(Svend Gade, Heinz Schall, Germany 1921, 125 min., 35mm)
Many silent filmmakers turned to Shakespeare for source material, transforming the Bard’s verbal poetry and drama into visual equivalents, but none more unusually than this project spearheaded by the legendary Danish actress Asta Nielsen. Nielsen, who takes the title role in this production, brings more than one kind of ambiguity into her portrayal of the “melancholy Dane,” which also gains weight from being shot at some of the actual settings (such as Elsinore Castle) called for in the play.
35mm print from the George Eastman Museum collection.
Upcoming Events in this Series
Film Screenings | The Wildcat (DCP)
Silent Tuesdays | Schweigen! | Polish Film Festival Years before his iconic “touch” was established, Ernst Lubitsch directed this broad farce about the military-and-marriage complex starring Polish emigré Pola Negri. Rischka (Negri), the daughter of a gang of robbers high in the snowy mountains of Germany, is a real wildcat and runs her father’s gang with ruthlessness.
Film Screenings | Faust (DCP)
Silent Tuesdays | Schweigen! Following Nosferatu and The Last Laugh, master expressionist F.W. Murnau hit a crest with his rendering of Goethe’s classic Faust. Emil Jannings plays the diabolical Mephistopheles, who tempts an aging alchemist with the promise of eternal youth for a small price — his everlasting soul.
Film Screenings | A Kiss for Cinderella (16mm)
Silent Tuesdays Director Herbert Brenon and star Betty Bronson reunite after Peter Pan for another adaptation of a J.M. Barrie play. Jane (Bronson) is a house slave who dreams of a Prince Charming and is nicknamed Cinderella by an artist whose studio she cleans because she always talks of the wonderful things that will one day befall her.