Helena Makowska

Polish singer and actress Helena Makowska (1893-1964) was a beautiful diva of the Italian silent cinema in the 1910s. During the 1920s, she moved to Berlin and became a star of the German cinema. Later, Luigi Comencini directed her in La valigia dei sogni / The Suitcase of Dreams (1953) as the aged actress of the silent era who is visibly moved by seeing herself back in Il fiacre no. 13 / Cab Number 13 (1917).


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 425.


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 467.


Italian postcard, no. 30. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 563.


Italian postcard. Photo DM.

Beautiful and a bit stiff

Helena (also Elena) Makowska was born Helena Woynowiczówna in Krivoy Rog, Russian Empire (now Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine), in 1893. She was the daughter of Ludwik Woyniewicz, a Polish engineer who worked for a Russian-Belgian company, and his wife, Stanislawa née Sauret.

At the age of 16, she married lawyer Julian Makowski, but the marriage was a brief intermezzo. In 1912 Makowska went to Milan to take singing lessons. The following year she debuted at the Opera as Amelia in 'Il ballo in maschera' and as Elena in 'Mefistofele'.

Her film debut was in the film Romanticismo (Carlo Campogalliani, Arrigo Frusta, 1915). It was based on a famous play by Gerolamo Rovetta, which was already filmed in 1913 and refilmed in 1951. Makowska is Anna Lamberti, whose husband Count Vitaliano Lamberti (Tullio Carminati) would like to join the partisans, but is withheld by his pro-Austrian mother. His indecision has estranged him from his wife, who has an affair with a Polish refugee, Cezky, Vitaliano's secretary. When Vitaliano finally joins the free-fighting patriots, he regains his wife's confidence, but her vengeful lover denounces Vitaliano to the police, then commits suicide. Even when warned, Vitaliano stays where he is, is caught and executed.

Romanticismo came out in Italy in September 1915, just a few months after the country had joined the Allied forces against Austria-Hungary and Germany in the First World War (April 1915). It was also Makowska's first film for the Torinese company Ambrosio.

From 1917 on, she switched to other film companies and played Ophelia in Ruggero Ruggeri's Amleto / Hamlet (1917), the seductress Elena in the comedy Addio giovinezza / Good-bye Youth (Augusto Genina, 1918) with Maria Jacobini, followed by La dame en gris / The Lady in Grey (Gian Paolo Rosmino, 1919). Makowska would go on to perform in some 40 Italian films until her move to Germany in the early 1920s. The Italian press constantly praised her beauty but found her a bit stiff.


Italian postcard by IPA, no. CT. 750. Photo: Film della Società Anonima Ambrosio, Torino (Turin). Still from Romanticismo (1915). Caption: Notte d'angoscia (Night of anguish).


Italian postcard by IPA CT Duplex, no. 1713. Photo: Film Società Anonima Ambrosio Torino. V. Uff. Rev. St., Terni. Helena Makowska (in the back) and probably Vittorio Rossi-Pianelli in the Italian historical propaganda film Val d'Olivi (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916), based on the novel by Anton Giulio Barrili (1873). Caption: Caught!


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT, no. 3887, card no. 2 Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Umberto Mozzato and Helena Makowska in La fiaccola sotto il moggio (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916), based on the eponymous stage play (1905) by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Caption: Tibaldo and Angizia.


Italian postcard by IPA, no. CT. 3873. Photo: Film della Società Ambrosio, Torino. Helena Makowska as the Egyptian courtesan in La Gioconda (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916, released 1917), based on Gabriele D'Annunzio's play. Caption: The resurrected mummy told the monk, refugee in the desert, the story of her ancient life: She had been a voluptuous courtesan who lived in the times of the great Pharaoh.


Italian postcard by IPA CT, no. 3876. Photo: Film della Società Ambrosio, Torino. Publicity still of Helena Makowska in La Gioconda (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916, released 1917) with Umberto Mozzato as Lucio Settala and Helena Makowska as Gioconda Dianti. Caption: Lucio Settala is madly in love with his model, Gioconda Dianti.


