Assunta Spina (1915)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Assunta Spina
Original title Assunta Spina
Country of production Italy
Publishing year 1915
length 1,690 m, at 20 fps 74 minutes
Rod
Director Gustavo Serena
script Francesca Bertini
Gustavo Serena
production Giuseppe Barattolo
camera Alberto G. Carta
occupation

Assunta Spina is an Italian silent film melodrama by Gustavo Serena from 1915. The film, made for Giuseppe Barattolo's production company "Caesar Film" , was based on a literary model by Salvatore Di Giacomo .

action

Assunta Spina worked in a laundry in Naples at the beginning of the 20th century. Although she is the bride of the irascible and violent butcher Michele, she is heavily courted by Raffaele. Rejected by her, he wrote an anonymous letter to her bridegroom in retaliation, in which he condemned her unfaithfulness when he was absent. When she accepts Raffaele's invitation to dance at a party because she feels neglected by Michele, the latter, half blind from jealousy, goes at her with the knife and disfigures her face. Michele is arrested and taken to court. At the trial, she tries to save him and claims that she challenged him, but the court doesn't believe her.

She lets the vice-chairman Federico persuade her to make a deal: her Michele should serve the two years to which he was sentenced in the nearby prison of Naples instead of in distant Avellino, so that she can visit him in the cell - but only if she gets involved with Federico for it.

The day before Christmas Eve, she expects the man in her house. But before him, Michele appears, who was released six months ahead of time. Assunta confesses everything to him, and Michele, furious with jealousy, stabs the deputy chairman in front of Assunta's eyes. When the police arrive, they take responsibility for the crime to save Michele from punishment and are taken away.

background

Salvatore Di Giacomo's story “Assunta Spina” was dramatized as early as 1909 and successfully performed in the theater.

The outdoor shots for “Assunta Spina” were filmed in and around Naples in southern Italy. Alberto G. Carta was in charge of the camera . The film structures were created by Alfredo Manzi . The film was viraged and premiered in Rome on October 28, 1915. It was also shown in Sweden under the title Ett sonat brott and in Japan.

reception

“ Verismo found its way into Italian silent film around 1915 . The main objective here was to present the fate of people from the lower classes of society as realistic as possible. [...] Francesca Bertini was a main representative of this direction in silent films. She was one of the first great film actresses and was considered the diva of Italian silent films. “Assunta Spina” is one of her most famous films. Above all, as in “Assunta Spina”, she was characterized by the portrayal of passionate and internally contradicting female fates, which she portrayed with natural gestures. " ("Maria" at gabelingeber )

“The recording technique of this film is still awkward, the movements of the camera are limited to a few horizontal shots, the close-up - which will soon become obsessed - only appears fleeting; the film consists largely of close-ups, which means that it was shot at a distance that did justice to both the changing expressions on the faces and the gestures of the actors. Since the artificial lighting was still missing, the outside shots were taken in the sun and the inside shots under the light that threw back the glass walls of the film studio. The shadows are therefore hard and the effects raw. The same object was used for distance and close-up photography. But the photography is clean and clear (thanks to the cameraman Alberto Carta), and some exterior shots would be appropriate for a good modern film. ” (Special edition of the film studio: Masterpieces of Italian silent films 1959)

The culture channel Arte broadcast the film on September 21, 2000 on German television. The restored version was provided with music composed in 1993, which is based on Neapolitan folk tunes.

literature

  • Franz-Josef Albersmeier: Theater, film, literature in Spain. Literary history as an integrated media history. (= Romania study series. Volume 15). Verlag Erich Schmidt, 2001, ISBN 3-503-04983-5 , pp. 49, 187.
  • Giorgio Bertellini: Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque. Indiana University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-253-22128-5 , pp. 87-90, 312, 368, 400, 407, 422. (English)
  • Gian Piero Brunetta: The History of Italian Cinema: A Guide to Italian Film from Its Origins to the Twenty-first Century. Princeton University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-691-11988-5 , pp. 7, 45, 49, 51, 53f., 364. (English)
  • Giuliana Bruno: Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari. ACLS Humanities e-book. Princeton University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-691-02533-9 , pp. 30-31, 110, 299, 405. (English)
  • Marga Cottino-Jones: Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema. (= Italian and Italian American Studies ). Verlag Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, ISBN 978-0-230-10548-5 , pp. 4, 20, 29, 35, 64-65, 74, 139, 247. (English)
  • Jean-Eric de Cockborne: Assunta Spina (1915). entr. 6th October 2013 at a-cinema-history.blogspot.de (English)
  • The verismo in Italian silent films. Published on September 19, 2010. ( gabelingeber.wordpress.com ( Memento from December 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))
  • Salvatore Di Giacomo: Assunta Spina. Drama in two acts. Translated by Fred B. Hardt. Published 1910, length 48 pages
  • Jean A. Gili: Francesca Bertini et la Film d'Arte Italiana. 26 février 2007. on line at 1895.revues.org (French)
  • Joseph Farrell, Paolo Puppa (Ed.): A History of Italian Theater, Illustrated Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-521-80265-2 , pp. 255, 262. (English)
  • Vittorio Martinelli: Assunta Spina. In: Enciclopedia del Cinema. 2004. (treccani.it , Italian)
  • Antonio Tedesco: STORIA DELLA CINEMATOGRAFIA NAPOLETANA. 12 ^ puntata. (napoliontheroad.com , Italian)
  • Angela Dalle Vacche: Diva - Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema. University of Texas Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-292-71711-4 , pp. 10, 13, 52, 58, 167, 208-209, 218, 259, 265, 279, 284, 288, 297-298. (English)
  • Birgit Warzecha: Gender difference in special education: research - practice - perspectives. (= Conflict - crisis - socialization. Volume 2). LIT Verlag, Münster, 1997, ISBN 3-8258-3246-5 , p. 318.
  • Friedrich von Zglinicki : The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors. Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1956, p. 486.

Web links

Illustrations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. imdb.com
  2. ↑ cf. gabelingeber.wordpress.com
  3. ^ Texts from the booklets of the student film club of the Univ. Frankfurt, Main: film studio, cf. Birett, sources kinematographie.de