Primal Pola… Bestia (The Polish Dancer) (1917), FINA Blu-ray box

Pola Negri – Asta from Poland

Buffalo Bill…

She is a star in our homeland

Buffalo Bill…

Warsaw cabaret song circa 1917

 

This is the oldest surviving Pola Negri film but it’s also the only survivor of her Polish films made from 1914 to 1917 when she moved to Berlin to appear as the dancing girl in a German revival of Max Reinhardt's theatre production of Sumurun – she’d also been in a successful Polish run of this play in 1913 which got her noticed by Warsaw’s Sfinks film company. During the German production, she met Ernst Lubitsch, who would, of course, later direct her, and Swedish legend Jenny Hasselqvist, in a film version of that play, released in 1920 but, before that was Die Augen der Mumie Ma (1918), Carmen (1918) followed by Madame DuBarry aka, in the USA, Passion (1919) which was an international hit and opened the door even in America. A new wave of European sexual sophistication was about to blast past the Griffith Girls and their dated innocence, and, as it always does, Hollywood started acquiring as much Germanic talent as it could.

In 1917 it’s worth pointing out, especially after watching the excellent season of Jerzy Skolimowski films at the BFI and on their new Blu-Ray/DVD set, that Poland was, as ever, in political flux and divided between Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Russian Empire. Sfinks was the pioneering production company and was able to gain success through distribution to the Russian market. It’s no coincidence that Bestia, as directed by Aleksander Hertz – founder of Sfinks – has a similar style to Russian films of say Yevgeni Bauer and other pre-Revolutionary filmmakers, with largely static cameras capturing intensely well-choreographed players using every inch of the performance space in rich and layered sets.

Pola's Apache dance

Hertz was one of those who recognised the hit potential of Asta Nielsen in the Danish Afgrunden (1910) and their distribution of that film and that star to the Russian market, made enough for the company to start making its own films. Again, it’s no co-incidence at all, that Pola performs an Apache dance very similar to Asta’s, wrapping herself even more provocatively around her cowboy; a trained dancer unlike Die Asta also less of an actor perhaps but more of a natural Earth spirit. In Bestia she repeats a similar attempt to produce a Polish Asta in Slave to Her Senses (1914), sadly now lost.

Her acting was mainly based on the best example of the time, which was Asta Nielsen… We were imitating her characterisation. Big, black, boldly accentuated eyes, very pale face and lips – big, red and pouty. The acting technique was overloaded with expressive gesticulations which at the time was supposed to replace the dynamic of spoken words. Halina Bruczówna, fellow Sfinks’ star speaking in 1936.

Pola was just 19 when she filmed Bestia probably in the autumn of 1916 and the originally named Barbara Apolonia Chalupec, had already lived a lot of life, the daughter of an activist father who had fought against both Austria Hungary and the Russians, being sent to Siberia and costing the family almost everything as her mother struggled as a cook to bring her up. Ill health stopped her ballet career in her teens but she lied about her age to get into the Academy of Dramatic Arts where she obviously excelled at turning her lived experience into dramatic gold dust.

Ain't no party like a Pola party!

That this sole survivor of the actor’s early period survives at all is due to an American lawyer Jesse A. Levinson, who bought copies of Pola’s Polish films in the hope of capitalising on her success in his home country. He replaced the titles with new one in English and took out all references to the original filmmakers claiming the film as his own which whilst fraudulent, enabled it to survive whilst European chaos ended up in the destruction of most Polish films of this period. It’s hard to know what other editing decisions were made but as the EYE’s Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi points out in the fab booklet accompanying this release, it’s likely that the Apache dance may have had some of the more risqué moments excised.

What we see in this superb restoration from the Polish National Film Archive – Audio-visual Institute (FINA) is almost complete though at some 64 minutes long and is a richly satisfying example of a pure Pola performance, the Polish Asta indeed. Premiered in 2018, the institute have released a Blu-ray which I bought from the Cineteca Bologna which is a sumptuous box set complete with extras and a 58-page booklet in Polish and English.

Pola is electric throughout as if instinctively understanding the nascent art of film acting helped, as noted above, by the example set by Asta but there’s a difference between the two that does make the Pole present as more of herself. She’s Lubitsch’s wildcat already, sexy, witty, confident and with the biggest, blackest eyes in silent cinema. She’s more than able to catch and maintain our attention though joyful febrility and the feeling that she knows you’re looking and just why; well before Hitchcock she made voyeurs of us all. She improved as an actress without doubt but there’s few as explosively nuanced and more straightforwardly erotic humans ever been seen on screen.

Pola's room, complete with self-referential banners and photographs

Gathering myself I notice there’s a plot in which Pola plays Pola Basznikow, a young woman who enjoys the party life much to the annoyance of her father who paces around in a fury as Pola dances and drinks with friends. She nearly causes a fight between two competing males, before heading off with Dymitr (Jan Pawłowski) and from there to home. After a blazing row with her father, Pola decides to leave and enlists Dymitr’s help and finances to do it. The couple stay at an hotel run by untrustworthy friends of Dymitr and, sensing they’ll be looking for her to pay her way, she “borrows” Dymitr’s money and heads off on her own to Warsaw leaving the young man with vengeance filling in his heart and his empty wallet.

In the big city Pola soon gets noticed… and, after getting a job modelling hats, gets asked out by a customer who takes her to the ballet where she’s transfixed by the dancer on stage. Pola starts taking lessons herself and we switch forward to her as a rising star at the Cabaret Ardent. This is one of those skilfully constricted scenes within the frame of the static camera, customers sat at a table up front, tables in the middle ground and Pola on stage at the right. The scene shifts as the camera focuses on her dancing and the appreciation of those foregrounded customers one of whom is the playboy Aleksy (Witold Kuncewicz), smitten with what he has just seen but very much married to his wife Sonia (Maria Dulęba) with a daughter to prove it.

Pola knows none of this and begins an affair with Aleksy who furnishes her with an apartment and many fine dresses – the haute couture is delicious as it often is in films of this decade – fashion wasn’t democratised until the twenties but there was plenty of stunning design at play for the well to do. Alesky’s homelife is given sufficient attention to build up his conflicted stress and whilst this is a classic love triangle – with all the angles wresting on Alesky the Cheat – there’s enough to guarantee heartbreak.

And all the while, jilted and de-funded Dymitr has also made it to the city and is working as a waiter at the Cafe de Paris… 

Pola drives Aleksy mad but he's pretty dumb anyway

The restoration comes with a new score from film composer Włodek Pawlik whose jazzy score aims to reach across the century and to “…reflect the meaning of emotions and what is most important in real life and in the film… permanent values regardless of technology and time.” There are some funky surprises in the score which, the more I listened the more I grew accustomed to… heck, there’s plenty of ways to go wrong with a silent score but this is Pawlik’s view and it does settle down to a pleasingly upbeat groove with the film’s lovely visuals and Hertz’s maximisation of the drama and minimisation of the fuss: things go as they must but he makes sure we enjoy it for as long as possible. No spoilers mind…

Bestia is definitely worth seeking out to add to your Pola collection or indeed any collection of early film. It’s quite hard to find online, there’s someone selling copies on eBay but you can order from this Polish site if you can navigate the language.