Pola Pola Pola! The Pola Negri Appreciation Site

The Pola Negri Appreciation Site is dedicated to preserving the memory of one of the great actresses of the early film.

Review of Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip: Music for
Experimental Film DVD in the "Music in Silent Films" section

Tom Verlaine? You mean that guitar player from the New York punk scene band Television? Yep, that's the one. Tom Verlaine has teamed up with fellow guitar player Jimmy Rip to create guitar soundtracks for a number of experimental silent shorts. These soundtracks and the shorts they accompany have been released by Kino Video on a DVD called Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip: Music for Experimental Film. This is probably the best introduction to experimental silent shorts you could ask for, because the soundtracks are so gorgeous. The soundtracks transform the films from abstract, artsy experiments to beautiful, romantic dreams that you don't want to wake up from.

December 13th is Tom Verlaine's and your webmaster's shared birthday, so in honor of that, I have added an in-depth review of the Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip: Music for Experimental Film DVD to the "Music in Silent Films" section of this site. You can read the review here. So Happy Birthday to Tom Verlaine and to yours truly, your not-so-humble webmaster!

Lady-fronted musical group releases full-length tribute
to singing German film star ZARAH LEANDER

2007 marks the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Zarah Leander, Nazi Germany’s singing Greta Garbo. As Joseph Goebbels began wanting to include propaganda in Pola Negri’s movies and Pola resisted, Swedish-born actress Zarah Leander picked up the banner where Pola Negri left off and became one of the most beloved singing stars of the Nazi era, having the advantage of being ten years younger than Pola and possessing a deep alto singing voice that is similar to Pola’s. Although many of the films of the Nazi period have become spurned or forgotten (and maybe justly so), Zarah’s films and music from the period continue to be loved by many in Germany and Europe in general to this day.

In August of 2007, a lady-fronted, cabaret-influenced Norwegian musical group named Einmal Kommt Die Liebe commemorated Zarah Leander’s 100^th birthday by releasing a full-length musical tribute to her. Entitled Wunderbar!, the album contains recreations of many of Zarah’s best-loved songs, as well as some original songs written about Zarah. The album is available on the Norwegian-based Provocateur Media label. I will be adding a review of this tribute album to the Pola site in time, but meanwhile you can click here to listen to songs from the album and click here to buy the album.

The Ophelia Orchestra's Sound and Smoke:
a sleazy, authentic reproduction of the music of Weimar Berlin

Approximately seven years of research went into the making of the album. The album features songs that represent all of the important movers and shakers of the period, and discusses the scene of the period in detail with numerous period photographs and very detailed liner notes. With this in mind, Sound and Smoke is an essential item for understanding Pola’s world, as this album faithfully and meticulously captures the music and the social scene she experienced and was part of during her tenure as a film star at UFA. Unfortunately, the album is going out of print and will only available for a limited time. I should have a review for this album forthcoming as well, but in the meantime, you can click here to buy the album.

More News (10-26-07):

Hi everybody! David Gasten, your webmaster, here. I really apologize about not being as available as I'd like to be here in Pola Land. The reason I've been unavailable is that I have been putting most of my energy into jump-starting a Saturday Night Swing Dance and a rocking, teenage Swing Band here in the Denver, Colorado, USA metro area. The Band has been seven years in the making and it will easily be the most intense and danceable band in the Neo-Swing genre once it gets going, but it will simultaneously avoid all the clichés that have beset other groups in the genre. The Dance is a little more established, but getting it going has been a year-long proposition of really hard work and sacrifices of all kinds along the way, hence why dear Pola isn't getting quite as much attention these days. The way I look at it is that if Pola started a Sarah Bernhardt or Ada Negri fan club and that's all she did other than work and raise a family, we'd never have Pola Negri as we know and love her today. And the same goes for your webmaster, for better or for worse.

By the way, if you're interested in seeing what we're up to in the world of Swing Dancing, check out this page. If you live in the Denver area, or happen to be passing through when we're having a dance, then you are personally invited to come join us; you'll have an amazing time!

But in the meantime, back to Pola and silent movie-related stuff--after all, that's why you're here. Here we go...

Last year, Reel Classic DVD released a really nice transfer of the 5-reel Kodascope print of The Spanish Dancer (1923) on DVD. It's nice to see this one released on DVD! Click here to read my review of Reel Classic DVD's release of The Spanish Dancer.

German author and film critic Frank Noack recently saw a screening of Bestia (aka The Polish Dancer), Pola's first film and Poland's first feature film, and has made his review of this film available to the Pola Negri Appreciation Site. You can read his review of Bestia here.

Have you ever heard of Alpha Video? Chances are good that if you live in the USA, you've seen budget releases of older films put out by Alpha Video in a bargain bin at a grocery store or somewhere like that. Well, in recent years, Alpha Video has been overrun by serious film fans, and these folks have gone about releasing all kinds of rare classics from the silent era at budget prices, stuff like the serial Tarzan the Tiger (1929), the surviving material from L'Uomo Mecchanico (1926--Italy's first sci-fi film), Will Rogers' 1922 version of The Headless Horseman, the 1913 and 1926 versions of the German film The Student of Prague (the '26 version is a MUST SEE--one of my favorite silent movies EVER), and the list goes on. Well, one of the items they've released is Pola's The Eyes of the Mummy (1918). This makes that particular film the easiest (and cheapest) Pola silent to get by a long shot, so now you have no excuse. I haven't seen Alpha's version of The Eyes of the Mummy yet, but I'm guessing it's probably on par with the other versions that are currently available. You can buy it cheap from Amazon.com.

I can't believe this has actually happened. Cecil B. DeMille, the creator of the big-budget exploitation film and the man who led the way in the American film industry's move onto the San Andreas fault line, released his last silent film, The Godless Girl, in 1929. For a long time, it has been unclear as to whether this film survived in a showable print, because one known surviving print, held by the UCLA, apparently was decomposed enough that it looked like The Battle of the Space Amoebas when screened. Well, of all things, The Godless Girl has gone from quasi-lost status to being restored by the George Eastman House from a print owned by DeMille himself, and is now available on DVD as part of the Treasures of the American Film Archives, Volume 3 box set, which was released on October 16 of this year. This isn't quite as amazing as Beyond the Rocks (1922) going from lost status to being something you can find on the shelf at your local DVD store, but it's getting there.

If you have an all-region player and can afford the $68 US for the 4-DVD set (and the way the American Dollar is performing right now, that's probably quite doable if you live outside the US), you can now watch The Godless Girl on your DVD player anytime you want, instead of wondering if you'll ever get to see it, as many of us have for years. Here it is on Amazon.com.