#also i struggled so hard with finding a good post for lemmons!

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masters of the air + text posts (5/?)

(screencaps credit @itstheheebiejeebies <3)

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The Vamps Part 3: Pola Negri and Exoticism

CW: I will be referencing the Roma in this essay and the slur g*psy will pop up from historical sources.

In the first post of this series, I mentioned that modern critics draw a deeper connection between Vamps and bloodsucking vampires than existed in the teens. So, forgive me that this Vamps entry is going to focus on another trait often shared between Vamps and vampires: otherness. In the Bram Stoker tradition, the undead-other and the foreign-other coincide. Stoker didn’t invent the concept, but Dracula and its Eastern European evil infiltrating the west has informed most vampire stories since his novel was published.

Likewise, Vamps are often explicitly foreign or vaguely coded as such. Most often this foreignness is steeped in a stereotypical conception of the East. This East at the time was really anything east of Western Europe, from Slavs to East Asians. As you could probably surmise–it’s usually problematic and insulting. Although, since Vamps were an international phenomenon, this is by no means universal.

Enter Pola Negri.

Pola Negri was born Apolonia Chalupiec in Lipno (now Poland) in 1897 to a single mother. Her Slovak father was a resistance fighter sent to prison in Siberia when Negri was a small child. Now, according to Negri, her mother was from an impoverished line of Polish nobility and her father had “probably more than a touch of the bohemian gypsy in his blood.” This is probably made up. Negri averred these “biographical” details when building her image in America and reaffirmed them in her memoirs, published in 1970. It’s hard to put an exact date on when and where these fictions emerged in her life or in her career. I can speak from experience that Polish-Americans often love relating embellished tales of their ancestry, so this may have been Pola, the person, as much as it is Pola, the movie star. If it’s the latter, it would be very Pola. No one before or since has committed to a bit quite like her.

Pola started out as a successful ballet dancer in Warsaw and transitioned to acting after she fell ill with tuberculosis. She took on the name Negri after a favored Italian poet, Ada Negri. Pola found significant success on the Polish stage and she made the leap to the new medium of film in the presumed lost Slave of Sin / Niewolnica zmysłów (1914). (Yes, she did all that by 17.)

In Pola’s only surviving Polish film, The Polish Dancer / Bestia (1917), she’s an energetic young woman who stays out too late partying. After Pola flees her parents’ home, she becomes a cabaret dancer and manages to throw the lives of two men into chaos. So, Pola was cast in vampy roles from the very start. Bestia’s Vamp tale is a bit more sophisticated than a simple morality play though. Pola is a strong-willed and independent woman taking advantage of weaker men. But, Pola feels remorse. She’s a woman who carries trouble with her wherever she goes, but simply because she doesn’t hold with society’s standards and expectations for women. Whether or not Pola is the bestia (beast) referred to in the title is definitely up for debate. Pola is more a careless Vamp than a malicious one, as Theda Bara is in A Fool There Was (1914). This, of course, doesn’t save her characters from a tragic end. Pola’s Polish roles are very much akin to the types of vampy tragediennes Greta Garbo would soon stake her claim on in America.

Though Pola had played a few exotic roles in Poland, on stage and screen, it was moving to UFA in Germany that brought those roles in spades. Her success was middling in Germany until she met Ernst Lubitsch. I would liken the Negri-Lubitsch team up much like Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder. Lemmon and Negri are both quite good on their own, but pairing with Wilder and Lubitsch brought out the absolute best in the performers. For UFA, Pola’s vampy image began to crystalize and along with that came the exotic, ethnic bent. In films like Carmen (1918) and Sumurun (1920) she plays a Romani Vamp and and “Oriental” Vamp, respectively. These films distilled the image of Pola as an agent of havoc in weak-willed men’s lives that was introduced in some of her Polish films.

The embargo on German films to America was lifted in 1919, partly due to the huge popularity of Pola’s film Madame DuBarry (1919). Pola’s impact on the American movie market was instant and many of her German films were bought up for American distribution. After an unofficial endorsement from Charlie Chaplin, Pola was signed to a contract with Famous Players-Lasky (soon to be Paramount).

Despite Pola arriving hot on the scene, the studio struggled to build her image. Pola was a new quantity. She was Hollywood’s first explicitly foreign star. A lot of effort was put into assuaging the xenophobia of American movie fans, while also highlighting her exotic nature. (Yes. In 1921, Poles were exotic.) If you recall from the Theda Bara post, in the early days of the star system the performer’s star image tied directly into the roles they played. If Negri was going to play all these femmes fatales from “the East” they couldn’t couldn’t wholly whitewash her Slavic ancestry. She’s quoted as saying at the time:

“They do not understand me. I am a child of my race, a Slav. I have no the restraint of the Anglo-Saxon.”

