The three Asta Nielsen Monopolfilm Series that were released from 1911 to 1914 mark the beginnings of the star system in important film markets such as Germany, Austria-Hungary, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Brazil, and Australia. The exclusive distribution of the 23 long features of those three series was based on the branded Danish actress, Asta Nielsen who was recognized and appreciated by cinema audiences through a wide range of different roles and characters. Asta Nielsen's versatility as 'the Duse of cinema art' was the core of the film star's brand.1 Far beyond conventional genres and roles, she plays a passionate young activist in Die Suffragette / The Suffragette, set in the then-current political context of the militant suffragette movement in Great Britain.
The Suffragette tells the love drama of the protagonist Nelly Panburne: the elegant daughter of English high society falls in love with an older man she has met in the park on horseback. Nelly rejects all the romantic advances of her friends. Instead, she is convinced by her mother to join the militant suffragettes' fight for women's voting rights. Driven by her sense of justice, she smashes shop windows and ends up in prison, where she begins a hunger strike and has to endure an attempted forced feeding. After her release, the suffragettes decide that Nelly should use an audience with Prime Minister Lord Ascue to place a bomb under his chair in the meeting room of his estate. She succeeds – but then she recognizes in the Prime Minister the rider she fell in love with! Mission unaccomplished, she rushes again to Lord Ascue's estate to warn him – but is unable to reach him. Immediately after the session ends, the bomb explodes in the empty room – Lord Ascue, who fully comprehends the situation at once, introduces Nelly to his colleagues as his future wife. The final scene shows Nelly – surrounded by four small children and her husband Lord Ascue – sitting happily with a pacifier in her mouth. The tongue-in-cheek suggestion for solving the suffragette question is that the passionate suffragette Nelly marries her greatest political opponent and finds her happiness as a mother and wife.
The film poster for 'The Suffragette' depicts Nelly Panburne not as a suffragette, but as an elegant young English lady with a fashionable dog as her pet: the photograph is probably from a star postcard (Det Danske Filminstut); film poster (Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin); cinema ad, General-Anzeiger, Dortmund, 20 September 1913.
Asta Nielsen's Nelly doesn't go through any character development: she is an elegant upper-class daughter who follows her naive feelings in the coming-of-age love drama, enjoying the privileges of youth. The film poster shows her in a long, light, gathered summer dress, with a Borzoi by her side – a Russian sighthound that was most fashionable in upper-class households at the time. She radiates the carefree ease of a daughter from a wealthy family. The unlikely twists of the plot in Urban Gad's screenplay are bridged by the actress through her authentic portrayal of Nelly's emotions. Nelly is politically influenced by her mother – but not when it comes to choosing a partner.
”In two titanic reels." Cinema ad, Taranaki Herald, Tenuka, New Zealand, 10 August 1914.
The Suffragette is characterized by two distinctive features:
First, of all 23 films in the three Asta Nielsen series, The Suffragette is by far the longest film, with a censored length of 1,878 meters: At the then-usual speed of 16 frames per second, the projection took 103 minutes, and with the short pauses needed for reel changes, nearly two hours. The Suffragette was announced as the only film of the three Asta Nielsen series with a length of five acts. Some cinema ads give the running time as one and three-quarter hours.2 By occupying almost the entire usual program time, The Suffragette broke the typical program format of the 1913/14 season, which was usually half short films and half one long feature. Asta Nielsen recalls The Suffragette in her memoirs only because of its extreme length: ”Union’s sister company in Vienna had sent threatening letters about The Suffragette even before they had seen it, threatening to cut it in half. It was, you see, the first time we had dared to produce a two-thousand-meter-long film.” (Nielsen 2022, 193) The exclusive distributor in Austria-Hungary, however, announced The Suffragette at a length of 1955 meters.3 In Great Britain a version shortened by almost half, only 3500 ft, which corresponds to 1067 meters, was offered by Walturdaw, the exclusive distributor.4 How cinema operators in Germany and Austria dealt with the extreme length of The Suffragette in their programming is not the topic here, but in any case, it would be worth a separate research contribution.5
The second special feature of The Suffragette is the embedding of the love story in a contemporary political struggle: the fight for women's suffrage in Great Britain. Asta Nielsen does not mention a word about this in her memoirs published in 1945/46. Just two decades before, she had labeled The Suffragette as a politically conservative film in a newspaper article series: "The Suffragette, set of course in London, where I, an emancipation-crazed berserker, first lash out at a minister, only to then fall just as passionately in love with him, sail into the harbor of marriage together with him, and thus show that a woman belongs not in the political assembly, but in the cozy home." (Nielsen 1928)
Urban Gad's daring double construction of The Suffragette's drama and topic
Urban Gad’s daring fictional construct: the militant suffragette Nelly Panburne plants a bomb under the chair of the Prime Minister, Lord Ascue – unaware that he is the mysterious stranger with whom she has fallen in love. The final scene shows the happy couple with their four young children.
