The
POLA NEGRI
Appreciation Site
POLA POLA POLA!
POLA
NEGRI: the silent and early talkie film actress who was:
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Born in Poland, "made" in Germany, stolen by Hollywood.
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A celebrity in America, an artist in Europe.
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Lover to Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, and Rod La Roque;
wife to a count and a prince. -
A high-grossing Nazi film star who would not bow to the idol of fascism.
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A "vamp" by reputation, a tragedienne in practice, but
a stunningly gifted actress in truth.
The Pola Negri Appreciation Site is dedicated to preserving the memory of
one of the great actresses of the early film.
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News 3-3-10:
Welcome to the Two Thousand Teens, a decade which will make the 100th anniversary of Pola's entrance into the movies. It's really hard to believe that the 1910's are really that long ago, especially when they seem so vivid and so close in silent movies.
I've got a BUNCH of updates this time around, and in fact will have to add a second round of updates in a couple of weeks. Here's what I have to far.
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Restored Madame DuBarry released on DVD
The Spanish company Divisa Video has released the F.W. Murnau Stiftung's restoration of Madame DuBarry (1919) on DVD in Europe. Thier version features German intertitles with Spanish and Portugese subtitles. I suspect that we will be treated with a version with English-language subtitles soon. Click here for more information (in Spanish); click here to order it from FNAC (also in Spanish). (Thanks to John Debuclet for informing me of this.)
Olga Baclanova's site gets a makeover!
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Our little sister site, Olgabaclanova.com, has just received a fabulous makeover! It has a much cleaner and pleasant look that improves greatly on its original design, and also features a brand new Sound Page that features Olga singing in Russian.
And just in case you're wondering who Olga Baclaova is, she is a lovely Russian actress who was in silents and early talkies, most notably Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) and the prototypical Universal Horror film The Man Who Laughs (1928). She was also in the now-lost 1928 silent movie Three Sinners with Pola Negri. The site is run by film and memorabilia collector Paul Meienberg, and your webmaster has been in charge of designing and maintaining the site.
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Review of Sound and Smoke, a CD of reconstructed music from the 1920's Weimar Berlin Cabaret Scene
We had a news item a while back announcing this delightful CD, and now we have a review up as well. This is the musical soundtrack of Pola Negri's Berlin period, and manages to authentically capture the excitement and the sleaze of the period. As mentioned in the review, this CD makes the 1971 movie Cabaret seem like a clown circus in comparison, it's that good.
Click here to read the review.
And speaking of sleaze:
The Reconstructed The Joyless Street (1925) is here!
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Asta Nielsen (left, seated) in The Joyless Street. |
We had a news item last summer about the coming release of the reconstructed The Joyless Street (1925), which is a silent German sleaze epic featuring Asta Nielsen and Greta Garbo and directed by G.W. Pabst of Pandora's Box fame. The 2-DVD reissue was finally released by Edition Filmmuseum of Germany in October of 2009, and I would agree with the chorus at Nitrateville that it was probably the highlight of silent movie releases for last year. I will also say that of all the German silents I've watched (and I've seen a lot), I've never seen one that just wallows in the decadence of the period quite like this in full-blown Cecil B. DeMille "exploitation epic" style. I will have a detailed review of this amazing 2-DVD set up soon, so watch for that. In the meantime, visit Edition Filmmueum's website for details and ordering info.
I will have another update with even more Pola news in a week or so, so watch for it...
News 12-13-09:
Review
of Asta Nielsen DVD
featuring Asta's complete Danish films
I'm a huge Asta Nielsen fan and I've been wanting to add some reviews of Asta Nielsen's movies to the Pola site for a long time. And we have finally done that with a review of the Danish Film Institute's DVD release which features the Complete Danish Films of Asta Nielsen.
Click here to read the review.
Asta Nielsen was a huge German silent movie star in the 1910's and early 1920's. I like to think of her as Pola Negri's big sister because she is a similarly great actress that pulls you into her world and makes you believe that she really is whatever character she is playing. Three of the films in this DVD release are monumental works of art that are literally as important as Birth of a Nation in their importance to the development of cinema.
Here is a very sexy clip from the first and most famous of these films, 1910's Afgrunden (The Abyss):
Life is a Dream in Cinema