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.

The hand-tint to Hell (or The Diva is in the details)… Satanic Rhapsody (1915)

If Bertini is the thought, the determined-soul of classic Italian Diva films then could Lyda Borelli be the style and grace? Less naturalistic than her “sister” she was the one with the classic theatrical training (Bertini being more purely “of the movies” although she did theatre too) and was remarkably expressive whilst creating a natural intimacy that compels the viewer still.

She was enormously successful until her “retirement” in 1918 by which time she had married count Vittorio Cini and for the next four decades focused on raising her four children and shuttling between Venice and Rome: sometimes the going gets so good there’ll never be a “better” time to quit.

Lyda Borelli

But her work and presence left their mark on an adoring public and the reasons for this seem perfectly exemplified by this odd and spectacularly-colourful take on the Faustian-pact… a skilled mash-up of contemporary dance, art and literature…

American academic Angela Dalle Vacche makes an interesting point about the nature of the Italian “Diva” film at this stage; yes they were films centred around strong female leads but, unlike their sisters across the pond, they “…were characterized by a suffering and maternal aura (mater dolorosa) which the American femme fatales never adopted.” Their trials were to include the full gamut of women’s issues such as abandonment, divorce, adultery, pregnancy, employment and, as here, aging.

An offer she can't refuse?

Based on a contemporary poem by Fausto Maria Martin and directed by Nino Oxilia (director of Sangue Blu) in 1915, Satanic Rhapsody was not released until the year of his death in the trenches of 1917, delayed by other schedules and possibly post-production colourization! Today it stands as a remarkable testament to Borelli’s appeal as well being a remarkable film in its own right.  A pre-raphaelite delight... and more.

Ugo Bazzini - would you trust this man?

Lyda plays Alba d’ Oltrevita, an elderly society lady, who has little life left and spends her days remembering her former beauty. She wishes far too hard and from out of a painting pops the malevolent form of Mephisto (zestfully realized by Ugo Bazzini) who offers to return her youth on the condition that she destroys a small statuette of Cupid which will mean that she will be restored but never again be able to feel love…

She throws the objet d’amour to the ground (does it smash?) and is instantly transformed into her younger self, vitality coursing through the veins of her outstretched, graceful arms as Miss Borelli begins to show her extraordinary physicality.

Reaching out to Tristano and Sergio

We see her looking at her reflection in a pond, surrounded by a veil of white silk that floats around her upper body born aloft by her movement: this is youth and beauty in motion and repose. She meets two brothers Tristano (Andrea Habay) and Sergio (John Cini) and proceeds to enchant them both in playgrounds, parks and parties.

All of this is shown in remarkable colour thanks to the labours of Oxilia’s army of hand colourisers – their technique isn’t always within the line but it shows the richness of the fabrics and more than a hint of the technicolour re-birth Alba’s pact has enabled. It is very much her journey as she sashays through a society that now views her with lust and awe – no longer pity.

But one cannot traverse in glory for long without impacting on those around you (I should imagine…) and soon Sergio is smitten, jealous of his brother’s share of Alba’s affection and wanting her for himself at any cost. He delivers an ultimatum: Alba must agree to marry him or he will kill himself… Now, it’s been a while, but that doesn’t sound like a winning tactic to me.

Consequences and complications start queuing up like London buses in a tube strike and you can be sure that… well, you know, Faust…

 “Alba has a confusing idea: the whole universe is love…”

The film is split into three parts with the first setting up the rejuvenation, the second the tug of love with the brothers and the third a dance of regret, desolation, hope and mortality. Borelli dominates this sequence even more than the others and there is no end of colourful moments as she wrestles with her turmoil. This is art in film.

Mirror mirror

There are some superb compositions and none more unsettling than her standing in front of her reflection – a double image – as she slowly draws a veil over her head: a veil for marriage and a veil for death. This action is repeated in the gardens as she prepares to make the choice that will kill her… a rebirth of a kind as she leaves behind the destruction of her immediate regeneration: this is a freedom she never knew she had.

Loie swirls and Lyda twirls

Satanic Rhapsody is “opera” and I doubt any other actress in Britain or Hollywood could carry it off or at least mean it in the way La Borelli clearly does at least in this context. Dalle Vacche – in the excellent Diva – Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema – points out the similarities between Borelli’s rapturous dance and American performer Loie Fuller but then Borelli was not only well-educated but also keen to express as much of her influences as possible. She gives a thoughtful and provocative performance so different in style and tone from what I’ve seen of La Bertini…  rich cinema.

I watched the 2007 reconstruction which features the original music from Pietro Mascagni written in 1914 and now played by Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz - it is good that the music survives to complete the experience of this most artful of films.

Further reading: This is just a blog, but these works are the real deal in terms of rigour, research and analysis; well written too even if I’m still trying to get to grips with Bergsonism ...

1.       Angela Dalle Vacche’s in-depth article Lyda Borelli’s Satanic Rhapsody: The Cinema and the Occult

  

2.       The same author’s Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema is available from Amazon.