DTwo films, two directors, two immortal divas. Duse by Pietro Marcellowhich chooses Valeria Bruni Tedeschi to give voice and body to the Italian actress in her mature season, and The divine of France – Sarah Bernhardt by Guillaume Niclouxwith Sandrine Kiberlain who captures the brio and resemblance of the protagonist of the French stage from the height of her glory to her old age, flow like visionary frescoes.
Historical truth deliberately remains in the background, as does philological precision: myth and artistic incandescence guide directors and screenwriters. Cinema celebrates the essence of two legends who have undermined the rules of the theater. And imposed, with talent and audacity, a revolutionary idea of female emancipation and… blatant rivalry.
Eleonora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt, the 2025 films
The decisive chapter of the challenge is being written at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Parisin 1897, when hostility was served to the public on a silver platter. Sarah, the landlady, offers hospitality to Eleonorawhich lacks French consecration. It’s an ambiguous gesture, generous and calculated, almost a trap: was it a distraction to have relegated her to an uncomfortable dressing room, from which Duse has to climb a fire escape to reach the stage?
Sandrine Kiberlain, 57, in “The Divine of France – Sarah Bernhardt” at the cinema from 23 October 2025 (Erika Kuenka).
That evening, however, in front of an audience excited by the confrontation, something unprecedented happens. Eleonora conquers without shouts, tears or sobs: it seems that she doesn’t act, even the movement of her hands tells more than what the verses of The lady of the camellias of Dumas son. In the soft light of his stage, for the first time Sarah senses the danger of a real adversary. He feels he belongs to the past, he has glimpsed modernity, but he knows he cannot be a protagonist.
Two rival icons
She, born in Paris on 22 October 1844, is 53 years old. Eleonora, born at dawn on 3 October 1858, 14 years younger. The rivalry had already been fueled by years of parallel tours. In London, in the spring of 1895, Duse’s artistic duel was less than a kilometer away: Sarah acted at Daly’s Theatre, Eleonora at Drury Lane, protagonists of the same drama, Father’s house by Hermann Sudermann.
Bouquets of flowers fly from one dressing room to another: hypocritical courtesy. In 1896 both are in the United States with the same titles, The lady of the camellias And Father’s house: Duse acts in Washington and is invited to tea at the White House by President Grover Cleveland, an honor not granted to Bernhardt who has to be content with New York triumphs.
Sarah Bernhardt (1844 – 1923) in 1989 in “Izeyl” by Eugene Morand and Armand Sylvestre (Photo by W & D Downey/Hulton Archive/Getty Images).
The press is divided, the critics oscillate. George Bernard Shaw from the pages of Saturday Review he is unable to choose: he recognizes in the Frenchwoman “the charm of a spoiled and courageous maturity” but admits that Duse “is already a quarter of a century ahead of the most beautiful woman in the world”. Over the years, the two study each other, smell each other, and are inspired by each other.
When, in 1882, Eleonora attended Turin a The lady of the camellias she was shocked and admitted that from the first bars the “golden voice” «declaims like a virtuoso with every fiber of her body. Nobody sobs, nobody despairs, nobody dies as well as Bernhardt.” There the Italian understands that she must change: not to imitate the French, but to find her own way. «In reaction I felt liberated too» she would write later.
Eleanora Duse (1858-1924.) in an image from 1905 (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images).
Sarah becomes a role model for Eleonora even off stagea model of independence and autonomy. At 37 years oldrich enough to be her own master, Bernhardt is an impresario in a theater world – in which women do not yet have the right to move freely: she chooses texts, actors, sets, costumes and knows how to expect authors to write for her. Pioneer of self-promotion, Diva with a capital D, she embodies the concept of celebrity, with a wealth of attention-grabbing stunts.
He had his portrait taken by the famous photographer Nadarflies in a hot air balloon with champagne and strawberries, lends his face to products for advertising campaigns. In 1899, he writes Le Figaro«everyone goes to Paris to see two profiles: that of the Eiffel Tower and that of Sarah Bernhardt». Eleonora, on the contrary, shuns worldliness and the spotlight off stage, does her own thing, lives the characters – women! not ghosts in masks – erasing the invisible membrane between the true self and the roles. She breaks every rule: she goes on stage without make-up, shows the public her blushes, sweats and imperfections.
And D’Annunzio among them…
Their private lives fuel the myth. Sarah, the born “bastard”does not hesitate to take on her son Maurice alone, from a fleeting relationship with the Belgian nobleman Charles-Joseph Eugène Henri Georges Lamoral de Ligne. Eleonora gives birth to Enrichetta with her husband Tebaldo Checchi, a not excellent actor, willing to live in his wife’s shadow, but remains an actress before being a mother.
Both chase love, but with opposite destinies: Sarah is insatiable, even sexually; she experiences stormy passions with men and women, theater directors and writers like the seventy-year-old Victor Hugo, she finds in Lucien Guitry the only one capable of keeping up with her pace, on stage and in life they are a magnetic couple: she overwhelming, he elegant and measured. Duse falls into the arms of Arrigo Boito and then Gabriele D’Annunziofrom which she will receive yet another wound: the French actress herself will steal the text of The dead cityinitially written for her by “her” D’Annunzio.
Two opposites that complement each other
For the world, Eleonora and Sarah remain two opposites who complement each other. Duse is modest, impalpable and limits her movements to a minimum. It embodies naturalness, sincerity and depth of soul. At least that’s what he wants us to believe. Bernhardt enters or leaves the scene with exaggerated attitudesoften without anything to do with the text, just to seek applause; Duse makes his entrance without being noticed, a few steps away from his modest gait or even with his back to the audience. Bernhardt’s forcing and Duse’s elusiveness…
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, 60 years old, in “Duse”, a film already in cinemas (Erika Kuenka).
The theaters were boarded up and listed in mourning
The last years are marked by fatigue, pain, resistance. In 1915 Sarah faces the amputation of a leg with theatrical courage. «Quand même!» (“Despite everything”), he repeated until the end of his days, “no one can stop me”. He left the scene forever in Paris on 28 March 1923surrounded by the devotion of a people who give her a funeral worthy of a head of state. All the theaters in France are listed in mourning while Duse – who is preparing to leave for a long tour through the United States where the magazine announces his return Time who dedicates the cover of July 30th to her – mourns her with real tears.
A year later, on April 21, 1924, at 2.30 in the morning, in Pittsburgh, Eleonora surrenders to his diseased lungs. The woman symbol of Italy in the world dies as she was born, in a hotel room on a cold, black, starless night. D’Annunzio obtained a solemn funeral for her, with the funeral train greeted by processions in Florence, Bologna, Padua, and burial in Asolo “with her face turned towards Monte Grappa”. For her too, theaters were closed as a sign of mourning. Two extraordinary lives. It’s a rivalry which, a century later, has still not ceased to fascinate.
Paola Calvetti is a writer and author of the book The rivals (Mondadori).