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OLD
NEWS PAGE
This
page covers old news in the world of Pola as far back as I have it.
News
4-5-10:
The
Pola Documentary makes its French première
This week is the
BIG WEEK for Pola at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris, France,
where she is the subject of a five-day screening series featuring
movies from throughout her career (more info below). And the
fabulous Pola Negri documentary, Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in
Cinema (2006), will receive its French Première at La Cinémathèque
Française on April 12, the Grand Finale night of the
screening series!
Pola Negri:
Life is a Dream in Cinema screens Monday, April 12, at 5:00 pm
at La Cinémathèque Française, located at
51, rue de Bercy – 75012 in Paris, France. You can read more about
the documentary on the Pola
Documentary: Life is a Dream in Cinema page.
News 3-28-10:
Pola
Negri film retrospective at
La Cinémathèque Française, Paris
My good friend Cyrille
Langendorff has realized a dream: to organize and present a week-long
career retrospective of Pola Negri's movies at La Cinémathèque
Française in Paris, France. This week of Pola Negri movies is
part of an even longer three-month series entitled "Tournages:
Berlin-Paris-Hollywood". Pola's week will run April
7-12, 2010, and will feature the recent 2006 Pola
Negri documentary and thirteen Pola Negri movies from Bestia
(1915) to Tango Notturno (1937).
Info
on the screening series (French language only) is available by clicking on
the screenshot to the right or
clicking here. David Gasten, the webmaster of Polanegri.com,
actually wrote a biography on Pola Negri especially for this
screening series. The bio was rewritten slightly and translated into French by
M. Langendorff. You can view the bio by following the link and then
clicking on the tab marked "Présentation" (outlined in red with
a scarlet arrow pointing at it in the screenshot above).
Review
of Pola's ultra-rare Madame Bovary (1937)
by Frank Noack
Berlin-based
author and journalist Frank Noack has donated several fabulous
articles to Polanegri.com, and the latest is no exception. This is a rare
review of the Gerhard Lamprecht-directed Madame Bovary (1937), one of
Pola's six Third Reich movies. I haven't seen this movie yet, but
according to Frank's commentary it sounds like it may be one of the purest
screen adaptations of the Gustave Flaubert novel. Pola's Mazurka
(1935) is a lost classic, and Frank likes it even better than Mazurka, which
should tell you something.
Click here to read the full review of Pola's Madame Bovary.
Song from Mazurka (1935) soundtrack
featured in vintage music site
Pola's talkie films
make great use of her smoky, Garbo-like contralto singing voice, and a
number of the songs she sings in her movies were also released on 78 rpm
shellac records. Eventually I hope to get a full Pola discography on
the site, but in the meantime, here's a little taster. This is a 78
release of one of Pola's songs from Mazurka (1935) as
featured on the vintage music site Weimar
Rundfunk. This is the song "Nur Eine Stunde",
the one that Pola is singing in the cabaret when she sees the man who
ruined her life seducing her daughter and shoots him on the spot. (Thanks
to John Terendy for this link.)
Click
here to listen to Pola's "Nur Eine Stunde" on Weimar Rundfunk.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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):
News
(9-3-09):
Pre-order
discount for Ladies of the German Cinema!
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LADIES
OF THE GERMAN CINEMA
featuring
Pola Negri Sappho (1921) - Henny
Porten Backstairs (1921)
It's finally here! Today is the official release date of the
long-awaited Ladies of the German Cinema DVD. This double-feature
DVD includes the video debut of Pola's 1921 movie Sappho, and a
crisp new transfer of the influential Henny Porten film Backstairs (also
1921).
Retail for Ladies of the German Cinema will be $19.95, but
until September 15, 2009, the DVD is
available at a pre-order price of $14.45 US +
shipping! (Offer
expired)
News
(7-14-09):
Detailed review of HI DIDDLE DIDDLE (1943)
In May of 2009, Grapevine
Video released Pola's second to last film, Hi Diddle Diddle (1943),
on DVD. I now have a detailed review of the DVD up that you can read
by
clicking here.
