The Return of Mata Hari: A Woman Redeemed (Sinclair Hill, 1927)

Abstract

Frederick Britten Austin explicitly referred to reports of Mata Hari's execution in his June 1924 Strand magazine short story, ‘The Fining Pot is for Silver,’ adapted by Mary Murillo and directed by Sinclair Hill for Stoll's 1927 release, A Woman Redeemed. Both scenarios feature a dark, heartless woman, Marta Rugini, a trusted member of an organisation of foreign agents intent on power and destruction. In the following article, I shall examine the film's selective re-working of the legend for a contemporary audience and contextualise its themes with reference back to memories and memoirs of the First World War (more or less fictionalised) and forwards to fears that the Treaty of Versailles would not for long guarantee peace in Europe. In addition to the film's reliance on literary and historical sources for its plot, I am concerned here with settings, costuming and locations as indicators of the character whom the 1917 prosecution lawyer dubbed ‘perhaps the greatest woman spy of the century.' The day after Mata Hari's death, the Paris correspondent for the Daily Express announced her the ‘World's most sinister adventuress,’ adding that the story of her career ‘outrivals any novel in point of dramatic interest and romance.’