Italian postcard. Caesar Film. Edited by the magazine Film (Naples/Rome). Photo by Roseo & Co., Napoli.

Italian actor Gustavo Serena (1882-1970) is most remembered as Francesca Bertini's co-star, but he did more than that. See also filmstarpostcards.blogspot.com/2010/08/gustavo-serena.html

Tags:   vintage postcard silent cinema film movies 1910s cinema italiano Italy Italian Gustavo Serena Gustavo Serena attore italiano male actor star Roseo Caesar Film

© All Rights Reserved

Italian postcard by Roseo & C., Napoli. Collection: Joseph North.

Lea Giunchi (1884-?) was the first comical actress in Italian cinema, acting either in her own 'Lea' series, or with male comedians such as Ferdinand Guillaume (Tontolini) and Raymond Frau (Kri Kri). She also played in the Italian silent epic Quo vadis? (1913), modern dramas and action movies.

Tags:   Lea Giunchi comica comedienne comedian comedy 1910s Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana vintage vedette Postcard Postkarte POstale Postkaart Postal Picture Cinema Carte Cartolina Cine Carte Postale Card Celebrity Costume Cinema Italiano Film Film Star Movies Movie Star Muet Muto Screen Star Silent Schauspielerin Stummfilm Darstellerin Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte ACtress Actrice Attrice tinted hat Hut cappello chapeau Lea Giunchi Roseo

© All Rights Reserved

Italian postcard by the Naples and Rome based journal Film. Photo: Roseo & Co., Napoli.

Carlo Benetti (1885-1958) was an actor of Italian silent cinema. Born in Florence, he married Olga Benetti, born in Ceprano (Frosinone). Both debuted in 1912 at the Cines company with two short comedies: E' meglio l'arte and In campagna è un'altra cosa (1912). They were then hired by the Latium film company in 1913, where they immediately got leads in six films, all directed by Ubaldo Pittei, e.g. La finestra illuminata, Passa una donna!, La mano della scimmia, Verso l'amore and L'orrida meta.

The engagegment with Latium didn't last long, though, as September 1913 they started to work for the joint companies Cines and Celio, both as protagonists (together in the drama Un divorzio, 1914), as well as as supporting actors, e.g. Olga opposite Leda Gys and Alberto Collo in the Cines drama Amore bendato (1914), and both in Il club delle maschere (Mario Ghione, 1913), starring Mario Bonnard. Other titles were e.g. L'oro maledetto (Ivo Illuminati, 1914) for Celio and La parola che uccide (Augusto Genina, 1914) for Cines.

End of 1914 the Benetti couple moved to the Caesar company, where Olga had leads in films by Emilio Ghione such as L'ultimo dovere, Per la pace etc., and later she also played Clorinda in Enrico Guazzoni's epic film La Gerusalemme liberata. However, equally important were Olga Benetti's roles as antagonist in the Francesca Bertini dramas, starting with Benetti's first feature-length film, Nelly la Gigolette (Emilio Ghione, 1915). The bond would last for years, with memorable such titles as La signora delle camelie (1915), Odette (1916), Fedora (1916), Andreina (1917), La piccola fonte (1917), and Tosca (1918). Carlo often co-acted in these films too, such as Nelly la Gigolette and Odette. Instead, in 1915 Carlo played without his wife as Don Federigo opposite Francesca Bertini in the latter's classical 'verist' drama Assunta Spina. Without Olga he also played with Bertini in Il capestro degli Asburgo (1915), Ivonne, la bella danzatrice (1915), Diana, l'affascinatrice (1915), La perla del cinema (1916), and Lacrymae rerum (1916). Mid-1910s the Benetti's were highly productive regulars of the Caesar troupe and thus also appeared in several films by Gustavo Serena, Emilio Ghione, Camillo De Riso and Edoardo Bencivenga - often performing in the leads or as most important antagonists.

By 1918 the golden years at Caesar were over. The couple moved to Filmograf, where they acted in films by Gian Orlando Vassallo and Gustavo Serena. Between 1920 and 1924 the couple acted in films at Rinascimento Film and FERT in Turin and at Libertas in Rome. Carlo played in several films with Maria Jacobini and directed by Gennaro Righelli: La casa di vetro (1920), Il richiamo (1921), Il viaggio (1921), and Cainà (1922), while opposite Jacobini in Guglielmo Zorzi's La bocca chiusa (1924). He also co-acted with Italia Almirante Manzini (La grande passione, 1922), Helena Makowska (La dama e il mistero, 1921), and Rina De Liguoro (Maremma, 1924). La vergine del faro (Telemaco Ruggeri, 1924) was Olga's last film. In the later 1920s Carlo could still be seen in such films as Fra Diavolo (1925), Kiff Tebby (1928), and La locandiera (1929).

Sources: IMDB, Aldo Bernardini, Cinema muto italiano protagonist, Aldo Bernardini/Vittorio Martinelli, Il cinema muto italiano, 1912-1929. NB IMDB erroneousy claims Olga was also in the 1911 version of Gerusalemme liberata. Prints of Verso l’amore, Amore bendato and a fragment of Fedora can be found in the collection of the Eye Filmmuseum. The entire film Diana l'affascinatrice with Carlo Benetti and Francesca Bertini can be watched on Vimeo: vimeo.com/206054166, courtesy of Cinematek Brussels (no sound)

Tags:   Carlo Benetti Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana 1920s 1910s Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte POstale Postkaart Postal Picture Cinema Carte Cartolina Cine Carte Postale Card Celebrity Costume Cinema Italiano Film Film Star Movies Movie Star Muet Muto Screen Star Silent SChauspieler Stummfilm Darsteller Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte Actor Acteur Attore Olga Benetti Roseo

© All Rights Reserved

Italian collectors card by the Naples and Rome based journal Film. Photo: Roseo & Co., Napoli / Caesar Film.

