Past Issues
The Film Career of Sarah Bernhardt
by Eve Golden
In the early days of the silent film, most successful stage stars looked down their noses at the medium. A few "posed" for the cameras to commemorate a particular role, like a keepsake snapshot. But few thought of film as an art form. Not until Sarah Bernhardt's 1912 artistic and financial success Queen Elizabeth did her fellow stars begin to flock to the film studios in any great number. Most were one-shot wonders. But Madame Sarah made a total of eight films in the waning years of her life, and five were great hits.
She was, arguably, the most famous actress of the 19th century. Not the most beautiful or even the most talented, but Sarah Bernhardt (nicknamed "Sarah Barnum"), knew how to cultivate her stardom. She worked like a pack horse, her French patriotism made her a national emblem; her wit, temper tantrums and willingness to try new things ensured that her worldwide super stardom would last from her first hit in 1869 through her death in 1923.
Born in Paris on October 23, 1844, she was the daughter of the Dutch immigrant Julie Bernard. The identity of Sarah's father has long been a mystery, and all of her biographers have different guesses. Growing up a poor, self-dramatizing child surrounded by the Parisian demi-monde, she probably became an actress to escape her mother's uncertain fate of being a kept woman. In 1859 she was sponsored into the Conservatoire de Musique et Déclamation by her mother's friend the Duc de Morny, and her theatrical training commenced.
She made her professional debut in 1862 and struggled for the next few years to establish herself. Unfashionably skinny and quirky, she did not catch on right away. Sarah finally became a star at the age of 25 playing a male troubadour in Francois Coppée's one-act La Passant (1869). Her career was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, but she continued thereafter charming the public and critics with her "silver" voice, her emotional dramatic acting and the sheer strenuousness of her repertoire.
Success after success shot her to the top of her profession: Madame Sarah triumphed as the Queen of Spain in Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas (1872), as Racine's Phedre (1874), as Marguerite in Dumas' La Dame aux Camellias (1880), as the Empress of Byzantium in Vitorien Sardou's Theodora (1884), as Jeanne d'Arc (1890), as Napoleon's son in L'Aiglon (1900) and in many Shakespearean roles. Most of these plays went into her permanent repertoire and were restaged again and again throughout her career. She traveled around the world, making ten extensive tours throughout America between 1880 and 1918.
Sarah was as famous a personality as she was an actress. She painted, sculpted and wrote; sheengaged in violent feuds and equally violent love affairs. She obligingly slept in a coffin for photographers, though she used a normal bed for more private slumber. Among her romantic conquests were the Belgian Prince de Ligne (with whom she had her only child, Maurice, in 1864), artists Gustave Doré and Georges Clarin, actors Mounet-Sully, Lou Tellegen and Jacques Damala (whom she briefly married in 1882), and countless others.
Sarah spent the opening years of the 20th century touring in Hamlet, one of the few women to play the title role. She opened in the play in May 1899 in Paris, and spent the next two years bringing the show to London, Scotland, Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. Sometime during that tour, at the age of 56, she made her film debut. Sarah was always interested in new technology: she had already made her recording debut, which still exists. In 1900, she filmed the brief duel from Hamlet, more as a technological experiment than a work of art.
In 1906, Sarah made her second film, a hand-colored two-reeler of Tosca. She had first played the Sardou melodrama in 1886: the role of a hot-blooded singer who murders to (unsuccessfully) save her lover from the firing squad was perfect for her dramatic persona. Sarah was so horrified by the film that she tried to have all the negatives bought up and burned, but -- as she found out a few years later -- she failed.
Finally, in late 1911, Sarah made her first successful film, a hand-colored two-reeler of La Dame aux Camellias, better known to American audiences as Camille. She flat-out did this for the money, an impressive $30,000. Co-starring her new young discovery Lou Tellegen, the film attracted a higher class of audiences to the moving picture houses. One critic wrote that "Bernhardt is the perfect mistress of gesture, pose and expression, and the pictures make the story thrillingly plain." Sarah herself, discussing the art of the film at this time, thoughtfully said that "if I could have watched myself in motion pictures at rehearsals I would have been a better actress."
Jean Cocteau, on viewing Camille years later, paid Sarah a somewhat dubious compliment: "I recommend to those who cannot admit the existence of sacred monsters that they go to New York and see the film of Madame Sarah Bernhardt ... What actress will play the great amoureuses better than Sarah in this film? None. And when it is over, we find ourselves back in modern life, like the diver who returns to the surface after having come face to face with a giant devil fish in tropic seas." Not exactly the kind of raves an actress might wish for.
Sarah's biggest film sensation, Queen Elizabeth, was released in 1912. She had appeared briefly in the Emile Moreau play, and spent three months filming the four-reel movie version (again co-starring Tellegen and directed by Louis Mercanton). A huge hit in Europe, the filmwas even more influential in America. Fledgling producer Adolph Zukor bought rights for his Famous Players company, paying the delighted Sarah 10% of the gross and $350 a day forpersonal appearances. Zukor cleared $80,000 on the film, with which he built his later empire.
Queen Elizabeth (originally titled Elisabeth, Reine d'Angleterre) is Sarah Bernhardt's most famous film, the one most seen today. It's hard to judge her talent: shot mostly from afar, she poses, flings her arms about and seemingly overacts (she did indeed still have both legs at this point, though her movement seems somewhat limited). But watch her face, strain to hear her absent voice, and you can see what a powerhouse she must have been onstage.
