The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy

The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy

1921 · 80 min · ★ 7.0 · Drama, Romance

"Taking its title from John Keats’s early 19th-century poem, this highly personal melodrama finds Dulac interrogating the archetype of the femme fatale. La belle dame sans merci follows a famous actress who was once seduced and abandoned by a rich man and subsequently resolved to become a “merciless woman,” forever scheming to hurt others (men in particular) in a ruthless yet captivating manner. Dulac challenges the Romantic archetype embodied in Keats’s poem by way of symbolist mise en scène, self-reflexive narration, and her typically associative approach to editing, locating a modern ambiguity within the stereotypical figures of 19th-century art." - Film Society of Lincoln Center

Directed by Germaine Dulac · Written by Irène Hillel-Erlanger

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Cast

Tania Daleyme Lola de Sandoval
Yolande Hillé Irène
Denise Lorys Comtesse d'Amaury
Jean Toulout Comte Guy d'Amaury
Jean Tarride Hubert d'Amaury
Pierre Mareg Marquis de Saint-Érasme
Lucien Glen Lucien
Louis Monfils

Make it a double feature

2h 56m together

The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy

The Death of the Sun

Both from Germaine Dulac.

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Antoinette Sabrier

Antoinette Sabrier · 1927

Antoinette Sabrier

Adapted from a play by Romain Coolus, whose work Dulac had covered as a theater critic at the turn of the century, this atmospheric and socially inquisitive film tells the tale of an independent, sexually liberated woman (Eve Francis) who is torn between her husband (Gabriel Gabrio) and her lover (Paul Guide). Controversial at the time of its release, Antoinette Sabrier finds Dulac using her bold sense of visual rhythm to achieve a complex portrait of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and a nuanced investigation into human intimacy, with her characters’ emotions expressed through then-innovative cinematic techniques such as slow motion and associative montage.

Âmes de fous

Âmes de fous · 1918

A serial in six episodes: 1) La seconde Marquise de Sombreuse; 2) Le Chateau maudit; 3) Folle; 4) L'Exilee; 5) La Danseuse inconnue; 6) Hallucination et realite. Set in modern day France in a chateau thought to be haunted since the Revolution, a Marquis and his daughter Irene (granddaughter of Marie Antoinette's lady companion) are preyed upon by Latin seductress, Lola, and her brother, Pedro. (Summary by Tami Williams, from the 2018 Il Cinema Ritrovato film program)

The Bread Peddler

The Bread Peddler · 1923

The Bread Peddler

The Bread Peddler is a 1923 French silent drama film directed by René Le Somptier and starring Suzanne Desprès, Gabriel Signoret and Geneviève Félix. It is based on Xavier de Montépin's novel of the same title.

Record 957

Record 957 · 1928

Dulac’s three 1929 "abstract" films, Record 957, Αrabesques, and Themes and Variations, were the results of a long period of reflection by the filmmaker, who sought to create a "pure" or "integral" cinema that would capture the essence of the new medium and owe nothing to the other arts. Each of these three studies was designed to be played silent. The first one, Record 957, is conceived of as a "visual impression […] in listening to Frédéric Chopin's Preludes n. 5 and 6." Its title and its opening shot of lightplay on a spinning record not only announce the film's dominant cyclical motif, but also evoke one of the filmmaker’s major sources of inspiration in Loie Fuller's serpentine dances.

Invitation to a Journey

Invitation to a Journey · 1927

Invitation to a Journey

A woman enters a nightclub and slowly begins to open herself up.

Princesse Mandane

Princesse Mandane · 1928

Princesse Mandane

Brazen embrace of fashionable costume and glamour creates a witty celebration of Orientalism and cinema itself.

Heart of an Actress

Heart of an Actress · 1924

Heart of an Actress

MovieDramaRomance

Desire brings out the worst in an actress' suitors-- One a well-to-do patron of London's theatre set, the other a lovestruck loner on the verge of penning a play dedicated to her.

The Death of the Sun

The Death of the Sun · 1922

The Death of the Sun

A young doctor is asked by her husband to choose between her profession and her family.

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Ceux qui ne s’en font pas · 1930

Ceux qui ne s’en font pas

Popular songs accompany two scenes of happiness: a jovial railway worker and a group of children dancing.

The Cigarette

The Cigarette · 1919

A Parisian museum director believes his wife is cheating on him and so places a poisoned cigarette in the box on his desk, thus allowing chance to decide the moment of his death.

The Seashell and the Clergyman

The Seashell and the Clergyman · 1928

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MovieDramaFantasy

Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

Arabesque

Arabesque · 1929

The film’s visual structure is principally composed of variations on the arabesque: arcs of light, water spouts, spider webs, burgeoning trees, flowers and foliage, a woman’s smile, arms stretching, an arm giving rhythm to a rocking chair. It uses natural elements (light, mirrors, water, and wind) and photographic techniques (multiple exposures and lenses) to distort the various elements, or to intensify their design.

Those Who Worry

Those Who Worry · 1930

Those Who Worry

MovieMusicDrama

A destitute, drunk woman appears to yearn for the life of a streetwalker.

Spanish Fiesta

Spanish Fiesta · 1920

Coveted by two different men, a woman turns to a third man instead.

Themes and Variations

Themes and Variations · 1928

Themes and Variations

I evoke a dancing woman. A woman? No. A bouncing line with harmonious rhythm. I evoke a luminous projection on veils ! Precise matter! No. Fluid rhythms. Why should one disregard, on screen, the pleasure that movement brings us in the theatre? Harmony of lines. Harmony of light. Lines, surfaces, volumes evolving directly, without the artifice of evocation, in the logic of its forms, dispossessed of any overly human sense, allowing an elevation towards the abstract, thus giving more space to sensations and to dreams : integral cinema. —Germaine Dulac

Gossette

Gossette · 1923

In Gossette (1923), Dulac experimented with and designed a number of special lenses and prisms to produce a variety of effects and multiply the expressive means which translate the characters' visions and mental states. She also reversed class and gender roles, as she made the female character Gossette come to the aid of Phillipe de Savières, falsely accused of murder, in order to save his name.

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