The Dumb Girl of Portici

Sometimes silent films show their age through deteriorated prints, or contemporary filming techniques that were less capable of visualizing detail, let alone outdated sociopolitical values. That's to say nothing of many titles of the era characterized by exaggerated facial expressions and body language, traits carried over from the stage and exercised for lack of sound and verbal dialogue; in general, only in the later years predating the advent of talkies would actors and directors begin to adopt more nuanced, natural sensibilities reflecting what we modern viewers are accustomed to. These and still other factors can make it hard for some viewers to engage with the cinema of one hundred years ago, no matter how grand a production was or how esteemed it may be in retrospect. Yet there's also a sense of artistry and wonder attached to these early years of the medium, and a reverent finesse, and these would sometimes be lost in subsequent years after sound technology developed and became the principal method of filmmaking. For all the great pictures to have been made in the sound era, it remains true that some of the best ever made hail from the silent period, and it sometimes seems that I find myself more consistently enchanted with the works of so long ago than with latter day projects that are more widely celebrated.

To whatever extent one might argue that the approach to various elements in silent fare is relatively simplistic, it's far more true that immense care and hard work went into any given piece; conversely, it sometimes comes across that there is much which modern filmmakers take for granted. Consider 'The dumb girl of Portici,' of 1916. It doesn't stand out to me in any way so much as to earn any special reverence, yet the production design and art direction are superb. Every facet of the sets was crafted with attentive consideration for the tiniest minutiae, from tiles on a floor to the wear of dirt and weather on building exteriors, while also setting the stage for big spectacle in palatial ballrooms and town squares. As one customarily expects of period features the hair and makeup, and especially the costume design, are utterly gorgeous; in this moment of watching I can't help but to think that the sartorial arrangements here best what we've seen even in award-winning dramas of more recent decades, like Michael Hoffman's 'Restoration.' From beautiful filming locations, to elaborate choreography (capitalizing on the skills of ballerina star Anna Pavlova, among others), and at times including the keen shot composition of directors Phillips Smailey and Lois Weber, there is a rich bounty of sights for us to take in here, all shrewdly considered and rendered to maximize their potential. Even the editing and tinting of frames occasion particular admiration, and the orchestration of some sequences is notably smart.

It's true, perhaps, that the plot in and of itself isn't so remarkable as Weber adapts an opera of several decades before. The tale is a familiar one as love blossoms between a peasant woman and a fancy nobleman following a chance encounter. Classic, anticipated themes emerge of class struggle, the casual indifference and cruel, prejudicial despotism of the wealthy and powerful, rebellion of the poor and oppressed, and the power of love as the narrative builds to inevitable tragedy. Yet even as the movie is shaped from a recognizable mold, the storytelling is engaging and absorbing as events progress, benefiting from Weber's strong, vivid scene writing. Given that the source material is of the stage, the theatrical bent of the direction and acting quite works in this flick's favor as each scene and passing moment is realized with dramatic emphasis; some tidbits come off especially well, and at one time or another most every actor has a little opportunity to shine. Any stunts and effects are excellent, and some odds and ends throughout are extra vibrant and impactful - more so as the length draws on. We're treated to both eye-catching spectacle and hearty drama; the tale is cut from familiar cloth, but that doesn't mean that its themes resonate any less, or are any less infuriatingly relevant all these years later. We could nitpick this and that, but any points of criticism feel decidedly minor when weighed against the substantial strength that 'The dumb girl of Portici' carries in pretty much every regard.

