The MIYUMI Project Japanese Experimental Ensemble for Chicago Film Society – Salomé

The MIYUMI Project Japanese Experimental Ensemble plays live musical accompaniment to silent film Salomé by Charles Bryant for the Chicago Film Society Presents series at the Music Box

From the organizers:

Directed by Charles Bryant • 1922

In 1922, renowned Russian stage and screen actress Alla Nazimova committed the extraordinary sum of $350,000 to produceSalomé, a film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s popular play — directed by, written by (under a male pseudonym), and starring herself. Although a woman of forty-two, Nazimova convincingly plays the teenage Salomé, who performs the Dance of the Seven Veils in exchange for the head of Jokanaan. The film unfolds through a series of posed tableaux, deliberate movements, and highly stylized sets, resisting realism and traditional narrative action and embracing the fabulous.Photoplaycautioned that it was “a hothouse orchid of decadent passion… You have your warning: this is bizarre stuff”. Officially “directed” by her husband Charles Bryant,Saloméwas largely shaped by Nazimova herself, with Bryant serving as both marital and professional beard. In his notoriousHollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger insinuated thatSaloméwas made with an all-queer cast and crew — an unverifiable claim that nevertheless summons the essence of the film’s decadent flamboyance. Salomécontains no explicitly queer characters, but its sensibility emerges from a network of artists whose identities and desires had to remain unspoken. Though the film was a financial and critical disaster and effectively ended Nazimova’s Hollywood career, it resurfaced as a cult object in the 1970s when it was double-billed withBroken Goddess, starring Holly Woodland. Seen a century on,Saloméoffers a record of how queerness circulates through aesthetics, rumor, and history, inviting modern audiences to read between the frames. (TV)

74 min • Nazimova Productions • 35mm from George Eastman Museum 

Preceded by:“Overstimulated” (Jack Smith, 1959-63) – 5 min – 16mm from Canyon Cinema

Live musical accompaniment by the MIYUMI Project Japanese Experimental Ensemble

Presented by Chicago Film Society and sponsored in part by AIRMW

For more information visit: https://www.chicagofilmsociety.org/calendar/current-season/#salome