Musidora, the artistic pseudonym of Jeanne Roques, was a French director, producer, writer and actress. She was closely linked to the ‘femme fatale’ archetype, and was close to the surrealist movement.

Jeanne Roques, better known as Musidora, was the daughter of a singing instructor and composer Jacques Roques, and of painter and feminist Marie Porchez, both of whom had socialist convictions. Jeanne grew up in an intellectual, cultured, and politicised environment, surrounded by ideas that were very radical for the time. She began studying painting but soon switched to acting. For her debut, she took the stage name – Musidora, the gift of the muses – from Fortunio, by Théophile Gautier. In 1910, Musidora entered the Parisian theatre scene with a role in La Nuit de Noces that, though small, enchanted the audience nonetheless. Hardly three years later, she took her first cinematic role, in Les misères de l’aguille (Raphael Clamour, 1913) and became enchanted by this new medium.

While she was working on the stages of the music halls and cabarets, she met producer Louis Feuillade in Les Folies-Bergère. He saw immediately the photogenic qualities of Musidora’s gaze and offered her a role in Severo Torelli (1914), the first of 28 films on which they would collaborate. With Feuillade deployed during the Great War, she had to work with other producers, but, on the return of her collaborator (he was demobilized for infirmity) they both set forth on their most exciting work together: the mystery serial Les Vampires (1915), in which she played Irma Vep, an evil femme fatale and criminal. The character became an icon of the post-war period, as much with the public as with intellectuals; of whom the fascination held for her by the surrealists is particularly notable. Musidora took a similar role in Feuillade’s new serial Judex (1916). These two works launched her definitely to international stardom.  

That same year, she made the leap to the other side of the camera, directing Minne (1916), which made her the first woman director in French cinema. The losses suffered by the film (30 000 FRF) obliged her to return to acting. After starring in (André Hugon, 1917), and the play La Revue sensationelle (1917), which criticised the drug problems suffered by Paris during the war, Jeanne again tried her luck as a director with La Vagabonde (Eugenio Perego and Musidora, 1918), based on a novel by Colette. She continued to combine theatre and cinema, but her later directorial works went badly or did not come to fruition at all. With the aim of securing control of her projects, she founded the Societée des Films Musidora, where she worked in production, adaptation and performance. Her next film, La Flamme cachée (Musidora y Roger Lion, 1918), received rave reviews, but she was only able to premier it on one screen and it generated significant losses. Despite it all, she persisted in her efforts and for her next work, Vicenta (1919), she wrote the script and composed what would later be known as a storyboard. She was not daunted by the difficulties of shooting, or the lukewarm reception, and set to work on Pour Don Carlos (Musidora y Jacques Lasseyne, 1920): a film set during the Carlist Wars and filmed in Guipúzcoa. The critics present at the first screening were full of praise for the film. However, no exhibitor was willing to screen it until its runtime of three hours had been reduced. Finally, Musidora had to re-cut the film and premier it as La Capitana Allegria. The film did not make an impact in France, but was a sensation for the Spanish cinema-going public. This, combined with the fact that she had met there the bullfighter Antonio Cañero, who would be her partner for several years, led her to spend a long period of time in Spain. 

Her Spanish period began with the theatrical tour El día de Musidora (The Day of Musidora), but she soon made her way back behind the camera with Sol y sombra (Sun and Shadow) (1922): an adaptation of the novel by Marina Star which Musidora co-directed with Jaime de Lausen, who served as a linguistic intermediary between Musidora and the Spanish crew. Set in the world of bullfighting, it was a melodrama starring Cañero and Musidora, who took on a double role as Andalusian servant and foreign tourist. Once again, the film fared better at the Spanish box office than it did in France: “A frenchwoman has made a film that is absolutely Spanish, of Spanish spirit”, declared Alfonso XIII. Neither the debts incurred nor the goring sustained during the shooting discouraged her, and, she soon after directed the short film Una aventura de Musidora en España (1922), a surprising accompaniment to her new direction; and La tierra de los toros (1924). This last film took advantage of the prohibition of bullfighting (following the military coup led by Primo de Rivera) to produce a documentary concerning daily life on a cattle ranch, and intercut it with scenes of fiction starring Musidora and Cañero. When Cañero left her, Musidora returned to Paris: ‘Spain was, for me, love: perhaps the most beautiful… It happened, as a film, the images blurred, like a dream… I am now a little wiser… Everything is a matter of resignation and knowing to conform… ’ (Muchas Gracias, 23/10/1926).

In France, she dedicated a couple of years to cinema and theatre, but announced her retirement after a triumphal appearance, as the Queen of Cinema, in the carnival of 1926. She dedicated the rest of her life to writing: songs, poems and the novels Arabella et Arlequin (1928) and Paroxysmes (1934). She also worked as a teacher of diction in the Conservatory of Reims, and in distinct roles at the Cinemathéque Française from 1944. She returned to the director’s chair only once with the short film La Magigue Image (1950). She passed away on 7th December 1957. 