It's still the case that this film isn't so striking as to earn rapturous praise. Just as with any era of cinema, silent productions range from the absolutely essential to the poorly considered, with a large portion existing in the so-so middle; I believe this sits firmly on the upper end of the spectrum, but is not an outright zenith. Him and haw as we may, though, I don't think there's much room to dispute how engrossing this is, and broadly enjoyable, and very capably made according to the techniques and technology of the 1910s. Sure, scenes of violence later on may be a tad messy and brusque, yet given the more plainly dramatic tack that is most prevalent, these are able to bear more weight than countless modern movies that would aim to assault viewers with a cavalcade of action. The writing isn't always so stellar in identifying who is who among its characters, and the third act is notably less tight and focused, but in fairness, I've seen bigger titles go far more wrong. By modern standards the acting may lack subtlety, yet modern actors sometimes struggle to do much with writing that is more stale and self-congratulatory than the sturdy if tried and true saga we see here. Even the cinematography may be fairly static, typical of the early years of a burgeoning medium, yet when Dal Clawson, Allen G. Siegler, and R. W. Walter employ camera movement in later sequences, the gravity of these is only heightened. And so on, and so on - there is lasting value in this picture that far exceeds any perceived faults, and which far exceeds what some brand new releases could claim.

This may not be something that changes the mind of anyone who has a hard time engaging with the silent era, but if you're open to the style and to all that cinema has to offer, then 'The dumb girl of Portici' holds up terrifically, and remains well worth checking out if one has the chance. While I'd stop short of saying it's altogether a must-see, all told this feature is a gem, and I'm happy to give it my solid recommendation!

This silent epic should be much better known than it is. It is based on the plot of an opera of the same name, describing a real revolt in Naples in the 17th century. The title character, Fenella, is the fictional mute sister of Masaniello, one of the key historical figures in that revolt. Fenella is played by ballerina Anna Pavlova, in her only full-length film. Unfortunately, Pavlova's broad acting style is better suited to ballet or opera, playing to the crowds in the back, rather than to the more intimate medium of film. On the other hand, she was one of the most famous dancers of her day, and this film is one of the very few records left to modern audiences to see her in motion.

Despite her top billing, the film does not hinge on Pavlova, and for the most part, this is really a beautifully made film. This was a Big-Budget picture when it was made -- the ornate costumes and sets are stunning. The scenes of the revolt are chaotic, real, and compelling.

Some of the actors, including Pavlova, as well as a few of the supporting roles, are guilty of the sort of overly theatrical acting associated with early movies. For the most part however, the acting is natural. I was particularly impressed by Douglas Gerrard, playing a nobleman who seduces and abandons Fenella in favour of his aristocrat fiancée.

Surprisingly, the film also works as a "silent musical". The early part of the movie includes a number of dance numbers showing a variety of styles, and not just those featuring the film's "star", Anna Pavlova. I would recommend this film for all of its parts.

Conceptually alone, this was a brilliant project for 1916. I was blown away by Guy Maddin's combination of the two silent art forms based on movement of ballet and silent film in the 2002 "Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary," and here's a mega-production from the early 20th century by Universal studios directed by perhaps the most intelligent of reflexive filmmakers of her day, Lois Weber, and starring in her film debut the biggest name in the history of ballet, Anna Pavlova. To underscore the absence of speaking in favor of graceful pantomime and highlight the musical properties in the art, Pavlova plays the eponymous "dumb" role of "The Dumb Girl of Portici," as based on the most-musical of the theatrical arts, an opera. Of course, there isn't the dance-like movements of the camera or emphasis on sex as in Maddin's postmodern film--this was 1916, after all. All the (over)dramatics, however, do build up to an exciting climax that could compete with anything seen in the Italian super-theatrical epics or D.W. Griffith's notorious blockbusters of the day, including some extended dolly and tracking shots.

