The “voix d’or” on silent film: the case of Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt is a paradigmatic case study for the joining of voice and silent film. This is because she was famous for her 'voix d'or' on the theatrical stage and because she was highly visible in the nascent period of the cinema's development. Traditionally considered an example of actress in the silent period who was 'silenced' by film, she has also been considered an anachronistic and ineffective on-screen performer. I argue instead that Bernhardt's films were not mute records of her live stage action but works that further promoted and developed her polymorphous body at the opening of the twentieth century.

Her Majesty moves: Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Elizabeth and the development of motion pictures

Sarah Bernhardt, the greatest theatrical star of the late nineteenth century, enabled and even promoted the association of early film with the British monarchy. She did this literally, by playing the role of Queen Elizabeth in Queen Elizabeth (Les Amours de la Reine Elisabeth, Henri Desfontaines and Louis Mercanton, 1912). Bernhardt also promoted the association of the cinema with monarchy symbolically, making the medium a new empathetic vehicle for the development of celebrity mystique and global power.