they should present
women sitting between two suitors on a small sofa. They should show, “inshort, if these dresses meet the demands of everyday life.”891 In 1911, aGerman fashion show was filmed for the first time. The fashion company
Leonard Tietz Aktien Gesellschaft from Cologne and Düsseldorf initiatedthe pictures and they were shown in several cities in the cinemas of the Union theatre chain. The author predicts a great success to these kinds of films
since the aesthetic of a fashion show was filmic in itself and therefore madeto be shown in the cinema.892
Even feature films of that time explicitly dealt with the topic of fashion:for example, the “fashion farces” (Konfektionskomödien) of the early Ernst
Lubitsch that took place in the milieu of the department stores and Berlin’s
Konfektionsmilieu893 and others like Gelbstern (Mannequin, 1913) or Die
Laune einer Modekönigin (The Caprices of a fashion queen, 1916), just to
name a few.
One of the most stunning examples of how film reacted to changes infashion was the 1911 scandal about the jupe culottes (in German: Hosenrock), which were created by designers Poiret and Drecoll and haunted thefeuilletons of the daily press for several weeks. From Berlin it was reported
that women wearing the jupe–culottes even caused crowds and traffic jams.
Although not many women actually dared to wear these trousers, satirists
and cartoonists jumped at it immediately. Moreover, as many as nine films
containing the catchword “Hosenrock” were distributed in 1911 in Germany:889

Cf. “Filmbilder vom Tage: Mode,” Illustrierte Kino–Woche, no.11 (1913).
“Das Kino in der Modeindustrie,” Der Kinematograph, no. 289 (1912).
891“Kino und Mode,” Der Kinematograph, no. 356 (1913).
892“Die erste große kinematographische Modenrevue,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no.40 (1911).
In 1917, during the war, Der Kinematograph asked several big German fashion salons(Modehäuser) what they thought about presenting fashion in film. Most of them agreed thatfilm had now become an adequate medium to present fashion, and they suggested that it
would be even more successful if film stars would present the collections in film. Besides,
German fashion films could thus combine patriotic education and education of the taste. Cf.
“Die Mode im Film,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 44 (1917).
893
For example Die Firma heiratet (The Perfect Thirty Six, 1914), Der Stolz der Firma (The
Pride of the Company. 1914) or Schuhpalast Pinkus (Shoe Palace Pinkus, 1916) und Der
Blusenkönig ( The Blouse king, 1917) both directed by Lubitsch himself. Cf. Mila Ganeva,“Weimar Film as Fashion Show,” German Studies Review 30, no.2 (2007), 289–310.
890

330

Schwiegermama im Hosenrock (Mother–in–law Wearing Jupe–culottes),
Sieg des Hosenrocks (Triumph of the Jupe–culottes) or Schreckliche Folgendes Hosenrock (Dire Consequences of the Jupe–culottes), just to name a few.
Most of them were short slapstick comedies making fun of women wearing
these “trousers” or of men mistrustfully reacting to this new trend.
On the other side, fashion houses attempted to incorporate filmic elements
into their fashion shows to create a certain “mood”. For example, Die Damesuggested illustrating the presentation of the collection with images fromfashionable skiing hotspots and arranging the whole fashion show as a trip tothese venues. The mannequin could present travelling clothes while images
from a railway journey are projected; on arrival at her hotel room––shownon film––she could present the latest house frocks and pyjamas.894
Fashion in film and the film stars
Apart from these obvious fashion related films, fashion became an importantfeature for the new cine–dramas, especially for the so–called “dramas fromsociety circles” that had become very popular with the female audience.
These films had to show “luxuriant decoration and lavish and fashionablecostumes” the Lichtbild–Bühne states in 1917, to offer the audience “insights into the living and loving of the upper circles.”895 Sometimes producers even used the lavish costumes as an advertising point for a film and its
star, as in the case of the film Der ausgeliehene Frack (The borrowed tail–coat, 1913) by the Kontinental Kunstfilm and its new star Maria Berthelsen.
There the ad says: “Maria Berthelsen, wonderful acting, enchanting exterior,marvellous costumes.”896 In 1915 the Lichtbild–Bühne even claimed that
Fern Andra was so extremely popular with the female audience because ofher “delicate taste regarding her costumes, both on the silver screen and in
her private life.”897 Although the theatre stars still dominated press coverageand they still set the standards for elegance and fashionability, the filmic“look” was about to conquer the territory of fashion.898 Besides, film and its
display of fashion led to a democratization and internationalization of taste.
Social theorist as the above quoted Werner Sombart and especially Georg
Simmel held that fashion had once been a prerogative of the upper classes
and that the change of fashion (Modewechsel) resulted from the attempts of
the lower classes to imitate the upper classes. According to Simmel, fashion(Mode) is a product of class distinction and it is characterized by the tension
between the imitative instinct and the aspiration for individual differentiation: “Thus fashion on the one hand signifies union with those in the same
894

“Eine Reform der Modenschau. Wirklichkeit und Film,” Die Dame, no. 7 (1917).
“Gesellschaftsfilms,” in Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 10 (1917).
896
Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 33 (1913).
897“Die Erstaufführung im Mozartsaal. Es fiel ein Reif in der Nacht,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 44(1915).
898“Der Einfluss des Films,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 22 (1915).
895

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class, the uniformity of a circle characterized by it, and, uno acto, the exclusion of all other groups.”899 Now, in the wake of industrialization with the
manufactured production of ready–to–wear clothes (Konfektion) that copiedhaute couture, everybody had the possibility to look fashionable.900 The new
media contributed to the dissemination of the images. Fashion journals andfilm made fashion visible, if not available, to everybody. Hence, film did not
abolish class distinctions but helped to make them less visible and more subtle. According to Sombart, fashion journals, newspapers and especially increased mobility also contributed to a reduction of the differences between
the big cities and the country.901
Expanding Sombart’s thesis, an article in the Illustrierte Kino–Woche
captioned “Cinema, Fashion and Society” pointed out that cinema offeredpeople from small towns and the provinces––i.e. “those who are unable tovisit the fashion on tea parties and horse races” –the possibility to makethemselves familiar with the latest looks from Paris and the United States:“People from smaller cities only have a sketchy idea of metropolitan elegance. Here the cinema acts––one might say ’by chance’––as a kind of mediator.”902
As evidence, so to speak, for the thesis that the cinema contributed to aninternationalization of fashion, the Lichtbild–Bühne reported that the ambassador of Serbia had observed that the women of Belgrade began to dress
according to American taste although there had not been any American travellers in Belgrade. Finally, he found out that the cinemas were mainly showing American films. Hence, local women asked in the department stores for“Yankee stuff.”903 Thus, not only the upper classes but also film stars set thestandards for a fashionable look.

899
Georg Simmel, “Fashion,” International Quarterly 10 (1904): 130–155, reprinted in The
Rise of Fashion: A Reader, ed. Daniel Leonard Purdy (Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P,
2004) 289–309. here 291.
900
On Berlin’s Konfektion see: Gretel Wagner, “Die Mode in Berlin,” in Berlin en vogue.
Berliner Mode in der Photographie, ed. F.C. Gundlach and Uli Richter (Tübingen, Berlin:
Ernst Wasmuth, 1993) 113–29. For a contemporary account see Moritz Loeb, Berliner Konfektion (Berlin 1911).
901
Cf. Sombart in Bovenschen, 102. in English: Sombart in Purdy, 315 (see n. 2).
902
Johannes Weiß, “Kino, Mode und Gesellschaft,” Illustrierte Kino–Woche, no. 21 (1914).
903“Der Film und die Kleidermode,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 4 (1914).
This international character of film and fashion was only weakened once, shortly after theoutbreak of the First World War. Fashion and film were exploited for the political agenda, but
a look into the film and the fashion magazines shows that these restrictions did not last too
long. However, there were attempts to create a specific German kind of fashion. And there
were ideas to produce fashion films which should highlight the power and the up–to–datenessof the German fashion industry. One example was the documentary Deutsche Modenschau
auf der Deutschen Werkbundausstellung zu Bern (1917) that was heavily advertised in the
trade press as “the biggest attraction for he female visitors of every cinema” and “a stunning
evidence of the productivity of the German fashion industry”. Cf. “Bemerkenswerte Filmneuheiten: Die Modenschau,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 43 (1917).

332

This international aspect was again intensified by the diversity of the cinema programme with its mixture of all kinds of films from different countries: a drama from Copenhagen was shown together with one from Paris, aPathé newsreel with a fashion film and the latest pictures of the German
Emperor and its family.
The Elegante Welt, too, emphasized the importance of fashion for film
and its success with the female audience and it talked about the responsibility of the cinema for educating the taste of the masses. In 1918 fashion journalist Ola Alsen wrote:
Because of its massive expansion and its low entrée fees the cinema especially appeals to the masses. Therefore it is important that ’taste’ (Geschmack) is cultivated in those films, especially in regards to fashion. […] Ingood films the lines of the dresses meet all requirements of the latest fashion
trends. The experienced and tasteful actress knows at all hours and in all
situations to dress up properly.904
The Elegante Welt also hints to the fact that the female movie goers not
only concentrated on the story of the film but that they used film as a kind ofmoving fashion magazine (Modespiegel) that helped them to orient themselves in the world of fashion. And film actresses were accordingly perceived as living and moving fashion models. In this respect, fashion journals
and film complemented each other. Therefore, the female audience virtuallycalled for more elaborate and extravagant dresses in the movies: “It is exceedingly boring if an actress changes her dresses only once or twice in afilm. Repetition is monotonous.”905 And Ola Alsen wrote: “The female film
viewers would be deeply disappointed to watch the same dresses in different
films.”906
Thus, in contemporary perception, the film actress was the best exampleof Simmel’s theory that fashion had become a means of distinction. Morethan any other woman she had to distinguish herself by her outward appearance since she literally had to sell her image. To be loved by the audienceshe first and foremost had to catch the audience’s eye, and the best means toachieve that attention was a fashionable appearance.907
This increased orientation of the film production to latest trends might
explain why Fern Andra was very often presented as a fashion role model,
while Asta Nielsen was never presented in this way in the fashion journals,
although she still was one of the most favourite actresses. In her article“Film and Fashion” Asta Nielsen expressed a totally different attitude towards film and fashion.908 She stated that she designed her costumes not with904

Ola Alsen, “Die Mode im Film,” Elegante Welt, no. 16 (1918).
“Der Film als Modenspiegel,” Elegante Welt, no. 23 (1918).
906
Ola Alsen, “Die Mode im Film,” Elegante Welt, no. 16 (1918).
907
Curt Moreck, Sittengeschichte des Kinos (Dresden: Paul Aretz Verlag, 1927), 248.
908
Asta Nielsen, “Film und Mode,” Illustrierte Filmwoche, no. 25 (1918). Also published in
Der Kinematograph, no. 433 (1915).
905

333

relation to their fashionability but with relation to their visual impression onscreen and to the character she embodied. What mattered for her was the
body beneath the dress and not the dress itself. Clothing and costumes were
not visual attractions per se but props to emphasise bodily expressivenessand to underline the traits of the character she portrayed. For example, shetherefore avoided wearing a notably well–fitting gown in tragic scenes, sothat the audience would not be distracted by that dress, especially because
most women believed that life is not that tragic when wearing a well–fitted
dress. Or, to say it in her own words: “A fancy hat does not go well with abroken heart.”
From today’s perspective, however, Nielsen’s way of dressing was very
innovative and up–to–date. Her aesthetics of the body resembled that of famous fashion designer Paul Poiret, who also propagated a slim and agile
figure. There are even similarities to the fashion concept of Coco Chanel
which was also driven by a certain emancipatory impulse represented bysimplicity and graphical lines. Nielsen’s way of dressing was ahead of her
time and in a way too radical to be perceived as fashionable.909 Hence, contemporary critics sometimes simply thought that her dresses were ugly.910
However, the claim for fashionable film costumes carries pitfalls as again
Asta Nielsen has noted in her article: films become outdated very quickly
and they appear literally old–fashioned shortly after their release. A critic
from Berlin reported in 1917 that he had watched a comedy of 1913 and that
he was heavily disappointed:
The male comedians were still side–splitting but the females on screen wereunintentionally funny. The film diva whose grace and chic I had admired four
years ago appeared clumsy and provincial to me now. […] It is no advantagethat film reproduces everything without change. The style back then is not
the style of today.911

However, precise ideas about a specific “cinematic fashion” were quite rare
during that time. One exception is Margarete Langen’s article “Film and Fashion” in the Lichtbild–Bühne from 1916: There she reflects about the qualities ofdifferent colours on black–and–white film or about the effect of different forms
and silhouettes on the filmic image. And she was looking for possibilities to909

José Teunissen, “Asta Nielsen. Mode und Modernität,” in Sprache der Liebe. Asta Nielsen,
ihre Filme, ihr Kino 1910–1933, ed. Karola Gramann et al. (Vienna: Synema, 2009), 238–53.
See also: Evelyn Hampicke, “Die Sufragette – Asta Nielsen und ihre Kleider. Gedanken zu
einem Filmfragment,” in KINtop 3: Oskar Messter – Erfinder und Geschäftsmann, ed. Frank
Kessler, Sabine Lenk and Martin Loiperdinger (Frankfurt a.M., Basel: Stroemfeld, 1994), 11–23.
910
Malwine Rennert, “Asta Nielsen im Kinodrama ‘Die Suffragetten’,” Bild&Film 3, no. 6(1913/1914).
911“Film–Konserven,” in Berliner Volkszeitung, quoted in “Pressestimmen,” Lichtbild–
Bühne, no. 3 (1917).
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combine trendiness, elegance and cinematic aesthetics.912 The above quoted
Ludwig Kainer, who had mocked the fake glamour of filmic costumes, presented some ideas, too. He wrote: “The best and most beautiful film actress fails
to impress if she has to act in tasteless and ornate spaces. […] She can not act inher everyday clothes may they even be the most elegant ones. Every film actressneeds clothing just for her films; every dress has to be chosen according to its
impression in black and white. Her dresses have to be of the most elegant simplicity that allows no tassels, fringes or beading. The good quality of the fabrics
and the furs will contribute to build up a beautiful line.”913
But not only the film costumes caught the attention of the female readers;
they were also interested in the private style of the actresses. Thus, the actresses
themselves became fashion role models. In 1917, for example the Elegante Welt
published pictures of Pola Negri at the race track in the Berlin Grunewald on
which she wears––as the caption said––a dress from the house of Drecoll.914 But
these kinds of “paparazzi” photos were not very common until 1918. More often, the magazines published staged pictures of cinema actresses presenting thelatest hat and dress trends. Here they acted as a kind of testimonial for style andelegance. In February 1917, Die Dame for example reserved an entire page forphotos of Henny Porten and Erna Morena presenting the latest hats.915 In May
Maria Widal presented coats916 and in June Lu Synd modelled for new summer
hats.917 What we can observe here is the beginning of the still current trend that
actresses act as models for fashion designers, or officiate as brand ambassadors
while models turn into film actresses.
However, the readers at that time not only oriented themselves by the stars inregard to fashion of clothing but also in regard to all that belonged to a fashionable and modern lifestyle: they wanted to know how the stars lived, what theirhomes looked like and how they spent their leisure time. The fan and fashion
magazines tried to answer these questions by publishing reports about the “private life” of various male and female stars. For example, the magazines reported
about Henny Porten’s sporting habits918 or about the holiday activities of different stars.919. They published home stories, for example, of Asta Nielsen and Erna
Morena,920 and illustrated them with semi–private photos of the actresses in theirhomes and with their children. But all in all, these reports from the “private life”
still stayed on the surface and most often reproduced well–known clichés aboutlife as a film star.
912

Margarete Langen, “Mode und Kino,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 6 (1916).
Ludwig Kainer, “Eleganz im Film,” Die Dame, no. 4 (1915).
914“Bilder von der Rennbahn,” Elegante Welt, no. 16 (1917).
915
Die Dame, no. 9 (1917).
916
Die Dame, no. 16 (1917).
917
Die Dame, no. 17 (1917).
918“Henny Porten im Sport”, Illustrierte Kino–Woche, no. 9 (1913).
919“Wie sich Kinokünstler erholen”, Illustrierte Filmwoche, no. 32/33 (1917).
920
See for example “Bei Asta”, Illustrierte Filmwoche, no. 25 (1918) and “Besuch bei Erna
Morena,” Elegante Welt, no. 16 (1916).
913

335

Fashion in the cinema
Not only filmic space but also the real space of the cinema was perceived asa space of fashion. Just like department stores, café houses and other spacesof modern consumer society, cinema was a place where women could enjoy
their recently gained mobility and where they could watch, show and paradefashion. The German journalist and actress Resi Langer, who made several
expeditions into the cinema scene of Berlin, reported in an article about theaudience of the elegant cinema palaces of Berlin West that a young lady did
not want to sit in a theatre box as usual but in the pit since she wanted everybody to see her new fashionable Bubikopf hairdo.921 The fact that women
went to the cinema to show off their latest fashion was also perceived bymale observers. In the article “My wife in the film theatre”922 a man describes a visit with his wife in the cinema and he asks for the reasons why
women were so fond of the cinema. The first reason for his wife to go to thecinema is, according to her, that she can go there without full dress. The
following ironical description of his wife changing her clothes several times
and posing in front of the mirror to find the right outfit for the cinema reduces this reason to absurdity. Instead, his wife loves to go to the movies justbecause she can show her latest dress or latest hairdo in public. Even during
the film show his wife was more concerned about her looks and those of theother patrons than about the images on screen. The husband had to listen tolong monologues from his wife when the latest hat models were presented
on–screen during the newsreel. “Look at these awful hats”, he cited her,
“Awful. Fashion is becoming even crazier.” The next film bored his wifeand she started to comment about the hats of the ladies in the audience andcriticized the hairdo of the “lady in the third row.”
In her insightful study of female movie–going in the United States, Shelley Stamp also noticed that sometimes the act of going to the cinema show
itself was even more important than watching the films. She writes:“Women’s tendency to parade themselves at leisure outing shifted visual
attention away from the screen and onto the circulation of gazes in lobby
areas and entranceways.”923
Perhaps the most obvious signs of fashion in the cinema were the large hatsof the female clientele. These large hats––which often blocked the view of other,predominantly male patrons so that they could not see the screen anymore––
were the subject of numerous essays, films, cartoons and even poems by then.924
921

Resi Langer, “Kinotypen. Plauderei aus den Lichtspielhäusern des Berliner Westens“,
Illustrierte Kino–Woche, no. 18 (1914).
922
Robert Wilke, “Meine Frau im Film–Theater,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 52 (1915).
923
Shelley Stamp, Movie–Struck Girls. Women and the Motion Picture Culture after the
Nickelodeon (Princeton, Chichester: Princeton UP, 2000), 196.
924
See for example Griffith’s Those awful heads (1909). For a filmography of “hat–films“ seeCatherine Russell and Louis Pelletier, “’Ladies Please Remove Your Hats’: Fashion, Moving
Pictures and Gender Politics of the Public Sphere 1907–1911,” Living Pictures 2, no. 1(2003), 61–84.
336

And there were numerous attempts by local cinema owners and appeals fromthe trade press to force women to take off their hats in the cinema.925 But women
did not care about these restrictions; instead, they used these hats to demonstrate
their fashion status. One male author even talked about a veritable competition
for the ultimate hat that would succeed in covering the whole screen.926 The hat,a relatively affordable piece of clothing that allows the wearer to act out her
creativity, was not only an accessory for the higher classes but it also allowed
women from the lower classes to spice up their outfit easily. Thus, the hat problem was not only a problem of the better cinemas, as the Berliner Allgemeine
Zeitung notes.927 In the cinema, women from the working classes––that werenormally excluded from the fashion system and from most of the other venuesof entertainment––had the possibility to stage themselves with a minimum ofeffort and money and to demonstrate their fashionable self–consciousness inpublic. However, parading fashionable dresses in the cinema and feeling like amovie star was not enough for many of the female cinema lovers; they wanted
to become film stars themselves.
Becoming a movie star
The establishment of the first film stars and the coverage of their work, theirlife in the film business and the alluring prospect to wear such beautiful
clothes awakened the desire of many young and not so young women to
appear on the silver screen themselves. They did not only want to read about
it, they wanted to become a part of it.
According to the numerous inquiries in the fashion and fan papers a lot ofGerman women and girls dreamed of being a film star. From 1912 on,
women virtually bombarded the editorial offices of the fan and fashion
magazines with questions on how they could manage to become a cinema
actress.928 The fashion and fan magazines as well as the trade press concordantly warned the young girls that it would not be easy to become an actress.
The Elegante Welt, for example, answered to one request: “As far as our
experience goes we can only strongly advise you against taking up the profession of a film actress. Only a few very talented women succeeded as anactress.”929
With numerous articles as well as little stories dealing with young girls
trying to become actresses, the Illustrierte Filmwoche on the one hand925

See for example O–: “Hutverbot für Kinos,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 16 (1914), “Kinematograph – und Göttin Mode,”Der Kinematograph, no. 234 (1911), “Vom Schuldkonto derriesigen Damenhüte,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 23 (1911) and Albert Walter, “Erziehet die Kinobesucher,” Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 45 (1915)
926“Hut ab!”, Der Kinematograph, no. 168 (1910).
927
From Berliner Allgemeinen Zeitung, cited in “Pressestimmen”, Lichtbild–Bühne, no. 28(1917).
928
See for example Illustrierte Kino–Woche, no. 24 (1913), and Elegante Welt, no. 27 (1913)
and numerous others.
929
Elegante Welt, no. 31 (1914).
337

aroused interest and raised the hope of the female readers that they might bediscovered by film producers, while on the other hand, they warned theirreaders with stories in which someone always tried to take advantage of thegirl’s desire to succeed in the film business and in which the girls never fully
succeeded in becoming a star.930 These stories especially suggested that theso–called Kinoschulen (cinema schools), where the girls should learn to act,
to move and to dress like a film star, had become a major problem. These
institutions attracted young girls by promising them a career in the film
business. In fact, these “schools” simply served dubious profiteering and atbest only squeezed money out of the girls. So, the magazines warned against
this kind of education which was never accepted by the film companies. But
all these reports about impostors and about the failure of so many girls did
not prevent the female film enthusiasts from still dreaming of a career in thefilm business, and from asking for advice how to become a movie star. In
1917, the Elegante Welt gave up and refused to answer this question any
more: “We are no longer able and willing to answer the continual question’How can I become a cinema actress?’!”931
Résumé
As we have seen, film and fashion were already inextricably linked in theyears before World War I, as both were epitomes of modern consumer society and both relied on the principle of display. Hence, film actresses began totake over the role of fashion icons and role models, not only in regards toquestions of clothing fashions but also in regards to their way of living. Besides, the attempts of––and the new possibilities (Konfektion) for––womenfrom all social classes to dress as stylishly as the women they could view inthe journals and on the screen finally resulted in the desire to become amovie star. Film and fashion journals contributed to a democratization andinternationalization of “taste” and they had become powerful partners inpromoting each other and the style of the “modern woman”.

930
See for example “Die kleine Maud. Aus dem Leben einer Filmenthusiastin,” Illustrierte
Kino–Woche, no. 27 (1914), “Plauderei. Der Herr Fuchs”, Illustrierte Filmwoche, no. 38(1917) and “Die kleine Filmschauspielerin,” Illustrierte Filmwoche, no. 45/46 (1917).
931
Elegante Welt, no. 22 (1917).

338

Facing the Silent Film Star: Concepts of Beauty and the
CameraTherése Andersson
We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!
– Norma Desmond, Sunset Blvd.

