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| Apolonia Chalupec - Pola to you |
I haven’t seen any of Pola’s American adventures and only
know her from her Polish and brilliant German films so, Zukor and Lasky you
better hadn’t screw this up!
I needn’t have worried… in the hands of under-rated sophisticate,
Mal St. Clair, Pola shines: an uninhibited, burst of teutonic energy that
radiates true even after nine decades. Bryony Dixon said that this was one of
those films included in the Treasures strand simply because it’s fun and whilst
this is undeniably true, there’s no denying that Negri is a world-class cultural
treasure.
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| Smokin' |
There’s no cheap tricks in Pola’s armoury only a
free-spirited expression that almost seems to be non-acting and yet she can act
and how. For every haughty puff on her cigarette – what can that all mean..? –
there’s a moment of purely-human doubt and weakness. She may dominate the men
around her but she is also painfully vulnerable in a way that Mae or Marlene
never were. When Pola loses she gets hit hard and those huge dark eyes fill to
the lids with bitter-sweet tears of despair.
The film’s great success is in throwing this European
class into the culture of the mid-west. It’s a timeless contrapuntal device but
one that is perfectly deployed by director St Clair. I loved his “touches” –
two sherry glasses filled and partly drained for an illicit rendezvous, the
balls of wool slowly unravelling alongside the gossipy rocking chairs on the porches
of Maple Valley… it’s playful and subtle allowing the audience in on the joke
rather than hitting them over the heads.
A picture paints a thousand title cards and in Miss Negri
Mal had an actress who ramped that up to a million… She was a one-woman new media
revolution – under-employed title writers must have been lining the streets in
protest.
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| Holmes Herbert as the repressed attorney |
Based on Carl Van Vechten novel The Tattooed Countess – the clue is in the title… - A Woman of the
World begins with a broken heart amongst the cocktail classes of The Côte d'Azur.
A young aristo is busily sweeping a young deb off her feet when his mistress, Countess
Elenora (Pola) returns… He protests that it meant nothing but is despatched
with a ripping of his lady’s portrait and a black-eyed stare.
To escape her humiliation, Elenora decides to visit her
cousin on the other side of the World… but wherever she goes, she won’t be able
to eradicate the tattoo on her forearm inked in her lover’s honour.
The scene shifts to that “Other side” and the mid-western
town of Maple Valley where the big news is a new water works and a district attorney
Richard Granger (Holmes Herbert) bent on cleaning the town up. Well, he’d
already done that with the water, why stop there?
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| Cousins?! Pola and Chester |
Improbably, Elenora’s cousin turns out to be Chester
Conklin - Sam Poore one of the town’s upstanding citizens with a moustache to
die for and a wife, Lou (Lucille Ward) fond of knitting on her porch and making
sure that no local news fails to get passed on.
The town’s a buzz with the news that a European Countess
is due to visit but the news has almost escaped Attorney Granger as he tries to
shoe her out of town for the offence of cigarette smoking… I had no idea that
cigarette holders were so closely associated with degenerate behaviour but
Granger has a policy of sub-zero-tolerance. He changes his tune when he
discovers who Elenora is and is humbled by her confusing mix of direct and
in-direct sexual signalling. Who wouldn’t? No woman looked at a man quite like
Pola Negri in 1925.
The cultural cringes grow more intense as Elenora meets
her relations and is introduced to local society. St Clair handles this action
and reaction with economy and the play on Pola’s free expression versus
prohibition-era emotional control is hilarious.
There’s a running joke about her tattoo which begins with
cousin Sam whispering to a neighbour, “can you keep a secret?” – she can’t and
neither can anyone else: they all relish the scandal. One of the sweetest
moments comes when Sam later tries to cheer up his dejected relation by showing
her his tattoo: a steam train inked from one forearm back over his chest and
finishing on the other… Now that’s a tattoo!
We now enter full rom-com as the Granger falls hard for
the woman whose morals he can’t comprehend and therefore tries to exile. His young
assistant, Gareth (Charles Emmett Mack) is despatched with flowers for Elenora
but can’t resist her himself. His youthful play is blocked by the Countess only
for Granger to see and get even more confused…
There’s a wonderful line from the conflicted Attorney
along the lines of denying love through prohibition – he knows his moral stance
is based on his self-denial. So it goes…
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| You want attitude? |
You just hope that someone or something will shock him
into just waking up! Cue Pola… with a whip.
Bryony was right (as usual): A Woman of the World is fun and is one of the most enjoyable films
I’ve seen all year. The restoration is superb too and that, coupled with witty piano
accompaniment from maestro John Sweeney meant my London Film Festival concluded
on a real high.
Catch this film if you haven’t already seen it and
hopefully a digital release will allow for more to be reminded of Pola’s grace and
star power.
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