View allAll Photos Tagged vitiello
Véritable chancre hier, la Maison du Prince a retrouvé toute sa splendeur. Splendeur qui devait être la sienne voilà plusieurs siècles. Cette maison verviétoise aurait servi de lieu de résidence aux Princes Evêques et à leurs cours. Une maison de chef d’état, en quelque sorte.
"Elle aurait pu accueillir les princes évêques de la Principauté de Liège lorsqu’il venait visiter leur bonne ville de Verviers. Il s’agit donc ici d’un pied à terre, d’un lieu de travail, directement situé ici près de l’administration et de l’ancienne église Saint-Remacle", précise Michaël Laurent, architecte à l’Atelier PHI.
Classée au niveau des façades avant et de la toiture, cette maison serait aussi l’une des plus ancienne de Verviers puisqu’un de ses pignons a été daté de 1528. Bref, c’est un morceau important du patrimoine verviétois que la Ville de Verviers tenait à sauver. C’est pourquoi elle l’a vendu pour une bouchée de pain, un peu plus de 7000 euros, à deux entrepreneurs de Battice, amoureux du patrimoine, Yves Liegeois et Giovanni Vitiello.
"Elle était vraiment délabrée! Quand on voit les photos quand nous sommes arrivés ici, il fallait vraiment avoir envie de le faire", se souvient Giovanni Vitiello, co-fondateur de la SPRL Maison du Prince.
Surprise comme la découverte de ces parties bois taillés pour accueillir des ouvertures. Un état des lieux de 1748 déniché par l’Agence wallonne du patrimoine permet de déterminer qu’il y en aurait 26, ce qui était plutôt rare à l’époque car les taxes étaient proportionnelles au nombre de fenêtres. En cours de chantier, les plans sont adaptés en conséquence.
La couleur sur les maisons en colombages, elle, est plutôt typique du Moyen Age.
"On avait comme inspiration les couleurs en place, existantes, explique Michaël Laurent, architecte en charge de la restauration. Ensuite, c’est en collaboration avec les différents acteurs du patrimoine, sur base de différents essais et simulations qu’on a pu faire ce choix de restitution colorimétrique".
Au fil des portes poussées, des escaliers montés, la maison vieille de près de 500 ans laisse entrevoir des pans de son passé comme cette rocaille ou cette verrière du 19ème siècle, ces colombages... Ici, passé et présent dialoguent harmonieusement.
A real canker yesterday, the Maison du Prince has regained all its splendor. Splendor which must have been hers for several centuries. This Verviers house would have served as a place of residence for the Princes Bishops and their courts. A head of state's house, in a way.
"It could have welcomed the prince bishops of the Principality of Liège when he came to visit their good town of Verviers. It is therefore here a pied-à-terre, a place of work, directly located here near the administration and the former Saint-Remacle church, "specifies Michaël Laurent, architect at Atelier PHI.
Listed at the level of the front facades and the roof, this house would also be one of the oldest in Verviers since one of its gables was dated 1528. In short, it is an important piece of Verviers heritage that the City of Verviers wanted to save. That’s why she sold it for a pittance, a little over 7,000 euros, to two entrepreneurs from Battice who love heritage, Yves Liegeois and Giovanni Vitiello.
"It was really run down! When you see the photos when we arrived here, you really had to want to do it", remembers Giovanni Vitiello, co-founder of the Maison du Prince SPRL.
Surprise like the discovery of these wooden parts cut to accommodate openings. An inventory of 1748 unearthed by the Walloon Heritage Agency allows us to determine that there would be 26, which was rather rare at the time because the taxes were proportional to the number of windows. During construction, the plans are adapted accordingly.
The color on the half-timbered houses is rather typical of the Middle Ages.
“We had as inspiration the colors in place, existing, explains Michaël Laurent, architect in charge of the restoration. this choice of colorimetric reproduction ".
Through the doors pushed open, the stairs climbed, the nearly 500-year-old house lets glimpse parts of its past such as this rock garden or this 19th century glass roof, these half-timberings ... Here, past and present dialogue harmoniously.
Hungarian postcard by City. Photo: Edison Film. Francesca Bertini and Sandro Salvini in La Serpe/The Poison Mood (Roberto Roberti, 1920).
Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings, but in Assunta Spina, based on the play by Salvatore Di Giacomo, she played a passionate washerwoman from the back streets of Naples. The film was partly shot on location, displaying an unseen realism for that time.
