Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. Photo: Films Caserini. Leda Gys and Mario Bonnard in La pantomima della morte / The pantomime of death (Mario Caserini, 1915).
Spanish collector card by Edics. y Publics. de Arte L. Planas, Barcelona, no. 5. Leda Gys and Mario Bonnard in La pantomima della morte / The Pantomime of Death (Mario Caserini, 1915). The Spanish release title was La pantomima de la muerte.
The last show of the famous Amazon of the Circus Continental
The Marchioness Servent (Maria Caserini-Gasperini) has two sons, the man of the world and globetrotter Roberto (Mario Bonnard) and Gualtiero (Gian Paolo Rosmino), who has always lived with his mother.
To finish his studies, Gualtiero moves to Rome, where he meets Sarah (Leda Gys), the famous amazon of the Circus Continental. He falls in love with her.
Roberto is sent by his mother to fetch Gualtiero. In Rome, he casually meets Sarah and spends an evening with her, not knowing that the woman is his brother's lover. Gualtiero surprises them and makes a scene. Their mother convinces Gualtiero to leave the city with her.
Roberto, who has stayed in Rome, begins to see Sarah. He also falls in love with her and goes on tour with the circus. Yet, Sarah is soon bored with him and forgets him in the arms of a new conquest. Roberto duels with the new lover but is seriously wounded. Sarah visits him in the hospital with a 'court' of admirers. Roberto, trying to get up, reopens the wound and bleeds to death.
At the Circus Continental, the last show of Sarah's Pantomime of Death takes place. In the act, Sarah is shot with a blank by an assistant during a beast hunt. The shot that goes off is not a blank, and Sarah doesn't rise anymore. Gualtiero has replaced the assistant and killed her for real. The circus audience does not realise the tragedy that has unfolded before their eye and applauds frantically.
French postcard, no. 7467. Leda Gys and Mario Bonnard in La pantomima della morte / The pantomime of death (Mario Caserini, 1915).
Spanish collector card by Edics. y Publics. de Arte L. Planas, Barcelona, no. 1. Leda Gys and Mario Bonnard in La pantomima della morte / The Pantomime of Death (Mario Caserini, 1915). The Spanish release title was La pantomima de la muerte.
Burned by the flame of sensuality
La pantomima della morte / The pantomime of death (1915) was praised by the critic Guêpe in the Neapolitan film journal La Cine-Fono in 1916.
Guêpe also hads some critical comments: "With just the fascination of her beauty, without any of those terrible dramatic switches in which a vulgar adventuress changes into a person of tragedy, Sarah destroys the two young men and the beautiful lives of the marquis of Servent, bringing them only death and destruction, while she is burned by the flame of sensuality with which she imprisons the other two.
It is the destiny of these rather fantasy-like women to die by the hand of those whom they have transformed into their own instruments of lust."
The critic thought Bonnard and Gys, even if well performing, could have done better, but at the same time admits that this conforms to the taste of the audience, which otherwise would be deluded. What starts as a real artwork thus becomes popular drama, in which the close-ups are all for the wonderful shapes of the protagonist, Leda Gys.
Leda Gys (1892-1957) starred in ca. 60 dramas, comedies, action thrillers and even Westerns of the Italian and Spanish silent cinema. Her claim to fame came with the film Christus (1916), shot in Egypt and Palestine, where Gys performed the Madonna. Mario Bonnard, a.k.a. Mario Bonard (1889-1965) was an Italian actor and director, whose rich career spanned from 1909 to the early 1960s.
Spanish collector card by Edics. y Publics. de Arte L. Planas, Barcelona, no. 2. Leda Gys and Mario Bonnard in La pantomima della morte / The Pantomime of Death (Mario Caserini, 1915). The Spanish release title was La pantomima de la muerte.
Spanish collector card by Edics. y Publics. de Arte L. Planas, Barcelona, no. 3. Leda Gys in La pantomima della morte / The Pantomime of Death (Mario Caserini, 1915). The Spanish release title was La pantomima de la muerte.
Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Il cinema muto italiano, Vol. 1917, II - Italian) Wikipedia (Italian and IMDb. With thanks to Elif Rongen-Kaynakci.
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