Pola
Negri's Sappho (1921) to be released on DVD in early August! Pola's Negri's extremely rare
German drama Sappho (1921) is to be released in early August of
this year on DVD by Grapevine Video! The film will be released under
the title Ladies of the German Screen, and will be featured
alongside Backstairs starring Henny Porten, which was also released
in 1921. Grapevine are giving his particular release a lot of extra
attention, and your webmaster has written liner notes for the DVD, created
the title of the release, donated photos for the DVD artwork, and advised on the music
score (which is going to be devastating, by the way). Watch
this space and we will let you know when this DVD is released as soon as we
receive word. (Update: released 9-13-09.)
News
(5-13-09):
Lost
film from Pola's Polish period FOUND! According
to the New/Polski Radio, "An early (and thus far unnamed) Pola
Negri vehicle has been discovered at Rome’s Centro
Sperimentale di Cinematografia by the husband-and-wife team of Marek
and Malgorzata Hendrykowski from Poznan University.
Dating from the 1910s, the Polish production is a detective story set in
Warsaw. The print has Italian subtitles and is said to be in good
condition." (Click
here for more information.)
I have not been able to ascertain which title from Pola's
Polish period this is, but I am guessing that it is one from the
"Mysteries in Warsaw" film series, which consisted of POKOJ
NR. 13 (Room #13), ARABELLA, and TAJEMNICA ALEI
UJAZDOWSKIOCH (Mystery of Uyazdovsky Lane). If anyone
knows, feel free to contact me and I will publish the information.
Thanks to my friends Carmen Hillebrew, Peter Kalm, and Bruce Calvert for
alerting me of this information!
Munich
Filmmuseum reconstruction of The Joyless Street (1925) finally
released on DVD!
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Greta Garbo in
The Joyless Street (1925). |
Since the
inception of this site, the Pola Negri Appreciation Site has linked to an
obscure article about the Munich Filmmuseum's reconstruction of the
1925 film The
Joyless Street (aka Die freudlose Gasse). This
German silent stars Asta Nielsen and Greta Garbo, and was directed by G.
W. Pabst of Pandora's Box fame. The Joyless Street
may well be one of the most censored movies of all time, as film boards in
every region of the world found something offensive in this film to edit
out. Because of this, all copies of the film that survive are
severely botched, making The
Joyless Street a confusing mess to watch--until
now.
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Asta Nielsen
(left, seated) in The Joyless Street. |
In the
mid-1990's, a team of three German researchers spent a year and a half
working on reconstructing The Joyless Street from various print
sources from around the world, and arose with a version that completely
reorganizes the storyline and, in the process, "giv[es] the
film a previously unrecognized depth." And after sitting
in the archives for thirteen years, we are elated to report that this
labor of love will finally be released on DVD in Europe. I'm
expecting that we will see a US release soon thereafter since Greta Garbo
is on the bill. The deluxe, 2-DVD Region 2 release of the
reconstructed The
Joyless Street will contain the film itself, two documentaries,
outtakes from the film, and a gallery of stills and lobby cards. The
DVD will be available from Edition
Filmmuseum in July of 2009. (Note: this release date has
been delayed.)
News
(12-13-07):
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. |
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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! |
More
News
(12-7-07):
Lady-fronted
musical group releases full-length tribute
to singing German film star ZARAH LEANDER
2007
marks the 100th 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 100th 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
In
addition to releasing the above-mentioned Zarah Leander tribute,
Provocateur Media has available an amazing full-length CD of authentic
rerecordings of music from Weimar-era Berlin.
Entitled Sound and Smoke: The Music of the
Berlin Cabaret Era and recorded by a musical group called The
Ophelia Orchestra, this album faithfully reproduces the musical
soundtrack to the period of Berlin history that gave us the art and
personalities of Pola Negri, Conrad Veidt, Marlene Deitrich, Kurt Weill,
Otto Dix, and many others.
What makes this particular album such a fantastic listen is the
fact that the producers purposely avoided a dry, classical, textbook-type
approach typical of practically every other rerecording of the music of
this era, and instead set about giving the album a sleazy, sporadic,
low-brow feel, to the point where you can almost see and feel the
reckless, depraved party scene that was 1920’s Berlin, warts and all.
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... Pola's
The Spanish Dancer (1923) makes it to DVD!
Review
of Bestia (1915), Pola's first film 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.
Another
DVD release of The Eyes of the Mummy (1918)
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), a compilation of the surviving material from the
Italian Sci-fi epic L'Uomo
Mecchanico (1926) and Will Rogers' 1922 version of The Headless
Horseman,
the 1913
and the
1926 version 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.
