Silent actors from Latin America

At le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2024 in Pordenone, one of the major retrospectives is dedicated to Latin America. The curator of this festival section, Paolo Tosini, has put together a programme of 31 titles. It aims to be an impulse for research and the preservation of silent material in Latin America, involving 16 archives from 10 different countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay. Most of the silent films of these countries are little known outside Latin America. For the occasion, EFSP selected 12 film stars born in Latin America.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1036/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Phoebus Film. Ramon Novarro in Scaramouche (Rex Ingram, 1923).

Mexican-American actor Ramon Novarro (1899-1968) was a popular Latin Lover of the 1920s and early 1930s. He was the star of silent Hollywood's biggest epic, Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925).


French postcard by Editions Cinemagazine, no. 237. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Ramon Novarro in Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (Fred Niblo, 1925).


French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, no. 207. Photo: Enrique (de) Rivero as Henri de Rogier in Le tournoi dans la cité/The Tournament (Jean Renoir, 1928), with . The film was scripted by Henry Dupuis-Mazuel. Sets by Robert Mallet-Stevens, costumes by George Barbier and exteriors shot at Carcassonne.

Enrique Rivero aka Riveros (1906-1954) was a Chilean actor, who peaked in the late 1920s and early 1930s French cinema. He is famous for his lead in Jean Cocteau's Le sang d'un poète/The Blood of a Poet (1930).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1035/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Phoebus-Film, Berlin. Paul Ellis in The Bandolero (Tom Terriss, 1924).

Manuel Granada (1896-1974) was an Argentine actor who appeared in American, Spanish, Argentine and Mexican films. He made his film debut in the Metro-Goldwyn film The Bandolero in 1924 under the name Manuel Granado, but would soon become better known as Paul Ellis in films such as Three Hours (1927) and The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929). Indeed, our card already uses the name of Paul Ellis for his first Hollywood film. Ellis would have a long career but mostly as a supporting actor. In the early 1930s, he was in Spanish language versions of Hollywood productions, while after the war he acted in Argentine in various films. All in all, he acted in over 110 films.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 5639/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Fox. Warner Baxter and Mona Maris in Romance of the Rio Grande (Alfred Santell, 1929).

Sultry, sleepy-eyed Argentine brunette Mona Maris (1903-1991) appeared in both European and Hollywood silent films. After the arrival of sound, she starred in a string of Spanish-language versions of American films.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1854/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Fox.

Barry Norton (1905-1956) was a boyishly handsome Argentine-born actor, who had a career in the United States. In Hollywood, he acted in over 90 films by F.W. Murnau and others. He started in silent films in 1925 and is perhaps best known for his role as Juan Harker in Universal Pictures' Spanish-language version of Drácula (1931). The English-language role of Jonathan Harker was originated by David Manners.


Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 5161. Photo: United Artists.

Mexican-born American film star Gilbert Roland (1905–1994) was often cast in the typical 'Latin Lover' role during the silent era. Roland later played romantic lead roles in Spanish language adaptations of American films. In the mid-1940s, he was featured in the popular film series The Cisco Kid. Beginning in the 1940s, critics began to take notice of his acting and he was praised for his supporting roles in John Huston's We Were Strangers (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). His last film appearance was in the Western Barbarosa (1984).


French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 331. Photo: Max Munn Autrey / Fox Film. Dolores Del Rio and Edmund Lowe in What Price Glory? (Raoul Walsh, 1926).

Mexican and American actress Dolores del Río (1905–1983) was a Hollywood star in the 1920s and 1930s. She was also one of the most important female actresses of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. Del Río was the first major Latin cross-over star in Hollywood and was considered one of the most beautiful faces that have emerged in Hollywood cinema. She also appeared in several European films.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3241/1, 1928-1929. Photo: United Artists. Lupe Velez in The Gaucho (F. Richard Jones, 1927).

