
Carmine Gallone
Directing
Biography
Carmine Gallone (10 September 1885 – 11 March 1973) was an early Italian film director, screenwriter, and film producer, who was also controversial for his works of pro-Fascist propaganda and historical revisionism. Considered one of Italian cinema's leading early directors, he directed over 120 films in his fifty-year career between 1913 and 1963.
Known For

Non-musical account of Puccini's opera: Tosca and Cavaradossi are in love, but the tyrant Scarpia desires Tosca and oppresses Cavaradossi who is fighting for freedom.
Tosca

The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.
House of Ricordi

Don Camillo (now bishop) and Peppone (now senator) return to the town of Brescello and rekindle their friendly rivalry.
Don Camillo: Monsignor

A story, set in Rome of 44 A.D., concerning the amorous and political intrigues of the evil Empress Messalina, the wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius, and her eventual hounding to death.
The Affairs of Messalina

When Emir Feofar Khan, leader of the Tartar hordes, takes up arms and invades the steppes of Eastern Siberia, Czar Alexander II of Russia entrusts the brave officer Michael Strogoff with a dangerous mission.
Michael Strogoff

Bewildered, Don Camillo learns that Peppone intends to stand for parliament. Determined to thwart his ambitions, the good priest, ignoring the recommendations of the Lord, decides to campaign against him.
Don Camillo's Last Round

Japanese-Italian adaptation of Puccini's opera.
Madame Butterfly

No description available.
Polikuschka

This tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, La maledizione (The Curse), refers to the curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter had been seduced by the Duke with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda likewise falls in love with the Duke and eventually sacrifices her life to save him from the assassins hired by her father.
Rigoletto

Historical drama depicting the last of the Punic Wars between the Roman Republic and Carthage.
Carthage in Flames

A story of the Second Punic Wars, beginning with Scipio's futile pleas to the Roman Senate to build an army to battle Hannibal, that climaxes with the battle of Zama.
Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal

Italian filmmaker Carmine Gallone was still in his "operetta" mode when he helmed 1938's Il Sogno di Butterfly (Dream of the Butterfly) Maria Cebotari plays opera diva Rosa Belloni, currently starring in a production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. The plot thickens when Rosa's backstage life begins to mirror the travails of the character she is portraying. The climax comes when Harry Peters (Fosco Giachetti), the American father of Rosa's illegitimate child, returns after four years with his new wife in tow, leading inexorably to a doleful ending both on- and offstage. Critics complained about the substandard photography in Il Sogno di Butterfly, but this might have been due to poor laboratory work.
The Dream of Butterfly

Film version of the Verdi opera about lovers on the run after the accidental death of the girl's father.
La forza del destino

The biographical story of Puccini spans his creative life from early student days to the height of success, including his early flop Madama Butterfly and his incomplete Turandot. Along the way he encounters three women who change his life, including an attractive, beautiful singer whom he drops for a small town girl, and a servant girl who commits suicide over him.
Puccini

Carmen, wife of a certain Vincenzo detained for theft, chooses Antonio as a friend. When the husband is released from prison, he accepts the relationship in progress and continues to use the woman in his shady businesses.
Carmen di Trastevere

An opera singer hides an American soldier in his house in Nazi-occupied Rome.
Before Him All Rome Trembled

Manon escapes with the young nobleman Des Grieux, then becomes a high-class courtesan and finally forced to exile to America.
Manon Lescaut

Virginia de Leyva, daughter of a Spanish Lord, becomes a nun in Monza, in 1600s. She becomes very strict with herself and the students until she's unable to resist a romance with the nobleman Gian Paolo Osio which will lead both to danger.
The Nun of Monza

As soon as he graduated from the Naples Conservatory, Vincenzo Bellini meets Maddalena Fumaroli and immediately falls in love with her.
Casta diva

A courtesan sacrifices her relationship with a youthful admirer after the man's father pleads with her. Adapted from Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 opera in the three acts "La Traviata".