Divas down under: the circulation of Asta Nielsen's and Francesca Bertini’s films in Australian cinemas in the 1910s

ABSTRACT

The early Australian cinema market was a lucrative target for export-dependent European film producers, from the French Pathé Frérès to the Danish Nordisk Films Kompagni. By 1913, cinema attendance was a national pastime in Australia, with approximately 12% of the population going to the pictures every Saturday night. Australian film production was innovative but too limited to meet domestic demand. As a result of this disparity in supply and demand, coupled with the innovative artistry of European silent films, a significant percentage of the films shown in Australia in the pre-World War I years were imported from Europe. Initially, most of these films were advertised simply by their title and occasionally the production company. Despite such minimal branding, many of these films were in continuous circulation on urban and provincial cinema circuits for years at a time. However, with the emergence of the monopoly-distribution system and associated rise of the star culture that sold films on the strength of an actor or actress's name, several European stars began to develop an devoted Australian following. Most of the early European stars who made a name for themselves in Australia were women, notably the Danish actress Asta Nielsen and the Italian actress Francesca Bertini. This article maps the scope of these female European stars’ popularity in pre-World War I Australia and explores the circulation conditions that facilitated their stardom, particularly in relation to the transformation of Australian production, distribution, and exhibition systems in the early 1910s, as well as during and after World War I.

KEYWORDS:

• Silent film
• Asta Nielsen
• Francesca Bertini
• Australian cinema circuits
• European film

Acknowledgments

The University of Wisconsin–Madison provided generous support for the earliest stages of this project, particularly through the Paul and Renate Madsen Endowed Professorship, while Professor Katie Sutton and the Research School for the Humanities at the Australian National University deserve credit for facilitating the further development of the project by providing me a Visiting Fellowship in November and December 2016. The College of Humanities at Brigham Young University has been generous with research and conference funding, as well as student support, to allow me to refine and present my findings to colleagues in several different countries.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Julie K. Allen earned her PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University in 2005. She taught at the Scandinavian Studies department at the University of Wisconsin from 2006 to 2016, and has been professor of Comparative Arts and Letters at Brigham Young University since August 2016. Much of her research focuses on cultural and national identity formation and dissemination, particularly in Northern Europe, through literature, film, religion, and nation-branding endeavors. Her first book, Icons of Danish Modernity (University of Washington Press, 2012), considers how the Danish literary critic Georg Brandes and the Danish silent film diva Asta Nielsen conveyed an impression of Danish modernity to the world, primarily through German media, while her second book, Danish but Not Lutheran: The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity 1850–1920, examines cultural, literary, and cinematic responses to the legalization of religious difference in Denmark in the mid-nineteenth century in 1849 and the subsequent conversion of nearly 30,000 Danes to Mormonism. Her current book project explores how the circulation of European silent film in Australasia before and after World War I intersects with issues of human migration, nationalism, and cultural imperialism.

ORCID

Julie K. Allen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9126-0101

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the College of Humanities, Brigham Young University (US), the Research School for the Humanities, Australian National University; the Graduate School, University of Wisconsin-Madison (US).