Seeing Sarah Bernhardt

Performance and Silent Film

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by Victoria Duckett

Type

Studies

Subject

Actress > Sarah Bernhardt

Keywords

Sarah Bernhardt, silent cinema, actress

Publishing date

2015

Publisher

University of Illinois Press

Collection

Women's Media History Now

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 248 pages
6 x 8 ¾ inches (15 x 22.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-252-08116-3

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Book Presentation:
The most famous stage actress of the nineteenth century, Sarah Bernhardt enjoyed a surprising renaissance when the 1912 multi-reel film Queen Elizabeth vaulted her to international acclaim. The triumph capped her already lengthy involvement with cinema while enabling the indefatigable actress to reinvent herself in an era of technological and generational change. Placing Bernhardt at the center of the industry's first two decades, Victoria Duckett challenges the perception of her as an anachronism unable to appreciate film's qualities. Instead, cinema's substitution of translated title cards for her melodic French deciphered Bernhardt for Anglo-American audiences. It also allowed the aging actress to appear in the kinds of longer dramas she could no longer physically sustain onstage. As Duckett shows, Bernhardt contributed far more than star quality. Her theatrical practice on film influenced how the young medium changed the visual and performing arts. Her promoting of experimentation, meanwhile, shaped the ways audiences looked at and understood early cinema. A leading-edge reappraisal of a watershed era, Seeing Sarah Bernhardt tells the story of an icon who bridged two centuries--and changed the very act of watching film.

About the Author:
Victoria Duckett is a film historian and a lecturer in media studies at Deakin University, Melbourne. She is the coeditor of Researching Women in the Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives.

Press Reviews:
"Duckett's excellent skills as a researcher and a writer shine through. . . . Seeing Sarah Bernhardt therefore not only adds much needed context and analysis to the performances of the legendary Bernhardt, but it also shows the promise of intermedial research."--Theatre Journal

"Addresses the chasm in criticism between a lionizing of Sarah Bernhardt's stage work on one hand, and the dismissal of her filmed performances on the other."--French Studies

"Conceptually ambitious and highly stimulating."--Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film

"Well written and insightful, this is required reading for those interested in theater, film, or women's studies. . . . Essential."--Choice

See the publisher website: University of Illinois Press

See the complete filmography of Sarah Bernhardt on the website: IMDB ...