European Film Star Postcards: Rina De Liguoro

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28 October 2015

Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1926)

The Italian-German silent film Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926) was one of the many adaptations of the novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. The stars were the Hungarian actors Victor Varconi and Maria Corda, the Italian actress Rina De Liguoro and the German Bernhard Goetzke. Original release prints of the film were entirely colourised by the Pathechrome stencil colour process.

Italian postcard by C. Chierichetti, Milano. Photo: Grandi Films, Roma. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926).

Pompeian street life with the rich Greek Glaucus (Victor Varconi) and his wealthy friends meeting the blind flower girl Nydia (Maria Corda), who also sings and plays the lyre. The bearded man left in the back is Burbo (Carlo Duse), the brutal tavern owner, who owns Nydia as a slave.

Italian postcard by C. Chierichetti, Milano. Photo: Grandi Films, Roma. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926).

Glaucus (Victor Varconi) has saved Nydia (Maria Corda) from Burbo and taken into his house. Nydia loves Glaucus, but he can only think of Ione.

Italian postcard by C. Chierichetti, Milano. Photo: Grandi Films, Roma. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926).

Nydia, in love with Glaucus, thinks she has given Glaucus a love potion, but instead it makes him delirious. It is Arbaces who has concocted this.

The Novel and the painting

The novel The Last Days of Pompeii was written by the baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834. The novel was inspired by the painting The Last Day of Pompeii by the Russian painter Karl Briullov, which Bulwer-Lytton had seen in Milan.

The novel culminates in the cataclysmic destruction of the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The novel became a bestseller, helped on its release by the eruption of Vesuvius just before publication.

The Last Days of Pompeii uses its characters to contrast the decadent culture of 1st-century Rome with both older cultures and coming trends. The protagonist, Glaucus, a handsome Athenian nobleman and Ione's betrothed, represents the Greeks who have been subordinated by Rome.

His nemesis is Arbaces, a scheming Egyptian sorcerer and a high priest of Isis, and the former guardian of Ione and her brother Apaecides. Arbaces represents the still older culture of Egypt. He murders Apaecides and frames Glaucus for the crime. Repeatedly he attempts to seduce Ione.

Olinthus is the chief representative of the nascent Christian religion, which is presented favourably but not uncritically. The Christian converts Apaecides to Christianity and is sentenced to death for his religion.

Maria Corda and Victor Varconi in The Last Days of Pompeii (1926)

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 53/3. Photo: Hisa Film-Vertrieb. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Carmine Gallone, Amleto Palermi, 1926). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Victor Varconi as Glaucus in Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1926)

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1344/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Hisa Film-Vertrieb. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Carmine Gallone, Amleto Palermi, 1926). Victor Varconi as Glaucus.

Bernhard Goetzke in Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1347/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Hisa Film-Vertrieb. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Carmine Gallone, Amleto Palermi, 1926). Bernhard Goetzke as the evil Egyptian priest Arbaces.

Italian postcard by C. Chierichetti, Milano. Photo: Grandi Films, Roma. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926).

The funeral of Apecides (Vittorio Evangelisti). Apecides, brother of Glaucus' lover Ione and former pupil of the Egyptian high priest of Isis, Arbaces, has converted to Christianity and threatens to unmask Arbaces's frauds. Arbaces stabs him and puts the blame on Glaucus, drugged unknowingly by Nydia. The priest in the middle is Calenus (Emilio Ghione), who has seen Arbaces murdering Apecides. Arbaces himself (Bernhard Goetzke) can be seen extreme left.

Italian postcard by C. Chierichetti, Milano. Photo: Grandi Films, Roma. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926).

At the Via delle Tombe in Pompeii the funeral service for the murdered Apecides is held. In the centre is the priest Calenus (Emilio Ghione).

The Star Cast

Handsome Victor Varconi (1891–1976) was as Glaucus the male star of Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii. The Hungarian Varconi, originally Viktor Varkony, was a highly successful matinee idol of the Hungarian-Austrian and German silent cinema in the 1910s and early 1920s. Later he was the first Hungarian actor to become a Hollywood star until the sound film completely altered the course of his career.