As the quote from Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) suggests, the image ofthe silent film star’s face became somewhat mystified and iconic, referring
back to the golden age of early film glamour and notions of the “cameraface”. In Sweden throughout the 1910s and 1920s, the idea of the camera
face––i.e. the beliefs of how cinematic technique, through the close–up, had
the capacity to reveal the actor’s soul and state of mind––occurred. The film
camera was thought of as an instrument for truth, registering and refining thebeauty of the face. In this article I would like to continue the discussion on
early film stars, style and beauty undertaken in my dissertation thesis,932
particularly in relation to the ideas of the camera face articulated in the
Swedish film magazines Filmen and Filmjournalen, focusing on questions ofrepresentation and the construction of femininity in connection to the physiognomic discourse current in Sweden at the time. Articles concerning actressAnna Q Nilsson will serve as my point of reference.
The physiognomic principles were invoked as a quasi–scientific system
for analysing personality through physical features. This belief can be traced
back through history, and was very common during the 19th century, forexample. The idea was that the inner virtues of a person were perceptible
932

The object of my thesis was the relationship between film, fashion and beauty concerning
different understandings of femininity, with reference to the establishment of the star systemand the making of celebrity culture, and how these were expressed textually through magazines and commercial ads in early 20th century Sweden. The period of time framing the discussion, from fin–de–siècle and onwards with specific focus on the 1920s and 1930s, corresponded to the course of publication of the Swedish magazine Filmjournalen. Star studies andreception studies made up the theoretical framework, offering an understanding of the popularpress both as a source of knowledge for and as an intermediary of fashion and style, creating awider network of texts and images and providing a context for how films were presented for
Swedish, mainly female, audiences. Film stars were understood as embodying different ideas;
represented, negotiated, and incorporated in already existing lines of thoughts, drawing attention to questions of media presentation, and to the ideas appearing behind the beauty ideals
and the aesthetics of the time. The discussion on stars was narrowed down to concern threeparticular themes – consumerism, emancipation and physiognomy – when presupposing
femininity as defined by appearance; considering cosmetics and fashion as providing practical, next–to–the–skin tools in this making, while film and journalism are working on a social,
discursive level. Beauty Box – Filmstjärnor och skönhetskultur i det tidiga 1900–talets
Sverige (Beauty Box – Film Stars and Beauty Culture in Early 20th Century Sweden) (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2006)339

through their outer appearance. The face was perceived as especially important, since it was thought of as the most distinct for reading the outer appearance as a representation of inner beauty.933 In the physiognomic writings ofJulien Leclercq from 1899, the principles are summarised as ”the science, of
which the purpose is to get to know a person’s inner self through the outer,in other words; the soul through the body.”934 Hence, the most initiated were
presumed to stay with readings of the face only, as it was understood as
manifestly revealing the soul.935 The physiognomic relationship between
outer appearance and inner virtues was recognized as particularly crucial for
women, since the principles were normative and gender specific: as such,generating notions of what was suitable for women to think, feel and act.
The practice of changing one’s appearance through technologies like cosmetics were seen as insufficient since hair–colour, eyes, ears, chin, mouth,
wrinkles, and the profile, were signs of the inner self independent of whether
they were natural or consciously shaped.936 The facial features were as suchdetermining, as a mirror for revealing the soul. In the 1910s and 1920s film
stars, as commonly known figures familiar from the screen and magazines,
appeared as exceptional examples to practice physiognomic readings on, as
Béla Balázs did in his theoretical writings on film and the human face.937
In the Swedish context, physiognomic principles were transformed into
schemas and developed into readings of female stars as personality types.
Both Filmen and Filmjournalen as fan magazines devoted most of theirpages to fashionable stars, highlighting appearance, and were further richly
illustrated with photographs. Recurring topics on film stars such as careerand rise–to–fame stories, romance and wedding gossip, and of course, fashion and beauty articles, were prevalent.938 The story of Anna Q Nilsson(1888––1974) a stage actress from the small town Ystad in southern Sweden, who emigrated and settled in New York in 1905, follows the rise–to–
fame–narrative neatly. In these articles, by emphasising Nilsson’s struggle tobecome a film actress through hard work; moving to a new country, learninga new language and supporting her self as a fashion model before carrying
on to the moving pictures, a correspondence to the idea of America as theland of opportunity is also implied.939 Nilsson as a starlet got her breakthrough as Molly Pitcher in the picture with the same name, in 1911 (Molly
933

Joanne Finkelstein, The Fashioned Self (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 5 ff, 18 f and 24.
Julien Leclercq, Människans fysionomi. Om ansikten och karakterer. 76 porträtt av samtida efter Eugène Ledos’ principer. Auktoriserad övers. af H.B. (Stockholm: Wahlström &Widstrand 1899), 1.
935
Ibid., 1.
936
Finkelstein, 5 ff, 18 f and 24.
937
Béla Balázs, ”Människans ansikte” (1949) in Sätt att se – Texter om estetik och film, red.
Astrid Söderbergh Widding (Stockholm: T. Fischer & Co., 1994), 172 f and 179 f.
938
Andersson, 30 f.
939”Hemma hos Anna Q. – ett Los Angeles minne.” Filmjournalen 5:1920, 144 f., and ”Anna
Q. Nilsson – Den fagra blomman från Sverige” Filmen 16:1920, 12 f.
934

340

Pitcher, Sidney Olcotte, 1911).940 In narrating and presenting these stories
combining beauty and success, Filmen and Filmjournalen actively contributed to ways in which the stars would be perceived.
When studying how different modes of femininity are described and performed through the articles in Filmen and Filmjournalen on film stars, theoretical notions on performance are applied. Judith Butler’s understanding ofgender not as a being or essence, beyond history, but as making, actively
created through social practices is taken into account.941 Film stars are thus
theoretically understood as a focal point to which different ideas were attributed, which in turn were represented and incorporated in already existinglines of thought occurring in early 20th century Sweden. With reference toTeresa de Lauretis’s viewpoint, cosmetics are considered as “technologies ofthe self”: as technologies for creating and recreating the self, as well as technologies for creating and recreating meanings of femininity.942 Two contradictory discourses on femininity and identity could be found in the Swedish
popular press at the time: an essentialist discourse perceiving identity as
determined, and an anti–essentialist discourse regarding identity as a resultof construction and performance.
Beauty and the Camera
The beautifying practice is historically much disputed and controversial, as it
is strongly associated with narcissism, independence and emancipation. Cosmetics were early on connected to certain social spheres, populated equally by
prostitutes, actresses and feminists, challenging the moralistic decorum of thetimes. At the turn of the century, cosmetics were considered unnatural andmorally dubious, and in using cosmetics the work of nature or the work of
God was regarded to have been manipulated.943 The criticism in Sweden, articulated mostly by the upper classes––by men as well as women––was however more diverse and part of a larger debate concerning femininity and emancipation. Through the eyes of the critics, beauty care of any kind was connected to narcissism, which in its turn was regarded as a female mental disorder, and which was manifested in the overestimation of oneself and the lack ofconsideration for others. The use of cosmetics was therefore perceived as vulgar and manipulating, which in the end would result in a shell of de–

940

Anna Q Nilsson had a very successful career and was voted the most popular woman in
Hollywood 1926. She was also the first Swedish actress to receive a star on Hollywood Walkof Fame.
941
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble – Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London & New
York: Routledge, (1990) 1999)
942
Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender – Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (London: Macmillan Press, 1987), ix and s. 5 ff.
943
Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, (1985) 2003), 107 f; and Kerstin Wenström, Husmoderns hemkurer och
goda råd. (Stockholm: B. Wahlström, 1925), 114 f.
341

personification.944 Since the practice of fashion and cosmetics was for a longtime considered vulgar and dubious, even the interest in, or, fascination forthese things were explained away as blameworthy vanity beyond reason.945
Women were, however, at the time considered vain by nature, but this vanity
could also be conformed and transformed into a fulfilment of voyeurism forthose around,946 echoing the 19th century pale, bourgeoisie feminine ideal, as
well as implicating that this ideal was the superior, true and pure, femininity.
This line of argument had strong moral implications for how grooming shouldbe perceived, also pointing to the double standard involved, marking a distinction between dressing up for oneself and dressing up for others. This also implies that the construction had to be invisible and that the cosmetics used had
to appear as a natural look, as authenticity. In this way appearance equalled
personality; the outward appearance revealed inner virtues, a notion that continues to occur throughout the 1920s in Sweden, and which is further brought
up by the popular press.947
In early celebrity culture the face was assigned a new commercial value,948
where photographs of the film star’s face could be utilized in marketing andcommercial ads, but the demands on perfection and a flawless look had consequences for portraits and the filmic close–up.949 The physiognomic principles
are thus more specifically related to the aesthetic and cosmetic conditions forthe close–up. The attention put to the individual, to the face, through the moving pictures, were at the same time new and media specific, as romanticising
the technology of film through claims of soulfulness.950 In the magazine Filmen, in an article from 1920, these ideas of flawlessness and soulfulness are
positioned to film stars. In order to manage the scrutiny of the camera andfulfil the demands of perfection, the female star must photograph well:
There are several young women, whose youthfulness would disappear on
film. The camera is fickle. It does not photograph as the person herself
wished it did. The camera does not show the colours of her hair and her eyes,or her fair complexion; her facial features do not appeal to the camera.951
944

Johan Söderberg, Röda läppar och shinglat hår – Konsumtionen av kosmetika i Sverige
1900–1960 (Stockholm: Podium, 2001), 92 f.
945
Anders Ekström, Damen med Velocipeden – En tingens kulturhistoria. Forskningsprogrammet Stella, Modern vetenskapshistoria 1850–2000, Arbetsrapport 13. (Uppsala: Avdelningen för vetenskapshistoria, Uppsala universitet, 1997), 22; and Wenström, 114 f.
946
Ekström, 22.
947
See also: Therése Andersson, ”Modernity in a Bottle – Female Self–Representation, Fashion and Film in 1920’ Sweden” (forthcoming, 201?)
948
Kathy Peiss, Hop in A Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), 45 ff.
949
Eileen Bowser, History of The American Cinema: The Transformation of Cinema 1907–
1915 (New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1990), 87 ff.
950
Jan Holmberg, Förtätade bilder – Filmens närbilder i historisk och teoretisk belysning(Stockholm: Aura förlag, 2000) 32 ff and 63.
951”Hur man utväljer en filmstjärna – och varför Justine Johnstone blev vald” Filmen
24:1920, 10.
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If the female star in front of the camera does not possess the specific filmic
beauty, she is regarded as condemned, and: “if she further lacks soulfulness,
intelligence and liveliness, she is a complete disaster. Because it is beauty withis gloss of coordinated talents, which command success in the film.”952 The
discussion of the film star’s face, its features and beauty for photographingwell, repeat physiognomic principles, and generates further questions on definitions of femininity and how these were embodied and represented. In an
article on the success of Marjorie Daw, it is further pointed out that any actress, who wishes to make it in the film business needs to possess a beauty
which expresses “intelligence, talent, inspiration, personality, grace, charmand several other rare, and in combination; almost nonexistent outer and innerqualities.”953 In these texts the camera and filmic techniques are presented as
the means for distinguishing the uniqueness of the star as something abstract.
Similar thoughts on the photographic value of the face are further exploredand presented in another article in Filmen as a matter of mathematical principles. In the article an American director explains to the female readers how
they could proceed for discovering their own photographic properties in accordance with the ideal camera face. The ideal camera face is said to be a
premise that has been practiced for a long time, but something the audiences
have been left ignorant of. The readers are then instructed to stand in front of amirror, and with the help of a set square and a measuring tape calculate thecurves, contours and surfaces of their own face.954 The perfect camera face
was described as having fixed anatomic proportions, and certain mathematicalinterrelated conditions, deriving from the bone structure. It is further pointed
out that a film star therefore must fulfil these mathematical conditions ofbeauty in order to gratify the camera. According to the director interviewed thesuccess of a particular film is more or less dependent on the actress’s ability tointerpret the plot through facial expressions and signs rather than overly theatrical play. However, this is said to be possible only if the actress has a perfectcamera face.955 These concepts of unique filmic beauty in terms of photographic proportions are presented as exceptional, as well as abstract; something that only a few women possess, as something internal and innate, insteadof presenting it as rather mainly depending on cinematography and the construction of the beauty ideals of the time.
Like the readings Balázs did of Asta Nielsen and Lillian Gish, the stating ofthe ”true” face as displayed by the camera, revealing the soul, is in fact, at thesame time the carefully made up face. The facial features have been corrected
through cosmetics and exact lightning, but are meant to appear as non–fabricated and authentic. The contradiction is apparent; the consciously con952

Ibid., 10.
”Marjorie Daw – filmens sötaste stjärna” Filmjournalen 3:1921, 82.
954”Ideal ansiktet” Filmen 24:1920, 14.
955
Ibid., 15.
953

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structed is at the same time presumed as essential and the most authentic. The
belief of abstract uniqueness of the film stars is however negotiated and translated in other articles, giving the stars more human characteristics, and as such
constructing different recognisable femininities. Both Filmen and Filmjournalen appropriated the looks of film stars as guides to different personality
types. This practice developed into typologies presenting types like “thesweetheart” and “woman of the world”,956 classifying women according topersonality, each symbolising attitudes and traits.
Anna & Co
As mentioned earlier, throughout the 1910s and 1920s Anna Q Nilsson wasvery famous in Sweden and magazines frequently published articles and interviews, and of course pictures of her. In Filmen and Filmjournalen especially,
the female stars from Europe and America are presented as the protagonists offashion and beauty culture, pointing to discussions concerning aspects such as
ethnicity, whiteness and youth. The film stars, who are understood to be underconstant visual scrutiny, are considered as standards for what all women could
look like if they just put a little time and effort into it, which also illustrates
appearance as constructed by commercial products, as well as it is highlights
gaze as theoretical notion. Popular style icons in Sweden at the time, concerning fashion, make–up and body ideals were Gloria Swanson and Mary
Pickford, and of course Anna Q Nilsson. In Filmjournalen one writer states,with reference to the influence of film stars: “Not least the movies have taught
us how to ’make ourselves beautiful.’”957
In both Filmen and Filmjournalen stars were often measured in relation toconceptions of what was called Nordic ideals of beauty, i.e. fair skin, blondhair and blue eyes as external signs compared with inner virtues such as kindness and generosity.958 These references to what is “Nordic” entail negotiationsof the transnational relations and especially American influences following
Hollywood films. Articles considering actress Anna Q Nilsson are excellent
examples of this practice. In an article in Filmen she is presented as:Miss Nilsson is one of the most beautiful women in the moving pictures, andher true, Swedish, blond hair is one of the reasons to her successful career.
Her charm and personality distinguish her as a genuine movie star.959

