Musidora

Early life

Jeanne Roques was born in Paris to the music composer and theorist of socialism Jacques Roques (1852–1931)^[1] and the painter and feminist Adèle Clémence Porchez (1855–1928),^[2] who instilled in her a love of literature. Her paternal grandmother was of Spanish descent.^[3] She began her career at an early age, encouraged by her mother. She wrote her first novel at the age of fifteen, she painted and sculpted, attending Emmanuel Frémiet's school for three years.^[4]

Jeanne adopted the stage name "Musidora" (Greek for "gift of the muses"), after the heroine in Théophile Gautier's novel Fortunio,^[5][6] and began performing in cabarets, [[Music hall#Music halls of Paris|music halls]], revues and plays in Paris in 1910, gaining recognition in Aristide Bruant's play La Loupiotte, where she played the part of La Môme Liquette (The Shirt Chick). Her first success was two years later at the Bataclan theatre, in the revue Ça grise, where she shared the stage with Colette, who became a lifelong friend. Musidora also performed in cabarets and on the stages of the l'Odéon and Châtelet theatres,^{[citation needed]} and appeared in revues at the Folies Bergère and Bataclan theatre from 1912 to 1914, singing, dancing (especially tango), comic acting, sometimes cross-dressing.^[7][8]

After a few appearances in short films, almost all of which have been lost, she made her film debut in Les Misères de l'aiguille (Miseries of the Needle) (1914), a feminist social drama produced by the socialist film collective Le Cinéma du Peuple and directed by Raphaël Clamour [fr], one of her colleagues at the Théâtre du Châtelet.^[9] The film tells the story of a seamstress who, after the death of her husband, attempts suicide with her child to escape poverty. The film highlights the problems of urban women of the French working-class.^[10]

After signing a contract with Gaumont, she appeared in a handful of films for Gaston Ravel in 1914. The film director Louis Feuillade had seen her perform as a tango dancer in La Revue Galante at the Folies Bergère and they began a professional collaboration, with her first major roles coming in his adaptation of François Coppée's play Severo Torelli, and in Le Calvaire.^[11] She was then one of the many actresses Feuillade employed in patriotic productions and vaudevilles. She also made several films with Gaumont's in-house directors, who were all pulled from their work by war mobilisation. Historical dramas, slapstick comedies, patriotic films, and sentimental scenes followed one another from 1914 to 1917.

Stardom – Les Vampires and Judex

In late 1915, having returned to civilian life, Louis Feuillade offered her the role of Irma Vep (an anagram of "vampire"), a cabaret singer, in Les Vampires (The Vampires). (The serial was not about vampires, but about a criminal secret society, inspired by the exploits of the real-life Bonnot Gang.) Irma Vep plays a leading role in the Vampires' crimes, and is a master of disguise. In the third episode, Musidora appears dressed for burgling, clad in a tight black silken hooded bodysuit, sometimes masked. She also appears in other episodes disguised as a maid, a typist, a sailor, a viscount, and a telephone operator, and spends two episodes under the hypnotic control of Moreno, a rival criminal, who makes her his mistress and induces her to assassinate the Grand Vampire.^[14] In another episode, she escapes captivity and conceals herself under a steam train: Musidora did her own stunts, hiding beneath the moving train, dropping off and lying between the rails as it moved away.^[15][16]

Musidora said later, "In the stunning VAMPIRES, I introduced the most discrete luxury. The black tight bodysuit had been worn before me by Josette Andriot, but it had been made of decent cotton. The micromesh silk of my suit would for a long time set astir the youth of 1916."^[17][18] Her biographer, Patrick Cazals, considers the scenes in which Musidora appears in her black silken bodysuit to be among the most erotic ones in the first quarter century of cinema.^[19] In Annette Förster's analysis, "film historic and feminist accounts treat the figure of Irma Vep in the black bodysuit as an embodiment of eroticism, evil, criminality, sexual difference, ambiguity, mobility, and silent film-experience."^[20]

The series was an immediate success with French cinema-goers and ran in ten installments until 1916. As a criminal antiheroine and femme fatale, Irma Vep was an immediate sensation; the role brought Musidora international fame and established Irma Vep as an enduring figure in silent cinema. The strange character enjoyed great popular success and Musidora was admired by members of the Surrealist movement, who later made her one of their poetic emblems.^[6] Her heavily stylised appearance, with her dark eyes heavily lined with kohl, her pale skin, her dramatic makeup, and her exotic wardrobe, contributed to Musidora becoming one of the most recognisable stars of French silent cinema. Her vamp persona was popularised in the United States by actress Theda Bara at about the same time.^[21]

