Tag Archives: Museo Nazionale del Cinema

Pride and passion: Pina Menichelli in Il padrone delle ferriere (1919)

Posted on 22 December 2017 by silentsplease

Aristocracy, hubris, and hauteur: these are the main ingredients in Itala-Film’s Il padrone delle ferriere | The Master of the Ironworks (1919), starring the majestic Pina Menichelli. I’d intended to cover another 1917 film in this Diva December entry, but when the Museo … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Pictorial emotion: the moods of Makowska

Posted on 2 March 2016 by silentsplease

I always enjoy sets of photographs where an actor is pictured expressing a variety of emotions: ‘passion’, ‘hatred’, ‘sorrow’, ‘love’, ‘grief’, ‘surprise’, etc. A famous example of this phenomenon is this spread of Florence Lawrence (‘The Biograph Girl’), printed in A Pictorial … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Diva films about diva films

Posted on 21 December 2015 by silentsplease

After spending some quality time with the films of Borelli, Menichelli, and Makowska, now I want to cast my net a little wider. Diva films were a major force of the Italian film industry in the teens—but how did people perceive … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

1918: Fragments of Menichelli. On the trail of “Gemma di Sant’Eremo” and “La passeggiera”

Posted on 9 December 2015 by silentsplease

Recently, I was reading Italo Calvino’s wonderful book If on a winter’s night a traveller (1979), and the following line stuck in my mind: The dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Hesperia! The diva as star attraction in Emilio Ghione’s Anime Buie (IT 1916)

Posted on 13 July 2015 by silentsplease

Today marks the 99th anniversary of the première of Anime Buie | Dark Souls, fourth in a series of films featuring the character Za La Mort, an honourable French apache (street criminal gang member) and his adventures in the criminal underworld and beyond. The character … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Oxilia, Menichelli, 1915: two short films

Posted on 2 May 2015 by silentsplease

    Via the excellent Sempre in Penombra blog; via FilmoTeca de Catalunya’s digitized collections Until his career was cut short by World War I, Nino Oxilia was one of the most promising Italian directors of the teens. Formerly a playwright, he entered … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Feminine threat! Menichelli in La moglie di Claudio | The Wife of Claudius (IT 1918)

Posted on 25 March 2015 by silentsplease

In 1918, Itala-Film released a film adaptation of Alexandre Dumas fils’ La Femme de Claude (1873), a play which updated the Messalina myth to 19th century France. The wife of Claudius, the legendary monstrous feminine – just what kind of woman is she, here in 1910s … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Love and rockets: Matrimonio interplanetario | A Marriage in the Moon (IT 1910)

Posted on 14 February 2015 by silentsplease

We all have problems in our lives, and in our relationships. But what if the one you love literally lives on a different planet? This is the problem facing the couple in Matrimonio Interplanetario, a charming Italian short film in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments