Abstract

Sarah Bernhardt is a paradigmatic case study for the joining of voice and silent film. This is because she was famous for her “voix d’or” on the theatrical stage and because she was highly visible in the nascent period of the cinema’s development. Traditionally considered an example of an actress in the early cinema who was “silenced” by film, she has also been considered an anachronistic and ineffective on-screen performer. I argue instead that Bernhardt’s films were not mute records of her live stage action but works that further promoted and developed her polymorphous body at the opening of the twentieth century.