"Kiss Me, My Fool!"

Not long ago, I watched a silent film named A Fool There Was starring Theda Bara, one of Hollywood's first stars of the screen. The film narrated a successful diplomat falling hopelessly for a predatory woman, called the "Vamp." Rudyard Kipling's poem "A Fool There Was" in part inspired the movie, and the poem occurs throughout the film.

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
And the work of our head and hand,
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand.

A fool there was and his goods he spent
(Even as you and I!)
Honor and faith and a sure intent
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
And the excellent things we planned,
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we know she never knew why)
And did not understand.

The fool we stripped to his foolish hide
(Even as you and I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside--
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died--
(Even as you and I!)

And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white hot brand.

It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing at last she could never know why)
And never could understand.

The film made Theda an almost overnight star. Her successive screen roles often drew from the film and showed her as "an unrepentant vamp bent on wholesale destruction."

While Theda is fascinating herself, for the purpose of the class, I am more interested in the role she took for the film. She has the power of an enchantress over men, but the love she draws from them never appears wholesome. Rather, she brings men down to the dregs of society, transforming a previously respectable figure into a penniless drunkard or worse. One desperate man, seeing her abandon him for another, takes a gun to threaten her. With a coquettish smile the woman bats away the gun with a single rose before demanding, "Kiss me, my fool!" He shoots himself and she is later described as laughing over his body.

Opposite to her is the diplomat's wife, who is both visually brighter with her fair hair and clothes and in every way promoting chastity, faithfulness, and motherhood. She swoons upon discovering her husband is staying in Italy having an affair with the woman, yet pleads with him several times to return. Her young daughter has no lack of affection from her. There is actually a scene in which the daughter goes to the woman played by Theda Bara to offer a flower, and Theda is ready to accept with a smile when the girl's aunt steps in and takes both the flower and the child. The commentary here is that a woman who does not exemplify the ideals of chastity and faithfulness does not deserve the pleasure of motherhood.

The film goes on until the previously upstanding diplomat is reduced to an incoherent and volatile drunkard, overtaken by the Vamp.

Her role in the movie reminds me of Florentina from The Ravages of Vice. Both the Vamp and Florentina form a romantic relationship to married men to the disadvantage of the men's spouses. Both only bring destruction in the union. Both escape consequence and end up lavishly accounted for while those with which they come into contact face ruination and tragedy.