A Fool There Was (1915)
A respectable Wall Street lawyer abandons his wife, child, and career after falling under the spell of a predatory woman he meets aboard an ocean liner, sinking into ruin while she moves on, unrepentant, to her next victim.
A Fool There Was made Theda Bara a star and, through her unnamed man-eating character, gave American slang the word “vamp.” Its frank treatment of seduction and its heroine’s total absence of remorse or punishment made it a sensation on release, and it entered the National Film Registry in 2015.
Background
Frank Powell directed A Fool There Was for Fox in 1915, adapting a stage play by Porter Emerson Browne that was itself inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘The Vampire’. The film made Theda Bara a star in the title role of an unnamed predatory woman, and her character’s frank pursuit of a married lawyer gave American English the word ‘vamp’. The picture was controversial for its open treatment of seduction and for an ending in which the heroine faces no punishment. It is preserved in the National Film Registry.
What to watch for
The film is built around the lawyer’s slow descent, beginning with the ocean liner meeting that starts it and marking each stage of his ruin through the family he abandons. Bara’s performance relies on dramatic makeup and posed gestures that became central to her screen persona, so watch how she controls the frame whenever she appears. The moral framing of the era is visible throughout, but the ending refuses the lesson its audience would have expected, and that refusal is what made the film so talked about on release.
