Italian postcard by Ed. S.I.C., Roma. Maria Jacobini in Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (Gennaro Righelli, 1921). Publicity for the Corso Cinema Teatro in Rome.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 92. Photo: Fert. Maria Jacobini in Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (Gennaro Righelli, 1921).
Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 95. Photo: Fert. Maria Jacobini and Carlo Benetti in Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (Gennaro Righelli, 1921).
Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 183. Photo: Fert. Maria Jacobini in Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (Gennaro Righelli, 1921).
A dramatic colour change in a central scene
The Italian silent melodrama Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (1921) directed by Gennaro Righelli and starring his future wife Maria Jacobini, was produced by the Fert Studios in Turin and based on a story by Fausto Maria Martini.
Maria Jacobini plays a young widow, Giovanna Landi, who loses her own child. She then adopts a boy, Santino, from an orphanage and takes care of him. Once Santino has grown a man (Lido Manetti also known as Arnold Kent), he falls in love with his adoptive mother. She is disappointed and disappears from his life, while he doesn't understand.
Il richiamo had its Roman first night on 17 October 1921. At the time, the Italian press remarked that Maria Jacobini remained a great actress, but Jacobini's beauty was too much hidden under makeup, to make her look older. The other actors were Lido Manetti, Carlo Benetti, Cecyl Tryan and Luigi Duse. The exteriors, shot in Venice by cinematographer Tullio Chiarini, were praised too, but the film's story had too many sidepaths, making it unnecessarily complicated.
A print of this film was discovered in the Komiya Collection at the National Film Center in Tokyo. In 1988, Komiya Takahashi donated what was left of the great collection of his father Komiya Tomijiro (1897-1975) to this centre. Komiya senior, son of a restaurateur, had grown up in Tokyo’s entertainment district, Asakusa, and collected the films of his youth, European productions from 1907 to 1920.
As they catalogued the films and drew up condition reports, Hiroshi Komatsu and the Film Center archivists realised that many were decomposed. But what did survive was precious enough – many unique and matchless colour prints – which were duplicated in 1991. Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (1921) is one of the few Komiya Collection films to survive completely. Thanks to the nitrate decomposition, the character played by Maria Jacobini undergoes a dramatic colour change in a central scene of the film… In 2012, a restored version was shown at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna.
Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 101. Photo: Fert. Maria Jacobini and Lido Manetti in Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (Gennaro Righelli, 1921).
Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 102. Photo: Fert. Maria Jacobini and Lido Manetti (Arnold Kent) in Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (Gennaro Righelli, 1921).
Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 105. Photo: Fert. Maria Jacobini and Cecyl Tryan in Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (Gennaro Righelli, 1921).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 67. Photo: Fert. Maria Jacobini and Lido Manetti in Il richiamo / The Call from the Past (Gennaro Righelli, 1921).
Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Il cinema muto italiano, 1921-1922 - Italian), Il Cinema Ritrovato, Wikipedia and IMDb.
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