LA PETITE GEISHA (Любовь японки / Liubov iaponki) [L’amore di una giapponese/The Love of a Japanese Woman; L’amour d’une japonaise] / (Больше не надо ни смеха, ни слёз / Bol’she ne nado ni smekha, ni slioz) [No More Need of Songs or Tears; Il n’en faut plus ni de rire, ni de larmes] (RU 1913)
regia/dir: Kai Hansen. co-regia/co-dir: Yakov Protazanov? scen: Sergei Garin. photog: Aleksandr Levitskii, Georges Meyer [Joseph-Louis Mundwiller]. scg/des: Cheslav Sabinskii. cast: Hanako (Hanako, Japanese nurse), Aleksandr Rudnitskii (Lt. Orlov, Russian prisoner), Yelena Smirnova (Raiskaia, demimondaine). prod: Le Film Russe (Pathé). uscita/rel: 04.06.1913. copia/copy: DCP, 33’28” (da/from 35mm neg. orig., 775 m., ?? fps); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Paris.

L’HONNEUR D’UNE JAPONAISE (Лучше смерть, чем бесчестье / Luchshe smert’, chem beschestie) [Better Death than Dishonour; Vaut mieux mourir que de perdre l’honneur] (RU 1913)
regia/dir: Yakov Protazanov? scen: Sergei Garin, dalla pièce di/based on the play by Ikuta Kizan, Ki-Musume (The Maiden). photog: Aleksandr Levitskii. scg/des: Cheslav Sabinskii. cast: Hanako (Akiki), members of Hanako’s troupe. prod: Le Film Russe (Pathé). uscita/rel: 07.09.1913. copia/copy: DCP, 18’46” (da/from 35mm neg. orig., 375 m., ?? fps); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Paris.

These two films are the sole surviving moving pictures of the dancer and actress Ohta Hisa, known as Hanako (1868-1945); a photographic record of her performances also exists. Public infatuation with the diminutive Japanese artist (some reports describe her as 4 ft. 6) predates these films: “She is like a kitten, whose every movement is a success,” enthused the New York Times (27.10.1907). Hanako (“Little Flower”) was first spotted by the dancer and entrepreneur Loïe Fuller, who provided her with a repertoire of “suicide” pieces. American and European newspapers, especially the French ones, describe her hara-kiri enactments when she was performing in La Martyre at the Théâtre Moderne in Paris, also noting her facial expressivity when conveying love and jealousy.
Hanako’s style first fascinated France in 1906, around the time that Europe was discovering kabuki theatre (Rodin, who met her that year in Marseille, made her one of his models; she posed for over 50 of his works), and she returned to France during a tour in the 1910s. Her friendship with the wife of Albert Carré, director of the Opéra-Comique and cousin of Michel Carré, the film director at SCAGL, led to several performances of Madame Butterfly, which may have inspired the screen adaptation of La Petite geisha. In Moscow in 1912-1913, her sophisticated acting earned praise from Nikolai Evreinov and Vsevolod Meyerhold, and she performed before the students of the Art Theater. The newly christened “Le Film Russe”, registered in 1910, marked the transformation of the Moscow branch of Pathé into a local production company with its own studio. This initiative helped launch the careers of several young directors; Peter Bagrov and Anna Kovalova have recently posited that these two films with Hanako were probably directed by Yakov Protazanov rather than Kai Hansen.
These restorations were carried out in 2021 by the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé and the Cinémathèque française, based on the original Pathé negatives. Editing and intertitles were reconstructed from the original scenarios and information on the prints. The 4K digital transfer was done by L’Immagine Ritrovata, Paris-Bologna. – Stéphanie Salmon