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.

After a four-year wait, Life is a Dream in Cinema: Pola Negri is finally available on DVD as part of a poster/DVD package!

For the purchase price of two beautiful 7 ½” x 11” black and white Pola Negri posters, a DVD of the Pola Negri: Life is a Dream In Cinema documentary is included FREE in the package! This poster/DVD package can be purchased for $25.00 US via PayPal from info [ã] brightshiningcity.com, or from Bright Shining City Productions'
online store.

Pola Negri has a new presence on the web, and its creator is none other than the actual Sun-Maid Raisin Girl herself! The Sun-Maid Raisin Girl's real name is Delia, and her image has been in the iconic Sun-Maid Raisins logo since 1970.

The Sun-Maid Raisin Girl's connection with Pola is that her father was a German baron and knew Pola personally. Apparently they were a little more than "just friends" too, which wouldn't be surprising knowing boy-crazy Pola. He was on the set with Pola during the filming of her movie Die Bergkatze (1921), and there is a photo on this new page to prove it! The Sun-Maid Raisin Girl builds pages in Squidoo.com in her spare time, and she has assembled a potpourri of info and pictures on the page, including the rare photo of Pola and her father on the set of Die Bergkatze.

Polanegri.com is hosting a special drawing in honor of the launch of the Sun-Maid Raisin Girl's Pola Negri page. Two lucky winners of the drawing will receive a sealed copy of Grapevine Video's Ladies of the German Cinema DVD coupled with a box of Sun-Maid Raisins.

The Ladies of the German Cinema DVD features the rare Pola Negri silent Sappho (1921). David Gasten, webmaster of Polanegri.com, was closely involved with the DVD's production, and it broke a sales record for best initial sales of any DVD released by Grapevine Video.

1. Email davidgasten ậ yahoø.com, and
2. Type "Sun-Maid Raisin Girl" in the subject line.

Offer ends 12:00 a.m. Mountain Time (US) on July 1, 2010; winners will be notified by July 3rd.

Grapevine Video is again offering $2 off every DVD in their catalog ordered through the Pola Negri Appreciation Site. This is not $2 off the total order either--this is $2 off every individual title!

Grapevine Video is a high-quality mail order DVD retailer that specializes in rare and hard to find silent movies. Many of the titles they offer are not available anywhere else. Grapevine offers a total of SEVEN Pola Negri titles and dozens of other titles from throughout the silent era, including an extensive list of rare European Silent titles.

1. Go to Grapevine Video's Website and start shopping. Grapevine has their titles listed in categories on the left hand side of the screen.
2. When you see a title you want to buy, click the "Add to Cart" button and an e-shopping cart page will come up.
3. In the "Customer Code" box in the e-shopping cart page, type the letters "PNAS" (for "Pola Negri Appreciation Site") to receive a $2 discount off every title you purchase! The e-shopping cart will guide you from there.

All of Grapevine Video's DVD's are Region 0, so playable worldwide. There is no limit on the number of titles you purchase either. This is an exclusive offer available only through the Pola Negri Appreciation Site.

After a four-year wait, Life is a Dream in Cinema: Pola Negri is finally available on DVD as part of a poster/DVD package!

Click Here to Order!

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.

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).

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.)