Despite the relevant theme of the fight for women's suffrage, film historians have so far paid little attention to The Suffragette: in the past three decades, only two essays on The Suffragette have been published. They deal with the acting and the star status of Asta Nielsen and only touch on the portrayal of the titular political movement in passing.6 Nonetheless, The Suffragette is outstanding in terms of topic and dramaturgy, being the most daring of the 23 long features of the three Nielsen series. Urban Gad, the screenwriter and director, literally breaks the conventional genre norms: he intertwines the fictional love drama between the militant young suffragette and the Prime Minister with documentary reenactments of meetings of the suffragettes and actions like window-breaking, hunger strikes, forced feeding, and bombings. In Gad's daring plot construction, Nelly Panburne commits violent crimes up to a bombing attempt on Prime Minister Lord Ascue, with whom she ends up in a happy-ending, having a joyful, child-filled marriage. Gad heightens this comedic point into farce by having Nelly Panburne, her mother, and Lord Ascue refer, through their character names, to real people from contemporary history, namely the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), her two militant daughters Sylvia and Christabel, and the British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith.7
The improbable love drama is indeed the main fictional storyline of The Suffragette – but the re-enactments from the current political context of the militant suffragette movement open up perspectives for the reception of The Suffragette that go far beyond the surface-level entertainment of an unbelievable love story with a happy ending. The Suffragette can be enjoyed as a piece for entertainment, but it can also be used as a journalistic source of information on the actions of militant suffragettes in England. This article analyzes how film distributors and cinema operators in different countries have addressed and emphasized the contrasting modes of reception present in the politically controversial The Suffragette in various ways through their marketing strategies.
Re-enactments from the current British suffragette movement: Nelly Panburne is subjected to an attempted forced-feeding whilst in prison (left) and speaks at a suffragette rally (right). Published publicity stills, source unknown (DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main).
Ads in the trade and daily press offer a rich archive of sources for film reception
Direct historical sources for film reception in the form of statements by individual viewers or contemporary descriptions of audience behavior are usually transmitted at best only sparsely. However, there are plenty of indirect sources for historical film reception: With printed advertising materials like posters, flyers, lobby photos, program booklets, and especially ads in the trade press and daily press, film distributors promoted the booking of films by cinema operators, and cinema operators in turn promoted ticket sales to audiences. Above all, newspaper ads from cinemas provide an inexhaustible archive for the history of film reception, because besides practical information about screening times and locations, they give hints about genres, stars, and plots that are relevant for shaping audience expectations.
The distribution ads and numerous cinema ads for the 23 feature films of the three Asta Nielsen series in the 1911/12, 1912/13, and 1913/14 seasons have been systematically researched and documented for five countries and are accessible online via the Importing Asta Nielsen Database (IANDb) of Philipps University Marburg: For The Suffragette, the IANDb lists a total of 349 ads from Germany, 133 from Austria-Hungary, 136 from Great Britain, 191 from Australia, and 200 from New Zealand.8 This rich collection allows for comparative statements about the expectations that exhibitors presented to their audiences in their advertisements for the reception of The Suffragette.
Germany and Austria-Hungary
Opening program of the Schauburg in Essen. Cinema ad, Allgemeiner Beobachter, Essen, 6 September 1913 (left). Advertisement of the exclusive distributor in Austria. Kinematographische Rundschau, No. 292, 12 October 1913, 77 (right).
The Wilhelmine Empire and the Habsburg dual monarchy were the home markets of the three Asta Nielsen series: Overall, four film companies from Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, and Vienna were involved in the consortium that, on May 27, 1911, in Frankfurt am Main, signed the epoch-making three-year contract with Asta Nielsen and Urban Gad for the exclusive production of 30 feature-length films.9 The first film of the third Asta Nielsen series, The Suffragette, kicked off the new cinema season 1913/14 in a whole bunch of German cities: Germany's largest cinema with 2,000 seats, the purpose-built Schauburg in Essen, opened its doors on September 5, 1913, with the 'mimic drama' The Suffragette. A week later, on Friday, September 12, and Saturday, September 13, the first monopoly week of The Suffragette ran in at least 18 cinemas across 14 additional cities in Germany.10 The film censorship office in Berlin approved The Suffragette for adults without cuts but imposed a ban for children, meaning teenagers under 16 were not allowed.11 In Austria, however, the Vienna film censorship cut controversial scenes: window-breaking, forced feeding in prison, the handing over of the 'hell machine' to Nelly, and the placement of the bomb had to be removed from The Suffragette.12
'Facial acting' – 'wrong political goals' – 'cultural document'
Deprived of key scenes related to the political context of the love story, The Suffragette was cautiously promoted in Vienna as a 'topical play' and as a 'comedy.'13 Although the Berlin film censors had shown no objection to the scenes banned in Vienna, the advertising for The Suffragette in German newspapers was also cautious and restrained. The vast majority of cinema ads stuck to the simple announcement “Mimic Play,“ sometimes also ”Topical Play,“ and made no further mention of the political context of the romance drama that was obvious from the film's title. If they did, it was always with explicit, sometimes polemical, distancing from the militant British suffragettes. Some cinema ads used the summary from the program booklet, which described the struggle for women's voting rights as a misguided path:
