Maciste
(1915) Director: Vincenzo Denizot, Luigi Romano Borgnetto –
Director of photography: Augusto Battagliotti, Giovanni Tomatis –
Production: Itala Film, Torino –
Original lenght: 1968 m –
Lenght: 1377 m –
Intertitles: Italian –
Censorship certificate: 9875, 22/6/1915 –
Première: 07/01/1916 –
First lead role for the gentle giant Maciste (original name Bartolomeo Pagano), who stole the scene to the leaders and the princesses in Cabiria. The period and the location are different, but not the essence: Maciste, no more a black slave, but an active and dynamic actor of the 1910’s in Torino, is still the generous defender of the oppressed. In this case, he defends a girl robbed of her inheritance and oppressed by a perfidious uncle.
The film restoration:
The restoration of Maciste was carried out by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, based on an tinted and toned nitrate print with Dutch intertitles that is conserved at the Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam [EYE Film Institute Netherlands]. At least two black and white safety prints had already been made from the same print and the intertitles were reconstructed by translating them from Dutch into Italian. Reconstruction of the Italian intertitles also used non-filmic documentation conserved at the National Cinema Museum of Torino. The intertitles on plates in Italian (an incomplete series) permitted the reproduction of the text, the style and the character of the intertitles of the era. In the case of missing intertitles, the sources for the text were the censorship certificate, the working notebooks and lists of intertitles. The intertitles on plates in foreign languages (English, French, German, Spanish) gave indications as to the way the missing Italian intertitles should be distributed and provided a background for inserts like letters, telegrams and tickets. The position of the intertitles was reconstructed according to indications on the color samples. In the same way, the samples made it possible to pinpoint the major gaps, which are marked in the restored copy with ten black frames, and to confirm the conformity of the coloration of the original Italian print with the Dutch print, which was also verified by comparing it with the editing and dye sheets. The obvious errors in editing were corrected. A dupe negative and a positive print colored with the Desmet method were printed, the restoration was conducted in 2006 at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna.
The Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna published a DVD of the restored film, part of the book Maciste. L’uomo forte (curated by Claudia Gianetto e Stella Dagna, 2009).
