With towering bouffant hair, midnight blue dress and silver bangles jangling, burlesque star Immodesty Blaize took to the stage of the BFI Southbank to introduce the one-off screening of Charles Byrant’s silent film, Salome. “Is it a film? Is it art? Is it a curiosity?” Blaize asked before warning that she was “not going to dwell on the plot… largely because the film doesn’t.”
Based on Oscar Wilde’s high-camp tragedy – which in turn is taken from the western world’s arch-tragedy, The Bible – Salome’s plot sees the petulant princess of Judea demand the head of John the Baptist after he spurns her indiscrete advances.
Although Salome’s lecherous step-father Herod can’t resist her infamously sexy dance moves, John, a man of God, is left unmoved and unimpressed. Bad move, John.
Salome comes from the bunny-boiler school of character design, so if she can’t have her man, well, no one can. It’s off with the prophet’s head pronto. Memorably played by lesbian Russian émigré Alla Nazimova, Salome is a constantly-writhing waif sizzling with avant-garde sex appeal.
Despite her 42 years, Nazimova very much looks the required 14. She is a slip of a girl in a slip of a dress, her wiggling limbs trussed up in crazy costumes designed by Rudolph Valentino’s wife, the set designer-come-Egyptologist, Natacha Rambova.
In her introduction, Blaize was straight with the crowd: “I’ll put my cards on the table, it is a flawed piece of work.” And she’s not wrong; the acting is all over-the-place with the silent stars’ facial expressions working double time to make up for a lack of convincing dialogue.
When she isn’t forced to mouth out-dated vernacular (“Suffer me to kiss my mouth!”), Nazimova swaps words for wiggles, while her vile mother’s outlandishly wild hair speaks more of her repellent character (she’s all for John’s early death) than her acting does.
Herod is suitably ogre-like, but only in a clownish way.
And while it is no minor task to divide your eyes between a film on screen and a live band on stage in front of it, the acting so easily swung past the bounds of believability that Bishi and her four-piece band provided a pleasant distraction.
Dancing bare-foot in a black playsuit and gold head-dress, Bishi played sitar and sang poppy World-electronica to a score composed for this one-off Bird’s Eye View performance.
And, aside from some curmudgeonly weirdo in the audience yelling at Bishi to sit down and stop blocking the screen (questions arise as to what he thought he was seeing when he bought a ticket to a silent film with live musical accompaniment), the pairing of modern score to old film worked well.
Great to see sexy women working it both on screen and in front of it; and all the more reason to throw you weight behind Rachel Millward’s inspired festival.
