Italian postcard. La fiaccola sotto il moggio (Eleuterio Rodolfi, Ambrosio 1916), an adaptation of the play by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Anna De Marco as Gigliola. Caption: "All was dark. An unrelenting scourge scatters in the night the trembling survivors. Blessed is the one who rests in peace!" The vengeful Gigliola visits the grave of her mother in the family chapel, one year after the murder. She holds a wrath in her hands.
Tags: La fiaccola sotto il moggio Ambrosio Eleuterio Rodolfi Gabriele D'Annunzio Adaptation play Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana 1910s Drama 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 Darstellerin Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte ACtress Actrice Attrice Anna De Marco
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Italian postcard. Helena Makowska as Angizia in the Italian silent film La fiaccola sotto il moggio/ The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, Ambrosio 1916), an adaptation of the play by Gabriele D'Annunzio. The Serparo (snake conjurer), played by Filippo Butera, curses his daughter Angizia (Helena Makowska): "You, woman, for this blood stain, which is on the offered linen, you may hate me. But I am telling you: as sure as the sun is now pouring, your destiny is fulfilled. Prepare yourself!" In the back, Angizia's stepdaughter Gigliola (Anna De Marco), who suspects her stepmother has killed her mother to marry her father.
Plot: The decadent noble family Di Sangro lives in a decrepit castle in the Abruzzi. Gigliola (Anna De Marco) hates her stepmother Angizia (Helena Makowska), a former servant of the family who in order to be able to marry Gigliola's father, Tibaldo (Umberto Mozzato), knew how to seduce him and kill his first wife, Monica (Linda Pini). In the mind of the young girl a desire for revenge grows, only to be fulfilled by killing the perfidious intruder. Before committing her 'justice', she takes poison to atone for the act she is about to commit. But the evil woman is already dead: it is Tibaldo who has preceded his daughter, when finding out about his second wife's infidelity and murder. Gigliola dies on her mother's grave, despairing she has been unable to finish her revenge.
D'Annunzio's originale tale has a partly different plot. Here the point of departure is that the family of Tibaldo and his new wife suffers from moral and physical decadence. A snake breeder, Angizia's father, is hosted by the family but then chased by his daughter, but not before he has cursed her. Gigliola has managed to get the deadly vipers and be bitten. But before she can act she finds that her father has killed Angizia in order to save his daughter purity but also to atone for his own complicity in killing his wife. Yet, Italian Wikipedia state an even different, drastic ending: Gigliola's dies but also causes the entire decrepit family castle to collapse, giving her father a heart attack and Angizia a defacement. This plot is not confirmed in other sources and it is not visible in the existing print, held by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. The title of play and film refers to an Italian expression, meaning being in the possession of a hidden truth.
The film critic Tito Alacevich praised Rodolfi's film, after his former adaptation of D'Annunzio's La Gioconda. He states that at the theater the audience dislikes D'Annunzio swollen language, but at the cinema they just neglect the title cards and enjoy the plot and the characters. Moreover, the critic praised the performances of the actors, in particular those of Makowska, De Marco and Mozzato. Instead, to our standards and compared to the others, Mozzato is rather overacting (like he did in other films as well).
The film exists and has been restored by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. It has gorgeous tinting & toning in pink and blue for the night scenes, and shows some interesting exteriors (the facade of a late medieval castle, a courtyard with heavy columns, etc.). It was shown at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna in 2016, 100 years after its production. Claudia Gianetto has written on it in the Cinema Ritrovato catalogue: festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/en/film/la-fiaccola-sotto-i...
Polish singer and actress Helena/ Elena Makowska (1893 - 1964) was a beautiful diva of the Italian silent cinema in the 1910s. During the 1920s she moved to Berlin and also became a star of the German cinema.
Tags: La fiaccola sotto il moggio Ambrosio Eleuterio Rodolfi Gabriele D'Annunzio Adaptation play Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana 1910s Drama 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 Darstellerin Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte ACtress Actrice Attrice SChauspieler Darsteller Actor Acteur Attore Helena Makowska diva Filippo Butera Anna De Marco
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Italian postcard. G.B. Falci, Milano, unnumbered. Maria Carmi as Isabella Inghirami in the Italian silent film Forse che sí, forse che no (Gaston Ravel, 1921), based on Gabriele d'Annunzio's eponymous novel (1910). In 1916 the play had already been adapted to film by Mario Gargiulo, with Tina Xeo in the lead.
