Showing posts with label Asta Nielsen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asta Nielsen. Show all posts

Thursday, January 6, 2022

Celebrating Asta Nielsen, an earlier Lulu

Asta Nielsen was an early European film star in whom Louise Brooks had a special interest. (For more about Asta Nielsen and her remarkable career, check out her Wikipedia page HERE, or better yet, check out this excellent article "Asta Nielsen - #Bosslady" by Nanna Frank Rasmussen. The short introductory film about Nielsen at the top of the page is surprising, even a bit shocking.) 

Brooks' interest likely stemmed from the fact that the two actresses had a few things in common. I don't know that they ever met, but they both worked under the same director, G.W. Pabst. Late in her career, Nielsen was featured in Pabst's Joyless Street (1925), which starred Greta Garbo. Brooks, of course, starred in two Pabst films, Pandora's Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). Another bit of overlap came in the form of a woman named Josephine Müller, who was Brooks' maid in Berlin; according to Brooks, Müller had  once worked for Asta Nielsen, and in her essay "Pabst and Lulu," Brooks notes that her German maid thought Nielsen the best actress in the world. 

And of course, both actresses also wore their hair short throughout their life, with Nielsen at times sporting bangs and a helmet-like bob similar to Brooks. 

However, the most notable thing that the two actress had in common is that they both played the same character, Lulu. Brooks played Lulu in Pandora's Box, while Nielsen played Lulu in Erdgeist, or Earth Spirit (1923), a German film directed by Leopold Jessner. We know from Brooks' notebooks that Brooks viewed Erdgeist on June 15, 1959 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Interestingly, when Brooks recorded the fact she had seen the film, she referred to it as Loulou. If you want to see the Nielsen film, hurry on over to the Danish Film Institute where you can stream Erdgeist online for free. These days, this 69 minute film is seldom shown in theaters or at festivals, so, this is a great opportunity to see a significant silent film. BTW, this version has Dutch intertitles with Danish subtitles. But no worries, just watch it for the visuals and you will be able to follow it along. Otherwise, hard-core Lulu devotees might also want to catch this 64 minute version of Erdgeist on YouTube which features Russian intertitles.

Speaking of screenings and festivals, the British Film Institute is mounting a multi-film, two part retrospective in February and March curated by film critic / film historian / author and friend to the LBS Pamela Hutchinson. "‘Die Asta’ was silent cinema’s Danish diva," notes the retrospective webpage, "whose mesmerising performances helped invent modern screen acting." More information HERE.

As Hutchinson notes, "A single tear from Nielsen, a single flicker of her mouth, says more than any superimposed effects of suffering,’ said German director Leopold Jessner. ‘She was and is the great actress, the canvas that makes dignity visible.’ Almost an overnight success when she appeared in 1910’s melodrama The Abyss as a young woman torn between passion and duty, Nielsen soon became Europe’s greatest film star – though her transgressive films would be censored in the US. She was widely celebrated for the emotional depth and sensuality she could convey with her modern, naturalist style and her deft use of gesture, whether in comedy or tragedy. This month we’ll explore her first films, made in Denmark and Germany, which reveal her to be a screen actress of boundless range, with unique sensitivity and unforgettably hypnotic eyes." 

For those interested, here is an LBS blog from 2017 about Nielsen which contains the scans of a vintage German language booklet on the actress noted for her large dark eyes, mask-like face and boyish figure who often portrayed strong-willed passionate women trapped by tragic circumstances. Sound familiar?

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The First Film Lulu, Asta Nielsen

Some six years before Louise Brooks played Lulu in G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929), the great Danish actress Asta Nielsen played the role in Leopold Jessner's film adaption of Earth Spirit (1923). Here is a terrific 1912 postcard of the actress sporting bangs and a bob.


Wednesday, March 12, 2014

A few more images of Asta Nielsen

Here are a few more images of the divine Asta Nielsen.... To learn more, check out her Wikipedia or IMdB pages.



Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Asta Nielsen as Lulu

Asta Nielsen and Charlie Chaplin
as Adam and Eve
Lately, I have been reading about the great Danish actress Asta Nielsen (1881-1972). Though she worked mostly in Germany, her fame transcended that nation's film industry and Nielsen is and was widely considered one of the first international movie stars.

About her, the great French poet Guillaume Apollinaire once exclaimed, "She is everything! She is the drunkard's vision and the lonely man's dream."

Notably, Nielsen played Lulu in Leopold Jessner's 1923 film  of Frank Wedekind's play Erdgeist. However, she may best be known to film buffs for her role as an aging prostitute in the 1925 German film Die freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street), which was directed by G. W. Pabst and starred then newcomer Greta Garbo.

Years later, Pabst stated "One has long spoken of Greta Garbo as 'the divine' – for me Asta Nielsen has always been and will always remain 'the human being' par excellence." Wow.

I don't know that Louise Brooks and Asta Nielsen ever met. And I don't know that Brooks was even much aware of actress, an actress who in so many ways set the stage for Brooks' own performance as Lulu in Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929). Nevertheless, the two actresses had much in common. At various times in the 1920's, including for her role as Lulu, Nielsen sported a severe Dutch bob not unlike Brooks.

Asta Nielsen, 1930
And like Brooks, Nielsen was known for her erotically charged style of acting as well as for her occasional androgynous appearance. (One of her best regarded film roles was as Hamlet, from 1921.) Not surprisingly, some of Nielsen's German films were censored when shown in the United States, where she failed to become well known.


 Below is an image of Asta Nielsen, as Lulu in Erdgeist. It is a striking, and very stylized image.


And here below is another image of Asta Nielsen as Lulu in Erdgeist. It is less stylized, though still striking. The studio who took this image is Binder. They also photographed Brooks.


And finally, here is a seven minute excerpt from Erdgeist. It features a new score by Luke Styles  commissioned by and premiered at the Stummfilmtage 2009 in Karlsruhe, Germany, by ensemble Amorpha under the direction of Luke Styles.

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