Silent Film Performance

This book provides a groundbreaking exploration of silent film performance. It combines close reading of silent screen acting with theoretically informed analysis, stressing the overlap between different performative arts, such as film and stage acting, dance, mime, and pantomime. The boundary between silent and sound films is also challenged. Anna Pavlovas acting in The Dumb Girl of Portici is read through Freuds work on the uncanny, disability studies, and notions of intermediality. Vladimir Mayakovskys performance in The Young Lady and the Hooligan is approached as a silent soliloquy and a representation of loneliness. Ivan Mozzhukhins tour de force in The Late Mathias Pascal is discussed through a queer failure lens, while Pola Negris presence in Hotel Imperial is analysed with the aid of texts on wartime anxiety. Harald Kreutzbergs stunning number in Paracelsus is examined in the light oftheories of mime and pantomime, arguing for its subversive potential in a Third Reich sound film.