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key of her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls who populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camelias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera 'La traviata'. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demi-mondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades versions followed with Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making it more sober, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key of her success through many films. She could perform with success the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of spaghetti western genius Sergio Leone.
La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark by the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925, when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German coproductions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilinguals Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and an Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in a Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions she expressed the diep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Gruppo di musicisti italiani che suonano tamburi giapponesi (TAIKO). Il nome del gruppo significa Via dell'Eco del Cuore, nome scelto dal loro maestro giapponese Kurumaya Masaaki.
Si sono esibiti insieme a lui a Finale Ligure lo scorso giugno nella suggestiva cornice dei Chiostri di Santa Caterina.
Grande serata !
I musicisti sono: Stefano Parisi, Mirco Taddei, Chiara Parisi, Giustino Caiazzo, Maria Vitiello, Bruno Cocco.
Qui sotto altri momenti della loro potente esibizione
e questo è un mio VIDEO della serata
Do not use any of my images on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission.
All rights reserved - Copyright © fotomie2009 - Nora Caracci
Gallows
Sound Academy
Toronto, ON
November 10, 2009
See more at thetopdown.blogspot.com
This image is copyright © 2009 Zack Vitiello. All rights reserved. This photo may not be used under ANY circumstances without written consent. Please contact zvitiello@hotmail.com for usage rights.
Russian postcard, no. 168.
Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings.
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key to her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls that populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, and directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (Alfredo De Antoni, 1918).
Next, Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camellias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play 'La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera 'La Traviata'. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demimondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades, versions followed starring Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication is emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making them soberer, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key to her success in many films. She could perform with success as the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone.
La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. The Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark through the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925 when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom, she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German co-productions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilingual Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in an Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions, she expressed the deep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Silents Please!, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by Edit. Soc. Anon. It. Bettini, Roma, no. 129. Photo: Bettini, Roma.
Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings.
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key to her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls that populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, and directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next, Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camellias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play 'La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera 'La Traviata'. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demimondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades, versions followed starring Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication is emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making them soberer, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key to her success in many films. She could perform with success as the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone.
La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. The Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark through the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925 when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom, she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German co-productions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilingual Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in an Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions, she expressed the deep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Silents Please!, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 306. Photo: Pinto, Roma.
During the first quarter of the twentieth century, Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings...
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key of her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls who populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camelias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera La traviata. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demi-mondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades versions followed with Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making it more sober, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key of her success through many films. She could perform with success the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone.
Francesca Bertini's La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark by the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925, when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German coproductions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilinguals Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and an Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in a Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions she expressed the diep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
A GMA Bug Series
Postcard :
A Ladybird 'Easy-Reading' Book
'People At Work'
The Postman
And The Postal Service
Ladybird
1965
Illustration by John Berry
CD :
Machinefabriek + Stephen Vitiello
Box Music
12K
12K48
Written by Rutger Zuydervelt & Stephen Vitiello
Design by Taylor Deupree
Use Hearing Protection
GMA
Queen Ristorante is a second-generation family owned Italian restaurant, which was founded in 1958. When we photographed the restaurant in 2011 for our book, "New York Nights", we also interviewed the second generation owner, Vincent Vitiello. Here is an excerpt from the full interview which appears in our book.
This neighborhood has changed drastically since we opened. It once had a very large Italian population and the area south of here on President Street and Union Street was almost exclusively Italian. Now of course, it’s very mixed and gentrified and also has gotten pretty expensive. Our customer base has not really changed because we have always been a neighborhood restaurant, which thrives on repeat customer business. Our customers are special to us and we try hard to make them feel that this is like a home to them. Even though there is a neighborhood feel to our restaurant, we try to keep the food at a world-class level but with a neighborhood sensibility. The fact that we have been in business over 50 years with consistently high ratings from the critics attests to the fact that we are one of the best Italian restaurants in Brooklyn and the top in all of New York City.
Roman early imperial period, 1st c. CE
From Boscoreale (see on Pleiades), villa rustica on the fondo Vitiello, in contrada Centopiede al Tirone, bathing complex
In the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN), inv. 22430
Photographed on display in the exhibit "Paideia: giovani e sport nell'antichità" ('Paideia: youth and sports in antiquity'), July 1-November 4, 2019, MANN, Sala dei Tirannicidi.
Italian postcard by Fotocelere, no. 35. Photo: Unione Cinematografia Italiana (UCI), Roma.
Majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was one of the first European film stars. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, she often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings. She also starred in (and some say also directed) one of the first realist films in Italian cinema: Assunta Spina (1915).