According to Filmen, Nilsson embodies all the components of the nationalromanticism of an “ideal Nordic woman”:
956”Det obestämbara något… Var är popularitetens nyckel – att symbolisera en typ?” Filmjournalen 10:1923, 154.
957
”Skönhet, grace och elegans” Filmjournalen 35–37:1925, 587.
958
See i.e.; ”På te hos flickorna Gish” Filmjournalen 8:1922, 242 f, ”En pratstund med dansösen – filmstjärnan Mae Murray” Filmen 21:1920, 8 and ”Senaste filmsvärmeriet: Anita Page”
Filmjournalen 13:1929, 21.
959”Anna Q. Nilsson – Den fagra blomman från Sverige” Filmen 16:1920, 12 f.
344

Her delightful being combined with her beauty––her full red lips, the golden
hair capturing the rays of the sun, the delicate complexion so typical of her
northern native country, the expressive eyes… she is the fair flower of Sweden.960

Nilsson came to personify a new feminine ideal in the early 1920s Sweden.
During the first decades of the century, a change in notions of ideal beauty
occurred––moving from the slender, innocent type with a pale complexion
that dominated in the 19th century, to the rosy, sound and healthy ideal––allmeasured according to “Nordic standards” in appearance: i.e. blond hair andblue eyes. The normative system of meaning underlying these new ideals forbeauty were classified according to notions of ethnicity and Nordic nationalromanticism. This is particularly clear in the depiction of not only Anna Q
Nilsson, but of Greta Garbo as “the divine” or “the mysterious woman” aswell. In Filmjournalen Garbo’s background of growing up in a poor part ofStockholm, and her ethnicity signified by the colour of her hair, are appropriated in the same way as to Nilsson, as biological explanations for her successand popularity,961 which express determinism and essentialism and deny theconstruction of the image.
These typologies are in addition to notions of appearance and ethnicity constructed according to film characters, resulting in an understanding of every
type as reduced to personifying and performing, as well as to possessing, acertain set of characteristics. Besides Anna Q Nilsson as “the fair flower of
Sweden”, ingénues like Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish are presented
throughout the pages of Filmen and Filmjournalen as just as good–hearted as
the women they portray in films, and also as ethereal, emphasising their thinand slender bodies.962 Theda Bara and Alla Nazimova are presented as vampires,963 and a dichotomy between the vampires and ingénues is maintainedsince they are presented as binary oppositions. These opposites are thus broken up as stars like Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo are presented as additional types of femininity, embodying notions of “the glamorous
woman” emphasising luxury and lavish fashion; of “the sporty woman” withreference to health, motion and modernity; and of “the mysterious woman”
where secretiveness and fashion is seen to be used as protection for that di-960

Ibid., 12 f.
See i.e.; ”’Vikingarna’ på segertåg i västerled” Filmjournalen 8:1926, 214 and 224, and”Varför segrar Greta Garbo?” Filmjournalen 6:1928, 11.
962
See i.e.; ”På deras vanliga lilla sätt. Manér och individuella smådrag ofta säkrare medel till
framgång än talang” Filmjournalen 34:1923, 593 and 600, ”En pratstund med Mary Pickfords
sminkör” Filmjournalen 7:1925, 137 and ”På te hos flickorna Gish” Filmjournalen 8:1922,
242 f.
963
See i.e.; ”Vamp mot sin vilja – Nita Naldi vill vara god men får inte för regissören” Filmjournalen 11:1923, 182, ”Alla Nazimova som konstnärinna” Filmjournalen 5:1920, 158 f and”En portion näs–vishet – Är näsan karaktärens spegel?” Filmjournalen 7:1923, 102.
961

345

vineness.964 These additional types of femininity are placed in the field between the two opposites mentioned above. The depictions and typologies presented by Filmen and Filmjournalen thus constituted fixed, ready–to–apply
categories of femininity.
Conclusion
Considering the construction of gender, two contradictory discourses were present in Filmen and Filmjournalen during the first few decades of the 20th century: an essentialist discourse perceiving identity as determined, and an anti–
essentialist discourse regarding identity as a result of construction and performance. The concepts surrounding beauty culture in Sweden at the time, startingfrom the dichotomy between appearance as natural or consciously constructed,
are paradoxical when presented as simultaneously manipulating and emancipatory. On the one hand: the abstract notions of the perfect camera face mystify thesilent film star; the ”true” face as revealing the actress’ soul, on the other hand,the face is carefully made up through cosmetics accentuating construction. As
such, the made up face is thus understood as non–fabricated and authentic.
The belief that the inner virtues of a person are perceptible through the facial
features and registered by the camera, translated into readings of the female stars
as personality types, and as such defined femininity by appearance. Different
modes of femininity are therefore performed through the representation of film
stars. Anna Q Nilsson is in accordance with national romanticism depicted as
embodying the notion of the ideal Nordic woman, and for example, Gloria
Swanson the glamorous American film star. This categorisation of individualtypes of femininity leads back to 19th century notions of female authenticity, in
physiognomic principles with the concept of identity as fixed and determinate,excluding all possibilities for change or development. In opposition to thisphysiognomic line of thought, modern fashion and beauty culture offered possibilities for change and for creation, as means of self–representation. With reference to Teresa de Lauretis’s viewpoint, cosmetics could be considered as technologies of the self; as technologies for creating and recreating ones’ own self;
as well as technologies for creating and recreating meanings of femininity. In
connection with Judith Butler’s thoughts, de Lauretis’s view offers an interesting
perspective, where the production of the self is done through continual performance, and there the self is constantly reconstituted. Even if the very practice of
putting on make–up in public drew attention and revealed a conscious construction, it questioned the physiognomic idea of female authenticity, and signalled adesire for independence in symbolic terms. Film stars as public figures are foundto be caught in the middle of this tension, embodying both these opposite views.
964

See i.e. ”Mycket toalettprakt i Gloria Swansons senaste film” Filmjournalen 2:1923, 21,”Hollywoods praktiska betydelse” Filmjournalen 15:1933, 8 f och 27 and ”Garbos praktiska
betydelse – Greta Garbos kläder är uttrycksfullare än någon annan stjärnas” Filmjournalen
31:1932, 18.
346

Women between Screenwriting and Fashion Journalism:
The Cases of Ruth Goetz and Ola Alsen
Mila Ganeva
I.
With the emergence of the longer narrative film around 1913 and the paralleldevelopment of a more sophisticated and socially diverse mass audience, thework of the screenwriter began to gain importance. It was especially in thewake of World War I, between 1918 and 1921, when German film productions experienced a boom and the feature film length was set at about 90
minutes, that the demand for more complex and dramatically coherent film
scripts became apparent. This demand was met by a new cohort of authors,working predominantly in the fields of journalism or of Unterhaltungs,–
Kolportage– and Trivialliteratur (entertainment literature or pulp fiction)
who were used to writing fast and keeping deadlines, and who were also
always attuned to the tastes of the contemporary audience. Studies by KarinBruns and Jürgen Kasten point to the fact, without further elaboration, thatfilm writing in Germany as an emerging professional field attracted numerous prolific journalists and writers of “trivial literature”: E.A. Dupont, Ruth
Goetz, and Thea von Harbou.965 While established literary authors continued
to be skeptical toward the aesthetic status of the new mass medium of film
and to avoid working for it, screenwriting became known as a new professional field to which aspiring young writers found relatively easy access.
In 1918 the German trade journal, Der Kinematograph, devoted a special
issue edited by E.A. Dupont on screenplay writers, an ostensibly marginalized and “worst paid” group within the film industry.966 The writers werereferred to exclusively with the masculine form of the noun: “Filmschriftsteller” or “Filmautor” (film writer, film author). The only the only woman
scenarist featured in this special issue with a short text and a photograph was
Ruth Goetz, who wrote:
The film writer is like a ’violet’ that blooms hidden from sight. The audience
does not know anything either about him or his work. Rarely does he getmentioned and he is never seen. If the film is bad, it’s the writer’s fault. If thefilm is earns the label “good” or “very good,” then the writer is entitled to a965

See Karin Bruns, “Kino–Stil! (Nationalistische) Lesearten des Expressionismus im Filmder zwanziger Jahre” in Die Einübung des dokumentarischen Blickes, ed. Ursula von Keitz
und Kay Hoffmann (Marburg: Schüren, 2001), 103–121. See also Jürgen Kasten, “Populare
Wunschträume und spannende Abenteuer. Das erfolgreiche trivialdramatische Erzählkonzept
der Jane Bess und anderer Drehbuchautorinnen des deutschen Stummfilms” in Das Drehbuch: Geschichte, Theorie, Praxis, ed. Alexander Schwarz (Munich: Schaudig, Bauer, Ledig,
1992), 17–53.
966
Ewald Andrè Dupont, “Aus der Praxis des Filmautors. Eine Rundfrage.” Der Kinematograph, Nr. 600, 3 July, 1918.
347

miniscule credit. This is different for the playwright and if one has started
writing for the theater stage, one has quickly to adjust to this reality. […] I
am letting this journal publish my photograph, so that people can at least
once see a film writer. 967

In reality, however, the participation of women in this branch of the film
industry, in screen writing, was unusually high. According to one study, inthe lead were Ruth Goetz, Jane Bess, and Fanny Carlsen, each of whom authored the scripts for over 50 films produced in the period 1916–1930; they
were followed by Marie Luise Droop, Margaret Maria Langen, and the best–
known scriptwriter, Thea von Harbou, with about 20 screenplays each forfilms that came out in the period 1919–1929. This same study by JürgenKasten estimates that 20% of all produced film scripts were authored by
women in the earlier phase, 1916–1925, dropping to about 8% in the later
years of silent cinema.968
Despite the high percentage of women in screenwriting, female film writers have occupied a blind spot in the film history of Germany and Austria.
Apart from Reinhold Keiner’s 1984 monograph on Thea von Harbou andJürgen Kasten’s groundbreaking article on Jane Bess, there has been no sustained research on women as scriptwriters in silent cinema. This article isconceived as a modest first step in rediscovering and introducing the professional women scenarists in German silent film. The focus is on a specificsub–group of screenwriters––women who concurrently to their careers in thefilm industry were also well known as fashion journalists, contributing regularly to a variety of mass–circulation magazines such as Die Dame, EleganteWelt, and Der Moden–Spiegel. In order to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of silent films of the late teens and early 1920s, this study addresses
the following questions: how did screen plays shape emerging popular genres and contribute to the establishment of generic conventions? How did they
direct in some very concrete ways the filmic experience of the audience,
particularly women? Finally, a closer look at two films––Die Kleine aus derKonfektion (1924, The Little Berlin Mannequin, dir. Wolfgang Neff) andLuxusweibchen (1925, A Classy Woman, dir. Erich Schönfelder), written
respectively by Ruth Goetz and Ola Alsen––demonstrates that the journalists’ expert knowledge in current styles and modes of presentation of clothes
967

See Der Kinematograph, Nr. 600, 3 July, 1918: “Der Filmautor ist das “Veilchen,” das im
verborgenen blüht. Das Publikum kennt weder ihn noch seine Tätigkeit, Er wird selten erwähnt – doch nie gezeigt. Ist der Film schlecht, trägt der Autor die Schuld. Verdient der Filmder Prädikat “gut” oder gar “sehr gut” – dann darf der Autor einen mikroskopisch kleinen Teilauf sein Konto rechnen. Wesentlich diese Punkte unterscheiden den Filmautor von dem Bühnenschriftsteller, und wer je Bühnen– oder Theaterstücke geschrieben hat, muß für den Filmauch in diesem Punkte umlernen. Damit man einen Filmautor auch einmal sieht, übergebe ich
Ihnen gern mein Bild.” All translations from the original German are mine unless otherwise
noted.
968
Jürgen Kasten, Film schreiben: eine Geschichte des Drehbuchs (Vienna: Hora–Verlag,
1990) 54–55. See also Kasten, “Populäre Wunschträume und spannende Abenteuer.”348

was instrumental in the production of popular silent films, in which fashion
was not only part of a spectacular mise–en–scène but also served as the raw
material for the narrative.
II.
The fashion theme shaped distinct cinematic conventions, creating a separate
sub–genre that became known as Konfektionskomödie, or “fashion farce”,
whose rise coincided with the flourishing of Berlin’s fashion industry, Konfektion, from around 1900 to the late 1920s. Fashion farces were among thefirst longer and commercially successful feature movies that came out between 1911 and 1918, including the first productions that featured Ernst
Lubitsch, initially as the lead actor, and later as both an actor and director:
Die Firma heiratet (1914, “Marriage in the Company”, dir. Carl Wilhelm),
Der Stolz der Firma (1914 “The Pride of the Company,” dir. Carl Wilhelm),
Der Blusenkönig (1917 “The Blouse King,” dir. Ernst Lubitsch) and
Schuhpalast Pinkus (1916, “Shoe Palace Pinkus,” dir. Ernst Lubitsch).969
Thomas Elsaesser, Sabine Hake and others have also pointed out that his
early films show how connected cinema is to commerce, marketing, consumer goods, and fashion, and how the Konfektion milieu as a world of
make–believe “effectively mirrors or parodies cinema itself.”970 However,these early Konfektionskomödien are also remarkable for combining a focus
on gender and class issues with visual pleasure and a genuinely democratic
perspective. The female characters are endowed with a degree of erotic andsocial freedom that hardly existed in real life in any class at the time.971 The
stories often center on a star mannequin, a young woman of lower–classbackground, who at first appears to be easy prey for the men in the company—from the owner down to the sales clerks, who all plot to become herlover. In fact, she very quickly asserts her own will primarily because she is969

For insightful analyses of these early films with Lubitsch, see Sabine Hake, Passions andDeceptions: The Early Films of Ernst Lubitsch (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992) 25–36. See
also Michael Hanisch, Auf den Spuren der Filmgeschichte: Berliner Schauplätze (Berlin:
Henschel, 1991), 284.
970
Thomas Elsaesser, “Early German Cinema: A second Life?” in A Second Life: German
Cinema’s First Decades, ed. Thomas Elsaesser and Michael Wedel (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
UP, 1996), 25.
971
Georg Seeßlen claims that the utopian moment in Wilheminian as well as later Weimar
comedy is tied to the image of the emancipated, pre–active, and socially mobile woman. See
Georg Seeßlen, “Das Unterhaltungskino II: Das Spiel mit der Liebe: Aspekte der deutschen
Stummfilmkomödie,” in Die Perfektionierung das Scheins: Das Kino der Weimarer Republik
im Kontext der Künste, ed. Harro Segeberg (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2000), 99–102.
For an extended and incisive discussion of early Weimar popular cinema, especially the importance of visual pleasure, see Christian Rogowski, “From Ernst Lubitsch to Joe May: Challenging Kracauer’s Demonology with Weimar Popular Film,” in Light Motives: German
Popular Film in Perspective, ed. Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy (Detroit, MI: Wayne
State UP, 2003), 1–23.
349

smarter, more ambitious, independent, and liberated than anyone had expected.
Throughout the 1920s and the early 1930s, fashion comedies continued toproliferate. They displayed alluring locations, events, and products associated with the modern lifestyle in the German metropolis––fashion salons,fashion parades, and fashionable clothes––all of which were often unaffordable for the lower– and middle–class audience in real life, but could be indulged with ease on the big screen. The protagonists in these films were also
appealing to the mass public: there was always the shrewd male shop assistant who knew how to cater to capricious and vain customers; and there wasalso the ambitious, smart, indispensable female model (“Konfektionsmädel,”“Probiermamsell,” “Gelbstern,” or “Konfektioneuse”) who hoped to acquire
middle–class status, to become famous an actress, a film star, or to open her
own designer salon.
The study of Konfektionskomödien, on the writing of which well–known
fashion journalists collaborated, demonstrates how fashion and film, together, taught the viewers from the screen how to see, analyze, and experience modern life. Admittedly, both media nourished fantasies of unattainableglamour. But they also provided ideas and practical advice, they taught andinspired. What Jeanne Allen has emphasized in her study of the American
film and consumerism of the 1930 and 1940s, applies to this early context ofthe fashion farces as well: These films offered access––“ownership by viewing”––to an otherwise inaccessible material environment, to a way of dressing, living, consuming that is “promised to the viewer ideologically, butawarded only to the eye.”972 Sabine Hake, however, has complicated ourunderstanding of the close collaboration between film and fashion in the first
three decades of the twentieth century by pointing out that this collaboration
is predicated upon two parallel processes that she identifies as “spectacularization of the commodity” and “narrativization of consumption.”973 Within amodernist Fordist culture that validated mass production and mass consumption as forms of democratization, film transferred these ideas into the sphereof fantasy production, into the world of images and stories. In other words,
as Hake claims, because of the role of film and other visual arts in the presentation and promotion of products, consumer culture became both a spectacle and a narrative.
Particularly helpful for the current project is Hake’s statement about theaffinity between product advertisement and film within modernity, since thisstatement is applicable to the relationship between fashion and film as well.
One could claim that both media––Weimar cinema and the Berlin Konfek972

Jeanne Allen, “The Film Viewer as Consumer,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 5(1980): 481–499.
973
Sabine Hake, "Das Kino, die Werbung und die Avantgarde," Die Spur durch den Spiegel:
Der Film in der Kultur der Moderne, ed. Johann N. Schmidt, Michael Wedel, and Malte
Hagener (Berlin: Bertz, 2004), 193.
350

tion industry– employed display practices that expanded the horizon of visual experience for the mass audience; they addressed real human needs anddesires by way of cultivating an imaginary relationship to the material world;
and they used images, text, and sound in order to spin out a variety of individual identification scenarios that were part of larger processes of social,ethnic, gender and national identity formation.974
Given these theoretical premises, fashion farces––as a peculiar mix of spectacle and narrative––appear as a practical guide for an audience of increasingly
more mobile and often working women, through the practices of fashion thatwere relevant, with some modification, in their own everyday lives. After all,the German New Woman, as recent studies have pointed out, was not only asurface projection, a passive or imaginary product, but also a “real” subject:
she worked outside of the home, had some leisure time, had some money tospend, and thus wanted to know what the up–to–date fabrics, designs, andhaircuts were, how make–up and lipstick were applied, and what clothes were
to be worn on what occasions. And it was the films to which the female viewers flocked, that satisfied this need. Thus, Konfektionskomödien functioned, inthe words of one contemporary observer, as “a live fashion magazine” (“einlebendiger Modejournal”), as a compendium of suggestions, tips, and updates
disseminated to a mass audience at no extra charge.975 True, they offered fantasies beyond reach, but they were a source of practical, usable advice as well.
Conversely, the films’ visual style itself was influenced by emerging formsof popular live entertainment such as the fashion show (“Modenschau”) andthe numerous fashion pageants (“Modekonkurrenzen”). Fashion shows incorporated in the films of various genres fulfilled multiple overlapping functions,some direct and obvious, other more subtle and elusive. First, they provided an
occasion for direct product placement, and needless to say, designer houses
such as Hermann Gerson or Wolff frequently took advantage of this opportunity (the source of the costumes was listed in the credits). Second, the fashionshows became one of the paradigmatic cinematic moments in which the female body was transformed literally into a spectacle, with the camera closing
up on the new, fetishized forms––slender torsos and exposed legs. At the sametime, the fashion shows within the films constituted significant breaks in the
narrative flow, during which the spectators were offered glimpses at the earlier
cinema of attraction preserved fragmentarily in the fabric of Weimar’s popular, story–based cinema. On could say that this disruption associated with thefashion show in early Weimar cinema in some ways reflected (even in themost straightforward and trivial narratives) the experience of modernity,
which was in its essence an experience of an environment becoming increasingly more distracting, disjunctive, fragmented.

974
975

See Hake, "Das Kino, die Werbung und die Avantgarde," 193–4.
Curt Moreck, Sittengeschichte des Kinos (Dresden: Paul Aretz, 1926), 239–40.
351

III.
Two Berlin–based fashion journalists, Ruth Goetz and Ola Alsen, distinguishedthemselves in scriptwriting and the films they wrote may be considered exemplary of the bonds established in the late 1910s and early 1920s between fashionand film, between journalism and scriptwriting, and, finally, between film viewing and consumerism. I will start out by pointing to one difficulty in writing
about fashion farces and their scriptwriters. Die Kleine aus der Konfektion(1924) shares the fate of 90% of Weimar films: all copies of it are lost, and Luxusweibchen (1925) is preserved only in a fragment. My insights into these works
have been thus informed by limited screening sessions at the film archives andby secondary textual and visual archival materials such as reviews, advertisingmaterial in Illustrierter Film–Kurier, stills, and censorship cards.
Here is some biographical information on the two journalists/screen writers:
Ola Alsen (1880 in Bonn––1956 in Munich) (pseudonym for Henriette Alsberg), daughter ofthe Jewish merchant Lehmann Alsberg, was one of the best–
known and most prolific fashion journalists in the 1920s. The 1930 Reichshandbuch der deutschen Gesellschaft identifies her as author of “elegant prose”[’elegante Prosa”]. She was fashion editor of Elegante Welt, but wrote regularly
also for Sport im Bild, Die Dame, Film–Kurier, and, in the period 1921–1924,
for the Der Moden–Spiegel, a weekly supplement to Mosse’s Berliner Tageblattund Handelszeitung. Alsen was a best–selling author of books of advice on
cosmetics, make–up, fashion, manners, and beauty. Her novel Das Paradies der
Frau: Berliner Roman (1919) sheds light on the workings of the Berlin garment
industry after the First World War and the role of women as designers and entrepreneurs. Her 1930 documentation Die Tochter Lots studies the lives andproblems of women in prison. Other novels include: Hier wohnt das Glück(1910), Garten der Leidenschaft (1920), Charlotte Bell (1924), Durch Klippen(1924), Ein Mädchen von heute (1925). Alsen also wrote the screenplays forseveral films: Treibende Kraft (1921, dir. Zoltan Nagy), Des Lebens und derLiebe Wellen (1921, dir. Lorenz Bätz), Monna Wanna (1922, dir. Richard
Eichberg), and Luxusweibchen (1924, dir. Erich Schönfelder). Sister of a prominent lawyer, Dr. Max Alsberg, and married to the editor –in–chief of the 8–Uhr–
Abendblatt Hanns Schultze, Alsen was a famous socialite who ran one of themost popular salons in Berlin. In 1933, in the hope that she would be sparedfrom persecution, she converted to Christianity. Her brother, Dr. Max Alsberg,
committed suicide. Shortly after, Ola Alsen managed to emigrate to Englandand later to the United States. After the Second World War she returned toEurope, lived in Munich and Zurich and continued to write on fashion for the
Swiss independent daily newspaper Die Tat.976
976

The biographical data is based on the following sources: Reichshandbuch der deutschen
Gesellschaft: Handbuch der Persönlichkeiten in Wort und Bild, ed. Robert Volz (Berlin:352

Ruth Goetz (1886– date of death unknown) was an active contributor to the
Modenotizen in Die Dame from 1923 till 1925, before becoming editor for
Der Modenspiegel where she worked in the late 1920s and 1930s. From1925 to 1928 she signed her articles as “Ruth von Schüching.” Goetz pursued a career as a writer, wrote novels and advice books, and is known as thescreenplay author for silent films, starting as early as in 1916. One of her
first film scripts, Noemi, die blonde Jüdin (1917, dir. Hubert Moest) was
included in a 1917 manual entitled Wie schreibe ich einen Film by Wilhelm
Adler as a model manuscript (“vorbildliches Probemanuscript”). Other films
include the series Die Herrin der Welt (1919, dir. Joe May), Heiratsannoncen (1925, dir. Fritz Kaufmann), Die Kleine aus der Konfektion (1924, dir.
Wolfgang Neff), Wie bleibe ich jung und schön (1926, dir. Wolfgang Neff),
and Dirnentragödie (1927, dir. Bruno Rahn). Along with Ola Alsen, Ruth
Goetz has been recognized by her contemporaries as both one of the first,
most influential fashion journalists in Berlin and one of the most prolificscriptwriters.977
Ruth Goetz substantially adapted Josef Wiener–Brausenberg’s novel Warenhausmädchen as she wrote the film script for Die Kleine aus der Konfektion(The Little Berlin Mannequin) directed by Maurice Turner (pseudonym for
Wolfgang Neff). In its essence, a comedy of errors and mix–ups, the film
starts as a melodrama: poor Trude Schneider (played by star acress Evi Eva)
is thrown out of her home, rejected by her lover (who also turns out to be aswindler), Paul Töpfer (Reinhold Schünzel), and saved by a noble industrialist Heinz Köllner (Karl Beckersachs) just as out of desperation she is about
to jump in the cold waters of the river Spree. But before the two––the deprived working–class girl and the rich factory owner––are finally united in a
happy marriage, the film traces the successful career of Trude, who takes ona job as a mannequin for distinguished Berlin fashion store (Konfektionshaus). The scenes portraying the everyday life of the mannequin with amixture of realism and fantasy are characteristic for many of the fashion
farces of the period––both literary and filmic. It is precisely in these scenesthat the expertise and craftsmanship of the fashion journalist as a scriptwriterbecame apparent, give rise to scenes of pure spectacle and offer the audiencean opportunity for closer observation of cuts, styles and accessories.

Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, 1930); Petra Budke und Jutta Schulze, Schriftstellerinnen in
Berlin 1871 bis 1945. Ein Lexikon zu Leben und Werk (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag 1995);“Ola Alsen gestorben,” Der Weg. Berliner allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland, 21 February 1956. Lexikon deutsch–jüdischer Autoren, ed. Renate Heuer and Andrea
Boelke, vol.1 (Munich: Saur, 1992) 125–26.
977This biography is relying on the following sources: Lexikon des Films, eds. Dr. Kurt Mühsam and Egon Jacobsohn (Berlin: Verlag der Lichtbildbühne, 1926), 65. See also JürgenKasten, “Populare Wunschträume und spannende Abenteuer.” 21; Hätte ich das Kino! Der
Schriftsteller und der Stummfilm, ed. Ludwig Greve et. al. (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1976), 308.
353

Die Kleine aus der Konfektion is characterized repeatedly by the critics at
the time as a credible “milieu study” of Berlin’s fashion scene. It offers
glimpses at the life and social status of the typical mannequin in a Konfektionshaus, who parades fashionable dresses for upper class customers. The job isless glamorous that it appears: for a minimal pay, Trude is required to put on
and take off dozens of outfits a day, yet she is not allowed to talk to the customers or to collect any commission from the sale of clothes.978 At the sametime, the setting of substantial parts of the film in a garment store is used as an
excuse to stage several fashion shows––pure visual extravaganzas that contributed little to the development of the plot but fulfilled other functions. First,
as the costumes for the fashion shows were provided by leading Berlin designer houses (de Beyer, Gerson and others, often mentioned by name in thecredits and in the printed film programs), the fashion show within the film
served as an effective advertisement for these businesses. Secondly, while inreality the seasonal fashion shows in department stores and designer salonscharged a considerably high fee for attendance (as if one is going to the theater), the fashion show within film could be enjoyed without extra pay and thus
constituted a significant draw for the mass audience.
Die Kleine aus der Konfektion should be seen as part of a trend establishedin earlier of fashion farces, most notably Gelbstern (1921, “Mannequin,” dir.
Wolfgang Neff) and Die kleine Midinette (1921, “The Little Salesgirl,” dir.
Wolfgang Neff) (both written by another prolific female scriptwriter, JaneBess), as well as continued in later works of the same genre such as Jaap
Speyer’s Die drei Mannequins (Die drei Probiermamsells) (1926, “The three
Mannequins”), Jennys Bummel durch die Männer (1929, “Jenny and HerMen”) and Moritz macht sein Glück (1930, “Moritz Gets Lucky”). Not unlike
other works in the genre, what Die Kleine aus der Konfektion lacks in artistic
value it makes up in attractiveness for a large and unpretentious audience. Or
as the reviewer for Film–Kurier has summed up its merits: “[This is] a filmthat has given up artistic ambition; but the director has an instinct for the sortof things that attract big audiences. The spectators will come in droves to se
this film and its commercial success is guaranteed.”979 In most works of thegenre, the story is secondary to the spectacle: “A story that flows by in beautiful, well staged pictures, without causing to much excitement.”980 And it is thisspectacle of fashionable display that constitutes the significant draw of such
978

For more on the mannequin as a social type and as a character in popular film and literature, see Mila Ganeva, “The Beautiful Body of the Mannequin: Display Practices in Weimar
Germany,” in Leibhaftige Moderne. Körper in Kunst und Massenmedien 1918–1933, ed.
Michael Cowan and Kai Sicks. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2005, 152–168.
979
Review of Die Kleine aus der Konfektion for Film–Kurier, 16 April 1924: “Ein Film, derauf jeglichen künstlerischen Ehrgeiz verzichtet; aber der Regisseur hat den Instinkt für das,
womit man das große Publikum packt und so ist denn ein Film entstanden, auf den die Zuschauermassen fliegen und der überall ein todsicheres Geschäft verbürgen dürfte.”
980
Review of Gelbstern in Filmkurier, January 28, 1922: “Eine Handlung, die in hübschen,gut inszenierten Bildern vorübergleitet, ohne sonderliche Aufregungen hervorzubringen.”354

films, especially for the female viewers: “Oh, and the moment in which themannequins appear for long fashion parades, the women in the audience will
get more delight for their eyes that they have paid for.”981
This tendency to favor the exhibition at the cost of the story or the artistic
sophistication is prevalent in the film Luxusweibchen (1925) as well. There
was hardly anyone with more expert knowledge of the workings of the fashion
world than journalist Ola Alsen to write the script. The title character, Harriet
von Randow, played by Lia Eibenschütz, presents a second, less frequent but
nonetheless popular type of mannequin in the fashion farces of the 1920s:
Harriet von Randow is not a working–class girl who rises to the ranks of highsociety through her employment in a Konfektionshaus, but a spoiled upper–class woman, who is suddenly abandoned by her wealthy husband; in order tosupport herself in the new situation, she is forced to take on a job as a mannequin in a fashion salon (“Modehaus Rainer”). Not only is she successful in her
professional career as a mannequin, but her talents and skills help the owner ofthe salon overcome a difficult financial situation.982 Needless to say, the two ofthem fell in love and after a series of comical complications they marry. As in
the other fashion farces, here too, the predictable scenario is subordinated tothe spectacle of the fashion show. The reviewer for the Film–Kurier wrote:[this film] becomes a Baedeker, so to speak, though elegant life in the city. It
brings us to night clubs and to fashion salons with their regular fashion shows[…] The story is just a pretext the staging of these various events. […] Overall [this film] is a tasteful picture magazine, in which the audience willbrowse with delight.983

Overall, the message of the film is mixed, as is its aesthetics. On the one
hand, it preaches moderation as far as the consumption of luxury items isconcerned, because this obsession with appearances has catalyzed bothbreak–ups and bankruptcies within the family. On the other hand, the filmsuggests that fashion could be a viable field for the professional realizationof women, but then uses a narrative twist to offer even more lavish scenes offashion parades prompting the audience to indulge in fantasies presented
from the screen.
981

Review of Gelbstern in Filmkurier, January 28, 1922: “Ach, und die Augen der Zuschauerinnen kommen auf mehr als ihre Kosten, wenn da die Mannequins in langer Reihe aufmarschieren.”982
A similar type of character, a wealthy woman who due to unusual circumstances in her life
starts working as a mannequin and quite a successful one, is found in the film Der Fürst vonPappenheim (1926, “The Prince of Pappenheim”, dir. Richard Eichenberg).
983
Review of Luxusweibchen, Film–Kurier, 21 April 1925: “So wird er [der Film] sozusagen
zum Bädeker durch die elegante Welt (womit aber nicht die so bekannte Zeitschrift gemeintist). Er führt in die Welt der Nachtlokale, in die Modehäuser mit den obligaten Modeschauen[…] Die Handlung erfüllt ihren Zweck als Vorwand für diese diversen Veranstaltungen zu
dienen […]. Alles in allem ein geschmackvolles Bilderalbum, in dem jedes Publikum gern
blättern wird.”355

As it addressed the questions of cinematic tradition, visual pleasure, andgenre, this brief discussion of film and fashion has hopefully brought us to abetter and more nuanced understanding of how both media worked. Closelycooperating with each other, especially by incorporating elaborate scenes offashion shows within the cinematic narratives, film and fashion engaged thesenses, molded the tastes, influenced everyday practices, and, ultimately,
determined the experience of modernity for mass audiences. And a key rolein this process played the fashion journalists and scriptwriters Ruth Goetz
and Ola Alsen whose expertise in all matters of fashion was well respectedby their contemporaries.

356

A Method to this Madness? The Myth of the Mad Silent
Star
Mary Desjardins
In her 1980 autobiography, Gloria Swanson describes how it dawned on her,
only moments after she lost the Academy Award for Best Actress of 1950 toJudy Holliday, that the public expected her to act like the film character
Norma Desmond, whom she played in her Oscar–nominated role: “They expected scenes from me, wild sarcastic tantrums. They wanted Norma Desmond, as if I had hooked up sympathetically, disastrously, with the role byplaying it.”984 Her feelings were confirmed in the months and years aheadwhen most of the film offers she received were versions of that mad silent starfrom Sunset Blvd. Swanson omitted, or may have forgotten by 1980, that she
had an early inkling of the public’s misconception about her, at the time of hercontinent–wide promotional tour for the film. A study of press reports andinterviews that served as accounts and commentary on this tour in the months
before the national release of Sunset Blvd suggests that the actress was alreadystruggling to create a discourse to counter what was apparently a growing
perception that the real, famous star of silent films—Gloria Swanson—might
be like the fictional has–been star of silent films—Norma Desmond—that is,excessively narcissistic and violently delusional.
In the course of Swanson’s promotional tour, several newspaper reporters
characterize the silent era in Hollywood as a time and place of crazy excess, aswell as express surprise that Swanson is still youthful–looking and even recognized after all so many years off the screen. The St. Louis Post– Dispatch ofJune 4, 1950 reports that it has been hinted that the “neurotic former star ofsilent films [in Sunset Boulevard] is a “thinly disguised fiction of [Swanson’s]
life,” although Swanson denies it and the “facts of her life bear her out.” Perhaps in response to these rumors, Swanson is quoted the next day, June 5,
1950, in the St. Louis Star–Times to say, “I know public taste.... I wasn’t a gal
with blinders on, living nothing but pictures, I had other interests.” To the Des
Moines Tribune on June 20, 1950, she phrases this thought more dramatically:“I always defied the laws of Hollywood.... when the descent of my careercame, I didn’t go amuck.” Swanson’s dramatic self–defense seems to havebeen warranted in Des Moines—Paramount had arranged for a special “teensonly” screening of Sunset Boulevard in that city in late July 1950. Swanson
appeared and talked to the group afterwards. Only July 22, the Des Moines
Register published some responses of the adolescents, who ranged fromeleven to seventeen years old: “’I certainly enjoy seeing old actresses comeback,’ ’She certainly does excellent acting for a woman her age,’ ’She’s cer984

Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson (New York: Random House, 1980), 488.
357

tainly a glamour girl for being as old as she is,’ ’You don’t think anything
about her age, because she can act.’” While all the responses are, at best,
backhanded compliments that suggest that older stars were right to be apprehensive about the youth demographic Hollywood was starting to cater to more
frequently in this period, one response published by the Des Moines paper
spoke to what would become Swanson’s nightmare. One teen, very possibly
conflating Norma Desmond and Gloria Swanson, responded simply, “she’s
nuts.”Is this teen’s response—“she’s nuts”—a case of spectatorial conflation ofactor and part? If so, does that mean that Swanson was such a good actressthat she could make audiences believe that she wasn’t, in fact, acting the partof an insane, has–been star? Most critics of the film both now and in 1950
have agreed that Swanson does a superb acting job. They stop short, however,of suggesting that her performance drew inspiration from a “real” state of insanity. Perhaps the teen’s statement suggested to some that Swanson was chosen to star in the film because some aspects of her career trajectory suggested aresemblance to that of Norma Desmond’s. However, the press–release biography of Swanson sent to newspapers and magazines around the country was
strategically crafted by the Paramount promotion department to create a perception quite the reverse of this—it constructs Swanson as an actress who hadgreat success in the past as star of silent features, but who is a woman andprofessional who lives and succeeds in the present, as an actress, businesswoman, fashion designer, health advocate, mother, and grandmother.985
I use the questions that emerged from the press coverage of Swanson’s
promotional tour in 1950 as points of departure for this paper—as evidence
that by 1950 the yoking of insanity and silent stardom, especially insanity andfemale silent stardom, not only had credibility, but to use an expression of thedaily Hollywood bible, Variety, the idea positively “had legs!” In this context,
what seems most interesting to me is that Swanson is seen to have come fromsomewhere, namely “old Hollywood,” that is also a sometime, old or past.
Commentary on Hollywood and its stars had been attempting since the teensto envision the spatial and temporal destiny of “old” or “tired”––where do they
go and will they ever come back? One attempt at this employed in the fanmagazines of the teens and twenties is related to what anthropologist Grant
McCracken calls the creation of “golden age” myths, narratives in which societies can place and protect cherished ideals without having to challengethem.986 The “golden age” myths constructed by fan magazines is evident intheir frequent accounts of stars of the teens, such as Florence Lawrence, Marguerite Clark, and Mary Fuller, retiring to idyllic rural spaces, such as farm985

