Vamps!

This has definitely been the week of the vamp, with Pola Negri at the Riverside Studios in London and then Theda Bara at the Barbican. Pola has the advantage in that she gets to play her role in a skimpy dancing-girl outfit, while Theda Bara is the original Edwardian seductress, swathed from chin to ankle in clothing; but it's a tight-run thing.

You can see why the character in "A Fool There Was" is called 'The Vampire'. Once she gets her claws into a man she never lets him go until he is drained beyond all use to her; and even then, she can't let him leave her — she must be the one to leave him. One hint that he may be on the way out, and she will switch on the charm, sink in the hooks, and haul him back in within minutes.

The sheer mesmeric power of the woman is hard to resist. Theda Bara, in 1915, plays a female most definitely in control. She will literally push her men out of the way or drag them along behind her, and at the merest hint of opposition of disapproval, that little oval face will flare into angular rage. It is easy to see why the British Board of Film Censors banned the film outright; even in modern times it is somewhat shocking, for the plain truth is that the bad girl wins.

Conditioned by years of mandatory morals, we are more than half-expecting to see the hapless victim redeemed by his loving wife and child and crawling back to family life a sadder and a wiser man, while the vamp gnaws her long nails in frustration, pays the price for her wicked life, or simply goes in heartless search of fresh meat. But not a bit of it. She cares not the snap of her fingers for him: but one breath of opposition, and she snaps those fingers again and again, and reasserts her power. She eats him up, and he dies miserably at her feet, virtuous wife forgotten and daughter abandoned.

The film is somewhat creaky in its construction, with a profusion of intertitles reading baldly "One week later", "Six months later", "The next day", etc., and it becomes very noticeable that the actual moment of the most dramatic events is not actually shown: a man shoots himself, a girl falls out of a car, even a kiss seems to be missing, as we see the 'before' and 'after' but not the event itself. I'm not sure if this is a limitation of the stunt/special effects work of the period, or if it is the result of censorship either before or after the fact. I found the plot quite hard to follow, and often had to rely on the intertitles to give me a clue as to just which characters of the large cast had been involved in the scene I'd just been watching, and what their relationship to one another was. Theda Bara herself is not so much attractive as mesmeric, although there is one scene early on where she keeps having to thrust back the shoulder-strap of her loose dress, which threatens to slip off as she is packing...

Compared to the films of the 20s, this production seems relatively unsophisticated, but it's always fascinating to see the everyday costumes and cars of this early era captured on film, like Edwardian potraits come miraculously to life. The little girl is especially appealing, being almost without self-consciousness and providing many of the leavening moments of humour in the film, down to the final scene where you can almost hear her, as she pulls at her devastated mother and points back, asking indignantly "But Mama, why is that woman kissing Papa?"

The screening was well-attended, courtesy of a helpful article in the "Guardian" earlier that week publicising Theda Bara and the event.

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"Sumurun", on the other hand, was as fairy-tale and frothy as the earlier film was contemporary in its dire prognosis. It's set in a never-never world of the Arabian Nights, and features Pola Negri as a dancing girl remarkable not merely for her looks (although these are impressive) but for the sheer brazen art with which she deploys them. The gentle heroine, Sumurun, is equally lovely but in a very different style; Negri's character is a calculated minx who knows exactly what effect she has on men and how to use it to her advantage. She is probably the only woman in film history who can't wait to get into the harem to be ravished by the Sultan...

Again, this is a film very much dominated by the female characters, but here they are better-drawn, and there are also good character roles for the men: including the roles of Chief Eunuch, and the two tumbling servants of the male romantic lead, the young merchant Noor-al-Din. (Sadly, the character seems to be so wet that it's hard to understand what Sumurun, who has her fiery side, can see in him.) The surprise tragic ending is somewhat abrupt, and out of balance with the broadly comic trend of the rest of the film; to such a degree that I was actually left wondering what had become of Negri's character when we were being shown what happened to all the rest, and didn't realise until overhearing other members of the audience afterwards that she was supposed to have died — presumably after being struck by the Sheik!

We saw a Goethe Institute print of this film in German (with live translation of the titles); according to the online review of "Sumurun" at the Pola Negri Appreciation website, the English-language (i.e. American export) edition is very different, having all the sexually suggestive scenes cut out. I can't help feeling that this would not only remove a good deal of the appeal but also the humour of the film...