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MUSEUM of DREAMWORLDS

MUSEUM of DREAMWORLDS

Silent Antiquity Films in the BFI National Archive
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Esclave de Phidias, L' (original)

1917

Alternative Titles

The Slave of Phydias (Alternative), Slaves of Phydias (Alternative)

 

 

 

BFI identifier

348024

Synopsis

Ancient Athens. The devotion of a slave girl, Callyce, to her master, the sculptor Phydias, takes her into exile with him. Rl.1. [Lacks initial section]. Sculptor Phydias searches for a divine model for a statue of Venus. Callyce, his slave girl, is in love with him, but her advances are rejected until she makes an offering of love flowers to one of the deities. Phydias embraces her, but their passionate encounter is seen by the sculptor's wife, Quinta. She has Callyce beaten, but Phydias saves her from further punishment. Quinta then steals the sacred gold set aside for the proposed statue of Venus and publicly accuses her husband of the theft. He is arrested. Callyce goes in search of him, playing her lyre (1617ft). Rl.2. From his prison cell Phydias hears her music. He is sentenced to exile. Quinta meanwhile watches a display of dancing by slave girls. Phydias is led into exile by a mounted guard of soldiers, followed by the faithful Callyce, who succours him when he collapses. At nightfall, by the sea, he bids farewell to Greece and is embraced by Callyce. On a boat, they approach Elide, the road of oblivion. Finis (789ft). (2406ft) (Shortlist) [Synopsis, viewing copy] Melkios sends Phydias a letter commissioning the carving of a statue of Venus for the Temple of the Goddesses. Phydias searches for a Divine Model for the statue. Callyce, the slave girl he selects, is in love with him but her advances are rejected. Callyce attempts to please him by picking his favourite flowers. Returning to the studio she spies Phydias with Quinta. Disheartened, Callyce takes the flowers as a love offering to a statue of a deity (End Reel One). Phydias hears Callyce playing her lyre in the gardens. He is enamoured. Phydias embraces Callyce but their encounter is seen by Quinta. Later, Quinta's affections are rejected by Phydias. She plans her vengeance. Quinta has Callyce beaten, but Phydias intervenes. Quinta then steals the gold payment for the statue of Venus and publicly accuses Phydias of the theft. Phydias is arrested. Callyce searches for him. playing her lyre. From his prison cell, Phydias hears her music and climbs to the window to see her. Meanwhile, Quinta hosts a party and watches a display of dancing slave girls. Phydias is sentenced to exile and is led away by a mounted guard of soldiers. Followed by the faithful Callyce, Phydias is comforted when he collapses. At nightfall, by the sea, Phydias bids farewell to Greece and is embraced by Callyce. They board a boat to Elide, the road of oblivion. End title (End Reel Two). (Synopsis)

Production Country: France
Production Company: Société Nouvelle des Etablissements Gaumont
BFI Category: Fiction
Source: N/A

Cast

Luitz Morat (Phydias)
Suzanne Delve (Callyce)

Credits

Director: Léonce Perret
Cinematographer: Georges Specht

Film Technical Information

Original Length: 850/ 910 m.
Length of BFI Viewing Print: 2405 ft
Support: Viewable
Black and White
Format: 35 mm , MP4

Comments on the print:

L' Esclave de Phidias, aka The Slave of Phydias (Léonce Perret, Gaumont 1917) was preserved in 1982 by the BFI as a 35mm black and white positive safety (2405 ft.), based on a 35 mm tinted and toned nitrate print (2675 ft.). Provenance of the nitrate: Bert Langdon. The BFI archive has a MP4 viewing copy. The print has English intertitles. Original length in France was either 850 m. (Ciné-Journal, 3 February 1914 ) or 910 m. (L’Écran, 27 January 1917). NB The BFI catalogue also uses the title The Slaves of Phidias, but there is only one slave in the film's plot. The BFI print is unique but incomplete, lacking for example a scene in which Phidias buys his model at a slave market.

Pantelis Michelakis adds: The film is catalogued by FIAF under the BFI’s alternate title as Slaves of Phydias, attributed to Italy, dated 1916, with no director and no production company (FIAF 35954), so that a French Gaumont film of 1917 by Perret is recorded as an anonymous Italian film of the year before.

