1920s Italian Movies

The movie is about a student in Turin during the 1920s (moved up from the earlier versions) and his love for a a seamstress. The student, Mario, is played by Walter Slezak; the girl Dorina by Carmen Boni. The femme fatale Elena (Elena Sangro) threatens the relationship. When school days end, seen here as a kind of transitory idyll, it is "farewell to youth" as the title states, and a melancholy goodbye to youthful romances as well to allow new lives to take form.

"The Roman Banquet, the golden glories, the unrivaled luxuries, the wine, the dance, the song, the beautiful women, the sumptuous splendors that taxed a barbaric world for a night of feasting and revel-- Re-created for your entertainment in the most colossal drama produced", reads an ad in the Daily Argus of New York. Unione Cinematografica Italiana's lavish production of the oft-told tale stars Emil Jannings as Nero.

A silent drama film directed by Herbert Brenon

No overview available

Miss Dorothy is a strange type of tutor, whom the old Duchess Sangro chose to educate Mara, her distant relative, a very rich orphan, with a capricious and rebellious character.

The beautiful young Berta Trégner, paralyzed by an accident, spends her life tolerating her misfortune and believing that her husband Gerardo still loves her. After six years, however, almost miraculously, she recovers and discovers that Gerardo has started a new family with Elena, her best friend, and that they even have a son. Distraught, she runs away from home. Michele, Berta's godfather, saves the day by discovering that Elena has rekindled relations with her ex-husband Alberto. He informs Gerardo, who, having rejected the unworthy Elena, can return to Berta to find love again.

No overview available

Madeleine is a beautiful married woman, hopelessly attracted to her former lover, Jacques. This obsession leads to the destruction of her life and eventually drives her to suicide, while her husband goes insane.

Sole is the first film by the great Alessandro Blasetti and bears a complex relationship to the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, a seminal event in Fascist political history.

The newly-settled city of Venice in the Sixth Century AD: A wandering people struggle to establish Christian Theocracy. Basiliola Faledro, an exotic dancer, wicked and cunning, arrives from faraway lands seeking to avenge her pagan lineage; Her father and brothers blinded and humilated by frenzied zealots. Her primary targets are the brothers Gràtico, both newly-elected to positions of power: One, Marco, an arbiter and tribune, the other, Sergio, a bishop. The title refers to a bold pronouncement made by Deaconess Ema Gràtico to her subjects the Venetians, a seafaring and desperate tribe-- That their native homeland is aboard a ship.

Frate Francesco/The Passion of St. Francis (1927) aka Santo Francesco was the third Italian film on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. St. Francis, or Santo Francesco in Italian, was played by Alberto Pasquali, and the film was directed by Giulio Antamoro.

A young count rents a villa near Rome to be near a woman he's courting. While there, he strikes up a friendship with a young woman living with a violent husband.

In ancient Rome, tyrannical Emperor Caligula is assassinated through the machinations of Messalina. She then makes a conquest of Marcus, who forces the Senate to name her husband, Claudius, as emperor. Messalina's wicked ways continue when she falls in love with Ennio, a slave. Ennio is also loved by Egyptian princess Mirit, but he loves neither of them, preferring the company of Ela, a Greek slave.

The story of the sixteenth century Italian noblewoman Beatrice Cenci.

No overview available

No overview available

Early Italian pirate adventure.

To save her profligate brother from disgrace, Giulia (Leda Gys) gives herself to her husband’s best friend and finds herself pregnant; years later her children’s paternity is called into question.

The devil takes Maciste down to hell in an attempt to corrupt and ruin his morality.

No overview available

No overview available

A young honeymooning couple are lured away to a seaside resort by a high-society sleazeball, who has plans to seduce the girl, while at the same time her hubby in desperation stakes all his money on the roulette wheels.

Nanninella, a young girl, is exploited and abused by her father, whom she maintains with her waitress salary. She falls madly in love with Tore, a handsome and upright man, whose friend Carluccio plots to have Nanninella for himself. Based on a popular Neapolitan song, ‘A Santanotte is the earliest extant feature film by Elvira Notari, Italy's first and most prolific female filmmaker.

