The Vamp in Danish Cinema of the 1910s as a Prototype of the “New Woman”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the image of a vamp in Danish films, evolving by the 1920s into the image of a new woman, which later on gained major popularity in German and Soviet films.
Not so vast by modern standards, Danish cinema in the early 1910s had a marked impact on the development of imagery in the world film art. Without having the lead in amount of films brought to the European film market, it however succeeded in setting the style in the cup-and-saucer drama genre, starting the fashion for specifically Danish melodramas and film sensations, introducing the viewer to the “Danish kiss” and crafting the image of a “vamp”, which very soon evolved in the world cinema into that of a new woman, reflective of the most important changes in the socio-cultural and socio-political life. Thereafter all the finds of the Danish filmmakers would be picked up and developed by the German, Soviet and American cineastes.
Danish films preyed on the controversial and taboo ground of human vices, sexuality and gender relationships, commonly responding to urgent and sensational issues. What the Russian pre-revolutionary press called “glamorization of the 20th century shame” actually refers to what filmmakers did taking advantage of sensational facts for framing thrillers. So, for example the Danish cinema enters the international film market with the hotly debated back then topic of “white slavery”.
The paper analyzes the pictures introducing the image of a vamp (the cyclus of “white slaves”, “The Abyss”, “Dance of the Vampire”, “Witches” etc.) and makes a guess at how the acute social issue of sexual slavery under the influence of culture-historical circumstances had evolved in cinema into the ideological construct of “the new woman”.