Asta Nielsen, the most important tragedienne of cinematic art (…) outdoes herself in this piece in the wonderful role of the young spirited woman chasing after false political goals, while her blonde blooming beauty is taken away from her destiny, until remorse leads her to love and into the arms of a man, where she finds the true happiness of a woman's life.14
Similarly, editorial ads in Prague treated the current political context of The Suffragette:
Is there a topic that can claim more immediacy than the struggle of the English suffragettes? Every day, you can read about their shocking deeds, which have long weighed like an albatross over the British Empire. And right in the midst of this tumultuous movement, Urban Gad places us in his ‘Suffragette,’ a tendency play through which he wants to show that a woman's destiny is of a completely different kind than what is pictured in so many English women's minds.15
Several cinemas in Saarland and Alsace explicitly made the connection to current political actions to make their distance from the militant suffragettes of the WSPU clear:
80,000 signatures have been collected by New York women for a petition in which they ask the immigration authorities to deny Miss Pankhurst, the leader of the English vote-hyenas, entry to the United States while she is traveling to America. Under the cry: 'Long live women's suffrage!' the wildest pranks are carried out in England by the women’s rights activists. Tragicomic street demonstrations with the usual side effects, such as window smashing, usually end with arrest, hunger strikes, and forced feeding. These fanatical hordes do not even shy away from arson and bombings, as in their delusion they see these as the only means to enforce their demands.16
Such a polemical distancing from the political topic of the film The Suffragette is also a kind of advertisement: the expressed disgust sensationalizes the English women involved and shifts audience expectations from experiencing the love drama to observing the suffragettes’ acts of violence. This emphasis on the political relevance of The Suffragette was the exception in Germany.
Standing all alone in the German-speaking press is the benevolently sober statement of film critic Malwine Rennert in the leading Catholic film journal Bild und Film: ”It was a pleasant surprise. Asta Nielsen appears in a cinema drama that is a true mirror of its time, and if the film is preserved, it could be considered a cultural document for future generations.“ (Rennert 1913/14)
Great Britain
At the time, Great Britain was the scene of violent actions carried out by the militant suffragettes organized in Pankhurst's WSPU. From 1912 to 1914, they orchestrated a full-blown bombing and arson campaign.17 Women's suffrage was only introduced in Great Britain in 1928. The political public sphere was liberal and had long been shaped by open debates. There were no known interventions by film censorship in The Suffragette which was regarded in the 1913/14 British cinema season as an entertainment film that realistically shows the actions of the suffragettes while clearly condemning them. The film does not deal at all with the political goal of general women's suffrage. This goal was discredited anyway by the violent methods of the suffragettes. In the film itself, Lord Ascue openly expresses this point of view when Nelly meets with him (after she placed the bomb under his chair in the meeting room): “If I were not already an opponent of your cause, I would become one because of your methods.”18
"Asta Breaking Windows". Published publicity still, source unknown (DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main).
“Asta Breaking Windows”
Walturdaw, the exclusive distributor of the Asta Nielsen series in Great Britain, placed the film star at the center with the release title Asta Nielsen, Suffragette. The character name Nelly Panburne from the German original version was changed to Asta Pambourne. At the same time, the release ad, which tells the plot of the film, clearly highlighted the controversial political context by placing the still image showing the protagonist with a raised hammer in front of a shop window. The caption reads: “Asta Breaking Windows.”19 Additionally, Walturdaw made it unmistakably clear that this long feature, with its happy ending, is directed against the suffragette movement:
Thus love overcomes every obstacle, and Asta truly becomes a new woman, with a mission far beyond what has so far obsessed her: the mission that marriage and motherhood sweeten and ennoble life, and places our heroine far above the pettiness and misguided efforts of her former colleagues, finally teaching her a woman’s true mission.20
This happy ending was indeed noticed in British cinema ads as “an amusing description.”21 It is a comedy, “an amusing story of suffragettes.”22 In Exeter, Asta Nielsen was a favorite with the audience.23 The Suffragette was therefore mainly promoted as an Asta Nielsen film—with a clear distancing from the violent actions of the militant suffragist movement:
Patrons of the City Palace, Exeter, will be glad to have the chance in the first few days of this week to see once again the popular cinema tragedienne Miss Asta Nielsen, who stars in the main attraction, 'The Suffragette.' The film introduces the general misdeeds of that group, from their 'primitive' way of drawing attention to their cause – smashing windows – to their more extreme recent tactics – large-scale destruction of property with bombs and fire. But the main story revolves around the central character leaving her colleague and acting as a 'blackleg' out of love for a political opponent of the cause. The film – in three parts – is very engaging, sometimes touching, and at other times funny.24
First portrait of Asta Nielsen in a British fan magazine. The Pictures, 20 December 1913, 5.