She herself claimed to be pleased with the end product: "I am immortal! I am a film!" she memorably cried.
Due to the huge success of Queen Elizabeth, Sarah's detested 1906 Tosca was unearthed and exhibited through Universal, much to her dismay. It got limited play and was pretty much ignored in the press. But the success of Queen Elizabeth also convinced other stage greats to try the medium. In her wake, Lillian Russell, Anna Held, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Mrs. Fiske, Maxine Elliott, James O'Neill, Lily Langtry and others gallantly strutted their stuffbefore the camera. Katherine Cornell, however, took Sarah's experiences as a warning. Cornell treated her troupe to a showing of Camille some years after its debut, and they fell out of their chairs laughing. Cornell took the hint and gave films a wide berth.
Early in 1913, Sarah filmed a three-reel version of her current stage hit, Adrienne Lecouvreur. The story of an actress's tragic love and mysterious death in the time of Louis XV, the film was three reels long, and again co-starred Lou Tellegen. It was another hit, though a qualified one (some critics complained of the over-long titles, necessary to clear up confusing plot points). But most reviews called the film and its star "unfailingly impressive"and noted that "the play of her wonderfully expressive features is allowed full scope" (apparently the director permitted more close-ups in this film). One newspaper even praised "two well-trained dogs" used in the production. Sarah herself complained only of hitting her marks during the filming: she was used to having an entire stage to work in, and confining herself the camera's narrow range frustrated her.
Despite later protestations in her biographies that she hated films and only did them for the money, Sarah seemed fascinated with the process. In 1913 and 1915, she made extensive home movies of herself, family and friends, and gave elaborate screenings to show them off.
"It is the wonder of the age," she said of movies in 1915. "I must confess that it was the novelty of the idea which first led me to act before the camera. But since then I have become greatly impressed with the utility of moving-pictures, and although I have acted before the camera so little, I feel diffident about venturing an opinion."
The making of Sarah's next film, Jeanne Dore (1915), was almost as dramatic as its script. She opened in the Tristan Bernard play in Paris in 1913. It was a mother love tale, not unlike Madame X and Stella Dallas. Sarah played the title role, a poor shopkeeper whose son is coerced into killing his stingy uncle by a vamp. Jeanne visits her son on the eve of his execution, disguised as the faithless fiancee.
Sarah was still touring in the play in early 1915 when her right leg had to be amputated, after confining her to a wheelchair for months. Immediately upon leaving the hospital, she filmed Jeanne Dore, again directed by Louis Mercanton. She could not yet walk on her new wooden leg, so was shot either standing or sitting; this in fact pinned her down and forced her to use facial expression rather than movement and helped her performance. The five-reel film, distributed by Universal in the U.S., got rave reviews and reflected well upon both its game star and the industry as an art form.
In late 1916, Sarah made a propaganda film, with the support of the French government. In Mothers of France, she played the wife of a provincial squire, who joins the Red Cross and becomes an Angel of the Battlefield. Upon losing both her son and husband in the war, she still manages to exhort her fellow mothers -- and wives -- of France to continue fighting the good fight. Much of the film was made near the front lines, in the towns of Challons and Rhiems, in trenches and field hospitals. In one scene, Sarah throws herself before a statue of Joan of Arc near the Cathedral of Rhiems, pleading with the saint to spare her family. The town gave the company only 15 minutes to film the scene, as the cathedral was sandbagged against shelling and had to be rewrapped after filming.
Director Mercanton told reporters that, "Madame Bernhardt's perfect poise and calm during all the time in the trenches was to me an amazing exhibition of fortitude in a lady of her years [72 of them], after a lifetime of luxury, pleasant surroundings, and at least the absence of physical peril." Audiences and critics, too, were bowled over by the blatant but effective propaganda film, which had been written by Jean Richepin. "Actress at her best," "thrilling war film," said various reviewers. Burns Mantle wrote that "most of it you see through a mist of tears."
Sarah's final film was never completed. Suffering from money troubles -- as always -- and in failing health, she signed with Hollywood producer and director Leon Abrams to film La Voyante (The Fortune Teller), by Sasha Guitry from a play of the same name. She was too ill to leave her house (although she convinced the nervous Abrams that it was just the flu). But the 78-year-old actress was dying. Wrapped in shawls and wearing dark glasses to protect her from the lights, she had a film studio set up in her Paris home. Among the cast members was a young Lili Damita, years away from Hollywood fame and a marriage to Errol Flynn.
Filming began in early March 1923. Cast member Mary Marquet recalled that "There was nothing left of her. All at once the director shouted 'Camera!' Sarah rose from her torpor; her face lit up, her neck grew longer, her eyes shone. 'What do I do?' she demanded in a voice that was young and strong. We were all stupefied. She had just dropped thirty years."
But Sarah was too ill to continue, as much as she wanted to. Her friend M. Haracourt told reporters that "In her delirium, Madame insists upon getting up and going downstairs to pose for the film. It is all they can do to dissuade her." Soon, word was out, crowds gathered outside her home and hourly bulletins were issued.
Sarah Bernhardt died in her son's arms on March 26, 1923. The world mourned; France practically fell apart with grief. Countless books have since been published on Madame Sarah, but all have brushed off her film career as unworthy of notice (even Cornelia Otis Skinner's otherwise definitive biography). Somehow, the low social and artistic status of "photoplays" has caused theatrical historians to ignore this important and pioneering segment in the career of one of the greatest stars of her time.