One of the items Alpha Video has 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 here.
Cecil
B. DeMille's The Godless Girl (1929) on DVD?!
(No Kidding!)
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George
Dureya and Lina Basquette rescue Noah Beery from a burning prison
in The Godless Girl (1929). |
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 III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934
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.
News
(1-1-07):
Happy Birthday, Pola!
January
3rd marks the 110th birthday of our beloved Pola!
Happy birthday, Pola; we love you!
XOXO
Transit
Films releases 6-DVD box set of Lubitsch films in Germany
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Transit
Films, the German releasing company that gave us the five movies
in Kino’s “Lubitsch in Berlin” series
(including the Pola movies Die Bergkatze/The Wildcat and
Sumurun), have released a 6-DVD box set in Germany of all five
of those films, one on each disc, plus a German-language
documentary about Lubitsch and his movies which appears on disc
six. The official
release date for this was November 22, 2006.
Keep in mind that this is a German language release, with
the movies being presented exactly as found in the Kino series
except with German intertitles instead of English intertitles.
You can order Transit’s Lubitsch box set here.
|
New
article on the Kino DVD release of Die Bergkatze/The Wildcat
I’ve
also posted an in-depth review of the Kino DVD
release of Die Bergkatze/The Wildcat here;
you can also read my review of Kino’s DVD release of Sumurun here.
Grapevine
Video releases Gypsy Blood on DVD
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Grapevine
Video have finally released a DVD of Gypsy Blood (1918),
the last of the Pola Negri VHS titles they had available before
they pulled them out of production in 2003 that hadn't seen
a DVD reissue. Release
date was December 15th. I
do not yet know what this version looks like compared to Sunrise
Silents’ DVD version, but I would assume that it at
least contains the scenes that were missing in the Sunrise
version, because those scenes were intact on the original VHS
version that Grapevine carried.
Once
I get a copy, I will try to get a review of it up on the Pola
site. In the meantime, you
can order Grapevine’s Gypsy
Blood
here.
Special
Offer for friends of the Pola Negri Appreciation Site:
save $2 on every title in the Grapevine Video catalog!
Click here
for details on how to take advantage of this amazing offer!
|
The Winners
of the Pola DVD Giveaway
Our
Pola DVD giveaway is officially over, and I had a really weird thing
happen: the winners (selected at random, mind you) had extremely
similar names. Jonathan
Sanders in the UK won the DVD copy of Die Bergkatze, and John
Saunders from Canada won the DVD copy of Sumurun.
Congratulations, guys! I
have a couple of extra DVD copies of Die Bergkatze/The Wildcat and
Sumurun, so I will be doing another giveaway in a few months—watch
this space…
Collectible
Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy book released in its Second Edition
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Here’s a piece of
non-Pola news that I haven’t had a chance to share yet.
Back in 1976, The A.S. Barnes Company released a book
called The Films of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy
that was pretty much the definitive work on the greatest musical
duo in movie history. The
book has been out of print for years and copies of the original
edition generally fetch $75-$200 today.
The good news is that
Knowles released an expanded, updated second edition
of this wonderful book on the Booksurge Publishing imprint that
includes over 100 extra pages of extra material.
(You’ll see my name in the acknowledgements too, which I
am really proud of.) You can buy the new edition of this magnificent book here. |
More
News (12-5-06):
Kino
releases Die Bergkatze (aka The Wildcat) and Sumurun
on DVD!
We
at the Pola Negri Appreciation Site have been waiting for this for a long
time. Die Bergkatze (1921; released as The Wildcat),
Pola's funniest and strangest movie, as well as one of the funniest silent
movies ever (yes, you heard right), was officially released on DVD today
(December 5, 2006) by Kino International, along with the amazing restoration of Pola's Sumurun
(1920; aka One Arabian Night). Die
Bergkazte/The Wildcat has, up to this point, been a criminally
unavailable lost masterpiece. There is literally no other movie like
it in existence, and it looks and plays like Monty Python fifty
years before Monty Python—literally. Sumurun has been
available before in its cut-down American release version One Arabian
Night, but now you can see it as director Ernst Lubitsch intended it—hilarious,
dramatic, sexy, and the starting point of Lubitsch's trademark directorial
style (aka "The Lubitsch Touch").