After the Les Vampires serial, Musidora starred as the criminal adventuress Diana Monti in Judex, another popular Feuillade serial filmed in 1916 but delayed for release until 1917. Diana Monti is even more seductive and wicked than Irma Vep.^[22] Disguised as the governess Marie Verdier, she attempts to seduces the banker Favraux, and tries throughout the series to seize his fortune.^[6]

In the fifth episode, Diana Monti escapes capture by removing her outer clothes to reveal a black bathing suit, in which she dives into water and swims away. A contemporary reviewer wrote admiringly, "Miss Musidora, who has to flee in great haste, plunges into the river in such a marvellous way, that one forgets the blackness of her soul for the moment."^[23] Judex was an even greater popular success than Les Vampires, and confirmed her position as a French film star or vedette.^[24]

By the time her contract with Gaumont expired in 1917, she had appeared in more than forty dramas and farces, and had become one of the stars of French silent film.^[8]

She subsequently acted in films directed by André Hugon: Les Chacals (The Jackals) (1917), Johannès, fils de Johannès (Johannes, Son of Johannes) (1918), and Mam'zelle Chiffon (1918); by Gaston Ravel: La Geôle (The Jail) (1918); by Germaine Dulac: La Jeune Fille la plus méritante de France (The Most Deserving Girl in France) (1918); and by Fred LeRoy Granville: Le Berceau de Dieu a.k.a. Les Ombres du passé (Shadows of the Past a.k.a. The Cradle of God) (1926). At the same time, she continued to appear on stage in revues, vaudeville, and melodramas.

Musidora and the Surrealists

André Breton, Louis Aragon, and the other founders of the Surrealist movement were avid viewers of Feuillade's serial films, particularly Les Vampires. Though not intended to be avant-garde, Les Vampires and Judex were lauded by Aragon and Breton in the 1920s for the films' elements of surprise, fantasy/science fiction, unexpected juxtapositions and visual non sequitors. They adopted Musidora as a cultural icon, and invited her to several of their events.^[a]

Aragon wrote:

The worldview that an entire generation forms originates in the cinema, and there is a film that summarises that, a series. An entire generation of young people falls in love with Musidora in LES VAMPIRES.^[26]

Breton sent her roses, and the actress attended a Dada evening. He wrote to her:

A few of us have often talked about you and the mediocre future that awaits the French cinema and theatre which has never known who you were. ... It is through Les Vampires that Musidora's portrait is offered, in its final touches, adorned in her tights for the union of love and death, her eye by turns dreamy, sadistic, or passionate. The myth was established through this idealised imagery. Yet beneath the hotel mouse-like swimsuit of arachnid and sublime silk, there was also a woman whom her admirers ignored. Suffering, sensitive, anxious, seeking to express in love, poetry, and struggle, a feeling of the unattainable that this elegant black armour stifled or masked ...^[6]

At the end of 1928, Aragon and Breton wrote a play in her honour, Le Trésor des Jésuites (The Jesuits' Treasure), in which all the characters' names are anagrams of "Musidora" (Mad Souri, Doramusi, etc.)^[6][27] The play was originally intended to be performed at the "Gala Judex", a gala organised to support the widow of actor René Cresté (who had played the title character in Judex) on 1 December 1928.^[28] The play was published in the special issue of the Belgian avant-garde review Variétés^[29] and was performed only once, in 1935, at the Nové Divadlo (New Theatre) founded by Oldřich Nový in Prague, in a production directed by Jindřich Honzl, with sets by Jindřich Štyrský.^[30]

Filmmakers Fritz Lang, Luis Buñuel, Georges Franju, Alain Resnais, and Olivier Assayas have all been influenced by Les Vampires and Judex in their careers as directors.^{[31][32][33][34][35]}

As a director and producer

At a time when many women in the film industry were confined to acting, Musidora achieved a degree of success as a film producer and director. She was among the earliest French women to work as a film director, screenwriter, and producer during the silent era. Following pioneers such as Alice Guy-Blaché and alongside contemporaries including Germaine Dulac, she belonged to a small group of women who exercised creative control behind the camera in early French cinema. Between 1917 and 1924, she directed or co-directed several films in France and Spain, although most are now lost. Her work has since been reassessed by feminist film historians as an important contribution to women's authorship in silent cinema.

