Italian postcard. Alterocca, Terni, No. 4293. Compagnia drammatica di E. Berti. Stage play by Gabriele D'Annunzio, based on a tale from Dante's Inferno (Paolo & Francesca). The play was first performed in 1901 with Eleonora Duse in the lead. This card refers to the second version by the stage company of Ettore Berti and Giuseppe Masi, with Emilia Varini as Francesca and Berti as Paolo. The play was performed e.g. at the prestigious Teatro Carignano in Turin from 7 March 1903. Act V, scene 4. The night of love.
Plot: Guido da Polenta was at war with the Malatesta family. When peace was made, Guido wanted to solidify it by marrying his daughter to the Malatesta heir, Giovanni Malatesta (Gianciotto), son of Malatesta da Verucchio, lord of Rimini. Giovanni was a brave man, but invalided and disfigured. Guido knew that Francesca would refuse to marry Giovanni, and so he had arranged the wedding so that Francesca thought she was marrying Giovanni's handsome brother Paolo. Francesca fell in love with Paolo and only realised that she had married his brother the morning after the wedding. Francesca and Paolo were then seduced again by reading the story of knight Lancelot and Queen Guinevere and became lovers. They were caught by Giovanni and killed by him.
Francesca da Rimini was filmed various times, in particular in Italy: in 1908 by Mario Morais for Comerio (actress unknown), in 1910 by Ugo Falena for Film d'Arte Italiana with Francesca Bertini in the lead; in 1922 by Carlo Dalbani and Mario Volpe with Mary Bayma-Riva in the lead; while in 1921, it was an episode of the Dante biopic La mirabile visione by Caramba. After WWII, Raffaele Matarazzo did a sound version, Paolo e Francesca (1950), with Odile Versois in the lead. Non-Italian adaptations were in 1908 by Stuart Blackton (Francesca di Rimini; or, The Two Brothers) with Florence Turner as Francesca; and in 1913 by Arthur Maude with Constance Crawley. Many TV movies followed from the 1950s onward.
Source: Dutch Wikipedia, IMDb.
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