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Theda Bara: Vamp
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The vehicle for Theda Bara's initiation into the cult of vamp movies. Based on Rudyard Kipling's "The Vampire," the film details the story of a just and moral man who falls from grace at the insidious hands of the unrepentant vamp. Notorious subtitling marks this as a genre-defining piece of cinema, especially "Kiss me, my fool!"
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Back in the days before Madonna, Marilyn and even Jean Harlow, there was Theda Bara! She was the Vamp. In the year 1917, if a newly ordained rabbi named Isaac Birnbaum were to be spotted by a member of his congregation watching this creature drive a priest to bottle and suicide in a steamy silent film called Father, I Have Sinned, he'd have to think fast to come up with an explanation. Truth to tell, the rabbi finds Theda Bara far more exotic than his old favourite, Tom Mix. But if he were to tell the truth, chances are he would be assigned to assessing the probity of pickles in a Brooklyn factory rather than realising his vision of remaining in Hollywood as the Frontier Rabbi. Theda Bara has problems too.
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One of the first sexual figures in film was Theda Bara. She was the first silent screen "star", making way for many women after her. She was portrayed the "bad girl," and her career coined the phrase Vamp (slang from the word vampire, a beautiful, conniving woman who seduces men and leads them to their ruin). In her first film, A Fool There Was, she was a seductive vampire, and this started her career as The Vamp. Although there were many vampire movies being made around the same era, Bara became the most well known female seductress. As the Vamp, she showed that women weren't always submissive and weaklings.
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The most extreme statement about vamping attributed to Theda Bara was its Victorian rationale. In an open letter to the mayor of Cincinnati that responded to The Catholic Federation's rejection of her film The Serpent (1916), Bara wrote that every "mother, every minister, every person [concerned] with the well-being of the younger element of Cincinnati owe [her] gratitude for what" Bara had accomplished with her films (qtd. in Golden 79). Bara recognized the draw of the cinematic medium and the effects it had upon its audience-particularly easily convinced youth. Additionally, the moviegoers ... went to see the vamp because they could participate vicariously in Bara's unrestrained wickedness and derive the satisfaction of moralizing about it at the same time. Reinforced by publicity stunts, this voyeurism and chastisement accordingly strengthened the association of women and sex with sin. Although a traditional male point of view, it possibly caused ambivalence in women who viewed the vamp films.
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In the arrangement of chapters, there is a real effort to contextualise Theda Bara's work, as well as the vamp figure. The unglamorous, production-line approach to filmmaking in the teens is captured in his chapter "A Film a Month." Another, "The Vampire: Desired and Despised," looks at responses ranging from censorship to satire. Unfortunately, while Genini recognises the importance of Bara's context, he does not explore its implications.
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