Plot: D'Annunzio's novel is set in Mantua, in Palazzo Gonzaga, whose inscription "perhaps that yes, perhaps that no" inspired the title. The protagonist is the noble Paolo Tarsis who lives a loving relationship of passion with Isabella. Unlike the other D'Annunzio supermen, he understands the change of time, and instead of taking refuge in the current of decadence, he rides the new fashion of cars, automobiles and airplanes, partly embracing the current of futurism. However, happiness does not last, because Isabella secretly betrays him with her brother Aldo, reproaching Paolo for his betrayals with Vannina, Isabella's younger sister, who is madly in love with Paolo. When the knots come to a head, Vannina goes to Paolo to reveal the relationship between her brother and her older sister. Paolo, furious, awaits the arrival of Isabella on which he unleashes his anger, beating and insulting her. Vanina commits suicide out of desperation. Isabella, before so self-assured and determined, has become so maddened that her father and stepmother lock her up in an institution. Paolo, unable to help her, also attempts a suicide with a desperate action, to arrive with his plane in Sardinia and return to Italy. The enterprise succeeds, and Paolo is hailed as a hero.
Parts of the novel - such as in the incestuous relationship between sister and brother - would be used by Luchino Visconti for his film Vaghe stelle dell'orsa/Sandra (1965), starring Claudia Cardinale and Jean Sorel.
With her aristocratic air, her severe looks but also her sweet undertones, Italian silent film star and stage actress Maria Carmi (1880-1957) was the cinematic translation of the 19th century Primadonna in Italian and German silent films of the 1910s and early 1920s. She also had an international stage hit with the play The Miracle/ Das Mirakel.
Tags: Forse che sí, forse che no Maria Carmi 1920 Gaston Ravel Medusa Film 1920s 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 Movie Star Muet Muto Screen Star Silent Schauspielerin Stummfilm Darstellerin Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte ACtress Actrice Attrice G. B. Falci
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Italian postcard. Unione Cinematografica Italina. G.B. Falci, Milano, unnumbered. Maria Carmi as Isabella Inghirami in the Italian silent film Forse che sí, forse che no (Gaston Ravel, 1921), based on Gabriele d'Annunzio's eponymous novel (1910). Aldo (Giorgio Fini) spies upon Isabella, while Vanna (Eugenia Masetti) confronts her elder sister Isabella.
With her aristocratic air, her severe looks but also her sweet undertones, Italian silent film star and stage actress Maria Carmi (1880-1957) was the cinematic translation of the 19th century Primadonna in Italian and German silent films of the 1910s and early 1920s. She also had an international stage hit with the play The Miracle/ Das Mirakel.
Tags: Forse che sí, forse che no Maria Carmi 1920 Gaston Ravel Medusa Film 1920s 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 Movie Star Muet Muto Screen Star Silent Schauspielerin Stummfilm Darstellerin Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte ACtress Actrice Attrice sepia UCI G.B. Falci
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Italian postcard by AR, no. 3557. Photo: Varischi Artico & Co., Milano. Oreste Calabresi as Lazaro in the stage play 'La figlia di Jorio' by Gabriele D'Annunzio ( 1904).
Oreste Calabresi (Macerata, May 7, 1857 - Lecco, February 15, 1915) was an Italian actor, considered one of the most important Italian theatrical actors in business between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Calabresi moved to Rome from an early age, where he began his career in the theater by joining the Roman amateur theater "Pietro Cossa". He made his debut in 1881 and from that moment on he signed contracts with various companies, such as Ruta, Lollio, and Salvini-Serafini. His performances in the context of the company Vitaliani aroused positive reactions from critics and the public, but to establish himself he had to wait for the meeting with the Marini company, directed by Giovan Battista Marini. Subsequently he performed with the companies of Garzes, Paladini, Zampieri in 1895, while two years later he staged La gelosa by A.Bisson together with the couple Reiter-Leigheb. In 1900 he founded together with Irma Gramatica and Virgilio Talli the company that for at least five years would prove to be one of the most followed and applauded: the Talli-Gramatica-Calabresi company. During this period he would also prove to be an inspired author. The company staged works by prestigious writers, such as Giovanni Verga, Giuseppe Giacosa and new talents such as Roberto Bracco. Later Calabresi became a partner first with E.Severi, then headed the Calabresi-Mariani company from 1909 and finally worked with the Sabbatini-Ferrero company from 1912. Calabresi stood out in both comic and dramatic parts. His name will remain linked to a memorable interpretation of Lazaro di Roio, to the first representation of D'Annunzio's tragedy La figlia di Jorio in 1904. Also worth mentioning is Sobrero's La nemica staged in 1912 at the Manzoni theater in Milan. In 1914 he acted in two silent films, Il gran giudice (Luigi Maggi, Leonardo Film 1914), and Amore senza stima (director unknown, Cines 1914), but they were neither box office hits nor part of film history afterward. Yet, in Amore senza stima his female partner was Giannina Chiantoni, who had played one of his daughters in the play La figlia di Jorio.
Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDB.
Tags: 1904 Gabriele D'Annunzio play spettacolo teatro Theatre Theater Abruzzi rural drama Vintage Postcard Postkarte POstale Postkaart Postal Picture Carte Cartolina Carte Postale Card Celebrity Costume Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana 1900s Lazaro Oreste Calabresi male actor acteur attore Schauspieler Darsteller Varischi Artico Varischi Artico La figlia di Jorio
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