Hungarian Maria Corda (1898-1975) played the slave girl Nydia, who is in love with Glaucus. Corda was an immensely popular star of the silent cinema of Austria and Germany. The pretty, blonde actress was a queen of the popular epic spectacles of the 1920s, which were often directed by her husband, Alexander Korda.

Not pictured on one of the postcards is Rina De Liguoro (1892-1966) as Ione. She was the last diva of the Italian silent cinema of the 1920s. De Liguoro had her breakthrough in 1924 as the sensual, untamed Roman empress Messalina, and the beautiful countess continued her glittering career in such epics as Quo Vadis (1924), Casanova (1927) and Cecil B. De Mille's notorious box office flop Madam Satan (1930).

Emilio Ghione (1879-1930), who played Calenus, was an Italian silent film actor, director and screenwriter. He is best known for writing, directing and starring in the Za La Mort series of adventure films, in which he played a likeable French apache and 'honest outlaw.'

The evil Egyptian priest Arbaces was played by German film actor Bernhard Goetzke (1884–1964). He was one of the impressive stars of German silent cinema, in particular in the films by Fritz Lang. Goetzke appeared in 130 films between 1917 and 1961.

Italian postcard by C. Chierichetti, Milano. Photo: Grandi Films, Roma. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926).

Glaucus (Victor Varconi) and the Christian Olintus (Ferruccio Biancini), the man on the right, in the prison of the Christians, waiting for their ordeal in the arena.

The adaptations

The first theatrical adaptation of The Last Days of Pompeii was Errico Petrella's opera Jone, with a libretto by Giovanni Peruzzini. It premiered at La Scala in 1858. It was very successful and remained in the Italian repertoire well into the 20th century. In 1877 followed an ambitious theatrical adaptation, which was mounted at the Queen's Theatre, Long Acre in London. It featured a staged eruption of the Vesuvius, an earthquake and a sybaritic Roman feast – the earth did not quake, the volcano did not work, acrobats fell onto the cast below, and the production was an expensive flop.

The first film version was the British short film The Last Days of Pompeii (1900), directed by Walter R. Booth. Eight years later followed Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Arturo Ambrosio, Luigi Maggi, 1908). In 1913 followed to more Italian silent film versions, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Mario Caserini, 1913), and Jone ovvero gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/Jone or the Last Days of Pompeii (Giovanni Enrico Vidali, Ubaldo Maria Del Colle, 1913).

The first sound version was the Hollywood production The Last Days of Pompeii (Ernest B. Schoedsack, Merian C. Cooper, 1935), with Preston Foster and Basil Rathbone. It carried a disclaimer that, although the movie used the novel's description of Pompei, it did not use its plot or characters. The film was a moderate success on its initial release, but made an overall loss of $237,000.

After the war followed the French-Italian version Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/Les Derniers Jours de Pompéi/The Last Days of Pompeii (Marcel L'Herbier, Paolo Moffa, 1950), starring Micheline Presle and Georges Marchal. The amphitheatre scenes were filmed at the Arena di Verona. The next adaptation was another Italian version, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Sergio Leone, 1959), starring Steve Reeves. Mario Bonnard, the original director, fell ill on the first day of shooting, so assistant director Leone and the scriptwriters finished the film. Later followed two TV versions and a German stage musical, Pompeji (2008).

But how was the 1926 version? David Melville reviews at IMDb: "The last of the great silent Italian epics, The Last Days of Pompeii is as lavish as anything produced by Hollywood at that time - only much, much raunchier. During an orgy in the house of the evil priest Arbaces, naked slave girls are served up (literally!) on platters decked with flowers. A nubile mummy rises out of her sarcophagus to do a striptease and bare-breasted sphinx statues come to life as her chorus line. In the gladiators' tavern, wildly effeminate men (kohl-dark eyelids and lipstick as thick as clotted blood) drool and bat their eyes over so much naked, muscular flesh. All in all, the most satisfyingly decadent Ancient Rome saga until Fellini Satyricon in 1968!"