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key of her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls who populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camelias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera La traviata. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demi-mondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades versions followed with Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making it more sober, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key of her success through many films. She could perform with success the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman.
Among Francesca Bertini's most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone. La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark by the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925, when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German coproductions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilinguals Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and an Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in a Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions she expressed the diep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by G. Vettori & Co, Bologna. Photo: Francesca Bertini in Tosca (Alfredo De Antoni, 1918).
Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings.
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key to her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls that populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, and directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (Alfredo De Antoni, 1918).
Next, Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camellias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play 'La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera 'La Traviata'. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demimondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades, versions followed starring Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication is emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making them soberer, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key to her success in many films. She could perform with success as the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone.
La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. The Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark through the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925 when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom, she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German co-productions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilingual Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in an Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions, she expressed the deep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Silents Please!, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Vintage postcard, no. 7484.
Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings, but in Assunta Spina, based on the play by Salvatore Di Giacomo, she played a passionate washerwoman from the back streets of Naples. The film was partly shot on location, displaying an unseen realism for that time.
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key of her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls who populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camelias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera 'La traviata'. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demi-mondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades versions followed with Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making it more sober, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key of her success through many films. She could perform with success the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of spaghetti western genius Sergio Leone.
La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark by the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925, when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German coproductions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilinguals Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and an Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in a Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions she expressed the diep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Vintage postcard, no. 5560. Photo: Caesar Film, Roma. Francesca Bertini in Diana, l'affascinatrice/Diana the Seductress (Gustavo Serena, 1915).
Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings.
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key to her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls that populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, and directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next, Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camellias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play 'La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera 'La Traviata'. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demimondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades, versions followed starring Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication is emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making them soberer, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key to her success in many films. She could perform with success as the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone.
La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. The Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark through the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925 when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom, she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German co-productions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilingual Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in an Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions, she expressed the deep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Silents Please!, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Shooting fotografico a Rossella tenutosi a Posillipo, nel cuore di Napoli.
Please like my FB page:
www.facebook.com/antoniomariniellophotographer
photographer - Antonio Mariniello
model - Rossella Vitiello
MUA - Fabiana Amabile
Assistant and video operator - Nicola Sarnataro
Kings Of Leon
Copps Coliseum, Hamilton
September 19, 2009
This image is copyright © 2009 Zack Vitiello. All rights reserved. This photo may not be used under ANY circumstances without written consent. Please contact zvitiello@hotmail.com for usage rights.
See more at thetopdown.blogspot.com
AFI
Sound Academy
Toronto, ON
November 10, 2009
See more at thetopdown.blogspot.com
This image is copyright © 2009 Zack Vitiello. All rights reserved. This photo may not be used under ANY circumstances without written consent. Please contact zvitiello@hotmail.com for usage rights.
Spanish postcard by La Novela Semanal Cinematografica, Número especial (special number).
Majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was one of the first European film stars. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, she often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings.
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key to her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls who populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camelias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera La Traviata. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demimondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades, versions followed with Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making it soberer, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key of her success through many films. She could perform with success the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone.
La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark by the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925 when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom, she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German co-productions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilinguals Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and an Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in an Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions, she expressed the deep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
M.O.D. Company from 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade and Soldiers from Spanish Armed Forces Airborne Brigade (BRIPAC) assault Objective Cricket as they conduct Situational Training Exercises during Operation Sky Soldier 16 at Chinchilla training area, Spain, Feb. 29, 2016. The training objective of Exercise Sky Soldier 16 is to enhance the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment readiness for multinational contingency operations and capabilities to conduct future missions with NATO Allies and partners. The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army’s Contingency Response Force in Europe, providing rapidly deploying forces to the U.S. Army Europe, Africa and Central Command Areas of Responsibility within 18 hours. The Brigade routinely trains alongside NATO allies and partners to build stronger relationships and strengthen the alliance. (Photo by Elena Baladelli/released)
Vintage postcard by Edizione A. Traldi, Milano, no. 406. Photo: Pinto, Roma.
Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings.
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key to her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls that populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, and directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camellias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play 'La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera 'La Traviata'. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demimondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades, versions followed starring Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication is emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making them soberer, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key to her success in many films. She could perform with success as the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone.
