Keywords

• Sarah Bernhardt
• the greatest international star of the late Nineteenth century
• was also one of the most famous stars of early narrative film. Acclaimed for her «golden voice»
• she made a remarkable transition to silent film. This paper explores the paradox of her success
• paying particular attention to the way in which her first films &ndash
• La Tosca (1908)
• La Dame aux camélias (1911)
• Queen Elizabeth (1912) and Adrienne Lecouvreur (1913) &ndash
• had their roots in Opera. Discussing the vocal training that Bernhardt brought to the theatre
• it argues that Bernhardt's films were less «filmed theatre» than they were Opera films
• artistic hybrids which were capable of joining vision and sound
• industry and art. Although we might therefore revise the terms of Bernhardt's engagement with film
• Bernhardt's reception within Italy indicates that her performance was not universally celebrated. Criticized for her excesses
• she was seen as the anachronistic and flip side to the naturalism championed on the stage and screen by Italian actors such as Ermete Zacconi. With Eleanora Duse famously cast as Bernhardt's antithesis
• we might instead argue that the two diva's do not so much represent difference as they do prefigure the subsequent (and ongoing) development of the cinema