The Polish Dancer

The Polish Dancer (1917)

Bestia

A wild young girl runs away from her parents' house to support herself and attracts the attentions of a married man, who is prepared to abandon his wife and child for her.

Date of release
1917-01-05
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (10)
Runtime
1h 2m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
Aleksander Hertz

Casting

Interesting facts

Bestia is a 1917 Polish silent film starring Pola Negri. It was directed by Aleksander Hertz and released by Warsaw-based film studio Sphinx Company. It was released in the U.S. under the title The Polish Dancer in 1921.

Production and release

Bestia was filmed in Warsaw, under German occupation, in 1916 and made its screen debut on January 5, 1917. The film features a lengthy dance sequence from popular theater actress Mia Mara, who was given top billing in a newspaper ad for Bestia in a period Polish newspaper. Mara went on to act in silent films in Germany under the name Lya Mara, most notably performing in G.W. Pabst's The Joyless Street (1925).

The film was released theatrically in the United States in 1921 on a States Rights basis by S.R. Levinson under the name The Polish Dancer. Copies of this version of the film survive at the George Eastman house and at the National Film Archive in Poland. The copy in Poland was brought from the United States in 1963 from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The Polish Dancer was digitally restored and released on DVD in 2011 by Bright Shining City Productions as part of the 3-DVD set Pola Negri: The Iconic Collection.

The film was digitally restored again in 2017, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the film's release, by DI Factory and reKINO Studios in a project co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.

This is the only surviving Polish film of Pola Negri.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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