MAE, Luis Pérez Ochando, 2020

Montserrat Casals i Baqué, known under the pseudonym Elena Jordi, was an actress, theatrical businesswoman in the genre of vaudeville, and Spanish cinematic director. Her outstanding work as producer, the short film Thaïs (1918), earns her the title of first woman film director in Spain.   

Born in the municipality of Cercs, in the region of Berguedà (Barcelona, Catalonia), she was the second of three daughters of the marriage between Maria Baqué and Bonaventura Casals, who worked as a foreman and later as a businessman in the local mines and cement kilns. We have little news of the family Casals i Baqué – save for the activity of Maria Baqué and her eldest daughter, Barbara in the social and cultural circles of the region – until Montserrat’s own marriage in 1901 to the veteran Josep Capallera, with whom she had two daughters, before their relationship ended in 1903. In 1905, the death of Bonaventura Casals led most of the family to establish themselves in Barcelona: Montserrat was accompanied by her mother, her little sister Tina, and her two daughters. We know that they managed a tobacconist’s on the corner of Boqueria y Rauric: a space frequented by artistic personalities such as the writers Ramon Vinyes and Pere Prat, amongst others. Some of these contacts – most notably her friendship with the scenographer Alexander Soler Marÿe (also written Marije), the son of scenographer and theatrical figurine maker Francesc Soler i Rovirosa – allowed her an introduction to the world of show business. On a personal level, this same Alexandre Soler would be a significant other to Montserrat Casals i Baqué.

It is between 1908 and 1910 – more precisely 1909, according to Barbara Zecchi – that Motserrat Casals i Baqué, who will hereafter be referred to by her artistic pseudonym of Elena Jordi, made her theatrical debut. Her first steps onto the Barcelonian stage went hand in hand with those of  the Teatro Íntimo de Adrià Gual and of the actress Margarita Xirgu, who was at the time the first actress of the Gran Teatro Español on Avenida del Paralelo in Barcelona: a place commonly considered to be the Catalonian ‘cathedral of vaudeville’. Subsequently linking herself to entities such as the Teatro Principal and the companies of Enric Borrás and Josep Santpere, Elena Jordi was carving out a reputation as a beautiful, elegant actress amongst theatre critics, achieving success with works by playwrights as diverse as Oscar Wilde, Georges Feydeau and Henry Bataille. The latter wrote the play The Nude Woman, in which Elena Jordi starred in one of the first nude theatrical roles of the Barcelona scene, leading to various disagreements about the censorship which led to the cancellation of several performances. Critical success was accompanied by renown amongst vaudeville enthusiasts, allowing her to found her own company in 1914, which would continue to put on plays by well-known national and international playwrights, from Maurice Donnay to Jordi de Peracamps (the pen-name taken by Santiago Rusiñol).

It is from 1916 that Elena Jordi made the leap to the world of cinema, without abandoning the theatre. She was probably given a leg up by fellow actor Domènec Ceret, with whom she shared billing in the Teatro Español: her first forays into the seventh art were with the company Studio Films, which was being managed by Ceret since the previous year. She worked alongside other actors in her company and with her sister Tina on some films. More specifically, Elena Jordi made her debut as a cinematic actress in the role of Lola Paris in La loca del monasterio (The Lunatic of the Monastery) (Domènec Ceret, Joan Solà y Alfred Fontanals, 1916), this being the only of Elena’s appearances on film of which there is still a record.

However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Elena Jordi is her work as a producer. She began working in the field of cinematic direction and production with the film Thaïs (1918), a short based on Jules Massenet’s opera of the same title, in which she herself starred as the protagonist. Though she was, up to this point, the first woman director in Spanish cinema, the absence of conserved reels of this film somewhat impedes our artistic consideration of her work as a director.

Also in 1918, Jordi acquired a plot of land on Vía Laietana in Barcelona, with the intention of building a theatre in her own name, a project which she ultimately did not bring to fruition. The press of the time tell of a building, whose facade was designed by Elena Jordi, in an advanced state of construction; but it was never opened as the Elena Jordi Theatre. Under different ownership, the building was opened to the public as the Pathé Palace in 1922, and rechristened as the Palacio del Cinema in 1940.

There is little news of Elena Jordi from this point onward. There are increasingly infrequent references to her theatrical performances, the last of which being in an interview conducted with Diari La Nau del Vespre dated 28th September 1929. This interview tells us something of her theatrical tastes – the finer works of vaudeville placed on a par with the more risquè – and informs us that she premiered a play in the season of 1929 in the Teatro Goya in Madrid. After this, nothing is known of her until her burial on the 6th December 1945, in the Les Corts cemetery in Barcelona.

Among other studies, notable is the research conducted by Josep Cunill, Barbara Zecchi and Irene, Irene Melé-Ballesteros, who appear in the teaser of Buscando a Thais (Searching for Thais) (David Casals-Roma): a documentary still in production.        