Visual Resources

L'esclave
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L'esclave de Phidias (1918) Vintage Spanish cromo/ collector's card. Nr. 1 of 6 cards.
L'esclave
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L'esclave de Phidias (1918) Vintage Spanish cromo/ collector's card. Nr. 2 of 6 cards.
L'esclave
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L'esclave de Phidias (1916-17) Vintage Spanish cromo/ collector's card. Nr. 5 of 6 cards.
L'esclave
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L'esclave de Phidias (1918) Vintage Spanish cromo/ collector's card. Nr. 3 of 6 cards.
L'esclave
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L'esclave de Phidias (1916-17) Vintage Spanish cromo/ collector's card. Nr. 6 of 6 cards
L'esclave
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L'esclave de Phidias (1916-17) Vintage Spanish cromo/ collector's card. Nr. 4 of 6 cards.
Phidias
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Phidias Vintage collector's card/ chocolat card. Stollwerck's Deutsche Alpenmilch-Schokolade. For the Stollwerck Helden-Album, No. 10 (1908). Group 413, No. II. Phidias, sculpting the Athena Parthenos.

1 - Introduction to website & project

In this introductory essay, we explain the layout and features of the Museum of Dreamworlds website, in order that you can see how to navigate it and make it useful for you. We explain the methods behind our inquiries and survey some of our research findings. We also indicate here some of our project’s other activities and future resources that we will be creating until and beyond the end point of the project in November 2027. We will be developing and extending this introduction as we continue to analyse the antiquity films in the BFI. At this stage, the website is also a work in progress so we would greatly welcome any questions you may have as well as suggestions for corrections, clarifications, additions or improvements, or notification of any malfunctions. We can be reached at: museumofdreamworlducl@gmail.com

1917- L’Esclave de Phidias and the dialogue between antiquity, cinema, and landscape

The Slave of Phidias (1917) creates a dialogue between antiquity and early cinema, reimagining the world of the Greek sculptor Phidias. Known for works like the Athena Parthenos and the Zeus at Olympia, Phidias represents ideals of harmony and divine beauty, which the film echoes through its fictionalised portrayal of his workshop and the muse figure Callyce. While informed by archaeological finds, the narrative blends history with creative interpretation. Director Léonce Perret reinforces this classical atmosphere through careful composition, lighting, and use of landscape, with Villa Maryland standing in for ancient Greece. By combining sculpture, architecture, and cinema, the film connects ancient artistic ideals with modern visual storytelling, highlighting the lasting appeal of beauty and creative inspiration.

1917- L’Esclave de Phidias. Sculptors in silent cinema and the representation of an artist

Phidias, renowned as the greatest sculptor of Greek antiquity and the lead artistic director of the Parthenon, is the subject of the 1917 French film L’Esclave de Phidias, directed by Léonce Perret. The film draws on aspects of Phidias's tumultuous life, focusing on a melodramatic narrative that explores his relationships and eventual exile, while largely neglecting his sculpture. Upon release during World War I, critics highlighted the film's artistry and the importance of its music, underlined by the special score composed for this film. Thanks to the joys of music, the artist finally capitulates to his model who is herself hopelessly in love with him.

THEME - A Composite Greece in Motion: Early Cinema and the BFI’s Silent Prints

This essay focuses on eleven Greek-subject films in the BFI National Archive, made between 1903 and 1927 in four countries, and argues that ancient Greece functioned for early cinema less as a body of stories to be adapted than as a repertoire of operations: a stock of things that could be done with bodies, costumes, poses, objects, substitutions, colour, and frames. What reached the studios was never a recoverable antiquity but a composite already assembled from translation, painting, sculpture, theatre, opera, dance, archaeology, and exhibition practices, which these films homogenise into a single world and differentiate only where a plot requires it. Each film is then read as testing unsettled possibilities of the medium, and is given a verb naming the relevant operation. Causation rarely sits where these stories assign credit, falling instead to slaves, objects, and uncredited performers whom the surviving records seldom name, and circulation is at once what the films depict and the condition of their survival, since colour, intertitles, lengths, and endings varied from copy to copy and are what each print has kept or lost. Read from the prints rather than from the synopses, these films are not attempts to reconstruct antiquity but records of a medium finding out what it could do.