Trilogia di Maciste, La - [1° episodio: Maciste contro la morte; 2° episodio: Il viaggio di Maciste; 3° episodio: Il testamento di Maciste] Maciste Super-Man - [1st episode: Maciste Against Death; 2st episode: The Travel of Maciste; 3st episode: The Will of Maciste](1920) Director: Carlo Campogalliani –
Director of photography: Fortunato Spinolo –
Production: Itala Film - U.C.I. –
Original lenght: 1° episodio: 1549 m; 2° episodio: 1798 m; 3° episodio: 1724 m –
Lenght: 988m –
Intertitles: Italian –
Censorship certificate: n. 15144 / 15145 / 15146 del 01/05/1920 –
Cast: Bartolomeo Pagano (Maciste), Letizia Quaranta (principessa / Princess Maria Laetitia), Carlo Campogalliani (Tito Fabrizi), Vittorio Rossi-Pianelli (principe / Prince Luitpoldo), Pierre Lepetit (Cioccolattino), P. Berton (il precettore / Tutor Dupuis), Ria Bruna (la contessa / Countness Henriette), Felice Minotti (il complice del primo ministro / Prime Minister’s accomplice)
The film:
“In the course of his long and distinguished career, Maciste flirted with a high number of genres, different backgrounds and narrative styles. The serial continuity is always guaranteed by the presence, the features and the functions of the principal character, according to a logic of variations on the theme. In the Maciste Trilogy, however, a stronger model of seriality is experimented, one which anticipates narrative continuity between the parts, resorting to the suspense of the action at the end of each episode. The film might be considered a somewhat isolated experiment, in “normalising” the character, reverting his adventures to the most classic topoi of action films then in style: the chases, the traps, the kidnappings follow one another on a principle of accumulation: the characters literally take on the profiles of the dramatis personae of the fable, including the princess in peril: to stay ahead of his enemies Maciste elaborates complex discoveries that owe more to cinegenia than to rationality. To paraphrase a commentator ‘As long as there is movement, what do logic and good sense matter?’”
The film restoration:
The restoration of La trilogia di Maciste was conducted by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, from a colored nitrate positive copy with French subtitles, conserved at Les Archives Françaises du Film-Centre National de la Cinématographie in Bois d’Arcy. The copy used was a re-release print prepared for the French market, in which the three episodes were combined to form one single feature-length film. The restoration recreated the original division into three episodes, indicated the gaps, and reconstructed and repositioned the Italian intertitles on the basis of production documents conserved at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino.
The restoration was carried out at the laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna in June 2010.