La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. The Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark through the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925 when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom, she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German co-productions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilingual Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in an Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions, she expressed the deep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
M.O.D. Company from 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade and Soldiers from Spanish Armed Forces Airborne Brigade (BRIPAC) assault Objective Cricket as they conduct Situational Training Exercises during Operation Sky Soldier 16 at Chinchilla training area, Spain, Feb. 29, 2016. The training objective of Exercise Sky Soldier 16 is to enhance the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment readiness for multinational contingency operations and capabilities to conduct future missions with NATO Allies and partners. The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army’s Contingency Response Force in Europe, providing rapidly deploying forces to the U.S. Army Europe, Africa and Central Command Areas of Responsibility within 18 hours. The Brigade routinely trains alongside NATO allies and partners to build stronger relationships and strengthen the alliance. (Photo by Elena Baladelli/released)
Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald Vitiello visited the U.S. Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, NM on June 14, 2017. Chief Patrol Agent Harris and Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Burwell take Acting Deputy Commissioner Vitiello on a tour of the Academy's Search and Conveyance Lab facilities.
Photos by: Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Paul B. Clayton
U.S. Army paratroopers from Company A, 1-503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade and Italian soldiers from Folgore Brigade, seize Ampugnano airport, Siena, Italy, during Mangusta 16 exercise, Nov. 21, 2016. The purpose of this operation is to improve relationship with host nation, strengthen the alliance and increase NATO interoperability. (photo by Elena Baladelli /released) www.dvidshub.net
U.S. paratroopers from 54th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade move towards an objective during Exercise Castle Warfare at Foce Reno Training Area, Ravenna, Italy, Dec. 7, 2016. Exercise Castle Warfare is a mobility development and demolition training exercise that strengthens tactical and technical procedures though small arms and crew served weapon systems qualification ranges. (photo by Elena Baladelli\released) www.dvidshub.net
M.O.D. Company from 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade and Soldiers from Spanish Armed Forces Airborne Brigade (BRIPAC) assault Objective Cricket as they conduct Situational Training Exercises during Operation SkySoldier16 at Chinchilla training area, Spain, Feb, 29, 2016. The training objective of Exercise Sky Soldier 16 is to enhance the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment readiness for multinational contingency operations and capabilities to conduct future missions with NATO allies and partners. The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army’s Contingency Response Force in Europe, providing rapidly deploying forces to the U.S. Army Europe, Africa and Central Command Areas of Responsibility within 18 hours. The Brigade routinely trains alongside NATO allies and partners to build stronger relationships and strengthen the alliance. (Photo by Elena Baladelli/released)
U.S. paratroopers assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, and Italian Army soldiers from Folgore Brigade are conducting the assault to Ampugnano airport, Siena, Italy, during Mangusta 15 exercise, Oct. 26, 2015. (photo by Elena Baladelli/released)
Spanish sniper from the Spanish Armed Forces Airborne Brigade (BRIPAC) communicates with maneuver elements as his unit partners with M.O.D. Company from 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade during Situational Training Exercises as a part of Operation Sky Soldier 16 at Chinchilla training area, Spain, Feb. 29, 2016. The training objective of Exercise Sky Soldier 16 is to enhance the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment readiness for multinational contingency operations and capabilities to conduct future missions with NATO Allies and partners. The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army’s Contingency Response Force in Europe, providing rapidly deploying forces to the U.S. Army Europe, Africa and Central Command Areas of Responsibility within 18 hours. The Brigade routinely trains alongside NATO allies and partners to build stronger relationships and strengthen the alliance. (Photo by Elena Baladelli/released)
Italian postcard. Photo by Bettini, Roma, No. 243.
During the first quarter of the twentieth century, Francesca Bertini (1892-1985) was a majestic diva of the Italian silent cinema. She often played the 'femme fatale', with men devouring eyes, glamorous attire, clenched fists, and in opulent settings...
Francesca Bertini was born Elena Seracini Vitiello in Firenze (Florence), Italy in 1892. She was the daughter of a comic theatre actress. Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled. In 1904, at the age of 16, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian cinema. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907). She appeared in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian pioneering companies Cines and Celio. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key of her success as a silent film actress. Her first important film was Histoire d'un pierrot/Pierrot the Prodigal (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914). Soon followed by appearances in L'amazzone mascherata/The Masked Amazon (Baldassarre Negroni, 1914), Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxalia, 1914) and a small part in the successful historic epic Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Bertini was the most versatile of the big three Italian Divas - Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli. Her strong face and dignified suffering carried a large number of films, now mostly lost. However, one of her most impressive films has survived: Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, 1914). David Melville reviews on IMDb: "Assunta Spina is a work of dazzling dramatic intensity - with a heroine who is striking in her sensuality and modernity. Unlike the languid paper dolls who populate silent films by Griffith and others, Francesca Bertini plays a fully sexual woman. A vulnerable but hard-headed child of the slums, she's not above flirting with a man who's not her fiance, or - once the fiance goes to jail for attacking her in a jealous rage - prostituting herself to an official in order to save him. Not a Madonna, not a whore, but a woman. Perhaps the first real woman in screen history." Bertini did not just play the role of the main character, but she also wrote the script, directed and produced the film. Later she directed herself again in one of her other famous roles, Tosca, in La Tosca (1918).