She set up her own film production company,^[5] Société des Films Musidora, and adapted two novels by her friend Colette: L'Ingénue libertine, which became Minne (1916); and La Vagabonde (The Vagabonde) (1918), which she co-wrote (with Colette) and co-directed (with Eugenio Perego), based on Colette's novel of the same name. In Italy, she produced and directed La Flamme cachée (The Hidden Flame) (1920) based on an original screenplay by Colette, before writing and directing Vicenta (1920). Between the late 1910s and early 1920s, she directed ten films, most of which are now lost, with only two surviving: Soleil et Ombre (Sol y sombra) (Sun and Shadow) (1922), and La Terre des taureaux (La tierra de los toros) (The Land of the Bulls) (1924), both of which were filmed in Spain.

Years in Spain

Musidora went to Spain in 1921 with a three-month contract to perform at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid.^[37] Through the mediation of the cuplé singer Raquel Meller, wife of the Guatemalan writer Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Musidora met the Cordoban painter Julio Romero de Torres, who portrayed her in more than one painting that same year.^[38] In Romero de Torres's circle she met the bullfighter (rejoneador) Antonio Cañero, a wealthy landowner from Córdoba, with whom she had a romantic relationship,^[39] which ended after a few months when he left her for a Russian princess.^[40]

In Spain, she wrote, directed, produced, and starred in four films, with limited success: Pour don Carlos (For Don Carlos) (1921), adapted from the eponymous novel [fr] by Pierre Benoit, which recounts the 1873–1876 guerilla campaign during the Third Carlist War;^[41]Musidora en Espagne (Musidora in Spain) (1922); Soleil et Ombre (Sun and Shadow) (1922);^[42] and La Terre des taureaux (La tierra de los toros) (The Land of the Bulls) (1924),^[43] which was conceived as part of a mixture of film screening and live performance, in which Musidora herself would sing and dance. Cañero was also to appear on stage, but he had left her by the time the film was exhibited in Spain.^[44]

Her films were well received by the press, yet she probably lost money making them.^[39]

Return to France

In 1924, Musidora ended her career as a filmmaker and turned to theatre and writing. After spending five years in Spain, she returned to Paris in 1926, and made her final film appearance in the religious epic Le Berceau de Dieu (The Cradle of God) alongside Léon Mathot, France Dhélia, and Lucien Dalsace. In the same year, she was elected Reine du Cinéma (Queen of Cinema).^[45]

After her marriage in 1927, she distanced herself from film and devoted herself primarily to the theatre until the early 1950s. In 1930, she was part of the production of Gustave Damien [fr]'s touring play, Échec à la Reine (Checkmate to the Queen), in Dinard.^[46]

She sculpted, and also published two novels, Arabella et Arlequin (Arabella and Harlequin) (1928) and Paroxysmes (Paroxysms) (1934), as well as numerous songs and a collection of poems, Halos (1940). According to her biographer, Francis Lacassin, Musidora left behind many unpublished works at her death. She also taught diction at the Reims Conservatory in 1938.^[47] As well as her relationships with Breton, Aragon and Colette, she was friends with other French cultural figures, including Germaine Dulac and Pierre Louÿs. She continued to appear in plays she had written (about thirty between 1916 and 1952) until 1948, including La Vie sentimentale de George Sand (The Sentimental Life of George Sand) (1946), and was a successful songwriter, novelist, poet, memoirist, and essayist.^[5]

Later writing and archival work

After the Second World War, she became involved in the film industry again. From 1944, the year of her divorce, she worked with Henri Langlois at the Cinémathèque Française on an oral history project for the Commission for Historical Research of the Cinémathèque, coordinating, conducting and transcribing interviews with her colleagues from silent cinema.^[48] Her work for this commission inspired her to direct and star in one last film, La Magique Image (The Magic Image) (1950), an homage to Feuillade.^[39][8] Her last public appearance was at the Cinémathèque's permanent exhibition in 1946, where she greeted visitors reclining on a bench, wearing the black vamp bodysuit that had made her famous.^[49] Late in her life, she would occasionally work in the ticket booth of the Cinémathèque Française, where patrons might not have realised that the older woman in the foyer was starring in the film they were watching.^{[citation needed]} She also worked as a journalist, writing many articles on cinema.^[50]

Death

Musidora died in Paris on 11 December 1957 at the Broussais Hospital in Paris.^[5][51][b] She was buried next to her parents in Bois-le-Roi, Seine-et-Marne, where her son practised as a dentist.^[47]

As actress

As director