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6/10
Archivist John
Senior Editor
A definitive 6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. La venenosa remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you are into the kind of silent films that lean heavily into the 'mysterious woman with a dark secret' trope, La Venenosa is worth about eighty minutes of your time. It’s not a masterpiece, and it definitely doesn't have the narrative tightness of something like Out to Win, but it has a specific, dusty circus energy that I actually liked. If you hate slow-moving plots where people stare intensely at each other for three minutes before a title card appears, you will probably find this unbearable.
Raquel Meller is the whole reason this movie exists. She plays Liana, a trapeze artist who is basically a walking death sentence for men. The 'curse' is never really explained in a way that makes sense—it’s just sort of accepted as a fact of life, like gravity. Every time a man looks at her, you can almost hear the movie screaming that he’s doomed. There is a scene early on in the circus where the camera just pans across the men in the audience, and they all look like they’ve forgotten how to breathe. It’s a bit much, honestly.
The circus sets feel real, which is a big plus. You can see the grime on the ropes and the way the light hits the dust in the air. There is this one shot of Liana climbing the ladder to her trapeze where the camera stays low, looking up, and you get a real sense of how high up she is. No safety nets, just 1920s vibes and prayer. It’s one of the few moments where the tension actually feels earned rather than forced by the music or the acting.
The acting is... well, it's silent movie acting. Warwick Ward is in this, and he has that classic 'I am a villain because of my eyebrows' look. He does a lot of lurking. There’s a scene in a dressing room where he’s just standing in the background while Liana looks in a mirror, and he stays so still for so long it starts to get creepy in a way I don't think the director intended. It’s like he forgot he was in the shot.
The middle of the film slows down to a crawl. There’s a lot of sitting around in ornate rooms. The costumes are incredible—Liana wears these heavy, beaded headpieces that look like they weigh twenty pounds—but the pacing suffers when the movie moves away from the circus. It tries to become a high-society drama, and it just isn't as interesting as the 'cursed trapeze girl' hook. It reminds me a bit of the tonal shifts in Lure of Ambition, where the movie can't decide if it wants to be a character study or a soap opera.
I noticed a weird edit during one of the dinner scenes. One second a character is holding a glass, and in the next cut, his hands are flat on the table, but the movement of the actors doesn't match at all. It’s a tiny thing, but once you see it, it’s hard to unsee. It makes the whole sequence feel a bit disjointed, like they ran out of film and had to patch it together.
The ending feels rushed. After all the build-up about the curse and the tragic fate of her lovers, the resolution just sort of happens. It’s one of those 'wait, that's it?' moments. But then again, you don't watch a movie called La Venenosa for a logically sound conclusion. You watch it to see Raquel Meller look hauntingly into the middle distance while men ruin their lives for her. On that front, it definitely delivers.
It’s a strange little artifact. If you enjoy the aesthetics of the late silent era—the heavy makeup, the theatrical gestures, the obsession with 'destiny'—you’ll find something to love here. Just don't expect it to make a whole lot of sense.
IMDb —
1919
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