MAE, Óscar Palomares Navarro, 2020

Helena Cortesina was an actress and dancer of Spanish cinema and theatre, and was one of the first cinema producers in Spain with her film Flor de España o la leyenda de un torero (Flower of Spain, or the Legend of a Bullfighter) (1923).

Helena Cortés Altabás, better known by the pseudonym Helena Cortesina, was born in Valencia in 1903. Her father Hernán Manuel Cortés hailed from the Valencian bourgeoisie, but abandoned the world of law and politics in order to dedicate himself to dramatic writing, achieving success as a writer of sainetes. Through the theatre Hernán met the singer Manolitas García Altabás Alios, with whom he had four children: Helena, Hernán. Ofelia and Angélica. Manolita left her husband and moved to Argentina accompanied only by her son in 1911. The daughters were sent to a religious school in Valencia. Once they had left, they dedicated themselves to cafe-theatre and lyrical dance, forming an artistic trio named Las Hermanas Cortesinas (The Cortesina Sisters). After they separated, they would each continue with careers in showbusiness: working as dancers, actresses of stage and film, and as circus artists. However, neither of her sisters would achieve the same degree of fame as Helena Cortesina.

In 1916, we have evidence of Helena’s participation in the music-hall of the Teatro Novedades in Barcelona. Her beginnings as an actress date from 1921 with Don Juan de España: a production during which she would meet the scenographer Manuel Fontanals, who would be her partner until 1936. Helena did not delay in achieving fame as an actress, nor in making the leap to film, enjoying resounding success for her portrayal of Elvira Montes in La Inaccesible (José Buchs, 1921). Her fame and the relative boom in Spanish cinema during the Great War enabled her to fund her own production company, Cortesina Films, which she did in order to propel the careers of her sisters as much as her own. From this platform, she herself directed Flor de España o la leyenda de un torero (Flower of Spain, or the Legend of a Bullfighter) (1923), with a script by José María Granada and musical accompaniment composed by María Bretón especially for performance during projection. It was a melodrama about the rise to fame of a bullfighter, played by Jesus Tordesillas, and his love for the dancer Flor de España, played by Helena Cortesina. Though her first and only film as director ended in disaster, Helena had no qualms about returning to the much more prestigious world of theatre. 

Helena Cortesina always remained within the intellectual circles of the era, and was actively committed to democracy, progress and education. So, in 1932 she was part of the La Barraca project of Federico García Lorca and Eduardo Ugarte, and from 1936 she was a member of the Intellectual Antifascist Alliance. In that moment, Helena Cortesina was hired by the theatre company of Lola Membrines, which travelled between España and Argentina. This led to her first trip to Buenos Aires, where she performed in María Teresa de Jesús by Eduardo Margiquina, Los Fracasados (The Failures) by Lenormand, Santa Rusia (Sacred Russia) by Benavente, and Bodas de Sangre (Weddings of Blood), whose overwhelming success led to Federico Garcia Lorca’s travelling to Argentina. He arrived in Montevideo in 1933, accompanied by Manual Fontanals, the partner of Helena Cortesina. During this five-month tour, the scenographer and the actress worked together on plays such as La Zapatera Prodigiosa (The Prodigious Shoemaker), Bodas de Sangre, and Mariana Pineda: all works of Lorca.     

On their return to Madrid, they tried to establish their own theatre company, but the failure of the project, combined with the death of their daughter, who had become sick during the tour, led to the couple separating in 1936. That year she collaborated with the theatre company of María Teresa León and Rafael Alberti,  Nueva Escena, but the Civil War brought about her self-exile to Buenos Aires with her sister Ofelia in 1937. It was, however, an exile committed to republican values, in the company of Spanish intellectuals. On her arrival in Argentia, she joined Margarita Xirgu in the filming of Bodas de Sangre (Domingo Guiborg, 1938) and shortly thereafter, founded with Pedro López Lagar a company through which to debut plays sympathetic to the Second Spanish Republic, such as Llegaron parientes de España (Relatives Arrived in Spain).

When the rebels won the Spanish Civil War, both sisters decided to remain in Buenos Aires. Helena continued working in the world of theatre, establishing a new drama company with fellow Valencian exile Gori Muñoz. During the following decades, Helena Cortesina continued in her career as a film actress, working on such titles as La dama duende (The Phantom Lady) (Luis Saslavsky, 1945), Los tres mosqueteros (The Three Musketeers) (Julio Saraceni, 1945), María Rosa (Luis Moglia Barth, 1946), A sangre fría (In Cold Blood) (Daniel Tinayre, 1947), La niña de fuego (The Fire Girl) (Carlos Torres Ríos, 1952), Intriga en el escenario (Plot on the Stage) (Feliciano Catalán, 1953) and El ojo de la cerradura (The Eavesdropper) (Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, 1962). Helena Cortés passed away on 7th March 1984 in Buenos Aires, where she was buried with honours. The press paid tribute on her passing.

MAE, Luis Pérez Ochando, 2020