It should be remembered how respected ballet was back then, too, largely thanks to the Russian prima ballerina Pavlova as its ambassador travelling the world. One may get a sense of it from the films of the era alone--long before "Black Swan" (2010) or "The Red Shoes" (1948). Charlie Chaplin would be the most famous filmmaker known to appreciate ballet, including his dream-sequence homage in "Sunnyside" (1919) to Vaslav Nijinsky. The year after this film, Yevgeni Bauer employed actress and ballet dancer Vera Karalli for "The Dying Swan" (1917), that title being taken from the solo dance originally commissioned for Pavlova on the stage. There are other, if lesser known ballet-inspired pictures scattered throughout the era, e.g. early Danish feature films such as "Ballettens Datter" (1913) and the Asta Nielsen film "The Ballet Dancer" (1911), the Alice Brody vehicle "The Dancer's Peril" (1917), or the Dadaist dance-inspired "Ballet Mécanique" (1924/1925). Of course, film has a long history with dance in general, from its beginnings with "Annabelle Serpentine Dance" (1895) and the many other Loie Fuller impersonators in often hand-colored prints to simulate the Art Nouveau dancer's use of theatrical lighting to affect colorful changes in her swirling silk costume. Another early dance film, "La Biche au bois" (1896), was specifically made to be projected during a stage play. Opera was highly respected and increasingly popular, too. Surely a catalyst for Pavlova's film debut was the introduction of soprano Geraldine Farrar in Cecil B. DeMille's production of the opera "Carmen" (1915). It may've, at least, contributed to Universal recruiting Pavlova with $50,000 up front for the film (putting her in "Chaplin territory as a highly-paid movie star," as Fritzi Kramer of the Movies Silently blog puts it) and her choice to adapt the Daniel Auber opera.

Ballet and opera were more of supposedly-high-brow art, like Shakespeare or revered novels, for filmmakers to integrate in the quest to emerge from an image as lower-class entertainment of nickelodeons and towards attracting middle-class women, believed to be arbiter's of taste, to cinemas. This message of "uplift" was at the heart of the work of a filmmaker like Weber, who was usually credited, as she is here, as one half of a co-directing team of the married ideal with her husband, Phillips Smalley (and regardless of her apparently more dominate actual creative role in the relationship). Indeed, Universal--taking after Rex, Weber's former employer and studio since incorporated into the then-new Hollywood company--included several husband-wife filmmaking teams and appear to have employed more female directors than any other studio at the time. And, Weber was their most important, as well as, reportedly, the highest paid director in the entire business at one point. It's why she was entrusted with the epic that's reported expense was as much as $300,000 (and when the budget for the prior year's "The Birth of a Nation" was a then largely unheard of sum of some $110,000).

As much as I respect the rest of her oeuvre, including "Hypocrites" (1915), "Shoes" (1916) and "Too Wise Wives" (1921), this may be my "new" favorite film of Weber's, because it's purely art. After it, she went back to making the same social-problem films of afore and for which I tend to complain while admiring the artistry of the propaganda. Aside from the size of the production and casting of Pavlova, it somewhat harks back to some of her earlier one-reelers at Rex, which were arguably more about the exploration of art than converting audiences to Progressive Christians. Reflecting on the nature of cinema through statue in "From Death to Life" (1911), twin paintings in "Fine Feathers," reproduced photographs in "A Japanese Idyll" (both 1912) and "How Men Propose" (although that one remains unconfirmed as a Weber film), and mirrors and genre in "Suspense" (both 1913). Much of this formal contemplation continues in Weber's later work, but it tends to be clouded by heavy-handed moralizing.

Here, we just get the intriguing and moving integration of Weber's silent film technique, Pavlova's mute dancing and performance, and John Sweeney's modern score adaptation of Auber's 1828 opera. Appropriately, the film begins with Pavlova dancing in a more-expected traditional ballet form against a black background. From there, Weber opens with too many over-explanatory title cards, but that soon subsides as the picture follows Pavlova's dancelike movements, an emerging tax revolt and the prince-and-pauper masquerade-made love triangle. Sure, Weber could've employed more close-ups, although that wasn't usually her style at the time, and there are nonetheless a fair amount of closer views for a film of 1916 and some good cutting, grand sets and plenty of extras for the climax and its preceding build up, which includes an infant being tossed at a wall and decapitated heads on pikes, as well as nighttime photography and some nice tinting/toning. Plus, those dolly shots to take in all the action. Is it overwrought and acted? Sure, but it's opera combined with two other mute art forms with their own systems of gestures and conventions, and it culminates in a helluva an old-fashioned spectacle of dramatics.

