alone in a society of dependents
by
Douglas Messerli
V. Demert (screenplay), Yevgeni
Bauer (director) Sumerki zenskoi Dushi
(Twilight of a Woman's Soul) / 1913
Watching the several silent films I
did in the summer and fall of 2011, I discovered something that I am sure
aficionados of silent films have long known, namely that the fewer titles that
a film has the more interactive it is with its audience. In Bauer's
ground-breaking 1913 film Twilight of a
Woman's Soul, we are given very few points of dialogue, and when credits
appear, they represent simple statements of location or suggestions on the
character's state of being ("Love and Conscience," for example.)
Having said all that, it is still apparent that the narrative of this early film is quite simple. A wealthy and beautiful young woman, Vera Dubovskaia (beautifully performed by Nina Chernova) is despondently bored by the world about her. The film begins with one of Bauer's specialties, a grand party, where the camera (possibly for the first time in film history) dollies forward toward the audience as the guests arrive from the back and sides of the set, wandering through the scene in their lush gowns and formal suits. Vera, suffering the angst of the whole event, remains alone in her room as her mother sends the butler into her, demanding that she attend the event. From her brightly-lit bed, Vera moves through a white veil into the shadows to peer out of the beaded curtain at the door of the grand living room. Dutifully, she enters the party, even agreeing, momentarily, to dance with a young man, before again retiring, this time in the garden just outside the ballroom.
The viewer, accordingly, must be very attentive to the acting, the facial and hand gestures, the complex bodily movements of the actor, to gain an understanding of the story. Much of the dialogue between various figures must be imagined, created in conjunction with the acting and the viewer's imagination. This bond is a far more intense experience than when, as in many Hollywood films, everything is spoken, the acting is a sidebar rather than the focus of our attentions. Even more exciting, to my sense of taste, is that sometimes the viewer gets it all wrong; he later comes to perceive that he has misunderstood—mis-invented—the dialogue or did not properly comprehend relationships. There is a kind of joy in having to go back and rethink the series of events uncoiling before one. Many viewers, of course, may find such a process in which they are actively involved in the work of art as a tiresome, even an unnecessary activity; some moviegoers prefer to sit back and have the images and the worlds they create flow over them. This all certainly explains my preference, in talking films, for the cryptic, the dissonant, the disjunctive, and works of highly complexity over easy and straight-forward narratives.
There she is again entreated by other suitors to join the dance, but
claiming a headache, she demurs—that is until her mother insists that she
return to the events. Nikolai Kozlovski's camera tracks her as she stands and
moves back toward the ballroom, pausing in anguish before she reenters to greet
her guests.
A few days later, her mother, on one of her occasional visits with
charitable gifts to the poor, invites her daughter along. The girl is delighted
to be included, and therein we perceive that her suffering is a kind an ennui
that has settled about her life. Carrying wicker baskets filled food and gifts
the two enter the house of a poor man—who just before their visit has been
observed drinking and eating while playing a somewhat violent game of cards
with his cronies—dispensing their treasures to husband and children. Their
final visit is to Maxim, who works for these poor people. An eager Vera spots a
sore upon his arm, which he (falsely) suggests is the cause of a burn, and she
immediately sets about bandaging the appendage.
Lusting after this beauty, Maxim writes her a letter proclaiming that
the injury has gotten worse, that he is burning up with fever and may die.
Discovering the note in her bedroom the next morning, Vera sets out, this time
without her mother, to visit Maxim, who, the moment she bends down to care for
him, grabs and kisses her, later pulling her to the floor where (symbolically
at least) he drunkenly rapes her. In her desperation, Vera grabs an object and
hits him over the head, evidently killing him.
Her dramatic, mad, procession home, clothes all askew, is worthy of
grand opera.
After yet another attempt to gain her hand, Dol'skii wins her over, she
determined to tell him the truth. But when she attempts to, he scoffs at her,
reassuring her that "nothing will shake his love." On the eve of the
wedding, however, Vera attempts to reveal her past again, writing a letter to
Dol'skii. When her maid attempts to deliver it, she is told that he has had to
rush home and will not return until the morning. Vera reluctantly, if relived, burns
the missive.
The wedding proceeds and she is gloriously carried off to the Prince's
estate. A few hours later, she tries to confess again telling him that she
has—as she puts it—"been" with another before him. Dol'skii is
shocked, unable to believe what he has heard and, finally, appears outraged.
Vera has no choice: she puts on her coat, takes her maid and her suitcase and
leaves, telling the Prince, "I pity you."
Time passes, and the Prince has clearly suffered in her absence as he
attempts to drown his sorrows in the company of loose women, whom he also
clearly abhors. Disgusted with the dance of an older whore, he leaves their
company, determined to find Vera and forgive her. He hires a private detective
who reports that she has gone abroad, but two years of searching for her
throughout Europe results in nothing.
One of the amazing things about this early melodrama—and in
contradiction to its English language title—is that Vera is not at all in her
"twilight." Having left the Prince, she has gone on to become, under
the pseudonym of Ellen Kay, a great star.
In his despondency, the Prince has retreated to his apartments until a
friend insists, one evening, that he accompany him to the theater, in part to
cheer up Dol'skii. There he discovers his former wife. After the play, he
visits her backstage, entreating her to return to him and their former
happiness. Vera, now completely in control, tells him "It's too
late."
The last scene is of a distraught Dol'skii, who realizes his life is
ruined, and shoots himself.
While Bauer's film is filled with high dramatic gestures of the late
19th century, it is, nonetheless, a truly modern work in which the heroine has
come a long way from Nora of Ibsen's The
Doll's House. Vera is a fearsome being who has transformed the males'
transgressions into a powerful character who is able to survive alone in a
society of dependents.
Los
Angeles, October 2, 2011
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (October 2011).
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