WATCH: Salome and Lot in Sodom

The 1923 silent film, Salome, stars Alla Nazimova as the young Judean princess, and the hauntingly seductive Nigel De Brulier as Jokaanan, the Prophet. Based on the play by Oscar Wilde, with sets based on the illustrations by Audbrey Beardsley, the film lasts a little over one hour and cost $350,000 , an exorbitant amount for the time. The sets are fairly bare, relying on atmosphere and character interaction to move things along. The straightforward narrative follows the Wilde drama faithfully, in high camp fashion even by contemporary standards. Posturing and posing are the main acting methods. It’s an amazing work nonetheless. A failure at the time of its release, it was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2000.

Of more interest on this double-bill DVD is Lot in Sodom, a short (28 minutes) silent art film directed by James Silbey Watson, heir to the Western Union fortune and friend and patron of artists and writers of the 1920s, especially e. e. cummings. Watson used many interesting cinematic devices, such as multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, and blurring to retell the biblical story of the ancient sin city, its lustful inhabitants, and destruction, without resorting to such high-camp attics as seen in Salome.