Pavlova's performance has been singled out negatively by some. Kramer points out that she fulfills the trope of "thistledown dames shrieking with delight at squirrels and generally acting like blithering idiots in an attempt to be rustic and delightful," which, yes, is true, but this is a performer best known for running around on her tippy toes in pointe shoes and a tutu pretending to be a swan, and after seeing her home films in "The Immortal Swan" (1935) documentary, which is included as an extra on the Milestone home video, where she surrounds herself with birds and other pretty things, I wonder not only whether her performance in the film matches her public image but also whether it wasn't also a bit true to her real self. Regardless, it's a fair point and part of the grander picture of three old art forms full of old-fashioned conventions.

I do take some umbrage, however, with Anthony Slide's criticism (in his book "Lois Weber: The Director Who Lost Her Way in History") that her overdramatic acting is the film's major drawback, before he continues to state that Weber's supposed hesitancy for close-ups was because Pavlova was too old for the part. What with being in her 30s for a rarely-adapted opera that was almost a century old back then, I guess. Yet, Slide's book does include a nice quotation from her that may best summarize the success of "The Dumb Girl of Portici." "I desire that my message of beauty and joy and life shall be taken up and carried on after me. I hope that when Anna Pavlova is forgotten, the memory of her dancing will live with the people. If I have achieved even that little for my art, I am content."

Thanks to the preservation of a 1920s 35mm nitrate reissue print (with the film already having originally been cut down from 11 to nine reels in between its premiere and general release) at the BFI and a 16mm copy at the New York Public Library's Performing Arts Library, as released on home video by Milestone Films, Pavlova's wish has been fulfilled, and the unique meeting of three old art forms live on.

In 1916 Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley were the go-to pair at Universal for serious tracts and interesting experimental cinema. So when Paramount did a silent movie of Carmen with opera star Geraldine Farrar and it worked beautifully, Weber and Smalley counterpunched with a silent version of MASANIELLO with great ballet dancer Pavlova -- a much more natural-sounding bit of casting for a silent movie. Then they shot it in a far more naturalistic fashion than Weber and Smalley usually used -- despite Pavlova wandering around the beach in toe shoes -- and did enormous and expensive set decorating.

Unhappily, while it probably worked very well at the time -- at least to the extent of letting audiences see the prima ballerina of the Russian ballet and in making it clear that real artists of the real arts would do movies -- this movie has not aged well. The melodramatic plot was typical of grand opera of the period, but modern tastes in stories are less grandiose and Miss Pavlova, while she moves beautifully, is clearly a stage actress and does not know how to tone down her performance for the screen. I also find the sumptuousness of the set decoration distracting.

There is much for a fan of silent movies of the 1910s to take pleasure in: the mobility of the camera, the advanced editing of the piece all serve the film in a manner that was striking in the period. However, given that almost a century has passed, much has changed to render this movie plebeian and odd. Even the word "Dumb" in the title longer means "mute" to the modern speaker of English, but "stupid". I fear the casual modern viewer will think this movie dumb in both senses of the word.

Prolific female director Lois Weber goes epic in The Dumb Girl of Portici, a sumptuously mounted production featuring the prima ballerina of her day, "the incomparable" (as billed) Anna Pavlova. Based on the opera Mansaniello, Weber tailors it for the waifish Pavlova as the sister of the title character giving her the floor most of the picture to leap about too and fro as the mute Fenella.

Spain rules over Naples in the 17th century and like most colonialist is bleeding the poor of the fishing village of Portici with crippling taxes. When the Duke arbitrarily decides to raise taxes on fruit, the people led by Fenella's brother revolt and begin to massacre the aristocracy, with lightening success but is soon betrayed by neighbor Pietro who harbors desires for Fenella. Regaining his strength Mansaniello attempts to kill a sympathetic royal, Alphonso, who has developed a thing for Fenella but she steps between them.

Director Weber wanders into DW Griffith territory with this silent epic of lush set design, opulent costuming and rousing crowd scenes of mass slaughter and beheadings with mice feasting on dead aristos. Amid all the calamity Pavlova leaps (with some cable assistance I believe) and bounds merrily about, an indefatigable innocent consumed by the joy of living, even in these circumstances.

Overlong, but worth a brief look if only for the rare footage of the dance icon and some excessive mass chaos, graphically presented.