See Paramount Studio press release biography of Gloria Swanson, c. 1950, Gloria Swanson clipping files, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
Beverly Hills, California.
986
Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University
Press, 1990).
358

houses and family plantations. These spaces are governed by the “virtuousness” of an idealized natural world and its circular temporality. The fan magazines cannot claim that these stars have maintained the popularity or good
health they once had, but in this “natural” temporality and spatiality, they escape modernity’s consumption cycles that govern fame and fortune as well as
replace the old with the latest novelty. Many early stars are “left” in this place
to be re–visited nostalgically by later journalists. However, when Gloria
Swanson, whose extra–textual persona is constructed to connote a successfulpresent, re–emerges in a 1950 film playing a character (Desmond) suggesting
not only the past, but specifically a pathologized passé, then ambivalent, perhaps even irreconcilable, images of the star circulate simultaneously.
At what point did it become likely that questions about the temporal andspatial location of stars, especially female stars from the silent era, would be
posed in relation to madness? This question is too large to be answered here,
but a look at three female stars from the silent era—Clara Bow, Mae Murray,
and Corinne Griffith—and how myths of their “madness” might have functioned in the moment of their initial stardom and/or in the later circulation of
their star personas suggest that Norma Desmond was not invented “whole
cloth.” The ways these stars were discussed at a various moments in their biographical trajectories as “mad” also suggests some possible points of entry into
how the mythology of the insane or mentally unstable silent star provides anextremely flexible discourse for the industry and the public to discuss aspectsof female stardom that inspire both anxiety as well as liberatory fantasies. The
persistent trope of the “mad” female silent star is a historiographic problem
because it has functioned as part of a popular history that negotiates the cultural and social meanings of stardom as a labor category, commodity form,
and model for personal identity across a wide sweep of American film history.
Yet, connections between female stars and insanity also seem to be the legacy of mythologies about femininity that, if not ahistorical or timeless, arenonetheless tiresomely persistent throughout the ages. Feminist theorists andhistorians have pointed out, in spite of any real, physiological origins of many
mental illnesses, insanity has long been linked to women in patriarchal conceptions of femininity.987 In fact, many feminists have argued that, from ancient theology to psychoanalysis to modern popular cultural forms, the pathological is almost always feminized or connected to definitions of the female
subject.988 Woman, in patriarchy, is the repository of the irrational, the abjectof a system supposedly based on rational thought and order. In particular, such
987

See Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, rev. ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005).
988
See Elaine Showalter, “Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender,” in Hysteria Beyond Freud, ed.
Sander Gilman et al. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), 286–344
and Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) for representative feminist theories of women, neurosis, andmental illness.
359

psychological disorders as hysteria and narcissism are associated with femininity in those psychoanalytic theorizations that delineate the contours of
femininity in relation to a particular “closeness” to the maternal body—thefemale subject, having both desired and identified with the maternal body inthe movement between pre–Oedipal and Oedipal stages, is thusly too close to
her own body to signify anything other than the “desire to desire” to use MaryAnn Doane’s phrase, resulting in a tendency to “speak” through bodily symptoms as a hysteric or take only her own likeness as a love object, as in narcissism.989
The discourses constructed around the personal and career vicissitudes ofClara Bow in the late 1920s and early 1930s illustrate how powerfully ideas
about hysteria functioned as explanatory tools for “non–normative” behavior of
female stars of that time, especially in relation to industrial imperatives. Despite
her continuing popularity in the transition to sound film production, Clara Bow
retired from film in 1930 and then again, permanently, in 1932. Between those
years of retirements, her retreat to a Glendale, Calif. sanitarium for “electricaltreatments” and then to a desert ranch with husband Rex Bell are described aswhat saved her from further “nervous collapse,” and it is intimated by somepress accounts, even from suicide.990 A series of highly publicized problems
starting about a year prior to her first retirement—alleged gambling debts, broken engagements and simultaneous love affairs, charging her private secretarywith embezzlement––were usually put forth by the press and fan magazines as
the immediate catalysts for her distress. However, the strategies already employed since 1926 to promote Bow’s persona in the typology of the flapper had
set the stage for this later period of 1929–32 in which “hysteria” or somatization
predominates as a way to represent Bow.
Bow is frequently described as “untamed.” Like a wild animal, whose motivations and effects are known only through bodily force, Bow kissed one of her
boyfriends so hard that his jaw was “sore for two days,” claims a caption for a
1926 Photoplay photo of the star. In other accounts, her eyes are “two dance–
floors of sparkling liveliness.”991 Her hair, as active as Medusa’s, if not as malicious, is compared more than once by Motion Picture writer Ruth Biery to a riot
and/or to an ocean—specifically, a “tempestuous riot” in one instance,992 a “riotof waves as free as the sea” in another.993 She is described, as early as 1926,
989

Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington,
Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987).
990
See David Stenn, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild (New York: Penguin Books, 1988) for a
discussion of these accounts.
991
Ruth Biery, “How I Interview Them,” Motion Picture, May 1929, 34–35.
992
Ibid.
993
Ruth Biery, “The Love–Life of Clara Bow,” Motion Picture, November 1928, 44–45. Seealso, Martha H. Patterson, Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman,
1895–1915 (Urbana and Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 19–20, for a
discussion of how the sexual desire of the “New Woman” was frequently imaged in relation
to water.
360

before she was crowned the “IT Girl,” as an “overcharged” human “dynamo,”
who reads almost “feverishly.”994 After Elinor Glyn declares—at the behest of
Bow’s boss, B.P. Schulberg—that Clara personifies that animal magnetism that
Glyn had once seen in Gloria Swanson and Rex the Wonder Horse, the quality
only nameable as “IT,” she is imagined by one fan magazine writer as not one tomerely lie on Glyn’s infamous tiger–skin rug with a rose in her teeth, but tovoraciously eat both the rose and the rug.995
Especially powerful was Adela Rogers St. Johns three part Photoplay article about Bow in 1928—in this piece, the mental illness and death ofBow’s mother in an asylum are revealed to the public and are woven into astory of Bow as a young girl, escaping to the movies to compensate for thehorror of her impoverished childhood home. Her mother’s mental illness,while it functions in the story as a literal obstacle to Bow’s ambitions to be
an actress—her mother tries to stab her to death to prevent her from becoming an actress—it also serves as a spur for Bow’s ambitions for stardom andcan be recuperated as part of the path to success.996 From late 1929 onwards,
when newspaper and magazine writers start to report of Bow’s excessive
living, especially in relation to a succession of broken love affairs, including
a few carried on simultaneously and one with a married man, they often emphasize Bow’s familial association with madness; however, now the story isused to explain her troubles rather than celebrate her overcoming obstacles
to success. In addition to reminders of her mother’s struggle with insanity,
Bow is described in a 1931 Motion Picture magazine article as having an
untrained, love–hungry heart which “dictates the moves and counter–movesof her life.” She is said to have both “devoured love” and have been “devoured by it,” language not only reminiscent of the animalistic description ofearlier discourse, but also words that suggest a loss of control or even of
subjectivity.997 Bow is said to amoral, rather than immoral. Discourses about
her red hair re–appear, too, and like her mother’s mental illness, suggest agenetic origin of Bow’s “nerves.” One writer went as far as to argue that“hair–trigger nerves” are “the natural heritage of all redheads.”998
The “naturalization” and inevitability of mental disorder in the star’s biographical trajectory subjects Bow to intense scrutiny, providing the press theopportunity to suggest the actress learn self–governance and/or get marriedand start a family with a man who truly loves her for who she is—and Bow
is rewarded with more praise when she does, in fact, marry actor Rex Bell994

Alice L. Tildesley, “She Wants to Succeed,” Motion Picture Classic, June 1926, 36–37.
Helen Carlisle, “Tag Clara, You’re It! Says Elinor Glyn to Clara Bow,” Motion Picture,
February 1927, 42–43, 116.
996
Adela Rogers St. John, “My Life Story, as told by Clara Bow.” The article ran in threeparts in Photoplay, February 1928, March 1928, and April 1928.
997
Gladys Hall, “In Defense of Clara Bow,” Motion Picture, January 1931, 29.
998
Toni Gallant, “Can Clara Ever Come Back?” Movie Classic, September 1931, 20–21.
995

361

and start a family.999 The diagnosis of “nerves” and the subsequent prescriptions for Bow’s return to mental health rob Bow of agency, as such prescriptions did for the hysterics of psychoanalytic case studies, and they also serve
as a way to avoid blaming the environment of Hollywood for what might inother contexts be considered immoral behavior. This, of course, was a concern to the industry after the star scandals of the early 1920s, in particular,
after the drug overdose of Wallace Reid and the possibility that audiences
would see the actor’s addiction to drugs as a result of either the social environment of Hollywood or its overworking of performers.1000
The press contextualization of Clara Bow’s alleged mental status in thelate 1920s and early 1930s suggests the way a popular notion of female“hysteria” functioned at a crucial moment in the history of the Hollywood
star system––when film regulation, especially in regards to images of female
sexuality, was in transition after the creation of the Hays office list of “do’sand don’ts” in 1927 and its opening up of a Hollywood office in 1928. The
Hays office, of course, was created (as the Motion Picture Producers andDistributors Association) as a public relations and self–regulatory responseto star scandals earlier in the decade, and it had many functions, from advising about film content to promoting markets for American films abroad. But
the opening of an actual office of this body in Hollywood had a symbolicrole in the late 1920s––it created what was at least the illusion of an active
self–regulatory body in the same geographic location as the stars, and one
fan magazine suggested that the frenetic, frenzied, partying lifestyles of“flapper” stars, such as Bow, Joan Crawford, and Alice White, were changing as a result.1001 In other words, the type of sexually free “flapper” exemplified by Bow in both on– and off–screen performances was questioned forits promotability in the social, cultural, and industrial climate of the moment.
In addition, the ability of silent stars to succeed in talking films was continually debated at this time. The persistent debate about the viability of stars’
careers in sound films created a generalized sense of panic for acting labor,favoring the studios which had incurred financial debts in the transition tosound and were looking for ways to cut costs, including actors’ salaries.
Rumors circulated about Bow’s “mic[rophone] fright”—a term commonlyused by the press at the time to identify the alleged loss of self–confidence of
certain silent film actors in the face of shooting with sound—and her alleged

999

See Clara Bow, “If I Had My Life to Live Over,” New Movie, June 1932, 40–41, and Ruth
Biery, “Clara Speaks for Herself,” Modern Screen, August 1934, 58–59, for a discussion ofthese issues.
1000
See Mark Lynn Anderson, “Shooting Star: Understanding Wallace Reid and His Public,”in Headline Hollywood: A Century of Film Scandal, ed. Adrienne L. McLean and David A.
Cook (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 27–51.
1001
Dorothy Manners, “What’s Happened to the ‘Whoopee Sisters?’”, Motion Picture, January 1929, 55, 115.
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fright, rather than the industry’s (partially) manufactured panic, was seen as
what caused her crying and collapsing on set.1002
Yet, this is an incomplete and simplistic reading: actually, Bow’s “nervous collapse” or hysteria is frequently described in the way the more sociallylegitimated male neurasthenia was defined—as a depletion of energy fromoverwork. And many reports pulled no punches in laying the blame on thestudio for this. Bow is said to be a “slave to work” in 19291003 and “Paramount’s little slavey” in 1931;1004 her bosses are said to be “indifferent,” “outto make money” and have profited by her commodification as the “IT Girl”(Hall) rather than given her quality stories.1005 One article has her declaring
her hatred of the title “IT Girl”1006, and in another she is quoted describing
her life as “work, work, work. Go home at night. Can’t sleep. Think too
much....” it’s “one picture after another.”1007 If the hysteric can only speak
through the body, Clara Bow found her power of the spoken word when she
is quoted that if she were to ask Mr. Schulberg the questions he expects her
to answer to reporters, “he’d give me a good crack in the face.” She adds:“people don’t know the studios are factories, that you get up at seven andwork hard all day under uncomfortable conditions.” Furthermore, people
don’t know it “because the studios don’t want them to know it.”1008
The mainstream press and fan magazines constructed Clara Bow as a hysteric, yet provided a venue for her to signal through the flames and speak toboth the constructed nature of her star persona as well as her exploitation aslabor, something other hysterics and other “scandalous” stars—or their families, like Mrs. Wallace Reid—were rarely able to do. If the star discoursearound Clara Bow suggests that contradictions in the star and studio systems
could be exposed, at times even within the very same pieces of promotion orreporting that positioned a star as lacking socially–effective agency as a hysteric, the discourses which contributed to a construction of silent star Mae
Murray as “crazy lady” provide a more classic and complicit accounting of
woman as pathological. While both hysteria and narcissism are equated witha patriarchal notion of femininity, narcissism is supposedly so much a part offemininity as to be normative, and Freud associates this self–love and self–
sufficiency with not only infants, perverts, and women, but criminals, cats,
and other beasts of prey. Perhaps this is why discourses constructed arounda woman’s narcissism provide more comedy than those about hysteria, eventhough the narcissistic personality can also inspire pathos.

