Acting
Italian silent film, an adaptation of La Curée by Émile Zola
During a fire, Pina is saved by her young cousin Enrico, who is blinded by the flames. The girl becomes Enrico’s guide, and the two earn their living as street musicians. Pina falls in love with Count Manlio, who sets her on the path to a singing career. For the sake of success, she abandons Enrico, but years later, overcome by remorse, she decides to leave Manlio in order to care for her cousin once again.
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.
Sant'Ilario is a 1923 silent film
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.
Sposa nella morte! is a 1915 Italian silent drama film directed by Emilio Ghione and starring Lina Cavalieri. Only 15 minutes remain today.
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.
Two siblings lose their parents amidst turmoil in revolutionary France and are adopted by a peasant family. Once grown up, the older brother enlists in the Napoleonic Wars.
Italian silent film directed by Emilio Ghione and starring Ida Carloni Talli, Lina Cavalieri and Diomira Jacobini. This film may have been rereleased in 1919 as The House of Granada by Paramount
Angela Chiaromonte is the daughter of a wealthy Italian prince who is killed in a fall from his horse. Though Angela stands to inherit half of a large estate, her older half-sister burns the will and thus inherits everything herself, throwing Angela into poverty. Fortunately, Angela is engaged to marry dashing Captain Giovanni Severi - but he soon is captured by Arabs while on an expedition to Africa. Believing him dead, Angela, dedicating her life to his memory, becomes a nun, unaware that her lover has escaped his captors and is returning to Italy. The dramatic climax takes place against a backdrop of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Guglielmo Oberdan, the martyr of Trieste, already exemplary figure of fervent irredentist, then anti-Austrian conspirator executed for attempting to assassinate Emperor Franz Joseph after the disillusionment that followed the death of Garibaldi (1882), became, in 1915, the symbol of a civil case of patriotism.
After rescuing a young boy named Leo from a brutal gang, the noble outlaw Za la Mort discovers the child is the heir to a massive fortune. He and his loyal partner Za la Vie must protect Leo from the Grey Rats, a ruthless criminal syndicate led by the villainous Grigione who are desperate to steal the inheritance. The chase leads them through the Parisian underworld and across the globe to secure Leo's safety and the secret of his past.
During the latter years of the reign of the tyrannical Roman emperor Nero, Marcus Vinicius, one of Nero's officers, falls in love with a young Christian named Lygia, attempting to enslave her. Lygia's protector, the noble and burly Ursus, works to save her from Vinicius' clutches. Pursuing Lygia, Vinicius finds himself at a catacomb prayer meeting led by the apostle Peter and finds his conscience stirring-- just as Nero orders Rome burned. A landmark in epic film, Enrico Guazzoni’s grand-scale masterpiece laid the foundations for what colossal Italian spectacles would become. The film had tremendous influence on Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914) and D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916).
Italian short drama starring Ida Carloni Talli.
Based loosely on Shakespeare's play, Plutarch's "Life of Antony", and Pietro Cossa's dramatic poem, "Cleopatra", this movie was spectacular for its time. It offers location shots made in Italy and Egypt, large crowd scenes (e.g., the Roman army embarking in Alexandria), lots of emotional drama (Marc Antony & Cleopatra, his wife Octavia, sister of Antony's rival Octavian, unhistorically coming to Alexandria to beg him to return to her, and some mean, mean looks exchanged between Octavia and Cleopatra.
