John Schuyler, a happily married lawyer, is appointed diplomat and sent to England. Due to an unfortunate accident, his wife and child can not come along with him. On the ship to England, Schuyler meets the notorious Vampire - a relentless gold digger who causes the moral degradation of those she seduces, first fascinating and then draining the very life from her victims.
Escravo de uma Paixão, Embrasse-moi idiot, A veszedelmes asszony, Byl sobie glupiec, Glupiec tu byl, The Vampire, La vampira, 从前有个笨蛋, Escravo de uma paixão
USANR
USA
yes this movie is confusing af because there are too many characters and it's hard to tell who anyone is due to the film stock being so degraded and half the cast looking exactly like a member of the other half of the cast. however all the parts with theda bara rule (she was That Bitch & that man was obsessed with her tiddies) and because i'm forever an advocate of pairing whatever music you want with silent films (that's what pianists/organists at local theaters did at the time anyway, i am being PERIOD ACCURATE OK), i played depeche mode's violator during this movie and it was a banger even though much of the movie is a slog. i bet theda bara would like depeche mode.
Fox fed stories to the press that Theda Bara had supernatural powers, and honestly? I can believe it!
Historically important as the only surviving star vehicle of Theda Bara, one of the sensations of the 1910s, this Fox feature briefly established 'the vamp' persona as a major box-office draw. The story came from a novel based on Rudyard Kipling's 1897 poem "The Vampire," itself inspired by a Philip Burne-Jones painting of a woman overpowering a prostrate man with a hole in his chest. This woman is both kinds of vampire: a femme fatale with supernatural bloodlust. In Bara's films, the supernatural is less overt, so 'the vamp' simply became an exotic, evil seductress. Through this persona, women take charge of their to-be-looked-at-ness, returning the male gaze with knowing smirks. Yet, as Gaylyn Studlar details, these femdom fantasies were…
extremely unsexy of everyone to deny this goth girlboss the good time she came out to have
gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss but it's 1915 and theda bara is buying a new fur coat from your life insurance
A tedious family of wealthy idiots gets what is coming to it at the hands of a woman who isn't afraid to use her ankles to get what she wants.
It's a little too stiff-necked and self-consciously archetypal for the melodrama to work in my eyes. It sort of works as a horror, with the femme fatale (vampire) exerting an pull over her victim so strong as to be inexplicable.
And that's sort of a problem - we never really get to feel Theda Bara's magnetism, just its supposed impact on others.
Mainly of historical interest. There's some ok cross-cutting between scenes of domesticity and debauchery, but that gets old pretty quick. There's also a scene here that prefigures Kane's room-destroying rampage. I wonder if Welles explicitly was referencing that?
every time theda bara was onscreen this seemed like a masterpiece. god she was one of the most stunning magnetic women to have ever lived. would’ve let her destroy my life, wait for me to rebuild it to come back and destroy it again. there is not much to say about the film itself, it’s fine. watchable enough but really you’re just waiting for theda to come back onscreen whenever she’s not there. still i’m glad it survived considering most of theda’s films are lost (simply unlose them)
There's #PreCodeApril and #Noirvember, so I'd like to start something called #SilentSpring, where I'll watch at least one silent film a day for the duration of Spring (so, for this year, until June 21).
Anyway...
This film ended up being of more historical than actual interest. The melodrama was ok, piano score was decent, but things really only livened up when Theda Bara was onscreen. 'Tis a shame that so few of her films have survived, but I'll take what I can get.
A Fool There Was was my first Theda Bara movie. She is a captivating and commanding screen presence, and I can see how her character of The Vampire would cause men---men of dubious moral character and weak will; can't put all the blame on the woman: just say 'no', fellas---to abandon their families and wreck their lives just to be in her disdainful and domineering presence. I wasn't immediately infatuated with Bara---as I was when I first encountered Fay Wray, Colleen Moore, Clara Bow, Myrna Loy, and others---but I do find her fascinating and will certainly seek out more of her films.
Although Bara is not an actual vampire in A Fool There Was, she leaves just as much devastation…
Theda Bara is a personality from film history who has fascinated me for the last few years. The silent film star who remained silent, never venturing into the era of sound. Bara was a truly dynamic personality and cinema's first real femme fatale with her image created out of bizarre publicity. For example, Fox fed stories to the press that Theda Bara had supernatural powers and after watching A Fool There Was, I just may start believing that. I believe that we are incredibly lucky that A Fool There Was, perhaps her best known film, has survived. Bara portrayed many other femme fatale figures, such as Cleopatra, but this work can sadly no longer be seen as the majority of…