Kino
released Die
Bergkazte/The Wildcat and Sumurun as two parts of a four-DVD
series entitled "LUBITSCH IN BERLIN" today, all of which feature
movies directed by Ernst Lubitsch when he was working in Germany in the 1910's
and 1920's before he and Pola became the first director and star to be
imported to Hollywood from Europe. Also included in the series are
the costume tragedy Anna Boleyn (1920) starring Emil Jannings and
Henny Porten (Germany's Mary Pickford), and a double feature of the
comedies The Oyster Princess (1919) and I Don't Want To Be a Man
(1920), both starring Ossi Oswalda, whom Lubitsch used in his comedies
as routinely as he used Pola in his dramas. Click
here to read more about this amazing and much-needed DVD reissue series.
More
News (10-22-06):
We're happy to report that
the Pola Negri film festival at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on
September 18-25 of this year was an overwhelming success! Both of
the Pola documentary screenings were sold out and met with warm audience
reception.
POLA NEGRI FILM FESTIVAL in Chicago
Pola's posthumous
career continues to grow, and we are now pleased to announce that
another Pola Negri film festival is being co-hosted in Chicago on
November 6-9 by the Polish Film Festival of America and the Chicago Silent
Film Society. Here
is a listing of events:
Monday, Nov. 6, 8:45 pm |
Life
is a Dream in Cinema: Pola Negri (2006) with introduction and
commentary by director Mariusz Kotowski |
Tuesday, Nov. 7, 8:00 pm |
A
Woman of the World (1925) |
Wednesday, Nov. 8, 8:00 pm |
Barbed
Wire (1927) |
Thursday, Nov. 9, 8:00 pm |
Hotel
Imperial (1927) |
General
admission tickets are $10.00 per feature film and $8.50 for the
documentary film ($9.00 & $7.50 seniors & students). Tickets are
available in advance by phone at 773-486-9612 or online at www.pffamerica.com;
they are also available at the venues one hour prior to the screenings. For
further information, go to The
PFFA's online press release about the event.
New
Articles on the Pola Site
German
author and film critic Frank Noack has contributed translations of some
vintage German texts on Pola Negri's Mazurka period. This is
a fascinating collection of material, and you can read it here.
Also, I have added reviews of Sunrise
Silents' Gypsy Blood DVD release and Grapevine
Video's DVD release of Hotel Imperial, as well as a
review of the new F.W. Murnau Stiftung restoration of Sumurun and
Sunrise Silents' DVD release of One Arabian Night (all in one
article, which you can read here),
to the "Articles About Pola's Films"
section of the site.
POLA
NEGRI FILM FESTIVAL in New York!
Pola Negri is
returning to the screen in New York this month via a week-long festival
hosted by the Museum of Modern Art. Entited "Pola Negri: Life
is a Dream", the festival will run from September 18-25. The
crown jewel of the festival will be the East Coast premiere of the Mariusz
Kotowski-directed documentary on Pola's life entitled Life
is a Dream in Cinema: Pola Negri, which will feature an introduction
by the director and legendary actor Eli Wallach. Here
is a listing of events:
Monday, Sept. 18, 6:00 pm |
Excerpt from Carmen (1918)
(piano acc. by Ben Model) |
Monday, Sept. 18, 8:15 pm |
Life is a Dream in Cinema:
Pola Negri (2006), introduced by
director Mariusz Kotowski and actor Eli Wallach |
Wednesday, Sept. 20, 8:15 pm |
Die Bergkatze (1921)
(piano acc. by Stuart Oderman) |
Thursday, Sept. 21, 6:00 pm |
Outtakes from A Woman On
Trial (1927)
Excerpt from A Woman Commands (1932)
A Woman of the World (1925)
(piano acc. by Ben Model) |
Thursday, Sept. 21, 8:00 pm |
Hotel Imperial (1927)
(piano acc. by Stuart Oderman) |
Friday, Sept. 22, 6:00 pm |
Excerpt from Carmen (1918)
(piano acc. by Ben Model) |
Friday, Sept. 22, 8:00 pm |
Die Bergkatze (1921)
(piano acc. by Stuart Oderman) |
Sunday, September 24, 1:30 pm |
Life is a Dream in Cinema:
Pola Negri (2006) |
Monday, September 25, 6:00 pm |
Hotel Imperial (1927)
(piano acc. by Stuart Oderman) |
Monday, September 25, 8:00 pm |
Outtakes from A Woman On
Trial (1927)
Excerpt from A Woman Commands (1932)
A Woman of the World (1925)
(piano acc. by Ben Model) |
By
the way, the A Woman on Trial outtakes are the only known surviving
material from what is otherwise a lost film. For further
information, go to The
Museum of Modern Art's website.