Italian postcard by C. Chierichetti, Milano. Photo: Grandi Films, Roma. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926).

Glaucus (Victor Varconi) in prison. The man on the right is the Christian Olintus (Ferruccio Biancini), who had converted Apecides. Olintus will see the eruption and destruction of Pompeii as a punishment of God.

Italian postcard by C. Chierichetti, Milano. Photo: Grandi Films, Roma. Publicity still for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone, 1926).

Glaucus is sentenced to die in the arena, eaten by lions, when just in time Glaucus's friend Sallustius, Nydia, Ione and Calenus expose Arbaces as the real murderer and he threatens to be lynched by the mob. Suddenly the Vesuvius erupts and the terrorised people flee.

14 October 2015

Bufera (1926)

In the silent Italian mountain drama Bufera/The Storm (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926), Rina De Liguoro plays a woman seduced and abandoned by a rude mountain man. He leaves her with a child. When finally her life seems to retake thanks to another, kinder man, the first one reappears. Luckily a mountain storm swallows the inconvenient intruder.

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 373. Photo: Rina De Liguoro in Bufera/The Storm (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926).

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 377. Photo: Rina De Liguoro and Celio Bucchi in Bufera/The Storm (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926).

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 378. Photo: Rina De Liguoro and Celio Bucchi in Bufera/The Storm (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926).

Glittering Career

The star of Bufera was Rina De Liguoro (1892-1966), the last diva of the Italian silent cinema. She had her breakthrough in 1924 as the sensual, untamed Roman empress Messalina, and the beautiful countess continued her glittering career in such epics as Quo Vadis (1924), Casanova (1927) and Cecil B. De Mille's notorious Madam Satan (1930).

Her co-star was the athletic Celio Bucchi (1886-1964), an Italian actor who starred during the 1920s in adventure films like La congiura di San Marco/The conspiracy of San Marco (1924). Later he became a nameless extra and warehouse manager of a studio in Turin.

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 388. Photo: Rina De Liguoro and Celio Bucchi in Bufera (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926).

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 389. Photo: Rina De Liguoro and Celio Bucchi in Bufera/The Storm (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926).

Italian postcard by G.B. Falci Editore, Milano, no. 393. Photo: publicity still for Bufera/Storm (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926).

Source: IMDb.

11 January 2015

Rina De Liguoro

Rina De Liguoro (1892-1966) was the last diva of the Italian silent cinema of the 1920s. She had her breakthrough in 1924 as the sensual, untamed Roman empress Messalina, and the beautiful countess continued her glittering career in such epics as Quo Vadis (1924), Casanova (1927) and Cecil B. De Mille's notorious box office flop Madam Satan (1930).

Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 381.

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 475.

German postcard by Ross-Verlag, Berlin, no. 699/6,1919-1924. Photo: Filmhaus Brückmann. Publicity still for Quo Vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1924).

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3046/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ufa.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3902/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Pinto Roma.

French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 431. Photo: Studio G.L. Manuel Frères.

French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 477. Photo: Pinto, Roma. The card refers to her status as countess.

Messalina

Rina De Liguoro was born as Elisabetta Caterina Catardi in Firenze (Florence), Italy, in 1892.

She studied piano with Maestro Luigi Finizio, graduating at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples. She made her debut as a pianist at the age of twenty-five and soon became a valued concert performer.

In 1918, she married count Wladimiro De Liguoro, son of film director and producer Giuseppe De Liguoro. They had a daughter, Regana, born the following year. Later, Wladimiro De Liguoro would direct several of her films.

After a concert in 1920, Rina was invited to visit a film set. During this visit, she appeared as an extra in La Principessa Bebé/The Princess Baby (Lucio D'Ambra, 1920). This was the start of a prolific film career.

She had her breakthrough with the lead role in the historical epic Messalina/The Fall of an Empress (Enrico Guazzoni, 1924), in which she played the sensual, untamed third wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius.

De Liguoro became the last diva of the Italian silent cinema with notable films like Quo vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1924) also starring Emil Jannings, Elena Sangro and Lillian Hall-Davis, and Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii/The Last Days of Pompeii (Carmine Gallone, Amleto Palermi, 1926) with Victor Varconi and Maria Corda.

There were several attempts in early Fascist Italy to recapture the success of the historical epics of the previous decade. Quo vadis? was produced by the ambitious Unione Cinematografica Italiana. D'Annunzio, the son of the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, was considered a rising director and also wrote the film's screenplay.

The production ran seriously over-budget, and additional financing had to be raised from Germany. The film was a critical and commercial failure on its release, effectively ending the career of its producer Arturo Ambrosio who had been one of the major figures of early Italian cinema

In the late 1920s, De Liguoro performed in Germany, Austria and France. A masterpiece was the French historical drama Casanova (Alexandre Volkoff, 1927). The film portrays the life and adventures of Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798). Star was the legendary Russian actor Ivan Mozzhukhin. Among the cast and the crew of the film were several Russian émigrés who had come to France following the Russian Revolution.

She also appeared in the French-German silent film drama Cagliostro (Richard Oswald, 1929). It depicts the life of the eighteenth century Italian occultist Alessandro Cagliostro (Hans Stüwe), based on a novel by Johannes von Gunther. The film survives but is incomplete.

Her last silent Italian film was Assunta Spina (Roberto Roberti, 1930), a remake of the classic version of 1915, starring Francesca Bertini.

Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 738. Photo: Rina De Liguoro dying in the final scene of Messalina (Enrico Guazzoni, 1924).

Italian postcard by G.B. Falci Editore, Milano, no. 393. Photo: publicity still for Bufera/Storm (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926).

Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna, no. 941. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for Quello che non muore/What does not die (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926).

Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 882. Photo: Pinto, Roma.

Laurel & Hardy

In 1930, Rina De Liguoro was invited to go to Hollywood. As Countess De Liguoro, she appeared in films like the box office success Romance (Clarence Brown, 1930) starring Greta Garbo and the flop Madam Satan (Cecil B. de Mille, 1930).

Wikipedia about the latter: "Madam Satan has been called one of the oddest films DeMille made and certainly one of the oddest MGM made during its 'golden age.' The film originally featured Technicolor sequences that are now lost."

De Liguoro also acted in Spanish-language versions of American films, including Politiquerías (James W. Horne, 1931), the alternate language version of the Laurel & Hardy comedy Chickens Come Home (1931) in which she replaced Mae Busch.

But the silent cinema days were over and Rina De Liguoro could play only minor parts in Hollywood. She decided to try again a career as a piano player.

She returned to Italy in 1939. There she appeared in a few films, including Ritrovarsi/Lost and Found (Oreste Palella, 1947) and Buffalo Bill a Roma/Buffalo Bill in Rome (Giuseppe Accatino, 1949).

Her last role was that of Princess of Presicce, Burt Lancaster's table companion at the ball in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).

Rina De Liguoro died in 1966 in Rome, Italy. She had demanded to be buried in her costume for Messalina.

Italian postcard by B&G, B, no. 11. Signed Rina De Liguoro. Photo: Rina De Liguoro as the title character in the epic film Messalina (Enrico Guazzoni, 1924).

Italian postcard (reproduction). Photo: publicity still for Savitri Satyavan (Giorgio Mannini, 1925), according to Wikipedia 'India's first international co-production', with De Liguoro as the goddess Savitri.

Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: still for Quo vadis? (1924).

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 388. Photo: Rina De Liguoro and Celio Bucchi in the film Bufera/Storm (Wladimiro De Liguoro, 1926). Bufera is a mountain drama about a woman seduced and abandoned by a rude mountain man, leaving her with a child. When finally her life seems to retake thanks to another, kinder man, the first one reappears. Luckily a mountain storm (hence the title of the film) will swallow the inconvenient intruder.

Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 865. Photo: Pinto, Roma. Rina De Liguoro as Anita Garibaldi in Anita/Il romanzo d'amore dell'eroe dei due mondi (Aldo De Benedetti, 1926).

Italian postcard, no. 3519. Photo: Rina De Liguoro as Corticelli in Casanova (Alexandre Volkoff, 1927).

Rina De Liguoro & Ivan Mozzhukhin in Casanova

Italian postcard by Ed. Vettori, Bologna, no. 3522. Photo: Rina De Liguoro and Ivan Mozzhukhin in the film Casanova (Alexandre Volkoff, 1927).

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio - Italian), Hans J. Wollstein (AllMovie), Cristiano Ruggero (Find A Grave), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia and IMDb.

02 November 2013

Casanova (1927)

In the next ten weeks, we will present you ten new film specials. Today we start with the silent classic Casanova (1927), directed by Russian director Alexandre Volkoff aka Aleksandr Volkoff. Starring as the well-known Venetian gentleman, lover, poet and inventor is the legendary Russian actor Ivan Mozzhukhin in his most famous role.

Ivan Mozzhukhin in Casanova (1927). German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3948/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ufa.

Ivan Mozzhukhin. French postcard by Europe, no. 175. Photo: Société des Cinéromans.

Always In The Service Of Women

Casanova shows Ivan Mozzhukhin at his best and his most light hearted. In the film he makes everything seem easy. As you can notice on the postcards, his name was spelled Ivan Mosjoukine in French, Iwan Mosjukin in German, and Ivan Mosjoukine in English.

The film is a far-from-accurate biopic of legendary Italian lover. Casanova is episodic in structure, almost like a collection of short stories. Casanova bounces from one adventure to another, going on 'secret missions' from Venice to Austria to Russia and finally back to Venice again.

He is always in the service of women, as he puts it in a letter to a man he has good-naturedly robbed. In the end, all his romancing catches up with him, and he is forced to choose between two women.

Though partly shot on location in Venice, Casanova was a French-German production.

Director Alexandre Volkoff was one of a significant number of film industry exiles who fled Russia following the Bolshevik takeover. Volfkoff worked in France for many years, and also made films in Germany and Italy.

The film also presented a pan-European cast. Casanova's delectable females include for instance French actress Suzanne Bianchetti as Catherine II the Great, Italian diva Rina De Liguoro, and German star Jenny Jugo as the lovely Therese who finally captures the protagonist's heart.

Diana Karenne. Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 133. Photo: Distr. S.A.G. Leoni.

Diana Karenne & Ivan Mozzhukhin in Casanova

Diana Karenne and Ivan Mozzhukhin. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 83/2. Photo: Ufa

Diana Karenne. Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 928. Photo: Société des Cineromans / Micheluzzi-Verleih / Cine Alliance Film.

One Of The True Divas

Pictured on the Ross postcard above is a carnival scene in Casanova with the Italian lover and his catch Maria, the Duchess de Lardi.

Maria was played by Polish actress Diana Karenne, one of the true divas of the Italian silent cinema.
Between 1916 and 1920, Karenne fascinated European audiences with her eccentric dresses and make-up, and with her prima donna behaviour.

The scene on the postcard was shot near the Venice cemetery Isola di San Michele.

With its panoramic location photograph and its lavish re-creation of decadent 18th century Venice, the visual style of Casanova is wonderful. There is even one long scene filmed in colour. The public follows Ivan Mozzhukhin through various chases, rescues, romantic liaisons, and hairbreadth escapes and this makes of this silent version of Casanova a spectacular, picaresque epic.

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The film ran into some curious censorship troubles in the U.S., and as result it was retitled Prince of Adventurers, with the main character rechristened as 'Roberto Ferrara'!"

Ivan Mozzhukhin. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 83/1. Photo: Ufa.

Rina De Liguoro and Ivan Mozzhukhin. Italian postcard by Ed. Vettori, Bologna, no. 3522.

Rina De Liguoro. Italian postcard, no. 3519.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.

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