Perhaps Sarah Bernhardt was a great theatre actress, but she was an awful film actress. As ignorant are the filmmakers who made this rubbish. Of course, the idea behind these productions from Adolph Zukor's Famous Players in Famous Plays, Pathé film d'art, or spectacles from Italy was to associate the new medium of film with the established art of theatre (often literature, too). The only decent legacy these films have is that they ushered in the age of feature-length films, but stagnating motion pictures to the grammar of the stage was of more consequence. The camera is stationary, the narrative is ridiculous and the acting is artificial and pretentious.
(Note: The version I saw was approximately 50 minutes and appeared to be at proper projection speed.)
(Note: The version I saw was approximately 50 minutes and appeared to be at proper projection speed.)