Essentially, Hollywood worked out the kinks of developing foreign stars for the American market with Pola. Pola was out there paving the way for Garbo once again.

Of course, Pola’s American career wasn’t a complete mess. She still made popular films–notably blockbuster Hotel Imperial (1927), directed by Garbo’s first champion, Mauritz Stiller. Pola and Paramount struggled to manage her image regardless of box office successes. Finding the line between the dramatic emotionality of Pola’s characters and the dramatic emotionality of the actress herself was difficult. A series of missteps regarding her relationship with Rudolph Valentino and his untimely death and then her untimely marriage to an impoverished Russian prince put her in a tough spot. On top of all that, talking pictures were roaring into theaters and there was likely concern about Pola’s viability as a talkie star.

But, after her divorce from said prince, Pola faced the microphone and surprisingly it was her singing that revived her faltering career. With the success of the song “Paradise” from A Woman Commands (1932), Pola hopped back over to Europe where she resumed working for the studio that made her a star: UFA. If you know anything about Germany in the 1930s, you can probably predict that these years were complicated for Pola. Hitler was fond of her work, even though her Aryanness couldn’t be proven. Pola arranged to live in France while working for UFA, but it was an arrangement built to bust. In 1938, she returned to the US and chose semi-retirement from film. Pola was getting older and the Vamp archetype that was originally her bread and butter had gone stale. In the end, I feel that many of Pola’s Vamps are the branching off point for the femmes fatales we know and loves from films noir of the 1940s and 50s.

To me, it says so much about who Pola was that she was always so willing to walk away from film. She didn’t seem to have much invested in being a huge star. Not that there’s anything wrong with that drive, but it’s such a modern-seeming departure from how film stars were managed and presented by studios in early Hollywood. Pola’s star image may have been centered on her exoticism, but it’s her fierce independence that I find so compelling.

Learn How to Get the Look BELOW THE JUMP

The Costume

Number one most important thing with a Pola costume: do not dress up as a stereotypical representation of a Romani woman. Just don’t. There’s a lot more to pull from that isn’t insulting an entire ethnic group.

The Makeup

Pola’s trademark is her heavy lids. Carve out a distinct shape with your eyes and use a dark shade almost up to your eyebrows. Use colors by all means, especially a shade that might make your eyes look deeper. For me, that’s using another shade of green. For you, it might be a blue or brown or purple. Now Pola regularly sported a glossy eye, which absolutely adds to the heavy lid look. Glossy lids, regardless of which product you’re using, is not going to last long. If you’re going out in this costume, you might want to opt for a fine shimmer as I did. That way, you won’t have to worry about touch ups.

Pola’s eye makeup somehow looks both mournful and judgmental. She’s somehow always looking down her nose at you even if she’s looking out from under her eyebrows.

The eyebrows should be distinctly drawn in though not super thick and curved to match  Heavy lids, long curved eyebrows. Like Theda Bara, leave the blush behind. Pola also had a beauty mark under her left eye that she often drew in for high contrast. I drew one on using the same dark brown shade I used on my brows.

As for lips, go with a thin silhouette and focus more on a sharp shape than a soft pout. Pola often wears a gloss over her lipstick–likely almond oil or petroleum jelly.

The Hair

Pola most often stuck to curly or wavy bobs. In some films Pola leans more toward a lob, which is trendy today, so you very well might have the appropriate hair cut already! I think I would do a full wet set if I were to tackle this look again, but I think the curling wand did an okay job. How neat you want to make the waves or curls is totally dependent on which film you want to mimic. I was going for Die Bergkatze / The Wildcat (1920) so unruly was the way to go.

Of course, Pola was high-key into turbans and headscarves. So, that’s an option.

The Clothes

This is where Pola makes it easy on modern imitators. She has a great range of (non-appropriative) costumes to choose from. I tried to recreate her mountain-dwelling attire from The Wildcat. But if you go back and look at her dance costume from Bestia (seen above), she rocks a very modern-looking gothy look. So, I’d recommend checking out a few of her films (some of her work with Lubitsch is currently on Filmstruck *nudge* *nudge*) then look in your closet and make an adventure of it. And remember, nothing is too over the top for Pola.

Read Part Two