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 of Bernhardt’s historical spectacles (La Tosca, 1908, André Calmettes, and Adrienne Lecouvreur, American title An Actress’s Romance, 1913, Louis Mercanton and Henri Desfontaines, both produced by Film d’Art), nor her last film, La Voyante (The Fortune Teller, 1923, Films Abdoré, Leon Abrams). Recently the final scene of Daniel (Pathé Gazette,1921) has been found, and we know that Bernhardt was involved with another lost film, It Happened in Paris (Tyrad Pictures, 1919). To these ellipses must be added those many short newsfilms which companies such as Pathé and Gaumont produced, and Bernhardt’s brief appearance in Sacha Guitry’s Ceux de chez nous (1915).

Rather than focus upon what is missing from this programme, or what we have considered too peripheral to include, I want to emphasize what these films bring to our understanding and appreciation of Bernhardt and the silent screen. As one of the most famous actresses of her generation – and certainly the most notorious – Bernhardt provoked both criticism and celebration. Today she is newly popular as a subject of research and exhibition. What is remarkable about the recent flurry of interest in Bernhardt is the way in which her films have been ignored. Removed from discussions about the avant-garde, feminism, and modernity, they are presented (if at all) as theatrical documents which provide visual proof of how she performed on the live stage.

What I hope this programme demonstrates are the limitations of this vision. Certainly, we can see Bernhardt on screen, and certainly, we can marvel at her theatrical performance. I think, however, that if we look at the films we can begin to identify the ways in which they resonate with her other activities, and the way in which they, too, might be considered remarkably “modern”. On film Bernhardt crossed artistic boundaries, inserted cultural difference into the terms of a national debate, collapsed the distinction between public and private life, and emphasized in action and dress the artifice and performativity of gender. Moreover, she physically incarnated the challenges and changes introduced by Art Nouveau. It is this last point I want to stress, since it resonates with the other silent film programmes featured in this festival. Indeed, I would go on to argue that Bernhardt’s films “belong” somewhere between the serpentine dances of Loïe Fuller and the abstract formalism of Germaine Dulac. Physically embodying the thin spiralling tendrils and turns of Art Nouveau, and doing this in a manner which saw it inserted into the changed tempo of narrative film, Bernhardt reminds us of the fact that the avant-garde – and particularly a feminist and modernist avant-garde – did not inevitably relinquish its hold on the female form and retreat into formal abstraction.

Victoria Duckett