Carmine Gallone

Carmine Gallone was born as Carmelo Camillo Gallone on 10 September 1885 in Taggia (in the province of Imperia), but grew up in Naples. His father, Pasquale Gallone, was Italian, from Sorrento, and his mother, Rosa Langery, was French, from Nice. He began writing plays at the age of 15 and, in 1911, he travelled to Rome to participate in the National Drama Competition organised to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Unification of Italy. Although the play he submitted, Il Britannico, did not win, it received an honourable mention from the examining committee. That same year, he married Stanisława Winawerówna, a Polish actress born in Warsaw in 1880. He was hired by the resident acting company of the Teatro Argentina, where he remained with his wife until the end of 1912. During this period, he also worked as a film critic for several Roman magazines. In 1913, the young film director Nino Oxilia introduced him to Cines, where he made his debut as a screenwriter, adapting several comedies by Henry Bataille. At the end of the year, the Chief Executive Officer of Cines, Alberto Fassini, entrusted him with directing the drama film The Naked Truth, based on Bataille's play of the same name and starring Lyda Borelli.

Gallone directed thirteen films for Cines in 1914 alone, including Amore senza veli, Il romanzo di un torero and Le campane di Sorrento. In 1915, he was chosen to direct Avatar, and in 1917, he directed Malombra, a loose adaptation of Fogazzaro's novel of the same name. Gallone's early films are characterised by a refined aesthetic sensibility influenced by the Decadent movement prevalent at the time. He carefully constructed each image, studying the relationship between lighting and composition to create original visual effects. At the outbreak World War I, Gallone was filming Cuor di neve, starring Leda Gys. He was drafted into the army at the end of 1915, serving in the 1st Regiment "Granatieri di Sardegna", before being called up by the Ministry of the Navy in 1916 to direct propaganda films. Meanwhile, he began a collaboration with the novelist, screenwriter and director Lucio D'Ambra, a key figure in the development of sophisticated silent comedy in Italy. D'Ambra and Gallone collaborated on several films, including: La chiamavano Cosetta, Storia dei tredici (1917), On with the Motley (1919), Il bacio di Cirano, a reimagining of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. In 1919, Gallone made his most successful film to date: the historical epic Redenzione (Redemption), produced by the Medusa Film company. Starring Diana Karenne, the film stood out from other historical films of the same period thanks to its elegant and sophisticated cinematography, and was a great success with both audiences and critics. While Italian cinema was experiencing a period of crisis and a decline in production, Gallone continued to make successful films characterised by lavish sets and high production quality. These included the dark, sentimental drama Through the Shadows (1924); the melodrama The Faces of Love (1924), based on the opera Adriana Lecouvreur by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé; and La signorina madre di famiglia (1925). In 1925, he directed The Fiery Cavalcade, a love story set against the backdrop of Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand. Starring Gallone's wife, Emilio Ghione, and Jeanne Brindeau, the film drew parallels between the Garibaldian and Fascist movements, a comparison that would later be endorsed by the fascist regime. In 1926, Gallone directed the historical epic The Last Days of Pompeii, based on E. G. Bulwer-Lytton's novel. A spectacular production with thousand of extras and an international cast, the film is notable for featuring scenes colorized by the Pathéchrome stencil color process. Despite its grand scale, the film was a commercial disappointment, particularly when compared to earlier versions. It was a major setback for Italian cinema and marked the end to the first part of Gallone's career as a filmmaker.

In 1927, Gallone left Italy to work in France, Germany, England and Austria. While in Paris, he directed Celle qui domine for the British film company Gaumont-British. That same year Gallone moved to Berlin, where he directed the drama film The City of a Thousand Delights, starring Paul Richter, Adele Sandrock and Langhorn Burton. His next movie, Pawns of Passion, shot in Germany and Poland in 1928, was an explicit anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda film. In 1929, Gallone shot his first sound film, Land Without Women, stylistically one of his best works. The movie was shot at the Staaken and Templehof Studios in Berlin with sets designed by the art directors Hans Sohnle and Otto Erdmann. After returning to Paris, he directed Un soir de rafle (1931). Lively, engaging, sentimental, and funny, it was considered one of the greatest successes of French sound film. In 1933, Gallone moved to London to realize English-language versions of some of his films. In 1934, he filmed Lucean le stelle in Berlin, for which he made French and English versions. The following year he directed the musical drama film Casta Diva. Written by Hollywood screenwriter Walter Reisch and starring Marta Eggerth, Lamberto Picasso and Gualtiero Tumiati, the film was a fictionalized biography of Vincenzo Bellini. It was filmed at the Cines studios in Rome and won the Mussolini Cup at the 1935 Venice International Film Festival. Gallone simultaneously shot an English-language version of the film, The Divine Spark, starring Marta Eggerth, Phillips Holmes, Benita Hume, and Donald Calthrop.

In 1937, Gallone was commissioned to direct Scipio Africanus, a historical epic widely regarded as the most significant cinematic propaganda effort of the Italian Fascist regime. The film was intended to celebrate the victorious conclusion of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and to serve as a metaphor for the regime's imperial project. It received heavy financial backing from Italian government and was overseen by Mussolini's son, Vittorio. Although the film failed to impress Mussolini, it still premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was quite successful. Following the revival of the Italian film industry, Gallone settled permanently in Italy. In the late 1930s he directed several films inspired by the world of opera, most notably Giuseppe Verdi (1938), Marionette (1939), Il sogno di Butterfly, (1939) and Amami Alfredo (1940). In 1940 he directed The Two Orphans, a remake of D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, starring Alida Valli and Maria Denis; In Eternal Melodies, starring Gino Cervi and the Spanish actress Conchita Montenegro, Gallone recounts the precocious debut, unhappy love affairs and premature death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, skilfully blending elements of opera with exquisitely dramatic scenes. The Secret Lover (1941) is remembered for Valli's provocative performance. Odessa in Flames (1942), a propaganda war film set in the Soviet Union, was the first result of a collaboration agreement between Italian and Romanian filmmakers. In 1943 Gallone directed Harlem, set in the US and critical about the American lifestyle, with afro-American and colonial British war prisoners employed in extra roles as colored characters. Despite its setting in a stilted New York lifted directly from contemporary American films, the film stood out for its memorable sequences.

Following the collapse of the Italian Social Republic, Gallone, one of the foremost figures in fascist cinema, was handed a six-month suspension by the Italian authorities. Between 1946 and 1947, he directed five film adaptations of operas, including the box-office hit Rigoletto and Davanti a lui tremava tutta Roma, starring Anna Magnani. These were followed by: Addio Mimì! (1948); The Lady of the Camellias (1949); Puccini (1952), which was also number one at the box office; The Legend of Faust (1953); Aida and Cavalleria rusticana (1954). When interest in operatic films waned, Gallone returned to historical epics, with Messalina (1951) and especially Carthage in Flames (1960), one of the most expensive epic adventure films produced in Italy during the 1960s. In 1955, he directed some comic films in the Don Camillo series, starring Fernandel and Gino Cervi. The 1962 comedy Carmen di Trastevere was the last film of his long career. Gallone died in Frascati on 11 March 1973 following a heart attack. Having directed over one hundred films, he is recognised as one of the most prolific filmmakers in the history of Italian cinema.