Maciste imperatore Maciste Emperor (1924) Director: Guido Brignone –
Director of photography: Massimo Terzano –
Production: Fert-Pittaluga –
Original lenght: 2134 m –
Lenght: 1650 m –
Intertitles: Italian –
Censorship certificate: 20004, 31/10/1924 –
Première: 04/11/1924 –
Cast: Bartolomeo Pagano (Maciste), Domenico Gambino (Saetta), Armand Pouget (Stanos), Elena Sangro (Cinzia), Oreste Grandi (Osram), Augusto Bandini (cadetto/cadet Paintheroxskoski), Lola Romanos (Ginevra), Gero Zambuto (Maresciallo/Marshal Di Lothar), Raoul Mayllard (il principe/Prince Otis), Giuseppe Brignone (Conte/Count Oultz), Lorenzo Soderini (Barone/Baron Riembergk)
The film:
Maciste takes advantage again of a break of acting in order to wash away injustice and castigate the wicked, this time in the name of dynastic legitimacy. Otis, the prince of Sirdagna kingdom, lives undercover in a foreign land, waiting to ascend the throne; Stanos the evil ruler though, is willing to do anything in order to prevent the legitimate prince installation. The court is a dangerous place, Otis is young and naïf: in order to solve the situation, Maciste, following the advice of his friend Saetta, temporarily takes Otis’s place, and presents himself as the legitimate prince. The crowd, enamored by his good looks, applauds him immediately as the emperor.
But Maciste is the faithful servant of the true king: after punishing the enemies and neutralizing the dangers, he returns the power to Otis. An explicitly political chapter of the good giant saga. We can see the reflection of the Italian political situation of that time in the populism of the temporary emperor, who fascinates the crowd, despises the institutional bureaucracy and solves the controversies with the strength and the charisma.
The film restoration:
The restoration was carried out by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, based on a tinted and toned nitrate positive print with Dutch intertitles conserved at the Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam [EYE Film Institute Netherlands]. The texts of the Italian intertitles were reconstructed from the censorship certificate and the lists of intertitles conserved at the Museum in Torino. The graphics of the signs, the intertitles and the inserts were reconstructed by analyzing the copies and the intertitles on plates of Fert films that were produced in the same period. As the intertitles were being inserted various consistent lapses were noted; the intertitles belonging to the lost images were mounted later, separated by ten black frames in order to make the story more comprehensible. The documents with the original story of the film permitted a further verification of the gaps and the editing order of the print. A dupe negative and a positive print colored with the Desmet method were printed.
The restoration was conducted in 2007 at the L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna.
