Pola Negri
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Best films:
Ernst Lubitsch: Carmen/ Gypsy Blood (1918) George Fitzmaurice's Bella Donna (1923) Herbert Brenon's The Spanish Dancer (1923) | Links: |
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Pola Negri (born Barbara Apolonia Chalupec in 1897) started out as a dancer and
theatrical actress in her native Poland. She also acted in some Polish films
like Aleksander Hertz's Bestia/ Beast/ The Polish Dancer (1917).
She became famous enough that theatrical director Max
Reinhardt brought her to Berlin, where she made more movies and met
Ernst Lubitsch. The latter turned her into a movie star via
Die Augen der Mumie Ma/ The Eyes of the Mummy Ma (1918),
Carmen/ Gypsy Blood (1918), Madame DuBarry (1919),
Die Bergkatze/ The Mountain Cat/ The Wild Cat (1921), and two more movies.
When Lubitsch moved to Hollywood, Negri too found employment there.
She became the first star of continental Europe to move to Hollywood, opening
the gates for Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.
Negri became the original "femme fatale" in films like
George Fitzmaurice's Bella Donna (1923) and
Herbert Brenon's opulent The Spanish Dancer (1923).
Lubitsch directed her again in
Forbidden Paradise (1924),
but her career started declining after
Mauritz Stiller's Hotel Imperial (1927).
The German director Paul Czinner
directed her in The Way of Lost Souls (1929).
She became famous as a flamboyant vamp, an image that she carefully self-promoted with display of unorthodox fashion.
During the sound period, she was more successful in Europe, particularly in Germany, where she starred in Willi Forst's Mazurka (1935).
World War II ended her career for good.
Like Asta Nielsen, she was a descendant of the European tradition of Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. But in cinema she introduced two disturbing elements: the Bohemian seductress threatening the patriarchal moral code and the foreign/exotic/"other" persona threatening the cultural order.
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