Francesca Bertini
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.
Francesca Bertini
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.