Beginnings to Superspectacles

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Motion pictures captured the Italian imagination from the first demonstration of the Lumières' Cinématographe in Rome on 12 March 1896. The driving force was Filoteo Alberini, who not only founded the first production company (Cines) in Italy and opened the first purpose-built cinema (the Moderno), but who also directed the country's earliest dramatic film, La Presa Di Roma (The Fall of Rome) (1905). Five years later, Italian studios were churning out 807 short subjects a year, many of them inspired by classical mythology, ancient history and local literature. But slapstick clowns like Cretinetti, Robinet and Polidor were also hugely popular, as were melodramas starring divas Lyda Borelli and Francesca Bertini.

Encouraged by intellectuals like Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian films grew in sophistication and were noted for their use of location and natural light, staging in depth, long takes and the integration of character and environment. But superspectacles like Mario Caserini's Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei (The Last Days of Pompeii) (1913) and Enrico Guazzoni's Quo Vadis? (1913) were also famed for the sheer scale of their sets and casts of thousands. Giovanni Pastrone's 15-reel Cabiria (1914), which made a star of Bartolomeo Pagano as Maciste, gave Italian cinema international pre-eminence.

David Parkinson