Presented by Dr Victoria Duckett 

Sarah Bernhardt, the great nineteenth-century theatrical actress, was also the first major international film star. Appearing cross-dressed in a short Hamlet film before international audiences at the Paris Exposition of 1900, this 56-year-old French actress most famously went on to make Camille (La Dame aux Camélias, 1911) and Queen Elizabeth (Les Amours de la Reine Elisabeth, 1912). Later appearing in one of the first celebrity home movies (Sarah Bernhardt at Home, 1915), she also made a WWI propaganda film, Mothers of France (Mères Françaises, 1917). This presentation explores these films as evidence of a productive exchange between the stage and the nascent film industry. Rather than see Bernhardt’s acting as evidence of the theatre’s incommensurability with film, it will demonstrate the legacy of her stage acting as she adapted it to early film. The talk will include screenings of the films accompanied by live music.

Dr Victoria Duckett is a lecturer in Media and Communications in the School of Communications and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Melbourne. She is author of Seeing Sarah Bernhardt: Performance and Silent Film (2015) and co-editor of Researching Women in Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives (2013). Victoria is on the editorial boards of Feminisms, Medias, Histories and Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film and is a member of the steering committee of Women and Film History International.