Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T12:06:00.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Foreword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2022

Julie K. Allen
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University, Utah
Get access

Summary

Lower the flags in her honor; she is incomparable and without peer.” So wrote early film theorist Béla Balázs of Asta Nielsen in his 1924 book, Der Sichtbare Mensch /The Visible Man, arguing that the Danish actress’s capacity for expressive gesture transcended language, producing an emotional meaning, a felt sensibility, that was uniquely cinematic. It was also decidedly sensual. Indeed, anyone who has had the privilege of watching Nielsen's sinuous, writhing body as she lassos a hapless gaucho in the famous dance scene from her first film, Afgrunden /The Abyss (aka Woman Always Pays, 1910), will understand why her name became a symbol of emancipated femininity in innumerable countries almost overnight. This shocking expression of female sexual desire—this dance that declares lust and pride, longing and addiction, aggression and eroticism—reminds us that the history of cinema, at its finest, is a sensory affair, an affective charge that moves people in often unpredictable ways.

When I first saw “Die Asta” on-screen at the 2002 Giornate D’el Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone, Italy, the theater shimmered with an irrepressible energy. The film was Engelein /Up to Her Tricks (aka Little Angel, 1914), a comedy in which the thirty-two-year-old actress plays a seventeen-yearold girl pretending to be twelve in order that her uncle does not realize that her birth preceded her parents’ marriage. This somewhat bizarre plot intensifies when Jesta becomes attracted to her uncle. I can think of no other actress who could make this role not only believable but also whimsical, poignant, and strangely erotic. In one memorable scene, Asta as Jesta sits at a desk wearing a loose pinafore, carefully placing flowers one by one around a love letter she has written to her uncle. She is a gauche teenager, aching with unrequited love. But, as she swivels on the chair, spine curving slightly as she hugs herself and sighs, she glances down at her bare knee. Suddenly, she becomes a prepubescent girl. She pulls her knee up, fully absorbed, and begins to pick at what may be a scab or bruise. Is she child or woman? Innocent or decadent? Cherub or temptress? As Asta/Jesta swiveled back to the desk, cradling her uncle's pipe and miming a sucking gesture, I stood up, swept to my feet with fellow festivalgoers as the theater roared with applause.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Silent Muse
The Memoirs of Asta Nielsen
, pp. xi - xvi
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×