Balletdanserinden

Stale, slow-moving drama featuring Asta Nielsen and Valdemar Psilander, two of Denmark's biggest stars at the time. They give solid performances, but the simple plot is stretched out to nearly 45 minutes for no good reason as it could quite easily have been told in twenty.

Two scenes in this film, "The Ballet Dancer", led me to believe there might be something worthwhile in it: a play within the play that is this film and a painting sequence. I was reminded of the work of Russian silent film director Yevengi Bauer, especially his "The Dying Swan" (Umirayushchii Lebed) (1917), which was about a painter and a ballet dancer. Additionally, Bauer included references to theatre throughout his film oeuvre. But, Bauer was also an artistic genius.

I was also led to believe there might be something to this film because August Blom seems to have been a talented filmmaker. In addition to directing "Atlantis" (1913), he made two intelligent little films in 1911, "Temptations of the Great City" (Ved Fængslets Port) and "Desdemona" (For Åbent Tæppe). But, alas, there's nothing worthwhile here.

The film centers on a story of adultery, which isn't very interesting--rather, it's merely sensational. The film boasts Denmark's two biggest stars of the era, Asta Nielsen and Valdemar Psilander, but I'm not a big fan of either. "The Ballet Dancer" is like most Danish films of the time, sensational but unfulfilling. There are good things to say about some of these films, and I've said them elsewhere when deserved. It seems to me that Danish films became set to fit a mold, and while I can see how a great filmmaker like Carl Theodor Dreyer came out of it and why the country in some ways led the world in the art in the early silent era, I also see why the national cinema largely faded away.

Camille is a pretty girl who has more than one job in the arts world ( she is an occasional actress and a ballerina ) and a very complicated love life that this German Count will try to explain. Camille loves Jean, a playwright, but he is having an affair with Herr Simon's wife. Herr Simon, a vigorous Dane, has no remorse using the whip "à la Pola style" on his wife when he finally discovers that she is deceiving him. However it is Paul, a painter, who really loves Camille. Paul even dares to paint his lover, a very risky business because everybody knows that it is not very advisable to mix work with love affairs.

With such a story, the film "Balletdanserinden" is full of the comings and goings of occasional lovers, dates and escapes, meetings and mix-ups and, the least that could be expected in such a tangle of loving and fussing, a tragic final ending for one of the characters and an illuminating and even happy outcome for another one.

Damen Nielsen stars together with Herr Psilander ( this time this handsome Danish fellow is not the main character of the story )in this exemplary "Nordisk" film production directed by Herr August Blom. As always one must emphasize the correctness and efficiency of those films productions, as they are very well done by the versatile film directors of this Danish company.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count too must sort out another fuss involving more than one Teutonic and fat heiress

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/