Italian postcard for the film Amleto (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1917), adapted from William Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet', and starring Ruggero Ruggeri in the title role, and Helena Makowska as Ophelia. Caption: Hamlet: Oh, I am your jester. What else can one ever do down here that is joyous?


Spanish minicard (collector card) by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona. Photo: Ambrosia. Helena Makowska in Il fiacre no. 13 / Cab Number 13 (Alberto Capozzi, Gero Zambuto, 1917), based on the novel 'Le Fiacre Nº 13' (1880) by Xavier de Montépin.


Spanish cromo (collector card) by Chocolat Imperiale, no. 3 of 6. Photo: Gladiator Film / Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Helena Makowska and Angelo Vianello in Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1918-1919), released in Spain as El Rayo.


Spanish collector card (cromo) by Chocolate Imperiale, card 5 of 6. Photo: Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Maria Jacobini and Helena Makowska in Addio giovinezza!/Goodbye Youth! (Augusto Genina, 1918). The Spanish release title was Adios, juventud!

German prison camp

In the early 1920s, Helena Makowska moved to Berlin, where she remarried to actor Karl Falkenberg.

Between 1922 and 1927, Makowska played in some 15 films in Berlin and also in three in Warsaw, such as Judith / Frauen im Sumpf (1923) and Frauenmoral / Women's Morals (1923), both directed by Dutch director Theo Frenkel, Taras Bulba (Vladimir Strizevsky, Joseph N. Ermolieff, 1924) with Oscar Marion, the Stuart Webbs-detective Der Schuss im Pavillion/The Shot in the Pavillion (Max Obal, 1925), and Kochanka Szamoty / Szamota's Mistress (Leon Trystan, 1927), her last film in Poland.

After her return to Italy, rumours started to circulate that she had an affair with Crown Prince Umberto. In the early 1930s, she married for the third time, now with an Englishman, Botteril, and returned to Poland as an opera and operetta singer.

In 1939, immediately after the Germans occupied Poland, she was arrested as a British citizen and in 1940, she was deported to Berlin. After four years in a prison camp, she was liberated in the course of an exchange of prisoners.

In England she joined the theatre ensemble of the Polish army, where she performed until the end of the war.


Italian postcard, no. 231.


Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. 127, with Romanian imprint by Editions SARPIC, Bucharest.


Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. ?, with Romanian imprint by Editions SARPIC, Bucharest.


Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. 35, with Romanian imprint by Editions SARPIC, Bucharest.


Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. 128.


Italian postcard, no. 23. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Italian postcard.


Italian postcard by Ed. Fotocelere, Torino.

Diva of bygone days

During her final years, Helena Makowska lived in Italy, where she did bit parts in Fabiola (Alessandro Blasetti, 1948) starring Michèle Morgan and Henri Vidal, and Quo vadis? (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951), with Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr.

She appeared in Luigi Comencini's melancholic La valigia dei sogni / The Suitcase of Dreams (1953) as the aged actress of the silent era who is visibly moved by the performances of Lyda Borelli in La Donna Nuda / The Naked Truth (Carmine Gallone, 1914) and of herself in Fiacre 13 / Cab Number 13 (Alberto Capozzi, Gero Zambuto, 1917), one of her most popular films.

In the film of Comencini, a modern audience of the 1950s cruelly laughs about the performances of the silent actresses, but the diva of bygone days sheds a tear over so much beauty and emotion.

Her final film appearance was in Arrivederci Firenze / Goodbye Firenze (Rate Furlan, 1958) with Maria-Pia Casilio.

Helena Makowska died in 1964 in Rome, Italy. She was 71. In 1999 director Peter Delpeut included footage of Makowska, Lyda Borelli, Pina Menichelli and other Italian silent film stars in his beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999).


Italian postcard, no. 133. Photo: Bettini, Roma.


Italian postcard, no. 29.


Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Medusa Film. Publicity still for Idillio tragico (Gaston Ravel, 1922), based on a novel by Paul Bourget. Caption: Ely rejects Oliviero, as she has now fallen in love with Pietro di Hautefeuille.


Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Medusa Film. Publicity still for Idillio tragico (Gaston Ravel, 1922), based on a novel by Paul Bourget. Caption: Ely's sadness after Oliviero has abandoned her.


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Medusa Film / UCI. Publicity still for Rabagas (Gaston Ravel, 1922).


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Medusa Film / UCI. Publicity still for Rabagas (Gaston Ravel, 1922).


Italian postcard.


German postcard by Verlag Ross, Berlin, no. 489/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 758/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Alex Binder. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 758/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Alex Binder.


Clip from Diva Dolorosa (1999). Source: The Stat (YouTube).

Source: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio) Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.

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.

Folgore (1919)

Beautiful, Polish-born diva (H)elena Makowska (1893-1964) was the star of the Italian silent drama Folgore/Lightning (Ugo De Simone, 1919). Her co-stars were Angelo Vianello and the Argentine (?) actor François-Paul Donadio who played between 1914 and 1921 in Italian silent cinema. At Ambrosio, Donadio had co-starred with Makowska in Romanticismo (Carlo Campogalliani, Arrigo Frusta, 1915) and Val d'olivi (1916). In 1919 they acted again together at Gladiator Film in Il principe Zilah (1919) and Folgore (1919).


Spanish cromo (collectors card) by Chocolat Imperiale, Card 1 of 6. Photo: Gladiator Film / Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Angelo Vianello and Helena Makowska in Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1919), released in Spain as El Rayo.


Spanish cromo by Chocolat Imperiale, Card 2 of 6. Photo: Gladiator Film / Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Angelo Vianello and Helena Makowska in Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1919).


Spanish cromo by Chocolat Imperiale, Card 3 of 6. Photo: Gladiator Film / Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Helena Makowska and Angelo Vianello in Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1919).

A gentle story of love and art

In Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1919) a talented young composer (Angelo Vianello) humbly asks the eminent diva (Helena Makowska) her opinion about his new composition, hoping she may promote it. Detesting big city life, he quietly works on his compositions at his estate. The curious diva visits him with her friends and invites him to join her. They fall in love.

As if to castigate him for his abandonment and new frivolous life, nature blinds him with a lightning bolt (hence the film's title). His beloved steals his last successful composition, called 'Folgore' (Lightning), and tries to sell it to a rich friend of the artist (François-Paul Donadio) who is also a musician, but the latter discovers the infamy and rejects it. The diva returns to her own life but now regrets her misstep. She wants to confess her guilt to the composer and return the manuscript, just when he is about to commit suicide. When trying to prevent him from his act, she dies herself.

Folgore had sets by Filippo De Simone and cinematography by Luigi Florio. Director Ugo De Simone was known for such Gladiator Film productions as L'amazzone macabra (1916), La figlia della tempesta (1917) and Maternità (1917), all starring another silent film diva, Italia Almirante-Manzini.

The premiere of Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1919) happened in Rome on 29 January 1919, but on 7 August 1918, the critic of the journal La Vita Cinematografica already wrote a positive review of the film: "A gentle story of love and art, gracefully drawn, tastefully scripted and executed by a trio of actors who know their stuff. There is, in the whole and in the details, a search for the best, an aspiration to modernity and a sense of progressiveness, which show that lessons (which today, unfortunately, come to us from foreigners) benefit those who are not so infatuated with themselves as to believe themselves superior to any foreign inducement. [...]

We note with pleasure that Vianello is among the actors who show the most promise, and we do not spare Makowska praise, who is much better and much more effective than she was in a very recent time. Fine as always is Donadio, a mature and assured actor."


Spanish cromo by Chocolat Imperiale, Card 4 of 6. Photo: Gladiator Film / Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Helena Makowska and Angelo Vianello in Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1919).


Spanish cromo by Chocolat Imperiale, Card 5 of 6. Photo: Gladiator Film / Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Helena Makowska and François-Paul Donadio in Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1919).


Spanish cromo by Chocolat Imperiale, Card 6 of 6. Photo: Gladiator Film / Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Helena Makowska and, right, François-Paul Donadio in Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1919).

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Il cinema muto italiano, Vol. 1918), IMDb and the cards themselves.