Ravished Armenia (film)
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''Ravished Armenia'', also known as ''Auction of Souls'', is a 1919 American silent film based on the autobiographical book ''
Ravished Armenia ''Ravished Armenia'' (full title: ''Ravished Armenia: The Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl, Who Survived the Great Massacres'') is a book written in 1918 by Arshaluys (Aurora) Mardiganian about her experiences in the Armenian gen ...
'' by Arshaluys (Aurora) Mardiganian, who also played the lead role in the film. The film, which depicts the 1915
Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was ...
by the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
from the point of view of Armenian survivor Mardiganian, who plays herself in the film, survives in an incomplete form.


Plot

According to a contemporary ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' article, the first half of the film shows "Armenia as it was before Turkish and German devastation, and led up to the deportation of priests and thousands of families into the desert. One of the concluding scenes showed young Armenian women flogged for their refusal to enter Turkish
harem Harem (Persian: حرمسرا ''haramsarā'', ar, حَرِيمٌ ''ḥarīm'', "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family") refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A hare ...
s and depicted the Turkish slave markets." The story was adapted for the screen by Henry Leyford Gates, who also wrote the book.


Production

The Selig production, which, for a massacre scene, used several thousand Armenian residents of southern California as extras, many of whom were survivors of such events, was filmed in 1918-1919 near Newhall, California. During a scene in which Mardiganian was escaping from a harem by jumping from one roof to another she fell and broke her ankle. The production, however, continued with Mardiganian being carried to each set for her scenes. The film shows young Armenian girls being "crucified" by being nailed to crosses. However, almost 70 years later Mardiganian revealed to film historian Anthony Slide that the scene was inaccurate: H.L. Gates later ghost wrote a 20-part newspaper series for "Queen of the Artists' Studios"
Audrey Munson Audrey Marie Munson (June 8, 1891 – February 20, 1996) was an American model (person), artist's model and film actress, considered to be "America's first supermodel." In her time, she was variously known as "Miss Manhattan", the "Panama–Paci ...
in which he described the filming of the crucifixion scene in the California desert and said that one of the 12 artist's models employed for the scene died several days later from influenza as a result of the exposure during filming. He named the dead woman as Corinne Gray.


Distribution

The initial New York performance of the silent film took place on February 16, 1919, in the ballroom of the
Plaza Hotel The Plaza Hotel (also known as The Plaza) is a luxury hotel and condominium apartment building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is located on the western side of Grand Army Plaza, after which it is named, just west of Fifth Avenue, a ...
, with society leaders, Mrs. Oliver Harriman and Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt, serving as co-hostesses on behalf of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. To raise funds for relief, the film was shown in several American cities at an admission price of $10 per person at a time when the typical American theater charged an admission of $0.25 to $0.35. Later, when the film went into general distribution, ads described it as the "$10 per seat picture." The film was first screened in London under the title ''Auction of Souls'' and in 1920 was shown twice daily for three weeks at the
Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no govern ...
to obtain support for the protection of national minorities. This showing of the film, which contains depictions of the flogging of women and their
nude Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. The loss of body hair was one of the physical characteristics that marked the biological evolution of modern humans from their hominin ancestors. Adaptations related to h ...
crucifixion, was authorized with cuts to five scenes that had been agreed to by the film producers without the film's formal submission to the
British Board of Film Censors The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of fi ...
, which never certified the film for general viewing in the United Kingdom. The film was released in Paris on December 11, 1919,
Salle Gaveau The Salle Gaveau, named after the French piano maker Gaveau, is a classical concert hall in Paris, located at 45-47 rue La Boétie, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. It is particularly intended for chamber music. Construction The plans for th ...
. It was sponsored by the dukess of Rohan.


Reception

Because of the film's subject matter, distributors often scheduled limited showings of the film to community leaders prior to releasing it to local theaters. Still, in some states there were attempts to ban or censor the film. For example, after the
Pennsylvania State Board of Censors The Pennsylvania State Board of Censors was an organization under the Pennsylvania Department of Education responsible for approving, redacting, or banning motion pictures that it considered "sacrilegious, obscene, indecent, or immoral" or might ...
banned the film, the distributors sued and overturned the state agency decision in court. In reversing the board's ban, the decision of the judge stated:
The court finds it a fact and a question of law that there is nothing in the scenes which make them sacrilegious, obscene, indecent or immoral, or such nature as to tend to debase or corrupt morals. Viewing the picture as a whole, the court finds as a fact that it is educational in nature. It is not only a vivid portrayal of the story ''Ravished Armenia'', but it is also a picture of conditions as they existed in Armenia a few months ago.
Mardiganian felt she had been cheated out of her $7000 fee for the film and received only $195. She sued her legal guardian Eleanor Brown Gates, the novelist wife of the screenwriter Henry Leyford Gates. She won $5,000.


Legacy

A restored and edited 20-minute segment of the historic motion picture (originally composed of 9 reels, i.e. approximately 90 minutes) was released in 2009 by the Armenian Genocide Resource Center of Northern California. It is based on a rare, surviving reel of film edited in Soviet Armenia. It includes a music score, an introduction, 125 subtitles, and a slideshow of several black-white production stills. The DVD is distributed by Heritage Publishing, Richmond, California, and is copyrighted by Richard Kloian. In 2014, the original screenplay to ''Ravished Armenia'' was released by Anthony Slide in a reprint of the original book.


See also

* Henry Morgenthau Sr. *''
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh ''The Forty Days of Musa Dagh'' (german: Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh) is a 1933 novel by Austrian- Bohemian writer Franz Werfel based on events that took place in 1915, during the second year of World War I and at the beginning of the Armenian ...
''


References


External links

*
Armenia (1919)''
a
A Cinema History
* ''Credo'', a 2005 presentation of the surviving segment of ''Ravished Armenia'': , , * {{Authority control 1919 films American black-and-white films American silent feature films Armenian genocide films Films directed by Oscar Apfel First National Pictures films 1910s American films Silent war films