Next Francesca Bertini played another of her best roles, Margherita Gauthier. La signora dalle camelie/The Lady of the Camelias (Gustavo Serena, 1915) was based on Alexandre Dumas fils' classic stage play La dame aux camélias, which again was the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera La traviata. It's the tragic story of a tuberculosis-ridden, suffering demi-mondaine who wants to get rid of her past and settle down with her lover, but this is denied, first by society (his father) and then by fate (her own illness and premature death). The drama inspired many actresses. In 1915, La dame aux camélias had already been filmed twice, first with Vittoria Lepanto (1909) and later by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1911). In 1915, Bertini's rival Hesperia made a competing version of La signora dalle camelie (Baldassarre Negroni, 1915) and in the US Clara Kimball Young made another version (1915). In the following decades versions followed with Theda Bara (1917), Erna Morena (1917), Pola Negri (1920), Alla Nazimova (1921), Sybil Thorndike (1922), Tora Teje (1925), Norma Talmadge (1926), Yvonne Printemps 1934), Greta Garbo (1936), Micheline Presle (1953), Maria Felix (1954), Sara Montiel (1962), Isabelle Huppert (1981), Teresa Stratas (1983), etc. Bertini became popular internationally. Her sophistication emulated around the world by female filmgoers. Reputedly, she earned $175,000 in 1915 - a record for the time. She developed the current acting techniques of film actresses by making it more sober, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key of her success through many films. She could perform with success the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman. Among her most popular films were Ultimo sogno (Roberto Roberti, 1920) and La donna nuda (Roberto Roberti, 1922) opposite Angelo Ferrari. The director of these films, Roberto Roberti, was the father of Spaghetti Western genius Sergio Leone.
Francesca Bertini's La giovinezza del diavolo (Roberto Roberti, 1922) was a remake of the female Faustian tale of Rapsodia satanica (1917), starring another silent diva, Lyda Borelli. But by the 1920s, Borelli had retired from stage & screen, after a wealthy and aristocratic marriage, even if her films lingered on in the cinemas. Director of La giovinezza del diavolo was Roberto Roberti, but the film bore its quality mark by the artistic supervision of Gabriellino D'Annunzio, the son of the famous poet, who just had filmed La nave, with D'Annunzio's mistress, dancer Ida Rubinstein. La giovinezza del diavolo had an unlucky life. It received its censorship card only two years after production and was finally released in 1925, when the diva trend was definitively over. Only Raimondo Van Riel received praise for his part as Mefistofeles. In 1921 Bertini married count and banker Paul Cartier. After a decade of divadom she withdrew from filming. She moved to Paris, but when her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, and thus in the second half of the 1920s she made a comeback. She acted in a handful of late silent Franco-German coproductions, opposite established actors such as Jean Angelo, Fritz Kortner and Rudolf Klein-Rogge: La fin de Monte Carlo/The End of Monte Carlo (Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas, 1926), Mein Leben für das Deine/Odette (Luitz-Morat, 1927), Tu m'appartiens/You Belong to Me (Maurice Gleize, 1928), and La possession (Léonce Perret, 1929). She also acted in the multilinguals Königin einer Nacht/Queen for a Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1930; also shot in a French and Italian version) and Odette (Jacques Houssin, Giorgio Zambon, 1934; shot in a French and an Italian version). The latter was the third version of Odette, based on a Stella Dallas-like tearjerker written by Victorien Sardou. In 1914, Bertini had already performed in a Odette-like film, Sangue blu, which narrative is close to that of Odette. In both versions she expressed the diep grief of a well-bred but fallen woman who loses her child because of a divorce. Years later, she is allowed to see her child once more, pretending to be a friend of the child's mother, and then she commits suicide. Bertini continued to act with some regularity until 1930. From then on she made each decade one film. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role of a nun, sister Desolata, in Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977). This was to be her last performance in a feature film. In 1982 she was the subject of the documentary L'Ultima Diva/The Last Diva (1982), shot in her early 90s, she was as sharp and commanding as ever. She was also one of the Divas featured in Peter Delpeut's beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999). Francesca Bertini died in 1985 in Rome, at the age of 93.
