What is it about?
In the history of cinema, silent film has waited a long time to see the light and be understood as a critical art form in crafting the times when cinema became a cultural bombshell. Women erected the medium together with the men who have been declared as pioneers. This article honors the work of two women pioneers of silent film: Alla Nazimova and Natacha Rambova. The crust of this work is to emphasize that their film, Salomé, based on Oscar Wilde's play, exhibits the influence of Avant-garde movements of the times, from Art Deco to Expressionism. Nazimova directed, edited and produced the film. Rambova was the creator of costumes and designs for staging the film.
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Why is it important?
It is important because modern Avant-garde and filmmaking were intertwined. Film experimentation as shown by Luis Buñuel, Robert Waine, Fritz Lang and others was not unique. Germaine Dulac, Lotte Reiniger or Alice Guy Blaché also experimented with film techniques and images.
Perspectives
Research for this project came about under the topic of "celebrity culture" and how it has charmed an entire modern civilization. The image and how impacted art and culture was a solid point of departure to capture the outreach of this technical revolution in painting, literature, performing arts, and the figure of the author. Since subjectivity plays a critical part in the development of the work of art, and women's true subjectivity had not been taken into account by modern psychology (i.e. Freud and followers), bringing them as important authors and creators in the development of the moving image and its consequences beyond the actor as a commodity was the force behind this work. These two women pioneers, being celebs, were nonetheless outstanding magicians of the moving image at a time when the arts synchronized to an unprecedented result. My hope is that other researchers will continue to unveil all possible paths to understand and appreciate silent cinema.
Dr MARIA CRISTINA C. MABREY
University of South Carolina
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Silent Cinema and the Avant-Garde (1910–1939): The Provocative Advent of Mass Culture and Women's Reformulation of Visual Arts, February 2022, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003174134-3.
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