Ultimi giorni di Pompei, Gli Last Days of Pompeii, The (1913) Director: Eleuterio Rodolfi –
Production: Società Anonima Ambrosio, Torino –
Original lenght: 1958 m –
Lenght: 1930 m –
Intertitles: Italian –
Censorship certificate: 994, 1/12/1913 –
Première: 24/08/1913 –
Cast: Fernanda Negri-Pouget (Nidia), Eugenia Tettoni Florio (Jone), Ubaldo Stefani (Glauco), Vitale De Stefano (Claudio), Antonio Grisanti (Arbace), Cesare Gani-Carini (Apoecide), Ercole Vaser, Carlo Campogalliani.
The film:
The Bulwer-Lytton’s novel The last Days of Pompeii was a real success that gripped the readers of the 1800s. At the beginning of the new century, the enthusiasm was still on and the very young Italian cinematographic industry didn’t let slip out the cinematographic potentialities of the story.
The 1908 adaptation directed by Luigi Maggi was a great success [http://www2.museocinema.it/restauri/muti_restaurati.php?id=17&l=en]; in 1913 the same production company started up a second version, thinking that the technique progresses achieved in those few years could hold moments of spectacular effects till then unimaginable.
Gloria film, after announcing a third film with the same subject, decided to give up the competition and recycled the sets for “Nerone e Agrippina”. The plagiarism started one of the most famous lawsuit about copyright of the Italian silent cinema.
The film had a great success with the public and the critics. The spectacular scene of the eruption and the delicate performance of Fernanda Negri Pouget, an actress of great sensibility, playing the role of Nidia, caused a great sensation. The public was also intrigued by the possibility to compare the two versions of the story, released in the same period. Some theater owners even organized consecutive screenings of the Ambrosio and the Pasquali’s films. Nidia, Glauco, Jone, Arbace and Claudio will come back on the screen again many times , but the 1913 film will be the reference point for all the further versions.
The film restoration:
The restoration was conducted by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. An analysis of the numerous prints of the film conserved in Italy and foreign archives revealed the existence of at least two negatives of the film, one which was destined for the European market and the other for the United States. It was decided to use the tinted and toned positive nitrate print with German intertitles that is conserved at the Murnau Stiftung in Wiesbaden as the primary matrix for the restoration since it is a first generation print in excellent condition. Lapses were corrected with an incomplete nitrate print with original Italian intertitles that was preserved in the 1920s and is conserved at the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana of Milano. A 16mm print conserved at the Cineteca Bruno Boschetto in Torino was the only copy that had the initial sequence with the white-haired man turning the hourglass with the ruins of Pompeii behind him. This sequence had been prepared for the American prints that were made from the second negative, but the copy in Torino is the only surviving print that conserves the images, even though it was made from the first negative. The writing “Il tempo” on the score proved to be a reference to the prologue rather than a musical indication; thus, it was also meant for the Italian version. The missing intertitles were reconstructed based on documents conserved at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino. The font of reference for the coloration was the German nitrate print, since the one conserved in Milano is a later print with different coloration that is sometimes richer but less faithful to the 1913 coloration. An analysis of the coloration between the perforations made it possible to recuperate tones of color which had disappeared from the images. A careful comparison of the documents (in particular the screenplay and the brochures with lengthy, detailed synopses) and the prints of the film made it possible to verify the order of the editing and the repositioning of a few scenes.
The restoration was carried out in 2006 at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna. The musical accompaniment was written by Maestro Stefano Maccagno, based on the original score by Maestro Graziani-Walter.