Hotel
Imperial now on DVD!
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Grapevine Video has reissued Pola Negri's film Hotel Imperial
(1927) on DVD. The DVD reissue features a brand new transfer from a
better-quality print with higher-quality equipment. Click
here for ordering information.
More
News (4-28-06):
Sunrise Silents releases CD-ROM of movie magazine
with Pola Negri theme
Silent
film distributor Sunrise
Silents have
been releasing a library of vintage movie magazines on CD-ROM in addition
to their high-quality DVD releases of silent films. The most recent
addition to their CD-ROM catalog has been the April
1925 Motion Picture magazine, which features Pola Negri on the
cover, and includes the cover article "The Mystery of Pola
Negri" by Harry Carr and a review of Pola's then-current film East
of Suez (1925). This CD-ROM release follows the 2005 releases of
their beautifully-packaged DVD's of Pola's films Gypsy
Blood (aka Carmen, 1918) and One
Arabian Night (aka Sumurun, 1920). Visit
Sunrise Silents' website for ordering information.
Grapevine
Video reissues Passion (1919),
Pola Negri's most important film
Silent
and early talkie film distributor Grapevine
Video has just reissued Passion
(aka Madame DuBarry, 1919) on DVD. Passion is
easily the most important and groundbreaking film Pola Negri appeared in,
and makes its debut on DVD at long last thanks to Grapevine's efforts.
If you saw the Life is a Dream in Cinema: Pola Negri documentary,
you may be interested to know that the clips of Madame DuBarry that
you saw in the film come directly from this release's source print.
This title was once available on VHS, but was pulled from circulation and
has been out of print until now. Follow
this link for ordering information.
More
News (3-15-06):
It's
finally here...
We've
promised for a while that Pola Negri will be making her triumphant return
to the big screen via a feature-length documentary about her life and
films. And now, the documentary is finally here! Life is a
Dream in Cinema: Pola Negri, directed by Mariusz Kotowski and produced
by Bright Shining City Productions, is making its World Premiere in Los
Angeles at Laemmle's Sunset 5 theatre as a featured entry in the highly
esteemed Polish Film
Festival of Los Angeles in the last weekend of April. The film
is a true labor of love from its Polish-born director, who invested three
years of work and a considerable personal fortune into bringing Pola back
to the screen. Click
here to see our new page about the documentary, and keep checking the
site for updates on future screenings.
"Pola Negri: The Unknown Years 1935-1938"
German
film critic and author Frank Noack wrote a wonderful article especially
for this site about Pola's Nazi/Third Reich period. It's entitled "Pola
Negri: The Unknown Years 1935-1938". It's a beautifully
written piece that not only contains many rare and little-known facts
about Pola's Nazi/Third Reich period, it is also an excellent introduction
to the German movies of the period for the English-speaking world, naming
and describing a number of Germany's biggest stars and movies from the
1930's and 40's. I illustrated the article with some very
rare photos from the period supplied to me by my friend Joop van Dijk.
Click here to read the article.
Sunrise
Silents releases Pola's One Arabian Night (1920)
Silent
film distributor Sunrise
Silents has
followed up their April 2005 release of Gypsy Blood (aka Carmen,
1918) with a November 2005 DVD release of Pola's 1920 film One
Arabian Night (aka Sumurun). This release includes a
wealth of bonus material, including the 1926 Lupino Lane short His
Private Life; the talking short The Voice of Hollywood (1929),
featuring Reginald Denny, Anita Page, and Mack Sennett amongst others; a
selection of Pola Negri portraits and glass advertising slides, and
commentary from Sunrise Silents proprietor Rich Oliveri about the possible
influences on Pola's Paramount-era roles.
Click here for
ordering information.
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