La fiaccola sotto il moggio (1916)

Polish singer and actress Helena/Elena Makowska (1893-1964) starred as the evil Angizia in the Italian silent film La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). The Ambrosio production was an adaptation of the eponymous stage play by Gabriele D'Annunzio (1905). Ivo Blom collected the complete set of Italian postcards that was published to promote the film, with the original envelope included.


Italian postcard. Photo: Ambrosio. Anna De Marco as Gigliola in La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: "All was dark. An unrelenting scourge scatters in the night the trembling survivors. Blessed is the one who rests in peace!" The vengeful Gigliola visits the grave of her mother in the family chapel, one year after the murder. She holds a wreath in her hands.


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 1 of 10, no. 3885. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Helena Makowska as Angizia in La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: She didn't want the requiem mass to be celebrated today. She wants to do it after Pentecost. Who knows why? [Angizia watches the Di Sangro family attending mass].


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 2 of 10, no. 3887. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Helena Makowska as Angizia and Umberto Mozzato as Tibaldo in La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: Tibaldo and Angizia.


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 3 of 10, no. 3889. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Scene from La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: Bertrando to Tibaldo: Look at me closely, look me in the eyes, you who speaks of victims. Well, one for sure is printed to the back of your eye, you widower of Monica, and husband of the woman of the marshes. [Gigliola and Donna Aldegrina witness a fight between the two stepbrothers].

A desire for revenge grows in the mind of the young girl

La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916) tells the decadent noble family Di Sangro. The family lives in a decrepit castle in the Abruzzi. Gigliola (Anna De Marco) hates her stepmother Angizia (Helena Makowska), a former servant of the family who in order to be able to marry Gigliola's father, Tibaldo (Umberto Mozzato), seduced him and killed his first wife, Monica (Linda Pini).

A desire for revenge grows in the mind of the young girl, only to be fulfilled by killing the perfidious intruder. Before committing her 'justice', she takes poison to atone for the act she is about to commit. But the evil woman is already dead: it is Tibaldo who has preceded his daughter when finding out about his second wife's infidelity and murder. Gigliola dies on her mother's grave, despairing she has been unable to finish her revenge.

Gabriele D'Annunzio's original tale has a partly different plot. Here the point of departure is that the family of Tibaldo and his new wife suffers from moral and physical decadence. A snake breeder, Angizia's father, is hosted by the family but then chased by his daughter, but not before he has cursed her.

Gigliola has managed to get the deadly vipers and be bitten. But before she can act she finds that her father has killed Angizia in order to save his daughter purity but also to atone for his own complicity in killing his wife.

Yet, Italian Wikipedia states an even different, drastic ending: Gigliola dies but also causes the entire decrepit family castle to collapse, giving her father a heart attack and Angizia a defacement. This plot is not confirmed in other sources and it is not visible in the existing print, held by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. The title of the play and film refers to an Italian expression, meaning being in the possession of a hidden truth.


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 4 of 10, no. 3886. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Anna De Marco as Gigliola in La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: All is dark. A relentless scourge scatters the trembling survivors in the night. Blessed is who rests in peace! [Monologue of Donna Aldegrina to her son Tibaldo.]


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 5 of 10, no. 3884. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Scene from La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: Tibaldo to his mother, Donna Aldegrina: Look, am trembling, weaker and more helpless than when I was born from your spasms. [In the play, Angizia and Gigliola are not present when he says so. In this dialogue, Tibaldo confesses to his mother that Angizia has said to Gigliola that she killed her mother. When he afterwards tries to strangle Angizia, his mother holds him back].


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 6 of 10, no. 3882. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Helena Makowska as Angizia in La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: Gigliola: I will only take the dagger. It has a mockingbird's head. It is nice. [Yet, the snake catcher gives her also a bag with poisonous vipers].

Gorgeous tinting and toning in pink and blue for the night scenes

The film critic Tito Alacevich praised La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916), after Rodolfi's earlier adaptation of Gabriele D'Annunzio's La Gioconda. He states that at the theatre the audience dislikes D'Annunzio's swollen language, but at the cinema, they just neglect the title cards and enjoy the plot and the characters.

