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Performing Passions: Sarah Bernhardt and the Silent Screen – Festival Il Cinema Ritrovato | Bologna 20-28 Giugno

ilcinemaritrovato.it · 623 words · saved by 1 readers

Sarah Bernhardt was born 22 October 1844, and died 26 March 1923. Beginning her engagement with film in 1900 with the short fencing match of Hamlet, she went on to make longer narrative films across a variety of genres: the historical spectacle, the documentary, the contemporary-issue film, and the propaganda film. The image which film history traditionally offers us of the actress and of the theatrical film – that she is a French anachronism mistakenly bringing the legitimate theatre to film – is contested by the very diversity and range of the materials available to us. As the first public retrospective of Bernhardt’s films, I therefore want to emphasize the novelty of what it is we are seeing. Like most historians working in silent film, I am of course aware that we are missing material. I therefore cannot claim that this is a complete retrospective of Bernhardt’s films, nor even that new excerpts or prints will not – at some point – come to light. We have been unable to locate two

Sarah Bernhardt was born 22 October 1844, and died 26 March 1923. Beginning her engagement with film in 1900 with the short fencing match of Hamlet, she went on to make longer narrative films across a variety of genres: the historical spectacle, the documentary, the contemporary-issue film, and the propaganda film. The image which film history traditionally offers us of the actress and of the theatrical film – that she is a French anachronism mistakenly bringing the legitimate theatre to film – is contested by the very diversity and range of the materials available to us. As the first public…

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