randy_byers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
randy_byers) wrote2007-06-24 10:21 am
randy_byers) wrote2007-06-24 10:21 am
Salomé (1923)
I'm writing about this movie in honor of Gay Pride weekend, because it's one of the gayest movies of the silent era.
I'm not sure why it isn't more famous than it is. It's dismissed by some as campy or artificial, but it seems to me that people either aren't recognizing that it's Decadent or don't care for that style. The movie is based on Oscar Wilde's play, and I guess the play isn't well-liked either. Even there, some people complain that a silent film is the wrong vehicle for Wilde's verbal wit, but this fails to recognize the perverse uber-romanticism that I suppose the movie takes from Wilde and that is very suitable indeed to an image-based medium. An early title card even puts it in words: The Mystery of Love is greater than the Mystery of Death. For my money, this is a strikingly gorgeous treatment of the story, lovingly produced by a group of theatrical decadents led by the Russian emigre, Alla Nazimova.
Nazimova was a fascinating figure who moved to New York City in 1905 at age 26, after already living a bookful of adventures and misadventures in Russia, and became a huge star on Broadway -- a leading interpreter of Ibsen and Chekhov. She started acting in movies in 1916 and swiftly became a big star in Hollywood too, and by the early Twenties she was powerful enough to produce her own movies, including a wonderful version of Camille, with the up-and-coming Rudolph Valentino, and this version of Salomé. Her mansion on Sunset Boulevard, called the Garden of Alla, was a notorious playground for the pansexual party crowd of old Hollywood.
Although she was actually still married to a Russian man, Nazimova claimed to be married to Charles Bryant. It was a convenient ruse for both, as he was gay and she was, if not a lesbian, at least bisexual. Bryant became the director of Salomé, although it was Nazimova's project through-and-through. She wrote the scenario (under the pseudonym Peter M. Winters), and she was the producer.
The other key artistic figure in the production was the Art Director and Costume Designer, Natacha Rambova. Rambova was born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy Hudnut in Salt Lake City, but took on the more exotic name in Hollywood. She was briefly married to Valentino, which was also rumored to be a "lavender marriage," although she always denied it. She was an amazing designer who also worked with Nazimova on Camille. The design on Salomé is described in the credits as "after Aubrey Beardsley," referring to the famous illustrations Beardsley did for Wilde's play. ("As a homosexual," says Michael Gibson, "Beardsley did not experience the anguish awoken in artists like Munch by the problematic state of relations between the sexes.")
The look of the movie is one incredible Art Nouveau tableau after another. This leads to a rather static feel, as though we are looking at a series of prints, but it also creates the feeling of an entire world. The costumes are outrageous, beginning with the strange glittery balls woven into and constantly wavering in Salomé's hair, and followed by a mind-boggling series of elaborate gowns and crazy robes and lamé loincloths. There is much male flesh on display, for example the strapping Syrian captain of the guard, with his fishscale tights and painted nipples. The sets are lush and yet spare -- the stylized Art Deco bars of John the Baptist's prison juxtaposed against an ornate wrought iron fence of thorny vines.
The acting style is iconic as well, with much striking of poses. Everyone in the cast was reputed to be gay, or at least that's the legend. Arthur Jasmine, who plays the effeminate Page of Herodias who longs for the Syrian with the painted nipples, later appeared Kenneth Anger's 1954 Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. I've seen complaints about the artificial acting style in this movie, but it all seems part of the effort to create magnificent tableaux. Nazimova, who studied under Stanislavsky in Moscow, gives a very subtle, graceful performance that seems to be patterned on a ballet, although her Dance of the Seven Veils is again more a series of poses than a dance. Her Salomé is a mixture of teen petulance, innocence, curiosity, and narcissism as she explores the great Mysteries of Love and Death.
This is a very, very stylized movie. There is not an ounce of naturalism in it. It is a hothouse flower from old Hollywood, and it failed horribly at the box office after struggling to find a distributor to begin with. It was made in an era when outraged conservatives were beginning to crack down on the Hollywood Babylon, with the first attempts at censorship established in 1922 or 1923. (How fitting is it that the most scandalous celebrity trial of the day, in which Fatty Arbuckle was accused of raping Virginia Rappe with a champagne bottle, causing fatal internal injuries, was actually a cover-up for a botched abortion? American sexual hypocrisy in a nutshell.) As the liner notes to the Image DVD point out, Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard -- living in what could be the ruins of the Garden of Alla -- wants to make her comeback with a production of Salomé. It is the very stuff of old Hollywood legend.
