The year 1911, the 50th anniversary of Italian Unification, was for Italy a year of national worship, and cinema marched enthusiastically in the parade, celebrating the pomp of the country’s splendors and claiming the onerous duty “to make Italians”. In fact, fifty years after Italy was declared unified, the heartfelt words of D’Azeglio were still relevant, considering the precarious, shaky national consciousness expressed by a large part of the population in the first decade of the 1900s. Promoting “Italianness” became a primary objective for the leaders of country, from the political establishment to the the cultural élite. And film too took up this battle with every weapon available, falling into line with the institutional communication strategy of looking at the past and the future, that used the grandeur of national history as a mirror of the equally glorious present, that depicted the universal nature of Italic culture as a valid passport for Italy’s definitive entrance among the leading world powers. In this climate of patriotic opulence Italian cinema ventured into the starry heights of Italian culture through the ages, taking on Dante (Inferno, Milano Films; Inferno, Helios Film; Purgatorio, Helios Film), Tasso (Gerusalemme liberata, Cines; Aminta, Helios), Manzoni (I promessi sposi, Film d’Arte Italiana) and gems of ancient history (Odissea, Milano Films; La caduta di Troia, Itala Film). In the celebratory fervor of 1911 patriotic subjects were clearly given priority. In fact, that year seven films about Risorgimento battles were made, including the magnificent Nozze d’oro (Ambrosio), winner of the first prize for the “artistic category” of the same festival in Turin. National pride on the screen also directly regarded the status of Italian film, which in 1911 boasted substantial growth in production, sales, form and style. In fact, an Italian school of filmmaking had begun to make a name for itself internationally with period films and comic serials: Cretinetti (André Deed), Tontolini (Ferdinand Guillaume), Robinet (Marcel Fabre), Cocciutelli (Eduardo Monthus). With the artistic and technical quality of longtime filmmakers such as Caserini, Maggi, Vitrotti, De Liguoro and emerging directors such as Guazzoni, Antamoro and Del Colle, Italian film could compete with the best foreign productions in terms of form and content, using cutting-edge stylistic solutions  and venturing into new genres like the Danish “sensational” drama or the French detective serial, launched in Italy by Pasquali with the series about Raffles the gentleman thief. However, the maturity of the Italian film industry is best demonstrated by the speed with which most production companies in 1911 adapted to the feature length film: the 1000 meters of La Gerusalemme liberata (Cines), the 1200 of Inferno (Milano Films) or the 1350 of Pinocchio (Cines) were a mere harbinger of the multi-kilometer lengths that were to come with later films like Quo vadis? and Cabiria and of the decisive step towards world success that would come with the years to follow.