Lupe Velez (1908-1944) was one of the first Mexican actresses to succeed in Hollywood. Her nicknames were 'The Mexican Spitfire' and 'Hot Pepper'. She was the leading lady in such silent films as The Gaucho (1927), Lady of the Pavements (1928), and Wolf Song (1929). During the 1930s, her well-known explosive screen persona was exploited in a series of successful films like Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934), and Hollywood Party (1934). In the 1940s, Vélez's popularity peaked after appearing in the Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalise on Vélez's well-documented fiery personality. She had several highly publicised romances and a stormy marriage. In 1944, Vélez died of an intentional overdose of the barbiturate drug Seconal. Her death and the circumstances surrounding it have been the subject of speculation and controversy.


Romanian postcard. Photo: Dorian-Film. Maria Corda and Adelqui Migliar in Die Sklavenkönigin/The Moon of Israel (Mihaly Kertesz aka Michael Curtiz, 1924).

Adelqui Migliar aka Adelqui Millar (1891-1956) was a Chilean actor who was the male star of Dutch silent cinema in the 1910s and early 1920s. Later on, he acted and directed in Britain, Austria and Argentina.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4768/1, 1929-1930. Photo: United Artists.

Mona Rico (1907-1994) was a Mexican American actress. Ernst Lubitsch discovered Rico in 1928 and gave her the lead of the female antagonist in the United Artists silent drama Eternal Love (1929), starring John Barrymore and Camilla Horn, and set in the Swiss Alps in the early 19th century.


French postcard for Campari. Photo: Studio G.L. Manuel Frères.

Mona Goya (1909–1961) was a Mexican-born French film actress who probably debuted in film in Germaine Dulac's late silent film Princesse Mandane (1928). In the same year, she also acted in various other films, such as the period piece Madame Recamier (1928) by Gaston Ravel and she had a small part in Marcel L'Herbier's lavish production L'Argent (1928). Goya's career really set off with the arrival of sound film around 1930.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5780. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Raquel Torres (1908-1987) was a Mexican-born American film actress. She had her breakthrough as a Polynesian beauty in White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). She played island girls, and biracial beauties and was a sexy foil to the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933). After marrying a stockbroker in 1935, she retired.

Source: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Italian).

Rapsodia satanica (1917)

'I capolavori del Canone rivisitato' is one of the main programmes of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. One of the masterpieces of the canon that will be revisited is the Faustian tale Rapsodia satanica/Satan's Rhapsody (1917). The star of this Cines production is Lyda Borelli (1887-1959), the first diva of the Italian silent cinema. The fascinating film actress caused a craze among female fans called 'Borellismo'. Rapsodia satanica was the last film directed by Nino Oxilia who was killed in action in 1917. Maestro Pietro Mascagni composed the score.


Italian postcard by Ed. Soc. Anon. Bettini, Roma, no. 173. Photo: Riccardo Bettini. Lyda Borelli.


Italian postcard by Ed. Soc. Anon. Bettini, Roma, no. 118. Photo: Riccardo Bettini. Lyda Borelli.


Italian postcard by Ed. Soc. Anon. Bettini, Roma, no. 275. Photo: Riccardo Bettini. Pietro Mascagni.


Italian postcard by Ed. Soc. Anon. Bettini, Roma, no. 158. Photo: Riccardo Bettini. Lyda Borelli.


Italian postcard by Ed. Soc. Anon. Bettini, Roma, no. 164. Photo: Riccardo Bettini. Lyda Borelli.

Additional footage, shot to please the maestro

Rapsodia Satanica/Satan's Rhapsody (1917) was at the time called "a cinematographic poem". This poetic vein can be found in the film's intertitles. The poet Fausto Maria Martini wrote the story of the film, in verse, in collaboration with the director of the Cines, Baron Alberto Fassini, who used the pseudonym Alfa. The old Contessa Alba d'Oltrevita (Lyda Borelli) deplores her faded youth after a party at her castle. Mephisto (Ugo Bazzini) steps out of a painting and offers her a pact: if she denies love, he will make her young again. She destroys a statuette of Love to confirm her renouncement (yet, the sculpture was not entirely broken). Alba changes into youthful splendour and enjoys the company of young men, in particular the two brothers Tristano (André Habay a.k.a. Andrea Habay) and Sergio (Giovanni Cini). Sergio is head over heels in love with her, but she laughs him off.

