Dumb Girl of Portici review

[Lokke Heiss]

In the discussion of the 'epic film,' how many of us can say they've seen even one directed by a woman? Solve that problem by catching up to Milestone Film's release of a Library of Congress restoration of the 1913 Dumb Girl of Portici, directed by the pioneering Lois Weber. This film is an adaptation of Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici (The Mute Girl of Portici), one of the first operas to directly incorporate ballet and mime directly into the storyline, which describes a war that breaks out when a French nobleman takes advantage of an Italian mute peasant girl in the Napoleonic era. The reason for the film being made was largely the availability of Russian dancer Anna Pavlova, who was doing a version of the story and was stranded in the U.S. by the start of WWI. There is a book waiting to be written on this fascinating film, which is indeed an epic, with obvious comparisons to Cabiria and Intolerance, but I want to focus on just one element, the idea that this is an epic with a decided feminist outlook.

Labels can be restrictive, and Lois Weber resisted being affiliated with what would now be considered feminist interests as the suffragette movements. Nevertheless, it's easy to see a radically different point of view in this film. First of all, there is a wonderful 'solution' to what is now called 'the male gaze,' which is a strong predilection to view or even fetishize the female body as an object of sexual desire. Weber handles this problem in two ways: the first - indicative of her era - is to use a lot of proscenium camera setups - which minimizes the objectifying of the closeup. The second, more novel aspect of is the performance of Pavlova, who gives a performance so stylized (somewhere between ballet and mime). that she almost exists outside of the rest of the story, a choice of acting style that forces any simple discussion as 'the male gaze' to be irrelevant, instead Pavlova exists in the story beyond the normal sexual spectrum appearing more like a sprite, (such as Ariel in the Tempest), than any traditional male/female role.

While this disinterest in the male gaze is fascinating to follow, the element that makes this a more compelling case for 'feminist epic' is the choice of the director to emphasize the patriarchal structure of a society that first allows the 'mute girl' to be taken advantage of, then brutally discarded, and then finally to be used a propaganda tool for another set of men to take over power.

While most movie epics are about men who somehow achieve nobility in doing violent acts to achieve worthwhile goals, Weber makes an epic that punctures this balloon of civility - after all, aren't violent acts more often attempts to cover up prior stupid behavior? While detailing the 'heroic' battles that envelope the community, Weber never loses sight that in all this bloodshed, its the women who are most defenseless and as a result, suffer the most.

[Bor Enots]

Library of Congress restoration.

[Lokke Heiss]

Corrected.

[Daniel Eagan]

I think the Spanish are oppressing the Italians. Anyway they're somehow all from the Hapsburgs.

One very clear-cut example of a woman's vs. a man's point of view comes during the seduction scene, where Weber focuses on Pavlova's physical reaction to the encounter, her pleasure, instead of showing the man's.

[Lokke Heiss]

Yes, I think it is Spanish or at least Bourbon. Unless you are from the area, trying to explain why the Spanish were in Sicily is one of those things that is futile, by the time you are a third of the way through the explanation, you realize you have to go back a hundred years and explain that too, because if you don't, none if it makes sense. And then you have to go back and explain the hundred years before that...

[milefilms]

The you, Lokke, for the review!

Just to credit everybody involved, the Library of Congress with George Willeman and Valerie Cervantes in the lead did an amazing job collecting the three print materials spending at least two years editing together the new restoration. Without them, there is no Dumb Girl of Portici! They did brilliant work. Then the LoC (thank you to Rob and Mike) entrusted their restoration to Milestone. They also scanned and contributed the 120 stills from the production for the release.

Milestone then hired Lori Raskin of An Affair with Film who spent six months stabilizing, cleaning and de-flickering the image. With the help of Richard Koszarski, the original script of DGoP was found at Universal, shot on 16mm microfilm in the 1940s (thank you to Janice Simpson and staff!) and on it, was the original tinting instructions. With those, Lori Raskin and PHI's Jere Guldin tinted the new version. Silent film and dance composer John Sweeney spent six months composing the score (based on Auber's opera), then hired the musicians and recorded and edited the score to the film.

The British Film Institute then gave Milestone the license to the bonus features for the release including the original 1935 documentary by Pavlova's husband as well as her 9.5mm home movies.

Professor Mariann Lewinsky Sträuli, BFI's Bryony Dixon, EYE's Elif Kaynakci, dance historian Caroline Hamilton, prima ballerina Evelyn Hart, Tanisha Jones (NYPL Dance Division), Weber expert Professor Shelley Stamp, and at least a dozen other people assisted.

You can read more at https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0150/ ... 840337913 and http://www.loisweber.net.