Salomé’s Dance
An evening pause: Music by Charles Barber. This comes from the 1913 silent film, Salomé, based on an Oscar Wilde play. Rarely seen, the movie represents a very early attempt to do something “edgy”. It succeeds about as well as modern “edgy” films, showing us a very shallow representation of human existence. But the visuals give us a glimpse into that early film world, when sets and costume were usually the only way to show something strange and striking.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
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Personally, not my thing.
However, if anyone wants to watch the whole thing, it’s at the Archive.
https://archive.org/details/Salomfebruary151923
(1:12:13)
In some ways the panting on lookers remind me of the dance scene in Metropolis.
But I think the latter is better, overall.
The background dancers costumes remind me of Carol Burnett’s costume in her Gone with the Wind parody sketch.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f6/cb/25/f6cb25ce0363fd71a541bb28d7ec9f6f.jpg
Bob, thanks for introducing me to this movie. The Russian actress, Alla Nazimova was 43 when she danced above as well as helped to finance the movie. It was a failure during her lifetime. BTW.. Metropolis, mentioned above, was a pretty amazing film for the time.
Weird and freaky. Hollywood hasn’t changed much in 100+ years.
Every time they showed Herod, all I could think of was Harpo Marx.
Andrew R: I had the same thought: That’s Harpo!
I think this is a new record in the “strange things I otherwise would not know existed in the Evening Pause”.
If I would have seen this at the time, I’d probably want my nickel refunded. Maybe it makes more sense with the rest of the movie? I don’t care enough to find out.
markedup2: The movie was a failure when it first was released, and that I think was because it simply stinks, being very slow and obvious and boring. However, I think it worth watching this one short clip, first because it is interesting from an historical perspective, and second because it is so bad as to be a bit entertaining.