Mistero di Jack Hilton, Il Mistery of Jack Hilton, The(1913) Director: Ubaldo Maria del Colle –
Director of photography: Giuseppe Testa –
Production: Savoia Film, Torino –
Original lenght: 1.100m –
Lenght: 930m –
Intertitles: Swedish –
Censorship certificate: 1633 - 1.12.1913 –
Cast: Ubaldo Maria del Colle (Jack Hilton), Adriana Costamagna (Adriana Duncan), Giovanni Spano (Thomas Trevalny), Arturo Garzes (marchese von Hilton, zio di Jack / Marquess von Hilton, aunt of Jack), Mario Mariani (il Rajah), Virgilio Fineschi (domestico di Hilton / Hilton’s servant)
The film:
"During the making of this film, when the production company Savoia used the beasts of the Nouma Hawa troupe, as it had already done in other productions, a leopard assaulted the actress Adriana Costamagna, horribly disfiguring her face. The tragic event, that required long vain treatments and painful surgeries to the actress in order to reconstruct the traits of her face, had a great media coverage in Italy and in foreign countries. The Savoia company, and, for the overseas, the Éclair company which edited the distribution of the film for the Italian editor, when the film was distributed in Europe between the end of 1913 and the beginning of 1914, took advantage of this episode and announced that the income of the film would have been devolved to the actress to help her pay for the medical expenses. The career of Adriana Costmagna, a beautiful and talented actress on her way to the newborn landscape of the Italian divas, was abruptly interrupted, even if, in the next years, her name still appeared in some marginal roles."
Aldo Bernardini, Vittorio Martinelli, Bianco e Nero, Il cinema muto italiano 1913, Part II, Centro Sperimentale di cinematografia, 1994, p. 71.
The film restoration:
JACK HILTONS FÄRDER OCH ÄFVENTYR (Il mistero di Jack Hilton, Savoia Film, Italy, 1913) was preserved in 2018 by Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino in collaboration with Svenska Filminstitutet (Stockholm). Restoration works were carried out at the laboratory of the Filminstitutet from the only available copy, a 35 mm tinted nitrate print with Swedish intertitles conserved in Stockholm.