During a costumed ball, in which Alba is dressed as Salome, she gets a note from Sergio, telling her to come out at midnight or he will kill himself. The capricious Alba then seduces Tristano and forces him to choose: either he or his brother will have her. He goes mad and prevents her from going outside. A shot is heard: Sergio has killed himself. Tristano and Alba are shocked, she pushes him away and closes the castle to mourn her loss. After a while she notices Spring has arrived and revives, covering her rooms with flowers. At nighttime, she notices there is a cavalier on the hills. Could it be Tristano returning? She dresses up like a priestess and goes outside, expecting her lover. But instead, it is Mephisto who punishes her for falling in love and changes her back into the old lady. When she sees herself in the pond, she dies of a heart attack.

As Anthony Kobal writes on IMDb, "Rapsodia satanica was the last film directed by Nino Oxilia and is undoubtedly one of the finest achievements of the early Italian cinema. In it, Oxilia spins a variation on the Faust myth, embodied here by the diva Lyda Borelli. Typical of extravagant D'Annunzian aestheticism at its height, Rapsodia Satanica was one of the summits of what was later called the 'tail coat film'. Diametrically opposed to the "cinema of reality" practised by Serena, Martoglio and others, 'tail coat films' set their melodramatic stories in the salons and villas of the upper middle class and the aristocracy, deploying narrative structures contrived to showcase their actors and especially its actresses. This had the effect of accentuating their physical presence and turning them into stars - probably the first stars in movie history. The success of the "diva" contributed to the development of motion picture grammar in its special use of the close-up."

Rapsodia satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1917) was the first and only film to feature a score written especially for it by famous Italian composer Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) primarily known for his operas. His masterpiece 'Cavalleria rusticana' (1890) caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music. Mascagni wrote fifteen operas, an operetta, several orchestral and vocal works, and also songs and piano music. Pietro Mascagni was probably the first composer to write a full score for an Italian feature film. Director Nino Oxilia had started shooting the film already in 1914. In 1915, Mascagni signed an exclusive contract with Cines to compose music for a film. Originally, Mascagni was to write a score for a film based on the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi, but the scenario by the socialist parliamentarian Enrico Ferri turned out to be too boring, too historical and, according to Mascagni, lacked lyricism. The project was cancelled. After that, three films were presented to Mascagni, of which Mascagni selected Rapsodia satanica, but under various conditions. The main condition was that the last part be entirely refilmed. Oxilia filmed additional footage shot to please the maestro.

Rapsodia satanica was ready in 1915. The film was presented for the press at the Augusteo in Rome and enthusiastically acclaimed by the critics. For reasons unknown, the film did not receive a censorship visa until June 1917. The official premiere took place on 5 July 1917, again at the Augusteo, but in the middle of Summer: audiences and critics had gone on holiday. More than sixty years later, in the 1980s the film was rediscovered. In the Netherlands, the film was included in the retrospective Hartstocht en heldendom: Il primo cinema italiano, 1905-1945 (1988), co-organised by Ivo Blom and Nelly Voorhuis. Only a black-and-white version was available at the time. In 1996, a part monochrome tinted and toned, and part hand-coloured version was found at the Cinémathèque Suisse in Lausanne. Thanks to the film archives of Bologna, Milan and Lausanne the film was analogue restored. In 2015 the film was digitally restored in 4K by Bologna and Lausanne. In 2018 Cineteca di Bologna released the 4-films-DVD Dive!, which includes Rapsodia satanica, with the music by Pietro Mascagni.


Spanish cromo by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 1 of 6 cards. Photo: Cines / J. Muntañola. Lyda Borelli and Ugo Bazzini in Rapsodia satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1917).


Spanish cromo by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 2 of 6 cards. Photo: Cines / J. Muntañola. Lyda Borelli, Giovanni Cini and Andrea Habay in Rapsodia satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1917).


Spanish cromo by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 3 of 6 cards. Photo: Cines / J. Muntañola. Lyda Borelli and Giovanni Cini in Rapsodia satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1917).


Spanish cromo by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 4 of 6 cards. Photo: Cines / J. Muntañola. Lyda Borelli and Giovanni Cini in Rapsodia satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1917).


Spanish cromo by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 5 of 6 cards. Photo: Cines / J. Muntañola. Lyda Borelli, Giovanni Cini and Andrea Habay in Rapsodia satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1917).


Spanish cromo by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 6 of 6 cards. Photo: Cines / J. Muntañola. Lyda Borelli in Rapsodia satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1917).

Sources: Le giornate del cinema muto (Italian), Ivo Blom ('Rapsodia satanica', catalogue festival Cinemémoire (1991)), Cinema Ritrovato catalogues 1996 and 2015, Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.

Art direction by Ben Carré

One of the major retrospectives of the 43rd edition of le Giornate del Cinema Muto is dedicated to Ben Carré's activity as a set designer. For King Vidor's classic La Bohème (1925) with John Gilbert and Lilian Gish, Carré designed most of the sets that recreate the Parisian setting of Mimì and Rodolfo's unhappy love story. The beginning and development of Ben Carré's extraordinary career, first in France, at Gaumont with Louis Feuillade, and then in the United States alongside some of the greatest directors, can be retraced in the section curated by Emmy Award-winning set designer Thomas Walsh. Among the titles are rarely-seen classics such as Trilby (1915) and The Blue Bird (1918), the result of Carré's collaboration with Maurice Tourneur.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/1. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Lillian Gish and John Gilbert in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/2. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Lillian Gish, John Gilbert and Renée Adorée in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).


German postcard by Bruckmann-Verleih. Photo: Universal. Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin in The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925). Caption: Premiere at the Primus Palast 5 November 1925.


Reproduction of a film still by Warner/ Vitaphone. John Barrymore as Don Juan fights Count Giano Donati (Montague Love), while Cesare Borgia (Warner Oland) and Lucrezia Borgia (Estelle Taylor) look on in Don Juan (Alan Crossland, 1926). Set design by Ben Carré.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 86/12. Montagu Love as the Captain of the Guards, Jacqueline Logan as Mary Magdelene, Dorothy Cumming as the Virgin Mary, and Joseph Striker as the Apostle John in The King of Kings (Cecil B. DeMille, 1927). Photo: National Film. Caption: Under the Cross.

The creator of the Emerald City

Ben Carré was born Benjamin S. Carré in Paris, France in 1883. His father, a professional painter and decorator, died when Carré was six years old. At thirteen, Carré left school to become an apprentice house painting estimator. Finding his talent lay in painting rather than arithmetic, he took a job as an assistant scene painter at Atelier Amable, at the time one of the most important scenic art studios in Paris. One of his first jobs was painting a large-scale reproduction of the Paris 1900 World's Fair for London's Earl Court Exhibition Hall. Within two years he was designing and painting backgrounds for the Paris Opéra, the Comédie-Française, and Covent Garden in London.

Like many stage designers of the era, Ben Carré was attracted to the burgeoning film industry. In 1905, the then 22-year-old Carré joined Gaumont as a scenic artist. He worked as Messier's assistant in Alice Guy's last years (1906-1907) at Gaumont before she moved to the U.S. Carré is credited for working as art director on films by Louis Feuillade such as Le Huguenot/The Huguenot (Louis Feuillade, 1909), La Mort de Mozart/Mozart's Last Requiem (Étienne Arnaud, Louis Feuillade, 1909), Le Festin de Balthazar/The Feast of Balthazar (Louis Feuillade, 1910) and Aux lions les chrétiens/The Christian Martyrs (Louis Feuillade, 1911). He overturned previous practice by insisting on painting his sets in colour. Soon after, the rest of Gaumont's scenic artists followed suit, and other studios followed soon after. After seven years at Gaumont, Carré moved to the United States in 1912.

Carré first worked for the American Eclair Film Company, based in New York. Carré was unimpressed by the quality of American production and was reportedly miserable until Maurice Tourneur came along. After director Tourneur emigrated from France in 1914, the pair worked on 31 films together. Carré did the art direction for classic Tourneur films such as the comedy-drama Poor Little Rich Girl (Maurice Tourneur, 1917) starring Mary Pickford, the fantasy The Blue Bird (Maurice Tourneur, 1918), and the adventure drama The Last of the Mohicans (Maurice Tourneur, 1920) with Wallace Beery. Carré also worked for many films with early film stars like Clara Kimball Young, House Peters, Olga Petrova, and Seena Owen.

In the 1920s, Carré worked as a freelance art director. He designed sets for The Red Lily (Fred Niblo, 1924) starring Ramon Novarro and created the catacombs for the Horror film The Phantom of the Opera (Ruper Julian, 1925) starring Lon Chaney. Carré worked on a string of films for the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, starting with The Masked Bride (Christy Cabanne, Josef von Sternberg, 1925) with Mae Murray. He produced key sketches for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1925) but received no screen credit because he left MGM mid-production to join Warner Bros. There he worked on the John Barrymore vehicle Don Juan (Alan Crosland, 1925), the first film to feature a synchronised musical score. At Warner he also designed the sets of the part-talkies Noah's Ark (Michael Curtiz, 1928) and The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) starring Al Jolson, and later also A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935). He designed the sets of Murnau's City Girl (F.W. Murnau, 1930), and the Golgotha scene in Cecil DeMille's Biblical epic The King of Kings (1927).

Due primarily to ill health, Ben Carré retired from art direction in 1937 but continued to work on background painting and the creation of miniatures. He created the Emerald City for the Technicolor fantasy The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) and worked on such classic musicals Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944), An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951), and Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1952) starring Gene Kelly. He also painted the backgrounds for the historical dramas Marie Antoinette (W. S. Van Dyke, 1938) starring Norma Shearer as the ill-fated Queen of France, and Julius Caesar (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953) with Marlon Brando. Ben Carré retired in 1965 at the age of 82. In addition to his film work, Carré was a prodigious painter and exhibitor of watercolours featuring Los Angeles cityscapes. He also designed murals for the General Motors Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1969. He died in 1978 in Santa Monica, California.


French postcard. Mae Murray in the American silent film The Masked Bride (Christy Cabanne, Joseph von Sternberg. 1925).


Italian programme card for Il Cinema Ritrovata 2011. Photo: Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin in Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925).


Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Florence, no. 426. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn, Roma. Antonio Moreno and Alice Terry in Mare Nostrum (Rex Ingram, 1926).


Vintage postcard. Photo: Warner Bros. John Barrymore in Don Juan (Alan Crosland, 1926).


French postcard by Europe, no. 452. Photo: United Artists / Regal Film. Douglas Fairbanks in The Iron Mask (Allan Dwan, 1929).


British large card by Picturegoer, in the Colored Art Series, no. CA 8. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Norma Shearer in Marie-Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


Vintage autograph card. Photo: Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly in An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951).


Big programme card by Cineteca Bologna for Il Cinema Ritrovato, XXXVI edizione, Selezione Cinema Ritrovato Young, 2 July 2022. Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952).

Sources: Thomas Walsh (BenCarré.com), Encyclopedia, I.S.Mowis (IMDb), le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Italian), Wikipedia (English and French), and IMDb.