
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci Edit., Milano Ida Rubinstein in the Italian silent film La nave / The Ship (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Mario Roncoroni, 1921), based on the homonymous play by Gabriele D'Annunzio.

French postcard by RA, no. 109. Photo: A. Bert. Ida Rubinstein in 'Le Martyr de St. Sebastien' (1911).
The ship
Ida Rubinstein was a close friend of the poet and playwright Gabriele D'Annunzio. In 1921 she played the lead of Basiliola in the film La nave / The Ship (1921), directed by D'Annunzio's son Gabriellino D'Annunzio and by Mario Roncoroni. The film was based on a play by D'Annunzio, which already had been turned into an opera and had been filmed in 1912 by the company Ambrosio, but without much success.
Guido Marussig, who had designed both the play and the opera, designed sets and costumes for the 1921 film. The directors shot the film in a style typical of the later silent epics in Italy, denying innovation in film language and instead focusing on acting, set and costume design, harking back to earlier epics such as Cabiria, but adding cruelty and sadomasochism. La nave is set in early medieval times.
In the Venetian plains, at the town of Aquileia, Basiliola (Ida Rubinstein), daughter of the dethroned tribune Orso Faledro returns per ship and notices her father and brothers have been blinded by the Graticò brothers, of whom Marco (Alfredo Boccolini) is the new tribune and Sergio (Ciro Galvani) has become a bishop. Basiliola decides to ruin all involved.
In an extended dance scene, she seduces Sergio, the lecherous bishop. This film contains the only moving images of Rubinstein dancing and owes a great deal to Oscar Wilde's and Richard Strauss's 'Salomé'. Basiliola manages to have the soldiers arrested who were responsible for blinding her relatives. Through her femme fatale behaviour the men, locked in a pit, desire to be killed by her bow and arrows.
Basiliola also manages to set up the brothers against each other, with the younger brother Marco killing his older brother Sergio. Marco, though, realizes the danger of the temptress Basiliola and condemns her to be blinded too. After her death, the whole community leaves by ship to escape the nearing barbarians and to found a new, Christian community on a nearby island, Venice.

Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Ida Rubinstein in La nave / The Ship (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Mario Roncoroni, 1921).

Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Ida Rubinstein in La nave / The Ship (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Mario Roncoroni, 1921).
The sad Venus
Ida Lvovna Rubinstein (Russian: Ида Львовна Рубинштейн) was born in Kharkov in the Russian Empire (now Kharkiv, Ukraine), in 1885, into a wealthy Jewish family. She was orphaned at a young age and left with a huge fortune. She went to a dance school in St. Petersburg, where she was trained by a.o. Michel Fokine.
She debuted in 1908 in Oscar Wilde's 'Salomé', where she performed the erotic dance of the seven veils. Shortly thereafter Sergei Diaghilev engaged her for his newly founded Ballets Russes in Paris.
There she danced the title role in 'Cléopâtre' (1909) and the role of Zobeide in 'Sheherazade' (1910), both in a choreography by her old teacher Fokine and with set and costume designs by Léon Bakst. In 'Shéhérazade', the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky was her partner. Rubinstein was praised for her sensual and opulent oriental dance style. She left the Ballets Russes in 1911.
Rubinstein was also known as a model in the art world. Her role in 'Cléopâtre' inspired Kees van Dongen for his painting 'Souvenir of the Russian Opera Season 1909'. Talk of the town was her nude portrait in 1910 by Valentin Serov. The Art Deco sculptor Demetre Chiparus made a bronze statue of her ('La danseuse'), to which a painting was made by Antonio de La Gandara.
The bisexual Rubinstein, a.k.a. La Venus triste, was entrusted to the canvas by the American female painter Romaine Brooks, with whom she had a relationship between 1911 and 1914. At that time, Rubinstein was a frequent patron of the art world and beau monde in Paris. She was friends with celebrities such as Sarah Bernhardt, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau and André Gide.

Soviet postcard by Aurora Art Publishers. Image: Nude portrait of Ida Rubinstein (1910) by Valentin Serov (1865-1911).

German cigarette card by Eckstein-Halpaus, Dresden, in the series 'Die Tanzbühnen der Welt', Group 2: Die Tanzbühnen des Auslandes (The dance stages of foreign countries), no. 86. Photo: Roosen. Caption: Ida Rubinstein, a famous Russian dance choreographer, who in recent years has presented her own ballet company in Paris with the participation of the most important contemporary artists.
A major theatre personality with charisma and acting talent
After Ida Rubinstein left the Ballets Russes, she founded her own dance company, the Ballet Ida Rubinstein. The company had immediate success with 'Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien' (1911), with music by Claude Debussy, text by Gabriele D'Annunzio, choreography by Michel Fokine and sets and costumes by Leon Bakst.
The press hailed the piece as a classic example of the 'stylised' modernism of those days. The archbishop of Paris criticised the fact that a Jewish woman performed the role of a Roman male saint.
Rubinstein is usually not counted among the greatest ballerinas, but she was a major theatre personality with charisma and acting talent. Moreover, due to her inherited wealth, she was able to engage the greatest composers and choreographers. She gave assignments to Maurice Ravel ('Boléro', 1928; 'La Valse', 1929) and Igor Stravinsky ('Le Baiser de la fée', 1928, 'Persephone', 1933).
In the twenties, she had her greatest successes with choreographies by Léonide Massine and Bronislava Nijinska. She also occasionally worked with the Ballets Russes. Rubinstein closed her company in 1935 and danced herself for the last time in 'Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher', Paris, in 1939.
In 1935 Ida Rubinstein took the French nationality. In 1940, after the start of World War II, she fled to London. She stayed in a suite at the Ritz Hotel and campaigned for wounded French soldiers. After the war, she returned to France and settled in Les Olivades in Vence, where she died on 20 September 1960.

Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Ida Rubinstein in La nave / The Ship (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Mario Roncoroni, 1921).

Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Ida Rubinstein in La nave / The Ship (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Mario Roncoroni, 1921).
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.