Seeing Sarah Bernhardt: performance and silent film

The most famous stage actress of the nineteenth century, Sarah Bernhardt enjoyed a surprising renaissance when the 1912 multi-reel film Queen Elizabeth brought her international acclaim. The triumph capped her already lengthy involvement with cinema while enabling the indefatigable actress to reinvent herself in an era of technological and generational change. Placing Bernhardt at the center of the industry's first two decades, Victoria Duckett challenges the perception of her as an anachronism unable to appreciate film's qualities. Instead, cinema's substitution of translated title cards for her melodic French deciphered Bernhardt for Anglo-American audiences. It also allowed the aging actress to appear in the kinds of longer dramas she could no longer physically sustain onstage. As Duckett shows, Bernhardt contributed far more than star quality. Her theatrical practice on film influenced how the young medium changed the visual and performing arts. Her promoting of experimentation, meanwhile, shaped the ways audiences looked at and understood early cinema.

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.

Screening Sarah Bernhardt: reinterpreting acting in silent film

Sarah Bernhardt, the great nineteenth-century theatrical actress, was also the first major international film star. Appearing cross-dressed in a short Hamlet film before international audiences at the Paris Exposition of 1900, this 56-year-old French actress most famously went on to make Camille (La Dame aux Camélias, 1911) and Queen Elizabeth (Les Amours de la Reine Elisabeth, 1912). Later appearing in one of the first celebrity home movies (Sarah Bernhardt at Home, 1915), she also made a WWI propaganda film, Mothers of France (Mères Françaises, 1917). This presentation explores these films as evidence of a productive exchange between the stage and the nascent film industry. Rather than see Bernhardt’s acting as evidence of the theatre’s incommensurability with film, it will demonstrate the legacy of her stage acting as she adapted it to early film. The talk will include screenings of the films accompanied by live music.

Researching women in silent cinema: new findings and perspectives

This anthology exposes the richness and variety of interests that motivate feminist film research today. Exploring women’s contribution to silent cinema, scholars from across the globe address questions of performance, nationality, industry, technology, labor, and theory of feminist historiography. The volume builds on the thematic, methodological, and material diversity that characterized earlier efforts in women’s film history, and the originating context of the sixth Women and the Silent Screen conference (Bologna, 2010). Much emphasis is given to the transitional period of silent cinema (1910s to the early 1920s), which emerges as the field where feminist film scholars are beginning to claim their own theoretical and historical ‘place’. While giving a new impetus to the idea of transitional cinema, the collected essays also illuminate the importance of film’s transnational circulation. Questions of nation and nationhood, and women’s inclusion or exclusion within these terms, are examined in connection to issues of cultural globalization. How did American serial queens impact early Chinese film? How did the variety stage accommodate American films in Rio de Janeiro? Along what lines might we discuss women filmmakers who literally toured the world? These are just some of the issues that are discussed in the volume. Each investigation prompts us into distinct acts of cultural contextualization. A particular focus on acting and the agency of the actress is shared across the volume. The fundamental figure of the actress links multiple threads of scholarship, traversing different films and national cinemas. Alice Guy, Asta Nielsen, Florence Turner, Lois Weber, Mary Pickford, Esfir’ Shub, Pearl White, Vera Karalli, Aleksandra Khokhlova, Elsa Lanchester, Louise Fazenda, Sarah Bernhardt, Gemma Bellincioni, Angelina Buracci, Yin Mingzhu, Leni Riefensthal: these are but some of the names that are encountered across the essays in the collection. New findings are exposed and new research perspectives are opened through these and other figures, allowing us to uncover original ways of thinking about women’s visibility and agency on film.

The silent screen (1895-1928)

In chapter 1, Victoria Duckett introduces the silent screen years (1895–1927) by investigating the American poet Vachel Lindsay’s claim in 1915 that European stage acting was unsuited to film. This critique held sway for decades, during which commentators celebrated American, as opposed to European, contributions to the new craft of motion picture acting. European acting became associated with mannered staginess in contrast to a more subtle American style. Building on recent scholarship that questions this dichotomy, Duckett skillfully analyzes the screen performances of two women actors: the French Sarah Bernhardt, arguably the most famous late nineteenth-century actor, who electrified theater audiences but made relatively few film appearances, and the American Lillian Gish, who began her career as a child in stage melodramas but whose fame derived from her appearances in films. Duckett’s nuanced reading of Bernhardt’s performance in the film Camille (Film D’Art, 1911) and Lillian Gish’s in Broken Blossoms (D. W. Griffith, 1919) reveals that despite their differences, they both used their bodies expressively to convey meanings and emotions.