Moreover, the critic praised the performances of the actors, in particular those of Helena Makowska, Anna De Marco and Umberto Mozzato. However, to our standards and compared to the other actors, Mozzato is rather overacting like he did in other films as well.

La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916) exists and has been restored by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. It has gorgeous tinting and toning in pink and blue for the night scenes and shows some interesting exteriors such as the facade of a late medieval castle, a courtyard with heavy columns, etc.

The film was shown at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna in 2016, 100 years after its production. Italian film historian Claudia Gianetto has written about the film in the Cinema Ritrovato catalogue.


Vintage cover of Duplex card series of 10 cards (complete) by IPA CT.


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 7 of 10, no. 3883. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Helena Makowska as Angizia and Filippo Butera as Serparao, her father, in La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: Serparo: But you, woman, for this bloodstain on the offered linen, hate me. But I tell you: surely as soon as the sun sets, your destiny will be accomplished. Prepare yourself. [Anguzia's father, maltreated and chased by his own daughter, curses her].


Italian postcard. Photo: Ambrosio. Helena Makowska as Angizia in La fiaccola sotto il moggio/The Torch under the Bushel (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). The 'Serparo' (snake conjurer), played by Filippo Butera, curses his daughter Angizia (Helena Makowska): "You, woman, for this blood stain, which is on the offered linen, you may hate me. But I am telling you: as sure as the sun is now pouring, your destiny is fulfilled. Prepare yourself!" In the back, Angizia's stepdaughter Gigliola (Anna De Marco), suspects her stepmother has killed her mother to marry her father.


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 8 of 10, no. 3890. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Anna De Marco in La fiaccola sotto il moggio (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: Simonetto: "Nothing, I have nothing... But I suddenly have such an anxiety, I don't know why, about you, for you, I don't know, Gigliola!"


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 9 of 10, no. 3891. Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Anna De Marco as Gigliola in La fiaccola sotto il moggio (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: Gigliola: "Mother, give me now the strength to come to you pleased and pacified, to you who left in my soul the vocation of death". [Before her mother's tomb, Gigliola sticks her hands in the bag with the vipers, before killing her stepmother who killed her own mother]


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, card 10 of 10, no. 3883 (the series has 2x number 3883, so this may rather have been 3888). Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Anna De Marco in La fiaccola sotto il moggio (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916). Caption: Gigliola: Where is my father? Who killed her? Who killed her? [Gigliola is too late to kill her evil stepmother, as her father, overcome with remorse, has already done so].

Sources: Claudia Gianetto (Cinema Ritrovato catalogue), Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.

Fernand Herrmann

Fernand Herrmann (1886–1944) or Fernand Hermann was a French silent film actor, who started his film career at Gaumont in 1911. He starred in some 26 films between 1914 and 1925. Herrmann is particularly known for the crime serials by Louis Feuillade for Gaumont, such as Les Vampires (1915) in which he played the double roles of Moréno and Brichonnet, and Barrabas (1920) in which he played the lawyer Jacques Varese.


French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, no. 13. Photo: Belge, Nice.


French postcard in the Les Vedettes de l'Ecran series by Editions Filma, no. 128.


French postcard. Photo: Film Gaumont.

Head of a ring of crooks

Fernand Herrmann was born in 1886 in Paris, France. He was the son of Léon Herrmann and Mathilde Schmoll. His father was a painter, and his mother had no occupation. A child with a passion for the circus, he dreamed of becoming a horseman or acrobat. As a teenager, he attended many of the classic plays performed at the Comédie-Française. He then decided to become an actor, taking diction classes before joining Charles Le Bargy's class at the Conservatoire.

After graduating with a first prize in comedy and a second prize in tragedy in 1907, Fernand Herrmann entered the Odéon, where he was mainly cast in roles of young actors. Two years later, he was hired by Sarah Bernhardt, in the troupe of the theatre that bears her name. He partnered the great actress in such plays as 'Le procès de Jeanne d'Arc' by Emile Moreau, 'L'aiglon' by Edmond Rostand, 'Les bouffons' by Miguel Zamacoïs and 'La dame aux camélias' by Alexandre Dumas fils. Just before the First World War, he also appeared in several plays at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées.

In the meantime, Fernand Herrmann had developed a keen interest in the cinema and was enthralled by the films he discovered. One of his first films for Gaumont was the short thriller Le trust, ou les batailles de l'argent/Trust (Louis Feuillade, 1911) in which a young inventor discovers a way to develop rubber in a more cost-friendly way. When he's on his way back to his boss with the new formula, he's kidnapped by his company's rival who wants the formula for himself. Such Gaumont regulars as Renée Carl, Jean Devalde and René Navarre were in the cast and Herrmann played an accomplice.

In the following years, he appeared for Gaumont in such films as Le calvaire (Louis Feuillade, 1914) and Severo Torelli (Louis Feuillade, 1914). While Fernand Herrmann played the title role in Severo Tortelli and the female lead was for Renée Carl (Dona Pia), actress Musidora (Portia) had one of her first film parts in this film, based on a play (1883) by François Coppée. Supporting actors were a.o. Jehan le Gall, Louise Lagrange and Georges Melchior.

Herrmann became known for the serial Les vampires/The Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915-1916), in which he played Juan-José Moréno (and Brichonnet), head of a ring of crooks rival to the Vampires. The serial established the genre of crime thriller, creating cinematic thriller techniques used later by Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang. The use of gadgetry such as cannons and bombs was also adopted by Lang in films such as Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler/Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (Fritz Lang, 1922). He played the leading role in another Feuillade serial, Barrabas (Louis Feuillade, 1919). as lawyer Jacques Vareèe. Together with journalist Raoul de Nérac (Édouard Mathé), Varese attempts in this serial to expose and destroy the criminal organisation led by a sadistic banker Rudolph Strelitz (Gaston Michel), known as 'Barrabas'.


French postcard by Maury's International Attraction Circuit. Photo: Gaumont. Fernand Herrmann and Renée Carl in Severo Torelli (Louis Feuillade, 1914).


Spanish collectors card in the Escenas selectas de cinematografía, Series, B, No. 20. Photo: Gaumont. Georges Biscot and Fernand Herrmann in Les deux gamines/The two kids (Louis Feuillade, 1921), presented in Spain as Las dos niñas de París.


Spanish minicard in the Escenas selectas de cinematografía series, series B, no. 3, for Juan Garcia, Chocolates Gavilan, Alicante. Fernand Herrmann and Bernard Derigal in Le fils du flibustier/The buccaneer's son (Louis Feuillade, 1922). The Spanish title is El hijo del pirata.

Decency and morality were the order of the day

After World War I, Fernand Herrmann remained one of the permanent cast members of Louis Feuillade. With the return of peace, decency and morality were the order of the day. The Feuillade serials of the new decade leaned clearly towards melodrama. Triumphant crime gave way to persecuted innocence and family life. In Les Deux Gamines (Louis Feuillade, 1921), Fernand Herrmann played the father of Ginette (Sandra Milowanoff) and Gaby (Olinda Mano). Les Deux Gamines, presented at the Gaumont-Palace from January to April 1921, was acclaimed by the public.

Feuillade's subsequent serials, such as L'orpheline (Louis Feuillade, 1921) starring Sandra Milowanoff, Parisette (Louis Feuillade, 1921) and Le fils du flibustier (Louis Feuillade, 1922) starring Aimé Simon-Girard were always received with great favour by the public. But they were not such a triumph as Les Deux Gamines.

In 1923, the film serial craze began to fade. Vindicata (Louis Feuillade, 1923), set in 18th-century Provence and the Islands, has just five "episodes". The star of the series was comedian Georges Biscot and Herrmann only had a supporting part. In L'orphelin de Paris (Louis Feuillade, 1924), Hertmann appeared with two child stars, the seven-year-old girl Bouboule, and her partner René Poyen, ex-Bout-de-Zan who had become a teenager.

Feuillade was exhausted by a lifetime of uninterrupted work. He was forced to take a complete rest in the summer of 1924 and died the following year. Fernand Hermann continued to make films but now with director Georges Monca, including La double existence de Lord Samsey (Maurice Kéroul, Georges Monca, 1924) with Geneviève Félix. His final film was L'espionne aux yeux noirs (Henri Desfontaines, 1926) with Maria Dalbaicin in the title role. Herrmann retired from the cinema for good.

