Edwin S. Porter and Hugh Ford | Bella Donna / 1915 [Lost film]

 inheriting the sand

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown writer (based on the fiction by Robert Hichens and the play by James Bernard Fagan) Edwin S. Porter and Hugh Ford (directors) Bella Donna / 1915 [Lost film]

 

      Since this 1915 cinematic version of the novel and stage play Bella Donna is lost, I have no way of telling whether it has the same references to gay sexuality as it did in the 1934 version. I have, however, read several reviews of the 1915 edition, starring Pauline Frederick as the uncaring woman who marries a somewhat romantic-minded young man, Nigel Armine (Thomas Holding) for his money, and moves with him to his villa in Egypt.

      As in all versions of the film, she quickly grows bored of her husband and falls in love with the dark-skinned native Egyptian, Baroudi (Julian L'Estrange) who also is attracted to the beautiful white woman simply because of the exoticism she represents in comparison with Egyptian wife and his dancing girls.

      As Nigel leaves her alone as he moves off to work in the Fayoum district, Bella Donna becomes ever more infatuated by Baroudi, and upon her husband’s return she and Baroudi plot his death, feeding him lead hidden in his sugar cubes.

      As he grows more and more distracted and weaker, he nonetheless is able to write a letter to his close friend back in London, Dr. Isaacson (Eugene Ormonde), who rushes to Egypt to find out what might be wrong with his friend.

      I can’t tell from the reviews whether there were sequences in London which not only established their long friendship, but make it quite clear that Isaacson was a “confirmed bachelor”—as in the 1934 version establishing him as a homosexual.

      But as in the later film, this earliest cinema version does very much center on Isaacson’s discovery of the poison and his saving his friend’s life. When the native and innocent Armine declares that he still believes his wife, she, so tired of his presence that she can no longer think straight-forwardly, admits to her crime and her hatred of her Nigel.

     Bella Donna rushes to Barudi’s arms declaring she is now “his alone”; but when he hears that their crime has been discovered he quickly sends her out of his house, declaring that she is a far too “dangerous toy.” As she attempts to return to Armine, Dr. Isaacson closes the door upon her, and, far different from the later version, she is sent out into a sand storm in which she dies.

      It appears, that much like the 1934 rendition in this lost film, Isaacson also can be recognized as having closed out all beautiful women from his friend’s life, offering up his male-only world, filled with his homosexual his affection if not actual sexual acts.

 

Los Angeles, August 19, 2024 / Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog.