Dan Navarro's Movie Reviews

"A rag and a bone and a hank of hair." With that familiar epigram, Rudyard Kipling described the femme fatale in his 1897 poem "The Vampire."

American author Porter Emerson Browne adapted Kipling's creation as a novel, then a stage play, both named after Kipling's opening line: "A Fool There Was." The play was successful, running for 93 performances at Broadway's Liberty Theatre. Then it was the movies' turn.

A Fool There Was, released in January 1915, made Theda Bara a star in only her second film. In it she plays the nameless—and heartless—"vamp" whose only purpose in life seems to be arranging the downfall of wealthy, gullible men. But Theda (born Theodosia Goodman) was intelligent and spiritual, and was "dead set"—according to her biography—against playing such an unvirtuous role. The precarious state of her finances, however, plus the fact that she was already 29 years of age, convinced her to play the vamp.

In the film, the vamp's prey is John Schuyler (Edward José), a happily-married, respectable career diplomat who is sent to Europe on a brief mission. He reluctantly leaves his charming wife and their little daughter and sets sail on the U.S.S. "Gigantic." (One wonders if the ship was so-named in tribute to the tragic "Titanic," which fell from the sea less than three years earlier.)

Quickly, the plotline is established. As Schuyler gets out of his taxi at the ship's loading dock, he is confronted by an unkempt panhandler begging for money. Schuyler presses a coin into the man's hand, then hurries on. A moment later, a second taxi rolls to a stop and the vamp—tall, haughty, imperious—exits and is approached by the same vagrant. He stops. They recognize each other. Then the tramp says:

"See what you made of me, and still you prosper, you hell cat!"

She brushes him aside and hurries to the ship. She has a new prey now, and she's closing in.

On board ship, with Schuyler all to herself, the vamp sets to work. She arranges for his deck chair to be placed next to hers. She drops her rose at his feet, and eyes him seductively as he bends down to pick it up for her. Soon they are arm in arm, two travelers comforting each other in their temporary exile from home. But one will soon become the other's sex slave.

Schuyler's expected short trip abroad stretches into several months. He receives a telegram dismissing him from his job, owing to his scandalous behavior. And still the woman clings to him, sucking his lifeblood as the man descends deeper into drugs, alcohol, and depression.

One of the most famous tag-lines from A Fool There Was is "Kiss me, my fool!" It was in Browne's original novel, and it is used effectively in the film. Near the end, when Schuyler's wife and best friend come to find him and rescue what's left of him, the woman chooses to humiliate both husband and wife by making her slave kiss her, full on the lips, right in front of his horrified wife.

For 21st century audiences, the film's mise en scène is instructive, especially when contrasted to another famous 1915 movie, The Birth of a Nation. For all its notoriety, the latter has been hailed for its innovative camerawork and majestic narrative sweep. There is none of that in A Fool There Was. Every shot in the film is created by a stationary camera rooted in place. There are no pans, and no tracking shots, except for one traffic scene which does not include the film's principals and was probably stock footage.

As a work of cinematic art, A Fool There Was is prosaic and unimpressive. But as a showcase for Theda Bara's talents, it is a revelation. She plays the vamp with an elegant cruelty that torments the man's very soul; a cruelty that, no doubt, would inspire later seductresses—Greta Garbo in the silent era, Sharon Stone and Glenn Close in the talkies—to be much more than a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair.