Expressionism… Fior di male (1915), Bonn Silent Film Festival with Cellophon

 

I don’t just sit here waiting for a new Diva film to be restored you know although sometimes maybe I do… Here was a prime cut of imperial Borelli in all her operatic pomp and with a collection of magisterial emotional displays only matched by her gorgeous and frequently changing wardrobe. Only in Italy miei amici and it took a German film festival to highlight that point. 

 

There's one review on IMDB that dismisses the lasting appeal of such "soapy melodrama" but this implies little awareness of the Diva cinematic concept that flourished in Italy in the 1910s and you would need a heart of stone and, frankly, zero fashion sense, not to appreciate the film. Flower of Evil is mannered, stylised, convoluted and skilfully excessive but it’s also – as with opera – meant to be like that, it’s not an accident or a wilful decision to piss off viewers a century later. 

 

Film historian and Diva specialist, Angela Dalle Vacche*, gives a very informed explanation of Borelli’s style and how she was not only influenced by Eleonora Duse, who she performed with, but also by classical art. The great Italian stage actor had a passion for simplicity and spirituality whereas Borelli took more erotic allusions into her art according to Dalle Vacche who also quotes art historian Robert de la Sizeranne concerning her clear debt to the Pre-Raphaelites especially with “…the desire to intensify the most minute of feelings sometimes... an obsession.”

 

Lyda Borelli and friend

For Borelli, acting was something of “a tightrope walking act between naturalism and expressionism…” and she was keen on using cliché to prick the audience bubble… as evidenced by a sequence at the start of the film where she holds a lion cub in her lap and shoots her most feline expression at the viewer… the actress “engaging in a camp deconstruction of the cliché”. Not a sex kitten but definitely one with claws.

 

So, fundamentally, the story matters less in terms of narrative context than in the provision of opportunities for La Borelli to show us her range of knowing eroticised expression. To this end Fior di male does not disappoint in the slightest.

 

As if to emphasise this relationship between story and actress, Lyda plays a woman called Lyda, a poor young woman who “lives among the lowest social classes”, dancing for the creepy men who pay for their pleasure. Borelli is shown lower screen right, her Lyda drenched in oppressed boredom, only just coming alive for the slinky show, taking a superior delight in the reaction she easily encourages; despising their petty passion.

 

A year later Lyda has given birth to a son but has to give him up not being in a position to care for him. The baby has a distinctive birth mark and, in her heartbreak, she knows there’s just a chance she might find him later in life. Things get worse for Lyda after the club where she dances is raided and she is sent to a correctional facility but, having hit rock bottom, the tough gets going and escapes.

 

Now the story really begins… as Lyda, exhausted from her flight, is found by the kindly Count van Deller who offers her food and rest. Restored she naturally robs him, only thinking twice when he mentions that the trinket comes from his daughter’s room, left untouched since she passed away. Lyda’s flicker of remorse turns into full repentance as she prays for forgiveness and returns the stolen item under cover of the night and there are some stunning shots of her guilty silhouette shot against a low sun on the beach – Domenico Grimaldi’s camerawork is fascinating throughout.

 

One of the great profiles

The Count sees Lyda’s good character and sets her up with a new name, Helena Simons enabling her to flourish as a tailor and then as manager of a fashion house. All the while she searches for her son and whilst he proves elusive other threads in the story begin to weave together, and at pace. The fashion house is funded by a bank run by one Bambi Rogers (Augusto Poggioli) who’s sister Fulvia (Fulvia Perini) is a trustee of the correction house where Lyda was incarcerated. Bambi makes eyes at Helena/Lyda and his sister suspects her of gold-digging before spotting who she really is and threatening to reveal all. But the Count stands by his new ward who, nonetheless, has rebuffed Bambi’s gifts and attention, she is no longer to be “bought”.

 

Nino Oxilia’s story being chock full of connected themes chief among which is parenthood, Lyda’s childless mother, the Count, robbed of his daughter becoming her surrogate father and Helena/Lyda herself adopting young seamstress Cecyl (c) as her daughter. Nothing supplants her desperate search for her son though, the natural bond is too strong and the search obviously will not be never ending…

 

Look at that for composition! Lyda and Cecyl Tryan

Things change when famous violinist Ruggero Davusky (Ruggero Barni) has a car accident near the family home and Helena and Cecyl nurse him back to good health, both falling in love with him without realising the other’s feeling. Once again Lyda must let her child go free and her broken heart is revealed in supple contortions of Borelli’s feature and form; her exquisite pain played out in lingering set pieces beautifully tinted in the EYE’s restoration.

 

The wheel of fate turns again and you just know the finish will be bigger than anything that has gone before. This is the unwritten code of Diva film, it’s what we expect and what gets delivered with skill and grace.

 

This was one of the first features for Carmine Gallone, who would go on to direct Borelli again in the darkly magnificent Malombra (1917) and to make films up until the early sixties. He uses his asset well, framing her in so many delicious set pieces combining lighting, design and the glorious costumery you’d expect from Borelli the clothes thoroughbred.

Lyda and Ruggero Barni

Accompanying were the Cellophon duo, aka Paul Rittel and Tobias Stutz who both play cello in ways that are emotionally resonant and respectful of the source visuals. There’s admirable flavour and restraint with both recognising the need to underplay when confronted by the operatic fireworks on screen. The cello is the most mournfully flexible of instruments and they put nary a foot wrong is musical tribute to perhaps the greatest Italian silent film diva…

 

Another excellent presentation from this year’s Bonn festival and I have completely run out of reasons not to go there in 2022!

 

Vielen Dank für die tolle sendung!

 

* In Diva, Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema by Angela Dalle Vacche (University of Texas Press) – essential reading with super commentary on contemporary acting including Danish diva, Asta Nielsen who, although not a diva per se, has to be the point of excellence against which all other performers are measured.