According to IMDb, Fernand Herrmann passed away in 1925. However, Pascal Donald at CinéArtistes shows sources that Herrmann died in 1944 in his hometown Paris. He was 58 and forgotten. Herrmann was the widower of soprano Angèle Grill, who had died a few months after their marriage in 1920, and was divorced from actress Hélène Barretta (1908-1922).


French postcard by Ciné Cartes, Paris, no. 3. Photo: Film Gaumont. Georges Biscot as Césarin at right, Ginette Maddie as Blanche, Michel Floresco as Morales at left and Fernand Hermann as Bajart in Vindicta (Louis Feuillade, 1923). Caption: La cour du faux marquis (The court of the false marquis).


French postcard. Photo: Film Gaumont.

Sources: Pascal Donald (CinéArtistes - French), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

Alan Bates

British actor Alan Bates (1934-2003) forged his name on the West End stage in John Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger' in 1956. He also appeared in 50 films and 33 television productions, and for each role, he created a three-dimensional, unique person. With few exceptions, the talented and versatile Bates performed in premium works, guided by a pure love of acting rather than by box office.


French postcard by La Roue Tourne, Paris. Photo: Alan Bates in The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971).


British postcard by NT (National Theatre) in the series 'Taking the Stage: an exhibition of photographs by John Haynes'. Photo: John Haynes. Alan Bates in the stage production of 'Butley' (1971) by Simon Gray at the Criterion Theatre.

Angry young men

Alan Arthur Bates was born in Allestree, England in 1934. He was the eldest of three sons of Florence Mary (née Wheatcroft), a homemaker and a pianist, and Harold Arthur Bates, an insurance broker and a cellist. Both of his parents were amateur musicians and encouraged him to pursue music, but at age 11, Alan decided to be an actor. After grammar school in Derbyshire, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

Following two years in the Royal Air Force, he made his professional theatre debut with the Midland Theater Company in central England in 1955. He joined the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, and at 22, he made his West End debut in 'The Mulberry Bush' (1956), which was also the company's first production. In the same year, Bates appeared in John Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger', a play that gave a name to a generation of postwar ‘angry young men’.

Along with Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Tom Courtenay, Bates was one of the pioneers in the ‘kitchen sink’ drama revolution that overtook the London theatre in the 1950s: angry young men - writers, actors directors and their creations - rebelling against postwar England's middle-class values. 'Look Back in Anger' made Bates a star and launched a lifetime of his performing in works written by great modern playwrights - Harold Pinter, Simon Gray, Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard as well as such classic playwrights as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and William Shakespeare.

His film debut was playing one of Laurence Olivier’s sons in The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960). Bates played his first lead two years later in A Kind of Loving (John Schlesinger, 1962), where he and June Ritchie played a couple trapped in their working-class life in Manchester. He starred alongside Anthony Quinn as the young English writer, Basil, in the film for which he will always be remembered, Alexis Zorbas/Zorba the Greek (Michael Cacoyannis, 1964). Another popular success was the 'Swinging London' comedy-drama Georgy Girl (1966) with Lynn Redgrave.

Throughout the 1960s, he starred in several major films including as a fugitive in Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes, 1961), as a suburban social climber who doesn't stop at murder to secure Nothing But the Best (Clive Donner, 1964), in Le roi de coeur/King of Hearts (1966, Phillipe de Broca), and in Far From the Madding Crowd (John Schlesinger, 1967). His role opposite Dirk Bogarde in The Fixer (John Frankenheimer, 1968), based on a novel by Bernard Malamud, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In 1969, he became the first actor to do frontal nudity in a major studio film during an infamous wrestling session with Oliver Reed in Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969).


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 1768, 1962. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Progress. Publicity still from A Kind of Loving (1962) with June Ritchie.

Versatility

Alan Bates began the subsequent decade on a very positive note, cast alongside Julie Christie as illicit lovers in The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971). He was handpicked by director John Schlesinger to star in the film Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) in the role of Dr. Daniel Hirsh. Bates was held up filming The Go-Between. He had also become a father around that time, and so he had to pass on the project. The part then went first to Ian Bannen, who balked at kissing and simulating sex with another man, and then to Peter Finch, who earned an Academy Award nomination for the role.

His versatility was again shown as the lead in Simon Gray's 'Butley', a stage comedy about an English literature professor's emotional and psychic disintegration. Bates originated the character on a London stage in 1971, did a reprise on Broadway in 1972, winning his first Tony Award, and played it again in a 1973 film. On stage, Bates had a particular association with the plays of Gray, also appearing in 'Otherwise Engaged', 'Stage Struck', 'Melon', 'Life Support' and 'Simply Disconnected'. In 'Otherwise Engaged', Bates' co-star was Ian Charleson, who became a good friend, and Bates later contributed a chapter to the 1990 book, 'For Ian Charleson: A Tribute'.

Bates would never attain the stardom of far lesser performers because of his preference for challenging and interesting work and avoidance of being type-cast. He continued to work in film and television throughout the 1970s and 1980s and starred in such international films as the dreamy fantasy The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowsk, 1978), as an intriguing but self-absorbed artist, Jill Clayburgh's bearded and ultimately spurned lover in An Unmarried Woman (Paul Mazursky, 1978), as Bette Midler's ruthless business manager The Rose (Mark Rydell, 1979), Nijinsky (1980), Britannia Hospital (Lindsay Anderson, 1984) and as Claudius in Hamlet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1990), which starred Mel Gibson.

Bryan McFarlane writes in Encyclopedia of British Cinema that "Bates went from strength to strength, even in films given the brush-off by the public: for example, the transferred stage successes, Butley (Harold Pinter, 1973) and In Celebration (Lindsay Anderson, 1974), or the undervalued Return of the Soldier (Alan Bridges, 1982)."

On television, his parts ranged from classic roles such as The Mayor of Casterbridge (1978, his favourite role he said), A Voyage Around My Father (1982), An Englishman Abroad (John Schlesinger, 1983) witty and painful as Guy Burgess, and Pack of Lies (1987) in which he played a Russian spy. He continued working in film and television in the 1990s, though most of his roles in this era were low-key.


Vintage photo. Progress. Malcolm McDowell and Alan Bates in Royal Flash (Richard Lester, 1975).

A softer, still attractive maturity

In 2001, Alan Bates joined an all-star cast in Robert Altman's critically acclaimed period drama and murder mystery Gosford Park (Robert Altman, 2001), in which he played the butler Jennings bordering on breakdown. Then he appeared as a fascist who plots to bomb a Super Bowl game in the thriller The Sum of All Fears (2002), and as a mad scientist who foretells disaster in The Mothman Prophecies (Mark Pellington, 2002) starring Richard Gere.

The rumpled charm of his youth had weathered into a softer but still attractive (and still rumpled) maturity. He later played Antonius Agrippa in the TV film Spartacus (Robert Dornhelm, 2004), but died before it debuted. The film was dedicated to his memory and that of writer Howard Fast, who wrote the original novel that inspired the film Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick.

Bates had been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1996 and was knighted in 2003. He was an Associate Member of RADA and was a patron of The Actors Centre in London from 1994 until his death in 2003. He won several theatre awards, including two Tony Awards.

Bates was married to actress and model Victoria Ward from 1970 until her death from a wasting disease in 1992. They had twin sons born in November 1970, the actors Benedick Bates and Tristan Bates. Tristan died following an asthma attack in 1990. In later years, Bates' companion was his lifelong friend, actress Joanna Pettet, his co-star in the 1964 Broadway play 'Poor Richard'. They divided their time between New York and London.

Bates had many relationships with men, including with actors Nickolas Grace and Peter Wyngarde, and Olympic skater John Curry. These were detailed in his posthumous biography, 'Otherwise Engaged' by Donald Spoto. Alan Bates died of pancreatic cancer in London in 2003. Sir Alan and his family set up the Tristan Bates Theatre at the Actors' Centre in Covent Garden, in memory of his son, Tristan, who died at the age of 19. Tristan's twin brother, Benedick, is a deputy director.


Trailer for The Shout (1978). Source: Passion4Horror (YouTube).


Trailer for Return of the Soldier (1982). Source: TapeSalvage (YouTube).

Sources: Brian McFarlane (Encyclopedia of British Cinema), Robert D. McFadden (The New York Times), Karen Rappaport (IMDb), David Claydon (IMDb), BritMovie, Wikipedia, and IMDb.