Sources: Gianfranco Mingozzi (Francesca Bertini), David Melville (IMDb), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Kings Of Leon
Copps Coliseum, Hamilton
September 19, 2009
This image is copyright © 2009 Zack Vitiello. All rights reserved. This photo may not be used under ANY circumstances without written consent. Please contact zvitiello@hotmail.com for usage rights.
See more at thetopdown.blogspot.com
M.O.D. Company from 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade and Soldiers from Spanish Armed Forces Airborne Brigade (BRIPAC) assault Objective Cricket as they conduct Situational Training Exercises during Operation Sky Soldier 16 at Chinchilla training area, Spain, Feb. 29, 2016. The training objective of Exercise Sky Soldier 16 is to enhance the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment readiness for multinational contingency operations and capabilities to conduct future missions with NATO Allies and partners. The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army’s Contingency Response Force in Europe, providing rapidly deploying forces to the U.S. Army Europe, Africa and Central Command Areas of Responsibility within 18 hours. The Brigade routinely trains alongside NATO allies and partners to build stronger relationships and strengthen the alliance. (Photo by Elena Baladelli/released)
On Jan. 23, 2018, McGeorge hosted a forum to explore the importance of an independent and impartial judiciary in the U.S. Presenters included Calif. Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. '83, and Distinguished Professor of Law Michael Vitiello. The Moderator was Judge Barbara A. Kronlund, Civil Judge Superior Court, San Joaquin County.
Italian postcard. Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Francesca Bertini in L'ultimo sogno (1921) by Roberto Roberti, father of Sergio Leone.
Plot: Maria (Bertini ) is chased from her village after the wife of her lover committed suicide. She starts a new life in a fishermen's village. Here the navy officer Guglielmo (Mario Parpagnoli) falls in love with her, dumps his girl, marries Maria and the two sail out for their honeymoon. The former lover Giovanni (Giorgio Bonaiti) shows up and confronts Guglielmo with his wife's past. Guglielmo kills Giovanni but his love for Maria has been killed too. When his ship is about to leave, Maria throws herself into the sea.
Francesca Bertini (1892-1985), originally Elena Vitiello, had already a prolific career in one-, two- and three-reelers for the Italian companies Cines and Celio, before she received diva status from 1914 on. In 1921 she married count Paul Cartier but divorced him. In order to take care of her son, she returned to the film sets, continuing to act with some regularity until 1930. Her last performance in a feature film was that of a nun in Bertolucci's Novecento (1977). She surely was one of the first Italian film stars.
Kings Of Leon
Copps Coliseum, Hamilton
September 19, 2009
This image is copyright © 2009 Zack Vitiello. All rights reserved. This photo may not be used under ANY circumstances without written consent. Please contact zvitiello@hotmail.com for usage rights.
See more at thetopdown.blogspot.com
AFI
Sound Academy
Toronto, ON
November 10, 2009
See more at thetopdown.blogspot.com
This image is copyright © 2009 Zack Vitiello. All rights reserved. This photo may not be used under ANY circumstances without written consent. Please contact zvitiello@hotmail.com for usage rights.
U.S. paratroopers assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, and Italian Army soldiers from Folgore Brigade are conducting the assault to Ampugnano airport, Siena, Italy, during Mangusta 15 exercise, Oct. 26, 2015. (photo by Elena Baladelli/released)
Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald D. Vitiello visits the Border Wall Construction Site near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry as eight different prototypes of the Border Wall were unveiled at the U.S. border with Mexico. October 26 2017.
Photos Courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Taken by Mani Albrecht
Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald Vitiello visited the U.S. Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, NM on June 14, 2017. Chief Patrol Agent Harris and Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Burwell take Acting Deputy Commissioner Vitiello on a tour of the Academy facilities.
Photos by: Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Paul B. Clayton
Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald Vitiello visited the U.S. Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, NM on June 14, 2017. Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald Vitiello and Chief Patrol Agent Dan M. Harris, Jr. inspect a bullet-ridden Border Patrol vehicle at the Border Patrol Academy, which was involved in a shootout near Sierra Blanca, TX.
Photos by: Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Paul B. Clayton