Such a detailed invitation to view Asta Nielsen in The Suffragette is an exception in Great Britain. Nonetheless, the Danish actress was “a well-established, renowned and acclaimed film star in Great Britain” (Chavez and Loiperdinger 2021, 167). In the 1913/14 season, British fan magazines dedicated several articles and cover pages to the Danish actress. Her first portrait was published just before the release of The Suffragette, with the title ”Asta Nielsen – Her Life and Art.“ The text is designed like a frame around the star postcard that was used as a template for The Suffragette poster, with the caption ”The latest photo of this famous actress.“25The next article on Asta Nielsen passed the publicity still off as a private photograph with a caption saying: ”A charming portrait of Miss Asta Nielsen with one of her pets.“ This article was an interview with Asta Nielsen, published as No. 7 in the series ”The Girl on the Film."26 Asta Nielsen was the very first non-British actress to be included in this special series.
“Hisses, Stamping of Feet”
Suffragists' protest against the screening of 'The Suffragette' in Aberdeen. The Aberdeen Weekly, 6 February 1914.
The suffragettes of Pankhurst's WSPU apparently did not call for public protests against screenings of the film The Suffragette, but instead preferred to ignore Asta Nielsen in her suffragette role. Only newspapers in Aberdeen report on suffragist activists who protested loudly during screenings. The journalistic accounts provide insight into the mood of suffragettes when faced with their unsolicited colleague on the cinema screen. They apparently felt it was fundamentally humiliating that their fight for women's suffrage was turned into a subject of film entertainment:
Considerable feeling has been aroused among Aberdeen supporters of the women's suffrage movement (...) by a film which has been on exhibition in one of the city picture halls. On Wednesday night the resentment took the form of a noisy demonstration and the showing of the cinematogram, which is entitled “Asta Neilson as a Suffragette,” was punctuated by hisses, stamping of feet, and other expressions of disapproval on the part of votes for women sympathisers. Special exception was taken to a portion of the picture showing the 'suffragette' being forcibly fed in prison, several persons marking their disapprobation by leaving the Hall.27
The depiction of force-feeding was considered obscene – a male supporter of the militant suffragettes shouted upon leaving the cinema: “(...) torture is not fun; stop it at once.”28
Unlike some of the short film grotesques that were common at the time and mocked the suffragettes, The Suffragette takes the suffragettes seriously, despite all distancing: After all, it’s the audience favourite Asta Nielsen who smashes shop windows and plants a bomb! Moreover, these actions are staged as reenactments, which, for the reception of the film The Suffragette – and thus for the reception of the contemporary suffragette movement – open up perspectives beyond mere entertainment. This is made obvious by cinema advertising for The Suffragette in Australasia.
Australia and New Zealand
For researching historical film reception through newspaper ads and reviews, the cinema cultures in Australia and New Zealand are particularly rich, because at the time the daily press was the main forum of a modern democratic public, and historical newspapers on the online platforms Trove and Papers Past are available in a density nowhere else in the world. The monopoly for the films of the three Asta Nielsen series in Australia and New Zealand was in the hands of West's Film Exchange, the distribution company of the British film dealer Thomas James West, who ran a cinema chain in Australia. Through West's Film Exchange, an astonishingly large number of Asta Nielsen films released before the First World War made their way to Australasia:
(…) all but three of the twenty-three films that make up the first three Asta Nielsen series, plus three of Nielsen’s four pre-World War I standalone films, circulated widely in Australia, while nineteen of her pre-war films were screened in New Zealand.29
When The Suffragette circulated in Australia from the end of February 1914 and in New Zealand from early April 1914 onward, general women's suffrage had already been politically normal in both countries for years.30 Cinema ads and editorial comments about The Suffragette therefore do not talk—as in Germany—of the English suffragette movement having "wrong political goals." Advertising for The Suffragette is open to very different ways of film reception and politically completely relaxed.
"a unique combination of comedy and drama"
In advertising for long features, mentioning the genre is basic information for shaping audience expectations. Urban Gad had already broken genre conventions when constructing the storyline. Even more than in Germany, Austria, and Great Britain, genre labels for The Suffragette in the daily press in Australia and New Zealand fluctuate between comedy and drama. “There is a strong comedy element right through the plot.”31 The talk even mentions a “farce comedy.”32 In other words: “The story is a satire, to a great extent.”33 The counterpoint to this is: “It is not a comedy, but a strong drama dealing with the most pressing topical subject of the day.”34 Or expressed in a similar way:
(…) It is not a comedy. It is not a burlesque, nor is it a travesty, or foolish diatribe upon the women's suffrage question. But is is a wonderfully human drama throbbing with the home interests and ambitions of England's womanhood.35
Some newspapers don’t commit to a specific genre, but leave it as a bit of both: “The cleverest of all plays, depicting fully the Suffragette Question in Tragedy and in Humour.”36 Or simply: “A unique combination of comedy and drama.”37
“The methods of the suffragettes are carefully retold.”
When looking through the cinema ads and reviews for The Suffragette, it’s noticeable that in Australia and New Zealand, The Suffragette was promoted less as a fictional love drama and more as a documentary-style re-enactment of political unrest in England. The scenes of suffragette meetings and actions in The Suffragette were considered 'down-under' as reliable and authentic recreations of actual events. Screenwriter and director Urban Gad was fully trusted for his intimate personal knowledge of the suffragette movement:
The clever picture portrayal of Asta Nielsen's doings as a militant suffragette (…) is particularly interesting in view of the actions of Mrs. Pankhurst and her followers in Great Britain. The methods of the suffragettes are carefully retold, and the picture leads to the suggestion that the author is in close touch with the inner workings of the suffragette camp and is well versed in the goal and other experiences which some of them have been called to undergo.38
According to a cinema advertisement for The Suffragette by West's, presented as a premiere report, the audience in Sydney felt very engaged with the topic of the suffragette issue:
The war for woman's rights, so relentlessly urged by English militant suffragettes, and the serious and momentous problem it presents, are forcibly and realistically dealt with in the New, Up-to-date Production, The Suffragette, which last evening at Glaciarium – West's – Olympia absorbed the earnest interest and attention of every individual member of the large audience, whether in sympathy with the cause or not.39
"Equal Rights to All." Cinema ad, The Sun, Sydney, 3 March 1914.
Accordingly, the audience included not only opponents and politically indifferent individuals but also political sympathizers of the WSPU's fight for women's suffrage in Great Britain. West's cinema ad just the day before had even openly shown support for the suffragettes' cause by placing the slogan "Equal Rights to All" under the film title "Asta Nielsen, Suffragette."40 This, however, happened only once.
"a strong object lesson to women who favour the militant methods"
In contrast, cinema ads from West's business partner Henry Hayward in New Zealand clearly indicated that The Suffragette took a stand against the militant suffragettes: The film "cannot be described as anything else but an attack upon the militant suffragettes."41"The suffragettes are not by any means shown in a favourable light and throughout there is a vein of sarcasm that cannot fail to escape the observer."42
A New Zealand newspaper inferred from the plot of the love story that the suffragettes were completely politically clueless:
The misguided women who burn houses to get votes and cheap advertisements, draw lots about the burning of the Premier's house. It is a quaint commentary on the brains of suffragettes that the lady who is down to fry the Premier doesn't know who the Premier is, and is frightfully astounded when she's about to throw the bomb to find he is her best boy.43
Hunger strikes and force-feeding in prison were even seen as a clear warning to sympathizers of the militant English suffragettes: “The acting of the heroine and her unenviable experiences prove a strong object lesson to women who favour the militant methods.”44
“Nobody interested in politics should miss seeing this film!”
In the mining district of Kalgoorlie, cinema operators expected a controversial reception of The Suffragette from the audience: “It may be that all will not agree with the picture's answer to the query, 'Should Women Have the Suffrage?' but it certainly gives a strong natural picture of the positions of the women who are fighting for their cause at the present moment in England.”45 As is well known, Urban Gad comically resolves the suffragette question in the happy ending in which the militant young suffragette starts a family with the suffragettes' fiercest political opponent. Those who do not agree with this answer are, however, compensated by the authentic depiction of the suffragettes and their acts of violence: “(…) every little detail being admirably carried out, even to the breaking of two huge plate glass shop windows, realism without a doubt.”46 The local newspaper therefore gives a strong recommendation for The Suffragette to everyone: “Nobody interested in politics should miss seeing this film (...)”!47
The Suffragette takes a stand in the fictional construct of the love story against the activists of the WSPU party. – But as a carefully executed re-enactment of the suffragettes and their actions, this long feature is even praised in New Zealand as an illustrative source of information for checking the news in the daily press:
Reading the daily cables in the newspapers detailing the doings of the militant suffragettes at home makes one wonder whether all this as cabled is true. Do they really perpetrate these deeds? The film (…) depicts the doings of these people, and in addition to giving one a very good idea of their methods, this is a very strong vein of humour combined with a pretty love story.48
Besides the cinema entertainment provided by an incredible love story, The Suffragette actually opens up another option for film reception: By intertwining the fictional main plot with documentary reenactments of meetings and actions of the militant suffragette movement, The Suffragette gains a second dimension that meets journalistic criteria. As an entertainment film, The Suffragette also provides clear information on a political topic that is being discussed in the daily press.
“Lord Ascue – a name as suggestive of Asquith as Panbourne is of Pankhurst”
Through the similarity of the character names Panburne or Panbourne and Lord Ascue with the real people Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters as well as British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, Urban Gad heightens the tension between the fictional love story and the current political topic – that the suffragette issue is theatrically resolved by the marriage of a militant daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst to the openly anti-suffragette Prime Minister Asquith is a daring farce. That a high-ranking politician marries a young woman who has attempted to assassinate him – that can only happen in the movies: No real case is known worldwide.
In Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom, the allusions in the character names to real people were completely ignored. In Australia and New Zealand, on the other hand, it was pointed out several times:
The film is an excellent one, and gives a realistic portrayal of militant suffragism. The heroine, Asta Panbourne, becomes a convert from the window-smashing, bomb-throwing ways of the Suffragettes' League, and marries the Prime Minister, Lord Ascue – a name, by the way, as suggestive of Asquith as Panbourne is of Pankhurst – whose life she had been assigned to destroy by setting a bomb under his chair in the Cabinet room.49
Asta Nielsen plays a militant daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst. The newspaper Barrier Miner in the mining center of Broken Hill explicitly mentions Sylvia Pankhurst.50 This is supported by a scene in the film: Asta Panbourne and her mother visit two haggard women with several small children; in the background, an older man takes multiple swigs from a flask. Sylvia Pankhurst was a political activist in London’s East End and founded the socialist East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) there in 1912. Her sister Christabel, who was leading the WSPU from her exile in Paris at the time, however, focused on well-off and educated suffragettes and excluded the ELFS from the WSPU at the beginning of 1914.
”Whether one sympathises with Miss Pankhurst or not does not matter one iota”
The association of the character names Nelly Panburne and Lord Ascue with real people was undermined in the English versions of The Suffragette by changing the name to Asta Panbourne, which explicitly refers to the actress Asta Nielsen. The merging of the suffragette lead role with the Danish film star was emphasized in Great Britain by the distributor Walturdaw with the film title Asta Neilsen, Suffragette.51 In Great Britain and Australia, and especially in New Zealand, numerous cinema advertisements with film titles like Asta Neilson, Suffragette or Asta Neilsen as a Suffragette highlighted that the film star Asta Nielsen plays a suffragette.52 Including the lead actress in the film title itself addressed the fans of the star; it highlights the current political expansion of her repertoire: Asta Nielsen is even able to play a militant suffragette – and thus proves once again her inexhaustible versatility, which is at the core of her brand. Thus, the political sharpness of the reenactment perspective seems softened in favor of the comedic reception offer of The Suffragette:
Whether one sympathises with Miss Pankhurst or not does not matter one iota. Those who enjoy a hearty laugh should not miss the opportunity of seeing how Miss Asta Nielsen became converted from a militant suffragette to the wife of a Prime Minister.53
Here, the expectation is built around the pleasure of watching the transformation of actress Asta Nielsen from a passionate suffragette to the spouse of the most powerful politician in the country.
Democratic multi-addressing – freedom for the audience and for business
The unconventional role of a militant suffragette is a highlight of Asta Nielsen's versatility: This core characteristic of the Danish actress qualifies her as a diva who attracts diverse audiences: “Asta Nielsen's often praised versatility refers not only to her acting skills but also to her ability to appeal to many social strata of cinema audiences.” (Grimm 2023,134) Male as well as female Asta Nielsen fans can be found in all age groups and social classes.54 Fundamentally, the versatility of the film star expands the fan base and increases the number of paying cinema-goers. In the special case of The Suffragette, the contrasting potential of fiction and political reality acts as a boost for audience appeal. This particular business opportunity was used very cautiously by cinema advertising in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Great Britain. In Australia and New Zealand, the viewers of The Suffragette were explicitly invited to focus their individual reception stance entirely at will on documentary re-enactments of the militant English suffragettes and their actions – or to use these only as suspenseful background for the enjoyment of a rather unrealistically constructed love story. Urban Gad's bold fictional invention of an outrageous love story between hostile personalities of current events created plenty of space for the multiple addressing of The Suffragette: In a democratic way, viewers could and should take the freedom as consumers to enjoy this Asta Nielsen film as entertaining and exciting cinema or to use it as a source of information, completely regardless of their political stance on the militant suffragette movement in England – and in this way, viewers as clients boosted business at the cinema box offices. Urban Gad's daring, double-layered construction of the film The Suffragette enabled the cinema operators to cater to the very different expectations and needs of a large customer base.
Epilogue: a grain of truth in the absurdity of Urban Gad's love story
On the screen, the two rivals put the inclinations of their hearts above their political convictions – and start a large family. In view of the bombings and arson attacks carried out by the suffragettes led by Emmeline Pankhurst and the relentless force-feeding of hunger strikers in British prisons, this seems absurd. Urban Gad's ironic resolution of the suffragette issue, however, also contains a grain of truth: The English suffragettes' seemingly relentless methods against the authorities did not mean a rejection of the bourgeois state as such. The suffragettes in Pankhurst's WSPU, mostly from well-to-do families, were embittered by the refusal of the liberal government granting them the missing democratic participation with the right to vote. With the start of the First World War in August 1914, they immediately stopped their fight for universal women's suffrage and focused on aid efforts for the fatherland threatened by the external enemy. One exception was Sylvia Pankhurst, played by Asta Nielsen, with the pacifist and socialist East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) that she had founded. The ELFS had already been excluded from the WSPU at the beginning of 1914 and concentrated political activities during the First World War on aid efforts for poor women in London’s East End.
This article was slightly revised on 30 September 2026
Notes
1. See Grimm (2025), 80-84, 90-98. The nickname 'the Duse of cinema art,' given by the German exclusive film distributor Projektions-Aktien-Gesellschaft "Union" (PAGU), puts the film actress Asta Nielsen on the same level as the Italian theater diva Eleonora Duse.
2. Bremer Bürger Zeitung, Bremen, 19 September 1913; Vorwärts, Berlin, 27 September 1913.
3. See full page ad for The Suffragette, Kinematographische Rundschau, Vienna, 12 October 1913.
4. See full page ad "Walturdaw Exclusive Features", Supplement to The Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly, London, 20 November 1913, ixxx.
5. For historical film screenings, The Suffragette was for a long time only available as a 799-meter fragment, which isn't even half the length of the censored version. Thanks to the reconstruction by the Deutsche Kinemathek, however, The Suffragette has been available on DVD since 2009 in a significantly longer version, corresponding to 1311 meters on 35mm film.
6. Hampicke (1994) analyzes Asta Nielsen's noticeably changing outfits as representations of the respective emancipatory status of the character Nelly Panburne throughout the film's plot. Haastrup (2021) focuses on how the film-aesthetic positioning of Asta Nielsen through camera direction makes The Suffragette a diva film, which is confirmed by analyses of reviews in Danish newspapers.
7. Similar to contemporary cinema audiences, film historiography also focuses on Asta Nielsen who is visible on screen, while the author Urban Gad remains hidden. The production script of The Suffragette, preserved in Copenhagen, has not been examined yet. See Schröder (2010) on the authorship of Urban Gad.
8. The Importing Asta Nielsen Database (IANDb) makes accessible over 19,000 ads and reports from more than 20 countries for the 27 feature films with Asta Nielsen released before the First World War. About three quarters of the records were researched and created within the project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), "Asta Nielsen: the International Film Star and the Introduction of the Star System", which was carried out under the direction of Yvonne Zimmermann and Martin Loiperdinger at Philipps University Marburg and the University of Trier from 2018 to 2022. The key publications of the research project are Zimmermann 2021b and Grimm 2025.
9. See Zimmermann (2021a) 108-113.
10. See Grimm (2025) 138-140.
11. See "Für Kinder verboten". In: Lichtbild-Bühne, Berlin, vol 6, no 37, 13 September 1913, 66.
12. See Kinematographische Rundschau, Vienna, no 294, 26 October 1913, 112.
13. See ads among others in Neues Wiener Journal, Vienna, 17 October 1913; Wiener Sonn- und Montagszeitung, Vienna, 20 October 1913.
14. Program booklet of Internationale Film-Vertriebs-Gesellschaft, Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin; quoted verbatim in several cinema ads: see Vorwärts, Berlin, 27 September 1913; Freiburger Zeitung, Freiburg, 16 September 1913; Würzburger General-Anzeiger, Würzburg, 10 November 1913; Hagener Zeitung, Hagen, 25 October 1913.
15. "Asta Nielsen in der "Suffragette" im Bio "Elite",". Prager Tagblatt, Prague, 29 October 1913.
16. Union-Theater ad, Saarbrücker Zeitung, Saarbrücken, 25 September 1913; Corso ad, Express, Mulhouse, 6 October 1913; Zentral-Kino ad, Völklinger Volksfreund, Völklingen, 29 November 1913.
17. See Rosen (1974) 189-245.
18. Intertitle, quoted from Theatre Royal ad, The West Australian, Perth, 11 March 1914.
19. "Asta Neilsen, Suffragette. Another Walturdaw Exclusive". In: Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly, London, 27 November 1913, 75.
20. Ibidem.
21. "The Palace, Atherton". In: The Leigh Chronicle, Tyldesley, Atherton and South Lancashire Advertiser, Leigh, 13 November 1914.
22. "The Empire". In: The Coventry Herald, Coventry, 25 July 1914, 1.
23. See Chavez and Loiperdinger (2021) 169-170.
24. ”The Suffragette. Exeter City Palace". In: Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette, Exeter, 3 February 1914.
25. The Pictures, 20 December 1913, 5.
26. Pictures and the Picturegoer, 25 April 1914, 218–219.
27. "Film Hissed in Aberdeen Picture Hall. 'Asta Neilson as Suffragette'". In: The Aberdeen Daily Journal, Aberdeen, 4 February 1914, 4.
28. "Uproar in Aberdeen Cinema Hall. Protest by Suffragists". In: Aberdeen Weekly Journal, Aberdeen, 6 February 1914. See also the facsimile of this long report.
29. Allen 2022, 246. Allen 2022, 246. Cf. T. J. West ibid., 53-64; cf. on the distribution and screening of films with the film star Asta Nielsen in Australasia ibid., pp. 244-257, and Allen 2021, 185-193.
30. Only two Australian states kept Indigenous women from voting for decades.
31. "West's Pictures". In: The Register, Adelaide, 11 March 1914.
32. "Fuller's Pictures". In: The Press, Christchurch, 18 May 1914.
33. "Imperial Pictures". In: Morning Herald and Miners Advocate, Newcastle, Australia, 27 March 1914.
34. "Asta Neilsen, Suffragette". In: Kalgoorlie Miner, Kalgoorlie, 23 March 1914.
35. Theatre Royal ad, The West Australian, Perth, 11 March 1914.
36. "Asta Nielsen Becomes a Suffragette", Masterton Electric Theatre ad. In: Wairarapa Daily Times, Wellington, 1 July 1914.
37. Theatre Royal ad. In: Timaru Herald, Timaru, New Zealand, 5 June 1914.
38. "West's Pictures". In: The Daily Herald, Adelaide, 14 March 1914.
39. West's ad, The Sun, Sydney, 4 March 1914.
40. West's ad, The Sun, Sydney, 3 March 1914.
41. "Hayward's Pictures". In: Ashburton Guardian, Ashburton, New Zealand, 25 November 1914.
42. "Hayward's Pictures". In: The Oamaru Mail, Oamaru, New Zealand, 20 November 1914.
43. "Suffragette". In: The Observer, Pontypridd, New Zealand, 9 May 1914, 6.
44. "Thompson-Payne Pictures". In: Wairarapa Daily Times, Wellington, 2 July 1914.
45. "Radio Pictures. 'The Suffragette Question'". In: Kalgoorlie Miner, Kalgoorlie, 28 March 1914.
46. "Radio Pictures. 'The Suffragette Question'". In: Kalgoorlie Miner, Kalgoorlie, 1 April 1914.
47. Ibidem.
48. "Asta Nielson, Suffragette". In: Timaru Herald, Timaru, New Zealand, 6 June 1914.
49. "West's". In: Public Opinion, Melbourne, 5 March 1914.
50. "Amusements. 'The Suffragette'". In: Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 21 March 1914.
51. "Asta Neilsen, Suffragette. Another Walturdaw Exclusive". In: Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly, 27 November 1913, 75.
52. In the cinema ads accessible via IANDb, the film title The Suffragette is placed 30 times in Great Britain just like this and 16 times with the name of the lead actress included in the title. For Australia, the ratio is 101 times without her name to 65 times with her name included. In New Zealand, the ratio flips dramatically, with 28 times without her name to 202 times with her name included in the film title: Thus, Asta Nielsen is virtually identical to her suffragette role Asta Panbourne or Asta Pankhurst respectively.
53. "Empire Pictures". In: The Leader, Orange, Australia, 4 May 1914.
54. See Grimm (2023).
References
Allen, Julie K. (2021) ”Between stage and screen: female European stars of early feature films in Australasia". In: Zimmermann, Yvonne (ed): Asta Nielsen, the Film Star System and the Introduction of the Long Feature Film. Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 19, nos 2-3, 175-200.
Allen, Julie K. (2022) Screening Europe in Australasia, 1906-1930: Transnational Silent Film Before and After the Rise of Hollywood. Exeter: Exeter University Press.
Chavez, Victor and Loiperdinger, Martin (2021) ”Asta Nielsen Film Trade in Great Britain: Pioneering the Exclusive Long Feature Star Series before the First World War". In: Zimmermann, Yvonne (ed): Asta Nielsen, the Film Star System and the Introduction of the Long Feature Film, Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 19, nos 2-3, 149-174.
Grimm, Friederike (2023) ”Adoring the New Woman: Asta Nielsen's Diverse Fan Base in Germany and Austria-Hungary in the Early 1910s". In: Alovisio, Silvio and Pravadelli, Veronica (eds): The New Woman in European Silent Cinema: Images, Narratives and Social Discourses. imago 26. studi di cinema e media, 113-134.
Grimm, Friederike (2025) Die Anfänge des Starsystems. Asta Nielsen in Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn 1911-1914, Marburg: Schüren Verlag.
Haastrup, Helle Kannik (2021) ”Asta Nielsen: A cosmopolitan diva". In: Kosmorama, #276. https://www.kosmorama.org/en/kosmorama/en/asta-nielsen-cosmopolitan-diva.
Hampicke, Evelyne (1994) ”Die Suffragette – Asta Nielsen und ihre Kleider. Gedanken zu einem Filmfragment". In: KINtop. Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films, vol 3, 161-172.
Nielsen, Asta (1928) ”Mein Weg im Film. 4. Entwicklungsjahre des Films". In: B.Z. am Mittag, 27 September 1928, quoted from Seydel, Renate and Hagedorff, Allan (eds) (1984): Asta Nielsen. Ihr Leben in Fotodokumenten, Selbstzeugnissen und zeitgenössischen Betrachtungen. Berlin (GDR): Henschelverlag, 82.
Nielsen, Asta (2022) The Silent Muse. The Memoirs of Asta Nielsen. Translated and edited by Julie K. Allen. Rochester, NY: Camden House.
Rennert, Malwine (1913/14) ”Die Suffragette". In: Bild und Film, vol. 3, no. 6, 137.
Rosen, Andrew (1974) Rise Up, Women! The Militant Campaign of the Women's Social and Political Union 1903-1914. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Schröder, Stephan Michael (2010) ”Und Urban Gad? Zur Frage der Autorschaft in den Filmen bis 1914". In: Schlüpmann, Heide; Kuyper, Eric de; Gramann, Karola; Nessel, Sabine; Wedel, Michael (eds): Unmögliche Liebe. Asta Nielsen, ihr Kino. Vienna: verlag filmarchiv austria, 194-210.
Zimmermann, Yvonne (2021a) "Introduction: Asta Nielsen, the Film Star System and the Introduction of the Long Feature Film". In: Zimmermann, Yvonne (ed): Asta Nielsen, the Film Star System and the Introduction of the Long Feature Film, Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 19, nos 2-3, 107-120.
Zimmermann, Yvonne (ed) (2021b) "Asta Nielsen, the Film Star System and the Introduction of the Long Feature Film". In: Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 19, nos 2-3.