1002

Ruth Biery, “Clara’s Microphone Fright,” Photoplay, July 1931, 31, 120–122.
Lois Shirley, “Empty–Hearted,” Photoplay, October 1929, 29.
1004
Herbert Howe, “Fallen Idols,” New Movie, January 1931, 36–37, 118.
1005
Ibid.
1006
Michael Woodward, “That Awful ‘IT’!” Photoplay, July 1930, 39, 133.
1007
Shirley, “Empty–Hearted,” 129.
1008
Elisabeth Goldbeck, “The Real Clara Bow,” Motion Picture, September 1930, 48–49.
1003

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Mae Murray made headlines throughout the 1920s and 1930s, with press
accounts emphasizing an extravagant lifestyle and grandiose self–
presentation; her feud with Erich von Stroheim over his refusal to give her
close–ups in The Merry Widow; the multiple law suits and breaches of contract over employment, real estate, and unpaid bills; her marriage to a princeof dubious royal lineage who was also a scam artist; and the hiding of her
son until he was nearly two–years old. In the 1940s, Murray is again a news
focus when she joins the Billy Rose Revue, a live variety show featuring
Hollywood old–timers, which the press reports as a pathetic, nostalgic enterprise. In 1947, she writes to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper that she wants
to get in touch with German producer Erich Pommer to pitch an idea for afilm for which she would write and act the part of Mary Magdalene, because“I feel her so strongly––always have––I can make it even greater than my“Merry Widow.” Thank God for imagination and inspiration.”1009 Pommer,
who eventually connected with Murray for a discussion of her plans, was in
the process of taking over directing the restoration of the German film industry from Billy Wilder, who would go on to write and direct Sunset Blvd. It is
unknown whether Pommer shared with Wilder the anecdote about the narcissistic star’s infatuation with powerful, femme fatalish, biblical characters.
Murray was quoted after a screening of Sunset Blvd, perhaps in denial of any
connection of Desmond to herself, as saying, “None of us floozies was that
nuts.”1010
Murray, who got her start as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, was depicted
in promotion from the beginning of her career as being overly concernedwith appearance and with maintaining a visual image of the Ziegfeld girlwho poses her body as if to offer the feminine form as representation of abstract ideals of beauty. A photo of Murray accompanying a 1924 article in
Photoplay shows her leaning back on a divan, heavily made–up, head tossed
back, the ermine–furred train of her dress swirling around her legs. The caption states that Murray is successful in obtaining “bizarre but picturesqueeffects.” In the article itself, “Mae Murray––A Study in Contradictions,”
author Adela Rogers St. Johns describes a star given to self–dramatization,and she struggles whether to explain this characteristic as originating in
Murray’s unconscious desires or from misguided social affectations.1011 A
mostly complimentary article in a 1922 issue of Photoplay had given one
origin for those affectations: Murray’s belief that an actress must “’keep
away from people.... Be in [the crowd] but not of it’.”1012 By 1929, Mae1009

1947 Letter to Hedda Hopper by Mae Murray, Hedda Hopper clipping file on Mae
Murray, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly
Hills, California.
1010
Sam Staggs, Close–up on Sunset Boulevard (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 163.
1011
Adela Rogers St. John, “Mae Murray – A Study in Contradictions,” Photoplay, July
1924, 43.
1012
Mary Morgan, “Secrets of Mae Murray’s Success,” Photoplay, January 1922, 31.
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Murray is one of the stars Ruth Waterbury, in a Photoplay article entitled“Going Hollywood,” identifies as being a victim of “phantasia Hollywoodii.” Waterbury diagnoses this made–up mental illness in any star who
has believed too deeply in her or his star mythology.1013 It has caused Murray
to believe she really is a queen, and consequently, she has forgotten her old
friends. Forgetting one’s friends, or going what the fan magazines in the
1920s and 1930s called “high hat,” was one of the biggest “crimes” of thestars for fans, a sign that narcissism keeps them from being the regular folks
they once were and, thus, keeps them far from the reach of fans who wantstars with whom they can identify. Murray’s insistence that there is no distance between her and the image is constructed as a delusional and selfish
fantasy of self–sufficiency.
The identification of Murray with excessive narcissism and even exhibitionism persists in press and fan magazine accounts throughout the thirties,
forties, and fifties. By 1930, Rogers St. John seems to have decided that noone in the younger generation of stars is as bizarre and startling as Murray
was in the teens and twenties.1014 No doubt drawing on her own earlier observations of Murray’s self–dramatization, Rogers St. John was also now
writing within the context of the many press stories about Murray between
1924 and 1930, including those about Murray’s fights with MGM and director Erich von Stroheim over her desire for more close–ups in The Merry
Widow, her lawsuits, which included breach of contract charges (some inwhich she is the victim, some in which she is the perpetrator), a well as stories about her fights with city hall and neighbors over property (which included, at one point, a warrant for Murray’s arrest for breaking and entering), her marriage to a Georgian “prince” David M’Divani, who was also ascam artist in collaboration with his brother (married to former silent star
Pola Negri), the hiding of her son with M’Divani until he was almost two
years old, and a fight with low–budget Tiffany studios who broke a contract
with her because she kept insisting she only play young girl roles. A Tiffany
spokesman pointedly remarked to reporters in March 1930 that her refusal toplay any role other than a young girl forced the studio’s hand because, after
all, “Miss Murray is not 16.”1015 The mysterious sequestering of her son was
described by the press in June 1928 as if it was an episode from a gothic
novel, most notably in accounts that stated the son’s only contact without the1013
Ruth Waterbury, “Going Hollywood: What Happens to People in the Garden of Satisfaction,” Photoplay, February 1929, 30–31, 104–106.
1014
Adela Rogers St. John, “Hollywood’s Younger Generation,” New Movie, 1930, 32–34,
124.
1015
My description of press accounts of what was perceived to be Murray’s bizarre, narcissistic behavior comes from newspaper clippings in the Mae Murray clipping file, Margaret
Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.
Many of these clippings are dated, but unsourced.

365

outside world was either from behind a “walled garden” or from behind a
shuttered, upstairs window of the actress’s house.
The press accounts of Murray’s “comeback” attempts in stage revues andnightclubs in the forties and early fifties, while praising her dancing ability
and effect on audiences, continued to associate her and her performancecontexts with the “gaudiest” episodes in Hollywood history.1016 And thepraise is always accompanied by, and therefore complicated by, images of a
now fifty–something Murray in a platinum blonde wig, heavy pancake
make–up, thick, false eyelashes, and dark lipstick. Hedda Hopper was
kinder, not mentioning in her July 24, 1947 Los Angeles Times account of
Murray’s hopes for a comeback in pictures that the star wished to play Mary
Magdalene, only reporting that the actress was in town briefly before returning to Europe to “fill film commitments” and that she “looked as cool as asummer breeze” in her all white outfit (unfortunately, the newspaper did notillustrate the piece with a photo of the actress). Perhaps there was little surprise when Murray’s authorized biography, which came out in 1959, wasentitled The Self–Enchanted, as press accounts had been suggesting for years
that she lived a self–enclosed world of fantasy.
Around the time Murray’s biography was published, a number of female
film stars associated with both the silent and sound era of the studio system—including, not only Swanson, but also Mary Astor, Ida Lupino, Joan
Crawford, and Bette Davis—acted in film or television roles as “has–been”
stars who teeter on the edge of sanity. This narrative theme and iconic motif
continued through the 1960s and 1970s, fueled by the continuing legacy ofSunset Blvd, as well as by the success of the 1962 film Whatever Happened
to Baby Jane? and by the bizarre, well–publicized 1965 divorce trial of silent
film star Corinne Griffith, once known as the “Orchid Lady.”
Griffith, who had retired from film shortly after the coming of sound, had
become a wealthy woman based on her shrewd investments, especially in
Beverly Hills real estate. Refusing to either divulge her real age or pay alimony to her husband of a few months, she declared on the witness stand of
the alimony trial that she was not the real Corinne Griffith, but, rather her
younger sister and former stand–in who had been posing as the famed star tohide the fact of Griffith’s death in Mexico thirty years prior. The ex–husband’s lawyer brought in two other former silent stars, Betty Blythe andClaire Windsor, who testified that the woman in court was, in fact, the “real”
Griffith. This strange incident, which no press accounts seem to have tied tothe plot of one of Griffith’s most famous films, the 1924 production Black
Oxen (in which the character played by Griffith takes “gland” supplements
to keep herself youthful looking and tries to pass herself off to old friends as
her younger niece), supposedly inspired Thomas Tryon to write Fedora, a
1016

Gene Knight, “Film Stars of Yesteryear in New Billy Rose Revue,” New York Journal
American, March 19, 1941, 15.

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story in his book Crowned Heads, which was adapted into a 1978 film written and directed by Billy Wilder, the writer–director of Sunset Blvd.1017
Corinne Griffith’s attempt to pass herself off in divorce court as her own
stand–in, while as narcissistic in its own way as any of Murray’s self––
dramatizations––Griffith literally doubles herself or creates a self in her
likeness to do her bidding––was seen by newspapers as a masquerade of awoman trying to hide her age and hold on to her money, rather than that of awoman, like Murray, who believed in her own manufactured image so completely that she was perhaps incapable making a distinction between it and a“real” self. While apparently Griffith had lied about her age before (as did
many female stars) and continued to do so after the infamous trial, she had
also provided generally honest accounts of her career and life to historians
and in her own books on such topics as cooking, antiques, income tax, realestate, her experiences of being married at one time to the owner of the
Washington Redskins. Her family memoir, which was adapted into the film
Papa’s Delicate Condition, was already well known at the time of the trial.
Probably for those reasons, the press accounts of the trial depict her as eccentric, but do not really question her sanity. Her husband, however, is described in more than one report as breaking down on the stand in “hysterics,”
a displacement of “femininized craziness” onto the man, who assumes either
the role of “gold digger”/gigolo or of romantic—opposite types, perhaps, butboth, nonetheless, feminized positions. The press unwittingly affirms thepsychoanalytic notion that the masquerader is a female neurotic who createsa double to protect the self. Perhaps somewhat comparable to the professional woman who masquerades as overly feminine to deflect reprisals forusurpation of the masculine position, Griffith authors a double whose role as“stand–in for glamorous star Corinne Griffith” allows “legal–subject Griffith” to escape the punishment of paying alimony, usually the “burden” ofmasculine subjects.1018 If Clara Bow struggled to wedge a distance between
herself as laborer and the persona of the “IT Girl,” Griffith creates, out of her
knowledge of industrial film practices around the star (i.e., the use of “stand–ins” to allow stars to escape the time and drudgery of lighting set–ups in shot
preparation), her own double to muck up legal rituals and proceedings that
rely on the self–sameness of name and subject, and that now threaten to takeher earnings away. (We could perhaps add to the “case study” of Griffith thediagnosis of a neurotic whose obsession with accumulating wealth suggests
a person fixated at the “anal” stage of development).
If the personas and values represented by some stars from the silent era
were incorporated into “golden age” myths where they could be protected as
1017

Anthony Slide, in Silent Players (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky,2002), is the only writer of which I am aware to make the connection between Fedora and the
divorce case of the “doubled” Corinne Griffith.
1018
Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” in Psychoanalysis and Female Sexuality,ed. Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (New Haven, Connecticut: College and UP, 1966).
367

cultural ideals, the personas of Bow, Murray, and Griffith became vulnerable
in eras or to forces that ambivalently exposed or constructed their psychological instabilities. Murray, who failed to secure long–term stardom’s success myth because her narcissism and delusions of grandeur ruined employment offers and fan adulation, is not allowed in the utopian fantasy space.
When she is found in the 1960s wandering in St Louis not knowing who she
is, and then after being taken back to Los Angeles walks every day up anddown Hollywood Blvd in her 1920s fashions, she becomes a figure who time
has past by, rather than one out of time. Her 1965 obituaries in the newspapers, unlike the fond obituaries of the same year for Clara Bow, either barely
suppress derision or are written in a sensationalist, purple prose reminiscentof the press accounts that describe the madness of Norma Desmond at theend of Sunset Blvd. Corinne Griffith, on the other hand, died in 1979, realestate intact, as one of the wealthiest women in America.

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Stockholm Studies in Film History
Published by Stockholm University
Editors: Bo Florin & Patrick Vonderau
1.Editors Sofia Bull and Astrid Söderbergh Widding. Not so Silent: Womenin Cinema before Sound

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