The film:

Before becoming UCI’s leading director, Augusta Genina worked for several studios based in Turin, including Itala Film for whom he made seven films such as Addio giovinezza (http://www2.museocinema.it/restauri/muti_restaurati.php?id=144&l=en), La maschera e Il volto and Lo scaldino (http://www2.museocinema.it/restauri/muti_restaurati.php?id=185&l=en). For a long time impossible to see, L’onestà del peccato stages a story based around violent contrasts which makes good use of actors.

From the enclosed atmosphere of high society emerges the character played by an intense Maria Jacobini. In the role of daughter, wife, lover and mother she plays a woman courageous to the point of becoming an instrument of death. Her character can thus be justifiably included amongst the galleries of portraits of a lady, often complex to the point of illegibility, which are characteristic of Genina’s cinema as a whole.

The film restoration:

L’onestà del peccato was restored by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino from a tinted nitrate print with Italian intertitles preserved by Cineteca di Bologna. Missing frames were replaced with fragments (91 meters in total) of a nitrate duplicate negative, preserved by Cinémathèque française and Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé. The restored version is 1885 meters long.

The elements were digitized at 4K and then restored at 2K. The censorship visa and the lists of intertitles preserved by Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino were utilized as references for the reconstruction of the missing intertitles, the editing order and the missing frames.

The restoration was carried out by L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna in 2017.  

back

• Restorations
• Silent films
• Sound films

• Online collections