film

The Cheat (1923) Production Photograph

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A Lost Film: The remake of The Cheat in 1923 starred Pola Negri in her second American film; she gave rise to the cinematic femme fatale. As with many silent films of the era, The Cheat is considered lost and theatrical stills are some of the only pictorial documents remaining.

Theatrical stills – shot since the advent of feature films in the 1910s – are simply production photographs. Over the last century they have become highly collected artifacts, here we can see where the photo was affixed to an album page.

The image here shows Charles de Rochefort playing a cunning art dealer masquerading as an East Indian Prince. The set design uses a multi-arm statue to underscore his foreign, and potentially nefarious, identity.

Looking closely at the statue, is does not appear to be a studio-made prop. The features and style suggest an authentic East Asian icon.

The richly brocaded costuming hints at the character’s royal pedigree, while his posture of reverence reveals his non-Christian religious allegiance.

A similar icon was photographed by German photographer Hedda Morrison in China between 1933–1946. It is viewable through Bristol’s Visualizing China project here: https://hpcbristol.net/visual/Hv08-085

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Andrew Marton’s Storm Over Tibet (1952) Icon

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Buddhist Demon of Shangri-la: Andrew Marton’s 1952 film, Storm over Tibet, utilizes Buddhist material culture to drive the Cold War horror-fantasy narrative. Filmed in part at Lamayuru in Ladakh, a cursed cham dance mask is a surrogate for the menacing antagonist.

Storm Over Tibet was a remake of Marton’s pre-war German-Swiss film Demon of the Himalayas from 1935. For both films Marton used documentary footage from the 1934 International Himalayan Expedition. Some of the same footage also was used for Columbia’s Lost Horizon in 1937.

The co-lead, Diana Douglas, holds the hand of a Buddhist statue owed by the prop department of Columbia Pictures. It appears to be an image of Cundī. While large Asian statuary was oftentimes created by studio prop departments, this appears as if it was an authentic, yet incomplete, Buddhist artifact. [Update: This is the Daoist stellar deity Doumu, related to the Buddhist Cundī]

Marton’s 1935 German film, Demon of the Himalayas, incorporating on-location footage is available on the Internet Archive, viewable here: https://tinyurl.com/253rhr48.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

For Related Buddhas in the West Posts Featuring Historical Film Photography:

For the Most Recent Buddhas in the West Posts:

Greta Garbo’s Guanyin in The Painted Veil (1934)

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A theatrical still of Greta Garbo in the 1934 film The Painted Veil gazing upon a standing image of Guanyin. Looking closely, we see Garbo’s hand touching the shoulder of Guanyin, a moment of contact between the “icons.”

Theatrical stills – shot since the advent of feature films in the 1910s – are production photographs. Many were kept by the studio in albums called keybooks, while others were printed for promotional purposes, often marked with a code (here we see 776–42).

As advertising material, stills would often picture “tension, struggle, action,” but not reveal main elements of the plot, as noted by David Shields.

The scene here is not in the final edit of The Painted Veil, but would have occurred when Garbo’s character arrived in rural China during a cholera outbreak. The touch of the shoulder signaled an arrival into a far-away land, reflected in the materiality of the Buddhist icon.

For more on the history and interpretation of early film still photography, see David S. Shields’ Still: American Silent Motion Picture Photography (2013).

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

For Related Buddhas in the West Posts Featuring Historical Film Photography:

For the Most Recent Buddhas in the West Posts: