I’ve heard it said that the working partnership between Pola Negri and German director Ernst Lubitsch succeeded because of Lubitsch’s eye. Specifically, his ability to “frame” Negri; containing her energy and redirecting it, so as not to sacrifice the whole to her part.
To claim Negri’s performances—her Negri-ness—needed framing is to say much. It is to acknowledge, first, that she cannot be ignored; and second, that her magnetism created artistic limits on-screen. Leave Negri untouched and everything around her disappears. Which is not so good, if something around her was worth keeping.
Aleksander Hertz, director of The Polish Dancer, did not have this insight. At least, not in 1917.
