Bestia (Film)
- Pola Negri Pola Basznikow
- January Pawlowski: Dimitri
- Witold Kuncewicz: Alexi Vilineff, businessman
- Maria Duleba: Sonia, his wife
- Lya Mara (as Mara Mia ):
Bestia is a 1916 in Warsaw, in what was then the Russian Empire belonging Poland, turned silent film with Pola Negri in the lead role.
Action
The young Pola, a real tomboy, is the problem child of her parents. She lives day to day and celebrating late into the night. The parents try to restrain her daughter, but to no avail. When it comes one evening again to an altercation with his father, decides Pola, together with her friend Dimitri to escape the constant harassment and tutelage at home. Soon Pola also has enough of Dimitri and separates from him likewise. In a drunken state she steals all his money and leaves him only back a short message. Pola's first job in their particular newfound freedom of life is that of an employee in a fashion salon. But soon discovered Pola her true passion: the dance. After some discussion, it is required by a Cabaret as house dancer.
Where she met the young, impetuous girl wealthy businessman Alexi Vilineff, with whom she then begins a relationship. She hopes to become one of the much older man no less than married, so she can spend a life in the lap of luxury. One day Pola enters at the Alexis side an elegant restaurant to dine together. Immediately she sees Dimitri, who works here as a waiter. Dimitri has not forgotten that Pola has robbed him and wants to take revenge on her for it. Pola undergoes little later the second shock: her wealthy merchant is already married and even has kids! She decides then to no longer see Vilineff again. Pola has no idea that Alexi has already left his wife for her. In the moment in which Pola believes she is already at the bottom, she meets Dimitri on the road, shooting at them. She is dying. Now Alexi intends to return in repentance to his wife and children. But, for some time seriously ill, has now died.
Production
The film was made about 48minütige midst of the First World War, which is under German military rule Warsaw. Bestia experienced there on January 5, 1917 his first performance. It is uncertain whether the film in Germany was shown. Often the title is circulating the Polish dancer, but which is sometimes also applied to Pola's first- slave of the senses (1914 ).
Melodrama can be seen as typical of the early silent films Pola Negri, its shown there type of role, the " vamp ," she was later to play again and again. Bestia film history has two meanings: it is the only Polish Negri film, which (at least in part) still exists today and the last Russo- Polish film of the artist before it was obliged in 1917 to Germany.
In a supporting role, the then still largely unknown Lya Mara ( under the pseudonym Mia Mara ) to see. Also in 1917, she followed an offer to Berlin and became like the Negri a great silent film star.
Director Aleksander Hertz (1879-1928) is one of today almost forgotten filmmakers of Poland. Here it comes in film history of Poland is of paramount importance: Even during the Czarist rule he had the important production company in Warsaw, the Sfinks, and directed and established a series of time very successful films, including several with Pola Negri.
2011 Bestia appeared in the U.S. on DVD.
Classification
Lotte H. Eisner wrote about the young Pola Negri:
"She is the Magnani of the silent era, vital, spirited. Seductive as to its beginnings, the Lollobrigida. She does not play, is hardly an actress in the then or today's sense. It is simply there. (...) The Negri represents the healthy sensuality in all its originality. There's nothing to fiddle and fiddled anything. In an era of round shapes they live plump and yet supple as a panther. (...) It is Unencumbered, only seduction. Your intellectual, more spiritual opposite pole is the great Asta Nielsen. Pola, the Polish woman, is a being full of safety, dominated by instincts. She is the dancer in " Sumurun " with all their Körperbiegsamkeit, with all its rhythmic nature liable ferocity. Not for nothing it seems predestined: it turned as the first movie with her the " Polish dancer" and later the "Spanish dancer" ".