“Patriotism is not enough…” Dawn (1928), Stephen Horne, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Day 7

This was one of the most moving films we’ve seen this week and all the more so for two ending beings shown, one from the Belgian digital transfer and the other from the BFI’s 35mm copy. There are differences between the two, not just the warmer tones of the film but also in the way that Nurse Cavell meets her end… the inevitability of violent death by gunshot.

Sybil Thorndike is outstanding as Nurse Edith Cavell and that final walk, her eyes wet with mortal fear, are truly heart-wrenching, bringing tears for the second time this week (the other occasion being the children of Vienna maimed by war). Stephen Horne played an absolute blinder with bass drum punching out Cavell’s final few paces in the first version and the piano taking the lead for the second. The accompaniment has to be as precisely judged as the action on screen and both were in step to devastating effect.

The Belgian version is the uncensored cut of what was a highly-controversial film… there was still plenty of sensitivity about this infamous episode and clearly, as the UK version shows, possible offense had to be limited.

This is not easy though especially when you have an actual member of Cavell’s team, Ada Bodart, playing herself… history as film, film actor as her own history.

"Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

After Dawn, a section on those Nasty Women was more than welcome and I especially laughed at the last, She's a Prince (1926) a crazy-cross-dressed, paparazzi-dumping, case of mistaken royal identity starring Billy Franey as the sorority “girl” formerly known as Prince and Alyce Ardell as… the “prince” formerly known as Alice.

The Swedish Challenge strand continues to impress and Thora van Deken (1920) featured a powerhouse performance from Pauline Brunius as the title character. She is fighting to protect her daughter’s inheritance by hiding her former husband’s will and Brunius display of determination in the face of her dubious action and motherly love is so… human. She was wrong but we are on her side… Brunius has the kind of face that can hold a movie on its own twisting conflicted emotions across strong features that fail to hide her darting eyes. This is why Swedish cinema was indeed “challenging” – completely naturalistic performance matched with films that deal in moral questions in a realistic and compelling way.

The restored print was more 2020 than 1920 and a delight to behold. It was a kind of Blue but emotions were melting through…

Maud Nelissen accompanied with pensive piano lines which perfectly matched this absorbing play of conscience and forbearance. I’d never heard of actress of film until this week and that, my friends, is what this show they call Le Giornate is all about!

On to the evening and two films from people I know and in films I’ve seen.

The Vampire, Philip Burne-Jones

Rudyard Kipling’s The Vampire was written to accompany the exhibition of a illustration by his cousin Philip Burne-Jones depicting a female vampire; another link between cinema and painting as per Tableaux Vivants. This vampire is a sexual predator draining her partners of their energies, funds and self-respect. The poem begins with the line A fool there was… and warns against the folly of falling for women who “…could never know why and could never understand!” decent family society presumably.

It is not a hugely complex story but it has one massive power point: Theodosia Goodman aka Theda Bara who turns what could have been a run of the deMille Victorian morality tale in to very modern sexual picaresque. Her vamp is working her way through male batteries like there’s no tomorrow and lives only for herself and yet she’s doing it in style! We want to go to Theda’s parties, hang out at the clothes store for the endless fittings her cool, cool, cool clothes demand and tell the straights to just go hang!

Theda is a punk rocker, Theda is a punk rocker, etc...

Theda is punk – Siouxsie, Poly and Pauline Murray would be nothing without her approach to mascara – and has a wit that just blasts everyone else off screen. Yes, there are deeper meanings to the struggle between family and pheromones but we’d all like a friend like Theda… er, wouldn’t we?

This was a much better print than the one used for the old Kino DVD although the source material is sadly not perfect. Still a real thrill to see it projected and to have accompaniment from Philip Carli with the premier of his new score for quintet! The music was as closely fit as one of Theda’s dresses and played off the humour as much as the drama just as Theda and, indeed, you and I… Philip played piano and was joined by David Shemancik, Günter A. Buchwald, Romano Todesco and Cristina Nadal. They are Theda’s band for her next all-nighter!

Last up was another who took sexual liberation a major cinematic step forward with Pola Negri in Mania, her third film of the week and her first film (?). This is not the playful Pola of Carmen but an equally passionate one who follows her heart into all kinds of trouble. A matchgirl spotted as the face of the brand, she falls for the artist’s muso buddy and, two stars of kind of born as Mania uses her “connections” to get her guy a break… Needless to say he doesn’t appreciate it and, as is usual – Theda being the exception… the woman pays.

