Francesca Bertini: Amore senza stima, Marion, Mariute
Pola Negri: Wenn das Herz in Haß erglüht
Asta Nielsen: Die Geliebte Roswolskys + frammenti/fragments
Il programma di quest'anno include film e frammenti di film – finora sconosciuti o erroneamente identificati – di tre delle più grandi figure del cinema europeo degli anni Dieci e Venti del secolo scorso. La decana era Asta Nielsen (1881-1972; debutto sullo schermo nel 1910), anche se l'italiana Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) la precedette sullo schermo di tre anni. La più giovane era l'attrice di origine polacca Pola Negri (1897-1987), che fece il suo primo film nel 1914 e nel 1918 era una stella del cinema tedesco di fama internazionale.
This year’s programme includes hitherto unknown – or previously wrongly identified – films and fragments of the work of three of the greatest figures of the European screen in the Teens and Twenties of the last century. The doyenne was Asta Nielsen (1881-1972; film début 19l0), though the Italian Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) preceded her on screen by three years. The youngest was the Polish-born Pola Negri (1897-1987), who made her first film in 1914, and achieved international stardom in the German cinema from 1918.
It is particularly interesting to see these three unchallenged divas in directly comparable roles, each playing a stage artist trying to reconcile public life and fame with private emotional turmoil. With eyes that are incomparably expressive, even when veiled by the lids, Nielsen’s great strength is that her performance is always pervaded by a detached humour. On the contrary, Negri’s strength is precisely that humour is never allowed to restrain her glorious emotional excesses and ballerina’s expansiveness. Bertini has charm and beauty and a naturalistic manner of performance, which happily does not inhibit her when it comes to the full-blown histrionics of the climax of Marion. In the words of another diva, Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, “We did not need to talk. We had faces then.” – David Robinson
