The emerging Italian film industry went talent-shopping in France, chez Pathé. In 1906 Cines recruited Gaston Velle – with a team of collaborators – and in late 1908 Giovanni Pastrone convinced André Deed (Henri Chapais, 1879-1940) to work for Itala Film in Turin. The Cretinetti series created by Deed, some ninety films from 1909 to 1911, was groundbreaking for its unprecedented worldwide popularity, financial success, audience loyalty and seriality. Cretinetti launched the star system, and film companies everywhere joined in producing comic series.
In Le due innamorate di Cretinetti, a beautiful specimen of the series and of Italian comedy in 1911, the actors joyously perform a choreographed odd-numbered equation: 1 man + 2 women + 2 men = 2 couples + 1 lonely man. Lubitsch would later use this kind of mathematics to construct sequences of equally compelling hilarity.
In Turin, André Deed and Valentina Frascaroli became partners in work and life; and when Deed returned to France in 1912, the series he made for Pathé centred on a couple, Deed’s Boireau and Frascaroli’s Gribouillette. In Boireau et Gribouillette s’amusents they are children who revel in destruction. While the playmates have fun in playing adults, we see for a sublime, fleeting moment the adult performers of a scène comique having fun pretending to be the drunkard father and the desperate mother of a heavy-going scène dramatique. Boireau s’expatrie looks much like a celebration of Valentina’s versatility; in fast-changing roles, both male and female, she peoples Boireau’s nightmare. During the war – Deed was drafted into the French army in 1916 – Frascaroli worked again in Italy, appearing in big features (Tigre reale) and important roles (Jane Eyre). She’s unquestionably brilliant in her comic films, but what about her dramatic talents? In Le memorie di una istitutrice you can see the young actress clearly left on her own, without any direction. She does a good job, in a pleasant, unpretentious way: she is charming.
The bulk of Frascaroli’s acting career ended in 1923 (except for a minor role in the French-language version of Ariane by Paul Czinner, in 1931). After WWII, Federico Fellini had the good sense to give her bit parts. Her very last films, as an uncredited extra, are I vitelloni and La strada.

Mariann Lewinsky