I’d seen Mania before at its UK premier in 2011 and it is a very impressive restoration with some gorgeous close-ups of our heroine and without her trademark eye makeup… but it’s not the mascara that maketh the woman it’s the personality! Pola is also “punk” as it happens: fresh, to the point and boundless…

Theda Bara... A Fool There Was (1915)

Film appreciation is so very subjective and there has to be a certain level of reasoned argument in support of opinion, tempering enthusiasm and explaining yourself - that's the challenge. Sometimes, however, you just don’t have much evidence to go on, and, as stated elsewhere, there is often a huge amount of preconception to over come, much of it the legacy of studio spin-doctors. Good mud sticks, so long as the PR message is simple and powerful enough.

Take Theda Bara for example. She was a ground-breaking actress who brought an aggressive female sexuality to the fore and had a lasting impact on the way that screen actresses could behave and be seen.
But there is so little of her work left to view. There are plenty of still shots that reinforce the legend of the “vamp” and which on occasion, feature her cavorting with skeletons and other morbid signifiers. The whole sex and death thing was very much in vogue (don't ask me why, I'm a Jungian...) and some bright spark at the studios even came up with the fact that her name was an anagram of Arab Death. What is that all about?!

She was the first real sexy symbol in Hollywood and one of the most persistently hyped actresses of all time.
But, was she any good?

Watching A Fool there Was, just about the only surviving full feature and the film that made her a star, you have to conclude that yes, she was a clever actress of some depth and wit. Not at all the histrionic “glowerer “ or under-dressed, over-expressive arm waver I’d expected. She was actually rather charming.

Already aged 29 and looking like one of Siouxsie Sioux's Bromley Contingent in the summer of Punk, Bara carries the whole thing off with a haughty humour and a twinkle in her huge black eyes. She looks very self aware and seems happy making herself the figure of scorn knowing full well that the men in the audience would be sympathetic in so many ways...

The film was based on the play which itself was based on a poem from Rudyard Kipling which forms the basis of the intertitles and is also featured in full in the Kino DVD extras. This literary backbone helps give the film its cutting edge as there are to be no compromises: “fool” they say and fool is what you get.
Bara plays “The Vampire”, a social leach who literally sucks her victims dry, ensnaring them in a world of almost unending and irresistible decadence. They only have to say no but they are all too weak and fall like husks once she has taken all their money and their vitality.

I’d expected this to be a bit overly-melodramatic and less than believable, but Bara’s playful performance convinces you. In once sequence she prevents an ailing suitor from shooting her then shows not a flinch of remorse when he shoots himself. She casually twists men’s minds and moves on, with singular purpose, to her next objective.
There is little characterisation beyond this but The Vampire is clever as well as commanding. She takes aim at the hapless diplomat, John Schuyler (Edward Jose, who puts in a hard-working performance!) who is just waving goodbye to his family on the boat to Europe. She playfully taps him on the shoulder and makes him notice her. Very soon he is draped over her in stultified exhaustion in Italy…some way away from his intended destination of London and far gone from his family.

Schuyler is disgraced and fired from his post. He returns to America but cannot be prised away from The Vampire – rebuffing even the attentions of his daughter. And, every time we see him, he staggers around more desperately with a little more life sucked away. He drinks, makes merry and is robbed of his life force as surely as if The Vampire was a more cinematically-typical one.
It’s uncompromising but Bara performs so intelligently that you believe in the story.

She was more interesting than I expected and more subtle. She seems quite relaxed and occasionally almost looks directly at the viewer with a half smile as her plans roll on the way she expects: she is in control throughout. This is very much “pre-code” in its a-morality apart from The Fool getting the end his foolishness deserves smashed against the iron self-interest of The Vamp.
Bara went on to be one of Hollywood’s major stars for the next four years or so, up there with Chaplin and Pickford. Mostly she played the same kind of “vamp” character but there were some attempts to broaden her pallet to include more traditionally sympathetic roles. Sadly, pretty much all of these films have now been lost.

There are two other early films, The Stain (1914) and East Lynne (1916) as well as some short 20’s comedies and The Unchastened Woman from 1925 when she was past her prime. A tantalising half-minute of her legendary Cleopatra (1917) survives – it looks very saucy indeed – but that’s it so far as is known. No other actor with a star on Hollywood Boulevard has had so many films lost.

Ah well, at least we have this film and I would recommend the Kino version for its clarity – a decent print – although you can also watch/download from the Internet Archive.

There’s also a fascinating 1936 radio interview on YouTube which shows her approach to the movie business. She sounds pretty smart and relaxed about the “pantomime” and you just wish there was more.

She married Liverpool-born film director Charles Brabin in 1921 and they stayed married for the rest of her life. Not quite the behaviour you'd expect from a vamp perhaps but proof of the distance between actress and actuality.