Rhapsody of Satan
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Rhapsody of Satan |
| Original title | Rapsodia Satanica |
| Country of production | Italy |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1915 |
| length | 4 acts, 905/850 meters, at 20 fps 45 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Nino Oxilia |
| script | Alfa |
| production | Società Italiana Cines |
| music | Pietro Mascagni |
| camera | Giorgio Ricci |
| occupation | |
| |
Rhapsody of Satan is an Italian silent film melodrama that Nino Oxilia directed for the Società Italiana Cines . The screenplay was written by Alberto Fassini based on a poem by Fausto Maria Martini (1886–1931) from 1915. The film music was composed by Pietro Mascagni , one of the most important exponents of verismo . The main role played the Italian silent film diva Lyda Borelli . The film wasn't premiered until 1917 due to various obstacles.
action
The story is a quasi-feminist variation of the Faust -Stoffes that Fausto Maria Martini had made in a poem 1915th Alba d'Oltrevita, an aging lady from the nobility, pledged her soul to the devil, who was supposed to give her back her youth in return. Because they are courting two brothers, Tristano and Sergio, with Sergio threatening to kill himself if she does not hear him. But she is not interested in Sergio at all, but prepares the wedding with Tristano. Only when Sergio actually takes his own life does feelings such as regret and love return to her. Now she is ready to accept her impermanence. At this moment, however, Mephisto withdraws his promise to give her back her youth, because she has broken the contract. It is noticeably deteriorating. In the veil she is approaching her end as Sergio's bride.
background
Fausto Maria Martini was a poet, dramaturge and literary critic from the school of the Crepuscolari , the “poets of the twilight”, who, aesthetically speaking and with a sense of the tragic, sang the hopeless decline of bourgeois culture. The basis for the film was a long poem by Martini, which not only served as a script, but was also sold to the audience as a kind of opera libretto. With this "poema cine-musicale" - so the subtitle - the cultural aura of the concert and opera business was to be introduced into the cinema in order to attract new audiences. The Turin native Nino Oxilia, who has been making films since 1913, wanted to apply the concept of the total work of art, as Richard Wagner had in mind, to film; all art movements, poetry, music, and cinematography should work here under one roof. The Rhapsody of Satan was Oxilia's last film. He fell as a war volunteer in 1917 in the first battle of the Piave on Monte Grappa .
The film was made in the winter of 1914 to 1915. Although it was received with great enthusiasm by viewers in a private screening in early 1915, it was refused to release for reasons that are not clear. It was only shown in cinemas in Italy in July 1917 after heavy cuts. In Germany it was first performed after the First World War in April 1922, and on April 19, 1922 it was presented to the test center in an original length of 4 files (949 meters) and was banned from young people under the number 5713. Premiered. There it was awarded by Universum-Film AG . It also ran in Spain , Portugal , France and the United States , among others .
The composer Pietro Mascagni, who became a star of the Italian opera scene overnight through his one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana in 1889, wrote an image-synchronous symphonic accompanying music. This is “neither 'pure' music nor symphonic poetry. Rather, it is music tailored for the film, which has an extraordinary expressive quality. ”When it was premiered in Augusteo on July 3, 1917, Mascagni himself conducted the orchestra in the cinema. In 2014 the composer Gabrio Taglietti developed a new musical version of the Rhapsody of Satan for violin and electric guitar. It was played live by the musicians Giacomo Baldelli, Maurizio Carrettin and Vittorio Soana at the screening of the film in February 2014 in the auditorium of the Music Academy in Mantua ; the verses of Fausto Maria Martini were recited by the actor Dario Cantarelli.
The copy of the premiere was viraged and partially hand-colored . The special feature was a combination of monochrome coloring and "stencil coloring of individual parts of the image, which in turn results in an extraordinary range of color nuances in the film". While the viraged version was thought to be lost for a long time , a nitro copy in the original colors of the work was discovered in the mid-1990s in the Cinémathèque Suisse in Lausanne , which contains all the coloring processes known at the time. In 1996, the Rhapsody of Satan was restored by the special laboratory L'Immagine Ritrovata of the Cineteca di Bologna with the help of archives from the Cineteca Italiana di Milano and the Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne. From the original length of 905 meters, 850 meters could be preserved in the restored version. The original color scheme could also be restored.
The culture channel Arte showed the film as a Franco-German premiere on June 1, 2007 on German television. The original music was recorded by the State Philharmonic of Rhineland-Palatinate under the baton of Frank Strobel .
reception
Anthony Kobal calls the Rhapsody of Satan "one of the best achievements that early Italian cinema produced" and a highlight of the later so-called "tail coat film". For other critics it was an “original… film adaptation of the 'Faust' saga”, with Mascagni's film music based on Wagner's Tristan .
literature
- Ermanno Comuzio: Rapsodia Satanica (1915) e la Musica di Mascagni. In: Cineforum. No. 265, 1987, pp. 7-12.
- Oliver Huck: Pietro Mascagni's "Rapsodia satanica" and the birth of film art from the spirit of music . In: Archives for Musicology . Volume 61, 2004, p. 190.
- Angela Dalle Vacche: Lyda Borelli's Satanic Rhapsody. The Cinema and the Occult. In: Cinémas: revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies. Volume 16, Number 1, 2005, pp. 91-115 ( online ).
Web links
- Rhapsody of Satan in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Luca Pellegrini: Rapsodia restaurata. Grande evento all'Opera di Roma . cinematógrafo.it, March 17, 2005.
Individual evidence
- ↑ According to Luca Pellegrini, it is a "dramma musicale cinematografico". Cf. Luca Pellegrini: Rapsodia restaurata. Grande evento all'Opera di Roma ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . cinematógrafo.it, March 17, 2005.
- ↑ Angela Dalle Vacche: Lyda Borelli's Satanic Rhapsody. The Cinema and the Occult . In: Cinémas: revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies . Volume 16, number 1, 2005, p. 97.
- ↑ Birett: Sources on Film History , No. 105 i
- ↑ bam-portal.de ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Rapsodia satanica di Gabrio Taglietti all'Auditorium . Gazetta di Mantova, February 23, 2014.
- ↑ kinotv.com
- ↑ Rhapsodia Satanica ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on arte.tv, April 13, 2012.
- ↑ "... is undoubtedly one of the finest achievements of the early Italian cinema". Anthony Kobal: Satan's Rhapsody-1915-Nino Oxilia Review . silentmoviesera, March 8, 2014.
- ↑ Salome (1922) / Rapsodia Satanica (1914) - silent films by Charles Bryant and Nino Oxilia . cinemamusica.de, June 29, 2007.