Based on Henrik Ibsen's play from 1890-

In order to conquer Margaretella with expensive presents, a young man called Tore steals his mother's jewels but Margaretella seems to prefer Carluccio who challenges Tore to a duel and wounds him. Forgiven by his mother just before she dies, Tore takes revenge by killing Margaretella, but even in prison he can't stop thinking to his victim.

No overview available

In the kingdom of Culrandia (a country that must border Ruritania) King Ottocar must give his daughter’s hand in marriage to the prince of another country. Bebè, tired of waiting for her fiancé, tracks him down in Paris and brings him back to Culrandia where they are eventually married.

Consuelita, a young woman who longs to escape the harsh conditions of her small fishing village, is married off to a wealthy, mentally ill Englishman. (Melo)drama ensues.

Cainá is a young peasant who lives in a small village in Sardinia together with her goats and parents. She is a wild and free spirit and unconventional for any small and closed communities dominated by old rules. Cainà yearns to escape from such a closed atmosphere and the isolated island, so, as an old tune says: "Somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere, waiting for me…"; When a boat arrives to the island, she will do her best to flee away from her little oppressing village and experience new adventures in the continent with the help of the boat captain.

The film, a swirling drama of love and death, is loosely adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1860 novel The Marble Faun. Princess Maria (Elena Sangro) is married to the Duke of Helgoland (Ugo Bazzini), the leader of an anti-government plot about to be exposed by their house guest Count Giorgio (Carlo Gualandri). Giorgio tries to involve Maria, and in his fatal fight with Helgoland, her husband is killed using the knife that Maria hands to Giorgio. Forced to flee, they meet up again in Rome, where Maria has changed her name to Myriam and Giorgio has become a monk. Giorgio still desires Myriam, who rejects his advances, and she convinces her suitor Donatello (Giorgio Fini) to kill him.

Cyrano de Begerac is joyous, witty, a poet, a leader and filled with plenty of charisma and bravado in 17th Century France. He has only one flaw: an unusually long nose which makes him unattractive to any woman. Thus, he cannot have the woman he loves, his cousin Roxanne. Roxanne loves an officer in his army who gets tongue-tied in front of women. Who will Roxanne love? Will Cyrano ever find love? Or will he find happiness in helping the officer woo Roxanne? This is a story of split personalities, human frailty and unrequited love.

A feature film by Elvira Notari, Italy's earliest and most prolific female filmmaker.

In 1921, Titanus released a three-part serial based on a popular Italian novel from the turn of the 20th century: Nobody’s Children by Ruggero Rindi. The tale of lovers thwarted by class differences, of illegitimate children and parental recognition denied was a major success for producer Gustavo Lombardo and leading lady Leda Gys.

No overview available

No overview available

A young girl is abducted by her tutor, and they set off in a ship which has a sheik on board, who tries to molest her, but she is saved by a sailor. He and Maciste fight off the entire crew but the girl is captured again by the sheik and carried off to his harem, where Maciste and the sailor rescue her and take her back to Italy.

Based on the famous historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni, and set between 1628 and 1630 in Lombardy, Northern Italy, during the Spanish domination, the film displays the marriage between two young textile workers, Renzo and Lucia. The 1922 version is one of the most ambitious and spectacular films in all Italian silent cinema, with remarkable mass scenes and some images that sparked controversy.

No overview available

Carmine Gallone and Amleto Palermi’s The Last Days of Pompeii 1926 stages in sumptuous colour tinting the epic fall of the ancient city buried by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption. Adapted from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s love story, the film was innovative in its special effects and an early major box-office hit. A beautiful tinted restoration print was prepared using photochemical processes by Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale in the mid-1990s and the premiere screening of the restoration print was held in the amphitheatre in Pompeii, followed by a screening at the major restoration festival ‘Il Cinema Ritrovato’ in Bologna in 1998.

The story begins with a scientist creating a device shaped like a man that can be remote-controlled by a machine. The mechanical man possess super-human speed and strength. The scientist is killed however by a gang of criminals, led by a woman named Mado, who wish to get the instructions for building the mechanical man. The criminals are captured before they are able to get them and are brought to trial and condemned. Mado manages to escape and kidnaps the scientist's niece whom she forces to give her the instructions which she uses to build a mechanical man.