Les amours de la reine Élisabeth

This film was a struggle. I had to keep myself from shutting it off and doing something else. I don't think I've ever been this bored for forty minutes, not even while listening to dry lectures in algebra class.

I'm grateful that we have the legendary Bernhardt captured on film for all time, but it's unfortunate that she was not paired with adequate filmmakers who understood how to make engaging cinema. The movie is literally a recording of a stage play, all done in long shot with the actors playing for the back row. Peppered throughout are intertitles which explain exactly what's going to happen in the next scene.

The fact that this film was made in 1912 is no excuse; watch the one reeler An Unseen Enemy from the same year and you can see that film is shot and acted much better than this. Perhaps if the likes of DW Griffith had directed, this might have been a classic. Instead we're left with a movie which only functions as a historical curio and nothing more.

This 1912 mini-masterpiece laid the groundwork for future feature-length films (even though it wasn't the first). The film will appear to many as just parts of a play that were filmed, which begin and end with intertitles that explain all the action before it happens on the screen. However, unlike future films, this one doesn't have any dialogue on cards. Altogether though, the characters are played well by their actors, Sarah Bernhardt portrays Elizabeth at a high level of supremacy, and this film is short, sweet and very easy to understand. I highly recommend it, but I also guarantee you, that finding it will take some time.

As much as practices and norms of the stage were carried over into the brand new cinematic medium as it developed, precious few are those titles that were ported as directly as this was. As much a test for the future of movies as it was an opportunity for legendary Sarah Bernhardt to achieve still another level of immortality, this picture definitely shows its age with fuzzy, grainy image quality and relatively scant intertitles. The very fact that a 111-year old feature survives, however, automatically makes it a cultural treasure, and the fact that it's quite well done is more gratifying still. Make no mistake, the film-making techniques on hand in this case are just about as basic as cinema could get, yet that's only a reflection of its place in history and not its value. Though unquestionably simple by the standards of even a few years hence, there's no mistaking that 'Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth' was a major step forward for the new art form, and even today deserves to be revered.

Seen in some moments more than others, the acting certainly bears the distinction most viewers would recognize in the silent era of exaggerated body language and facial expressions. In some measure compensating for the lack of sound and verbal dialogue, the trait is also carried over from stage performance, which in this instance is especially understandable. With this having been observed I don't think there's otherwise anything super remarkable about the acting either way, but the cast are more than suitable in bringing the tableau to life as producer and co-director Louis Mercanton experimented with the new medium. More immediately noteworthy are the contributions of those behind the scenes, for the costume design is utterly gorgeous and heavily detailed. The sets are only half a step behind - perhaps less downright ornate, but nevertheless representing a bounty of visuals for us to take in at any given moment. Meanwhile, while some minutiae and the utmost fullness of Émile Moreau's play is surely lost in translation to film, it's also evident that the man understood the needs of Moving Pictures and ably shaped the narrative and scene writing to get around the lack of spoken words. To that point, whether Moreau or someone else specifically penned the intertitles I don't know, but either way they handily complement the action on-screen to communicate the plot.

Save perhaps for being one of the few Silver Screen appearances of Bernhardt, and the fundamental truth of being such an early "full-length" silent feature, there may not be anything about this that's super special. It's rather well done, almost incredibly so in light of how young the medium still was, and tells a compelling story despite obvious condensation, but isn't exactly revelatory. Modern viewers who have a hard time engaging with older titles won't find anything here to change their mind, and even for silent devotees this will probably stand out more as a beloved artifact than for any facet of its craftsmanship or storytelling. Be all that as it may, the fact remains that 'Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth' has held up stupendously since its release in 1912, and is as interesting and entertaining now as a relic of a time long past as it was for contemporary audiences watching a "Motion Picture" of more than just one or two reels. Unless one has a discrete motivation there might not be any reason to go out of your way to check this out, but if you do have the opportunity to watch 'Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth,' it's a classic that's well worth watching and remembering.

With this other movie from 1919, i discovered French history with an English production and it was about the favorite girl of a king. Here it's the opposite: it's about the favorite boy of a queen and it's a french production about English history! As i don't know the historical facts, i can't comment the story but there is a great dramatic tension: the love triangle (or even square), the ring artefact. Some find useless the captions that explain the scene BEFORE however for me they were essential and without them i would have been lost in the story. From a production point of view, i'm a bit disappointed: sure the period wardrobe looks cute as well the props but honestly they look like more spanish than british. About the big diva Sara Bernhardt, she left me cold: she was OK with pantomimes but what an awful make-up! her white head with a neck piece looks like she was wearing the Halloween mask, no kidding! And indeed the camera is still and it looks like a taped stage play. In a way, less stupid than King John from 1899 (a silent Shakespeare, appreciate the paradox!) but not a classic as the loves and hates of the mighty bores me ... deeply!

Much as I enjoy silent films I was disappointed with this famous early feature, although it provides a rare glimpse of a legendary actress. Sure, it's interesting to see Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Elizabeth I, but it's also frustrating to find that the people who adapted the stage play 'Queen Elizabeth' to the screen had no affinity for the cinema. Compare this to the exciting, comparatively fast-paced films D.W. Griffith had already been making for Biograph for several years, or to the innovative work others were doing at Vitagraph and elsewhere, and you'll realize that the producers of this costume drama were old-fashioned even for their time. Unfortunately, this is one of those slow-moving, stodgy efforts that give silent movies a bad name, especially with viewers who haven't seen better examples of the medium.

That said, one can be grateful that the film was made at all, and that it survives, because it does afford us a look at a major personality of the era, and also gives us a sense of what the theater-going experience was like at the time. 'Queen Elizabeth' is very much a filmed play: each scene is arranged for the camera as it would have been performed in a traditional theater on a proscenium stage. The camera sits back along about the fourth row of the orchestra section, and although it pans slightly once or twice it never takes the viewer into the action among the performers. We are forced to sit back and watch the pageant from a respectful distance. The third scene, which involves a fortune teller, appears to have been shot outside under natural lighting, but otherwise the actors declaim before obviously painted sets. (Griffith, meanwhile, was racing his camera alongside speeding trains -- real ones, that is.) We never get a close look at Madame Sarah, but she attempts to compensate with occasional sweeping arm movements, trembly hands, etc., for the folks in the balcony seats. There are no dialog titles, though documents are shown. Otherwise, as in the "Prince Valiant" comic strip, historical title cards tell us exactly what is going to happen prior to each scene -- an annoying device one finds in other early silents, but which happily disappeared a few years after this film was made. The actors, decked out in Elizabethan finery, strike appropriate poses. For the modern viewer, the experience feels like a school-sponsored trip to a wax museum.

Theater historians might be interested in the second scene, when the Queen and her courtiers enjoy a performance of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' after which the young playwright William Shakespeare is brought forth for a royal audience. There's also a nicely staged sequence towards the end, when the Queen watches through a picture window as her former lover, the Earl of Essex, is brought back to the palace under arrest. Unable to bear the sight, she has a servant close the curtain, then collapses. It's the dramatic peak of the story, but there's nothing cinematic about the way it's presented: the scene could have been done precisely this way on stage, and no doubt was. And therein lies both the strength and the weakness of this particular piece of celluloid: it's an important document of a legendary actress, but we're left with only a pale shadow of what made her great. It's more than we have of, say, Edwin Booth or Sir Henry Irving, and it's certainly better than nothing, but imagine what a more skilled director could have accomplished with this material and this star.