Italy: Growth Through Spectacle

Italy: Growth Through Spectacle

Italy - Cinema
1) Italy came somewhat late to the film production scene,
2) but beginning in 1905 its film industry grew rapidly and within a few years,
    resembled that of France.
3) Although films were produced in several cities,
    a) Rome’s Cines (founded in 1905) and
    b) Turin’s Ambrosio (1905) and
    c) Itala (1906) soon emerged as the principal companies.
4) The new firms were handicapped by a lack of experienced personnel,
     and some lured artists away from French firms.
5) For example, Cines hired one of Pathé’s main filmmakers, Gaston Velle, as its
     artistic director.
6) As a result, some Italian films were imitations, even remakes, of French movies.
7) By 1910, Italy was probably second only to France in the number of films it sent
   around the world.
8) Partly because Italian producers catered to permanent film theaters,
9) they were among the first who consistently made films of more than one reel
    (that is, longer than fifteen minutes).
10)For example, in 1911, a major director of the period, Giovanni Pastrone,
   made La caduta di Troia (“The Fall of Troy”) in three reels.
11)The triumph of this and similar films encouraged Italian producers to make longer,
   more expensive epics, a trend that culminated in the mid-1910s.
12)The large sets, crowd scenes, and lavish historical costumes of The Fall of Troy
     were typical of Italian epics.

The Fall of Troy (Giovanni Pastrone, 1911)

French clown renamed Tontolini
1) French-born clown Ferdinand Guillaume was known by the stage name Polidor.
2) He starred in over a hundred comedy silent shorts billed as the character Tontolini
   for Cines before working for Pasquali Film in Turin.
3) He is the opening of Giulio Antamoro's Pinocchio (1911) starring Guillaume in the
    title role.

Pinocchio (Giulio Antamoro, 1911)

See Film Clip