Transnational Trailblazers of Early Cinema: Sarah Bernhardt, Gabrielle Réjane, Mistinguett

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Notes

1. About the intersection between theater and early film histories, see, for example: Annette Förster, Women in the Silent Cinema: Histories of Fame and Fate (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017); Martin Loiperdinger and Uli Jung, eds. Importing Asta Nielsen. The International Film Star in the Making, 1910–1914 (New Barnet, Herts, UK: John Libbey, 2013); David Mayer, Stagestruck Filmmaker: D. W. Griffith and the American Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009); and Heide Schlüpmann, The Uncanny Gaze: The Drama of Early German Cinema, Trans. Inga Pollmann (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010).

2. In her essay about Sarah Bernhardt on the Women Film Pioneers Project, Victoria Duckett explains that ‘we still need to determine the role that Bernhardt played as director and perhaps even manager, producer, and screenwriter of her own films. Indeed, it is inconceivable that a mature woman who was an actress, manager, director, and playwright on the live stage would relinquish creative control on film’ (‘Sarah Bernhardt’, in Women Film Pioneers Project, eds. Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta [New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2015], https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-cqt4-pc13 or https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/sarah-bernhardt/). Unfortunately, Duckett’s new book does not offer further clarification about Bernhardt’s possible role behind the movie camera.

3. See Cinema’s First Nasty Women, co-curated by Laura Horak, Maggie Hennefeld, and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (Kino Lorber, 2022). https://wfpp.columbia.edu/cinemas-first-nasty-women/ The DVD/Blu-ray boxset includes one film with Mistinguett, La ruse de Miss Plumcake (Miss Plumcake’s ruse) (France, 1911).