Give it a spin sometime. You'll feel gay, at least for a day.
I'm not sure why it isn't more famous than it is. It's dismissed by some as campy or artificial, but it seems to me that people either aren't recognizing that it's Decadent or don't care for that style. The movie is based on Oscar Wilde's play, and I guess the play isn't well-liked either. Even there, some people complain that a silent film is the wrong vehicle for Wilde's verbal wit, but this fails to recognize the perverse uber-romanticism that I suppose the movie takes from Wilde and that is very suitable indeed to an image-based medium. An early title card even puts it in words: The Mystery of Love is greater than the Mystery of Death. For my money, this is a strikingly gorgeous treatment of the story, lovingly produced by a group of theatrical decadents led by the Russian emigre, Alla Nazimova.
Nazimova was a fascinating figure who moved to New York City in 1905 at age 26, after already living a bookful of adventures and misadventures in Russia, and became a huge star on Broadway -- a leading interpreter of Ibsen and Chekhov. She started acting in movies in 1916 and swiftly became a big star in Hollywood too, and by the early Twenties she was powerful enough to produce her own movies, including a wonderful version of Camille, with the up-and-coming Rudolph Valentino, and this version of Salomé. Her mansion on Sunset Boulevard, called the Garden of Alla, was a notorious playground for the pansexual party crowd of old Hollywood.
Although she was actually still married to a Russian man, Nazimova claimed to be married to Charles Bryant. It was a convenient ruse for both, as he was gay and she was, if not a lesbian, at least bisexual. Bryant became the director of Salomé, although it was Nazimova's project through-and-through. She wrote the scenario (under the pseudonym Peter M. Winters), and she was the producer.
The other key artistic figure in the production was the Art Director and Costume Designer, Natacha Rambova. Rambova was born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy Hudnut in Salt Lake City, but took on the more exotic name in Hollywood. She was briefly married to Valentino, which was also rumored to be a "lavender marriage," although she always denied it. She was an amazing designer who also worked with Nazimova on Camille. The design on Salomé is described in the credits as "after Aubrey Beardsley," referring to the famous illustrations Beardsley did for Wilde's play. ("As a homosexual," says Michael Gibson, "Beardsley did not experience the anguish awoken in artists like Munch by the problematic state of relations between the sexes.")
The look of the movie is one incredible Art Nouveau tableau after another. This leads to a rather static feel, as though we are looking at a series of prints, but it also creates the feeling of an entire world. The costumes are outrageous, beginning with the strange glittery balls woven into and constantly wavering in Salomé's hair, and followed by a mind-boggling series of elaborate gowns and crazy robes and lamé loincloths. There is much male flesh on display, for example the strapping Syrian captain of the guard, with his fishscale tights and painted nipples. The sets are lush and yet spare -- the stylized Art Deco bars of John the Baptist's prison juxtaposed against an ornate wrought iron fence of thorny vines.
The acting style is iconic as well, with much striking of poses. Everyone in the cast was reputed to be gay, or at least that's the legend. Arthur Jasmine, who plays the effeminate Page of Herodias who longs for the Syrian with the painted nipples, later appeared Kenneth Anger's 1954 Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. I've seen complaints about the artificial acting style in this movie, but it all seems part of the effort to create magnificent tableaux. Nazimova, who studied under Stanislavsky in Moscow, gives a very subtle, graceful performance that seems to be patterned on a ballet, although her Dance of the Seven Veils is again more a series of poses than a dance. Her Salomé is a mixture of teen petulance, innocence, curiosity, and narcissism as she explores the great Mysteries of Love and Death.
This is a very, very stylized movie. There is not an ounce of naturalism in it. It is a hothouse flower from old Hollywood, and it failed horribly at the box office after struggling to find a distributor to begin with. It was made in an era when outraged conservatives were beginning to crack down on the Hollywood Babylon, with the first attempts at censorship established in 1922 or 1923. (How fitting is it that the most scandalous celebrity trial of the day, in which Fatty Arbuckle was accused of raping Virginia Rappe with a champagne bottle, causing fatal internal injuries, was actually a cover-up for a botched abortion? American sexual hypocrisy in a nutshell.) As the liner notes to the Image DVD point out, Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard -- living in what could be the ruins of the Garden of Alla -- wants to make her comeback with a production of Salomé. It is the very stuff of old Hollywood legend.
Give it a spin sometime. You'll feel gay, at least for a day.