Introduction: Women and the silent screen

What are the gaps in current film histories? Who has been forgotten and why? How can we write histories of cinema that are more inclusive while not eliding processes of exclusion or other dynamics of power? This essay demonstrates the significance of gender in relation to early cinema.

Interview in Melbourne with Meg Labrum, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra, June 16, 2015

A conversation with Meg Labrum (National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra),arguing that women have a disproportionate impact upon the programming of silent film at festivals. It asks how she works and, specifically, how the change to digital has impacted archival outreach and access today in Australia.

Women and the silent screen VII

In 2013 I was convenor (with Jeanette Hoorn) of a now well-established academic event, the Viith International Women and the Silent Screen conference. This provided a forum where researchers explored the significance of gender and early cinema in all its facets. Rather than a specialist forum within a broader disciplinary field, the conference offered an opportunity to present research that reframed the significance of gender in early cinema. I also programmed the film screenings, introduced these to audiences, and provided the opening and closing remarks on the conference.

Cognitive consequences of expressive suppression : effects of sex and emotional valence

The present research was designed to examine whether sex and/or emotional valence pl aya role in the cognitive consequences (e.g., memory) of expressive suppression. Seventy-two (36 male and 36 female) undergraduates were randomly assigned to either a control or expressive suppression condition, and were asked to watch silent film clips intended to elicit amusement and disgust. While watching each film, participants listened to sixteen nonemotional words. After each film, participants were asked to answer questions about wha t they had seen in the film (visual memory), to recall as many words as they could (auditory recall memory), and to select from a list any words that they had heard during the previous film clip (auditory recognition memory). With regard to the effects of expressive suppression on visual memory, results indicated a 3-way interaction between condition, sex and film emotion: Men performed more poorly than women on the visual memory test after watching both the amusing and disgusting films in the control condition, and when watching the amusing film in the expressive suppression condition. However, men in the expressive suppression condition performed better than women after watching the disgusting film. In terms of the effects of expressive suppression on auditory memory (recognition and recall), a condition x film emotion interaction indicated that there was no difference in auditory memory for the expressive suppression and control conditions when watching the amusing film, but that the expressive suppression group showed poorer auditory memory than the control group for words presented during the disgusting film. Moreover, a ma in effect of sex on auditory memory suggested that men recalled and recognized more words than women across conditions. Taken together, these findings suggest that both sex and the emotional valence of films may influence the effects of expressive suppression on memory. Results will be discussed in the context of previous literature concerning the effects of expressive suppression on cognition.

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.

Interview with Mariann Lewinsky, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, July 2, 2015

A conversation with Mariann Lewinsky, Il Cinema Ritrovato, arguing that women have a disproportionate impact upon the programming of silent film at festivals. It asks how she works and, specifically, how the change to digital has impacted archival outreach and access across the globe today.

Interview with Karola Gramann, Kinothek Asta Nielsen, Frankfurt, January 9, 2015

A conversation with Karola Gramann, Kinothek Asta Nielsen, Frankfurt, arguing that women have a disproportionate impact upon the programming of silent film at festivals. It asks how she works and, specifically, how the change to digital has impacted archival outreach and access across the globe today.

La storia del cinema muto a Bologna attraverso la documentazione d'epoca. Protagonisti, imprese, spettacoli e luoghi per la gestione dell'immaginario della società urbana (1896-1925).

Studio storiografico condotto su fonti archivistiche, filmiche e sulla stampa locale e specializzata che ricostruisce dettagliatamente l'ambiente cittadino d'inizio Novecento nel quale si sono diffusi i primi spettacoli cinematografici, determinandone le caratteristiche e tracciandone l'evoluzione fra 1896 e 1925. L'avvento della cinematografia è strettamente connesso a un processo di modernizzazione del volto urbano, degli stili di vita, delle idee e il cinema si salda a queste istanze di rinnovamento, con una precisa ricaduta sull'immagine della città e sull'esperienza dei suoi cittadini appartenenti alle diverse classi sociali.