Program 8: La belle dame sans merci
Germaine Dulac
August 24 - 30, 2018
Taking its title from John Keats’s early 19th-century poem, this highly personal melodrama, about a famous actress who vows to become a “merciless woman” after she is abandoned by a rich man, finds Dulac interrogating the archetype of the femme fatale.
La belle dame sans merci (1921, 80m, 35mm)
Taking its title from John Keats’s early 19th-century poem, this highly personal melodrama finds Dulac interrogating the archetype of the femme fatale. La belle dame sans merci follows a famous actress who was once seduced and abandoned by a rich man and subsequently resolved to become a “merciless woman,” forever scheming to hurt others (men in particular) in a ruthless yet captivating manner. Dulac challenges the Romantic archetype embodied in Keats’s poem by way of symbolist mise en scène, self-reflexive narration, and her typically associative approach to editing, locating a modern ambiguity within the stereotypical figures of 19th-century art.
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