The Woman with the Hungry Eyes

The Woman with the Hungry Eyes (2006)

**** (out of 4)

Screen vamp Theda Bara is the subject of this wonderful documentary that digs into her career in the silent era. It seems that Bara has been forgotten overtime, which is probably due to the fact that the majority of her features are sadly lost.

What makes this documentary so special is that it really goes into great details about her career. As you'd expect, her early life and life after her movie career are covered but the majority of the 100- minute running time is devoted to her actual movies. What was so great about this is that the documentary goes from year to year and gives great detail about the movies that were made in those years, their production history, their box office success or failure and finally we even hear about how they compared to other movies from that year.

I really loved the way her story was told and I thought director Hugh Munro Neely did a brilliant job at breaking everything down and really delivering something truly great. As I said, the majority of Bara's work is lost, which is too bad but we're given excellent covered of some of her biggest movies including the notorious 1917 version of CLEOPATRA. There are film historians and critics on hand to discuss the work as well as the personal life of the actress.

If you're a fan of silent cinema then this documentary is a must see. If you're interested in who Theda Bara was then it's even more of a must.