Olga Benetti (?-1958) was an Italian actress who acted in many films of the Roman film companies Cines, Celio and Caesar in the 1910s and early 1920s. She often performed opposite Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena and her husband Carlo Benetti (1885-1949).

Tags:   Olga Benetti Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana 1920s 1910s Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte POstale Postkaart Postal Picture Cinema Carte Cartolina Cine Carte Postale Card Celebrity Costume Cinema Italiano Film Film Star Movies Movie Movie Star Muet Muto Screen Star Silent Schauspielerin Stummfilm Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte ACtress Actrice Attrice Darstellerin Caesar Film

© All Rights Reserved

Italian postcard by Magazine Film - corriere dei cinematografici, Napoli/Roma. Photo: Roseo & Co, Naples / Caesar Film.

Camillo De Riso (1854-1924) was an Italian actor and director of the Italian stage and screen, most famous for his comic acting and directing at the companies Ambrosio, Gloria, and Caesar.

Camillo De Riso was born in Naples on 20 November 1854, as the son of Alfonso De Riso, a stage actor who was most popular in the 19th century. Camillo started in the theatre company of his father in the early years of the 20th century, after which he created his own company together with Giuseppe Sichel and Giuseppe Brignone.In 1912 he was hired by Ambrosio Film in Turin, where he formed a successful trio with Gigetta Morano and Eleuterio Rodolfi, contributing with his rotund face, small size and generous look of bourgeois bonhomme. Examples are Un successo diplomatico and L’oca alla Colbert, both 1913 and both directed by Rodolfi. The films of the trio were often based on Italian and French fin de siecle pochades and grew in length over the years. In late 1913 De Riso started at the Gloria company. Here he created the gay epicure and shameless libertine character of ‘Camillo’, and directed himself in this series of comical shorts between 1913 and 1914. He also performed in feature films, a.o. as the theatre impresario Schaudard in Lyda Borelli’s debut film Ma l’amor mio non muore (Love Everlasting, Mario Caserini 1913), and as the unfortunate Giuliano Barbet in Florette e Patapon (Caserini 1913), an adaptation of the famous pochade by Hennequin and Véber. While De Riso also acted in epics and thrillers such as Caserini’s films Nerone e Agrippina and Il treno degli spettri (both 1913), he more and more specialized as the comedian, either in the lead in comedies or as the sidekick in dramas. At Gloria he was also a director, starting with the comedies Somnambulismo (1913) and Romanticismo (1913), and stayed there until 1915. In 1914 De Riso shortly worked for the small Rome based company Latium Film, where he a.o. directed and acted in an adaptation of Zola’s Nana (1914).

From 1915 on Camillo De Riso’s career took a new turn, when he started working at the Roman Caesar Film company. Here he not only continued his Camillo comedies, well into the early 1920s. He also acted in a long series of films with diva Francesca Bertini. At Caesar, Bertini then had quite a fixed cast around her including De Riso, Gustavo Serena, Olga and Carlo Benetti, Alfredo De Antoni, and Giuseppe De Liguoro. The men of this group often also functioned as directors as well, including De Riso. Titles include: La signora delle camelie (Gustavo Serena, 1915), La perla del cinema (Giuseppe De Liguoro, 1916), My little baby (De Liguoro, 1916), Odette (De Liguoro, 1916), Andreina (Serena, 1917), the series of I sette peccati capitali (The Seven Moral Sins, 1918-1919, several directors) – of which De Riso directed himself the episode La gola (1918) – Mariute (Edoardo Bencivenga, 1918), and Spiritismo (De Riso, 1919). De Riso also directed other popular actresses of the late 1910s such as Leda Gys (La principessa, 1917, which he also scripted), Tilde Kassay (Niniche, 1918; I nostri buoni villici, 1918; La figlia unica, 1919; Una donna funesta/Nanà, 1919), and Elena Lunda (Una donna, una mummia, un diplomatico, 1920), but in the early 1920s De Riso mostly directed his own Camillo comical shorts, and he even did a parody of Shakespeare’s Otello in 1920 (which the press didn’t like). Memorable parts De Riso played in A San Francisco (Serena, 1915), Don Giovanni (Bencivenga, 1916), the Sardou adaptation Ferréol (Bencivenga, 1916), and lastly, in Occupati d’Amelia (Telemaco Ruggeri, 1923), the adaptation of a famous Feydeau boulevard comedy, and starring Pina Menichelli and Marcel Levesque. De Riso contributed to over a 100 films, mostly comedies, and directed some 65 films, until his premature death in Rome on 2 April 1924.

Sources: Italian Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, IMDB.

Tags:   Vintage Postcard Camillo De Riso Camillo De Riso Cinema Cinema Italiano Film Film Star Movies Star Screen Silent Sepia Schauspieler Actor Acteur Attore Italy Italian Italia Italiana Italiano 1920s 1910s Muet Muto Stummfilm Theatre Theater Stage Teatro Buhne Ambrosio Gloria Caesar Latium Comedy Comedian comical commedia comédie Komödie Mario Caserini Eleuterio Rodolfi Gigetta Morano Francesca Bertini Tilde Kassay Elena Lunda Leda Gys Gustavo Serena Giuseppe De Liguoro Olga benetti Carlo Benetti Alfredo De Antoni Edoardo Bencivenga Adaptation drama melodrama Lyda Borelli Director screenwriter regista scenaggiatore epicure libertine Roseo

© All Rights Reserved