Astamania… Der fremde Vogel (1911), DFI digital streaming

"It is incredible what this extremely thin person is able to call forth from within herself. If one wanted to forge all of the incarnations of the modern woman with all the deepest abysses of her soul into a single type… this Danish woman… would be the most fruitful object…”   German film critic, Josef Aubinger, Zeit im Bild 3 (1913)

This was Asta Nielsen’s seventh film of 1911 after her breakthrough with the audacious, leather skirted specificity of Afgrunden (The Abyss) the previous year. Already she was conquering Europe and was working in Germany with her partner, director Urban Gad, after the massive success of this first film which ran for an unprecedented several weeks at the Kosmorama in Copenhagen, where films usually switched in three or four days, as well as extended runs in Paris and other major cities.

She had originally hoped to use the film as a means of boosting her theatrical career in Denmark¹ but, despite its success, snobbery held her countrymen back and it was a German film companies that saw the potential. Within a few months Deutsche Bioscop had engaged both Asta and Gad to make a series of films that would be sold on the strength of their names.

Asta

The “first Asta Nielsen series” of films made in Berlin started in the late summer and she was heralded for her acting skill and for her popular as well as critical appeal with the trade paper Der Kinomatograph hailing her first film as changing the cultural conversation “all of a sudden (making) artists enthusiastic fans of cinema pantomime”, with film drama having previously been considered “kitsch”, now being taken seriously because of Nielsen’s ground-breaking persona, skill and charisma.

The films were also getting longer too following the example of Afgrunden and using Asta’s ability to sustain longer and more complex narratives; the Kinodrama or social drama², with a length of up to an hour

Asta was breathlessly described as the “Duse of the art of cinema” or the “Fortuna of the art of cinema” not necessarily to initiate intellectual debate, but in a marketing attempt to legitimise the new media and the actor’s contribution as Uli Jung and Martin Loiprdinger point out in their introduction to Importing Asta Nielsen: The International Film Star in the Making 1910-1914 (Kintop Studies in Early Cinema) ³. This aside there clearly was a more serious consideration of probably the first actor with named recognition – and a fan base - outside of comedy and the likes of Max Linder and Andre Deed.

Extraordinary light and shade captured by Guido Seeber

The actor’s versatility was another hallmark of this remarkable first year of success with Paul Ehren of the Union-Theatre cinema chain journal commenting: Up to now, she has surprised us again and again. She has appeared to us as a flirtatious female, as a fighter for her beloved husband: we have seen a humiliated woman, then, in turn a proud domineering temperament – always someone else and yet always herself, always unmistakeable – Asta Nielsen.

But there was more, as Jung and Loiprdinger point out, Nielsen’s films featured challenging subjects that were not only risqué, yes, that leather skirt, but also representing women in situations that were reflective of a society advanced beyond traditional cultural representations. As they say, in some countries her films were the reason for formal or informal censorship, some were age-restricted and others were just banned, all of which adds to the view of her star power as she moved as quickly as Charlie, Elvis or The Beatles to alter the landscape of what was now possible in terms of audience devotion.

 

Asta and Carl go boating

Asta and Carl Clewing

Der fremde Vogel also known in English as The Course of True Love, and in the USA as The Strange Bird (!?), features some of this challenging subject matter and whilst it is that curious mix, to modern eyes, of romantic comedy and melodramatic tragedy, it asks questions about a woman’s right to chose who she wants to love. Whilst this is by no means uncommon for stories of this time, Asta’s power creates a heightened sense of lovelorn desperation that goes far enough the perfunctory conversions of the dilemma to melt even the hardest heart of a modern viewer.

Written and directed by Gad, he gave it the subtitle of A Romantic Tragedy in the Spreewald, which is a large inland delta of the river Spree to the south of Berlin, including the Spree Forest, now a UNESCO biosphere reserve but always an atmospheric swampy mix of hundreds of tributaries and wooded isolation.

Asta plays May, the daughter of an English landowner, Sir John Wolton (Hans Mierendorff) on holiday in Germany for a mix of socialising and fishing. One of Wolton’s friends, fellow Brit, Herbert Bruce (Louis Ralph) falls for his daughter and by the conventions of English class and social etiquette, no less prescriptive than southern German Junkers, the audience might expect that that would be it.

 

Hans Mierendorff waits for a bite

But May is a woman who knows her own mind and is fascinated with Max the Strapping Boatman (Carl Clewing) as he takes her off to get food for the group’s picnic breakfast. There’s some wonderful location shooting with smart cinematography from Guido Seeber capturing the characters in and on the lush waterways with some great shots of Asta confidently punting and showing her curves on tight-fitting black dresses. If that sounds a bit to Daily Mail sensationalist well the Danish film star did cause a stir when she “flaunted” her naked calves and feet at one point dragging her boat ashore.

There are some lovely scenes with Carl and Asta boating as well as relaxing by a hay stack, both naturalistically improvsing their characters’ sexual fascination. Max takes May to his house and his fiancé Grete (Frau Karsten) is naturally put out and reports the liaison to Wolton and Bruce who manages to progress from outrage to entitled ownership very quickly.

Plans are made to separate the couple and to bring May to her senses, locking her up to prevent any escape from her responsibility to love a man of suitable station who has been personally selected and authorised by her father. May is made to write a letter disclaiming her new love whilst attempts are made to pay Max off… but, as with the many waterways, the course of true love never runs straight and May manages to escape with Max. Soon the race is on as Wolton and Bruce follow in hot pursuit…

Now, now dear. Be reasonable...

The film is screening on the Danish Film Institute and whilst there’s no English sub-titles, the intertitles are brief and infrequent including three asking Wo bleibt das Fruhstuck? as May dawdles with Max, holding the food hostage to her fascination. The fascination is all in watching Asta’s total mastery, already, of her medium, knowing that the ever-growing audiences would lap this all up, fixating on every aspect of her performance in ways that Pickford, Gish and Talmadge were still a year or three away from accomplishing.

 

The film, along with so much more, is here on the excellent Danish Film Institute website.

 

Next year the BFI has a Asta Nielsen Spring Season curated by Pamela Hutchinson which will be the first time in decades that Die Asta has had this kind of focus in the UK. It’s going to be great although I doubt that we’ll have the Asta Nielsen Waltz played as happened during the screening of Der fremde Vogel at the opening of a cinema named after the actress in Dusseldorf in November 1911… but you never know?

Pamela explains more on her Silent London site and you can watch for details on the BFI site.

1. Julie K Allen, Ambivalent Admiration – Asta Nielsen’s Conflicted Reception in Denmark 1911-14 – see below

2, Andrea Haller, Advertising Asta Nielsen and the Long-Feature Film – the Case of Mannheim – see below

3. Uli Jung and Martin Loiprdinger Importing Asta Nielsen: The International Film Star in the Making 1910-1914 (Kintop Studies in Early Cinema)