DALL’AMORE AL DISONORE
Sog.: Guido Silvani. Prod.: Film d’Arte Italiana / S.A. Pathé Frères; 35mm. L. or.: 530 m. L.: 500 m. D.: 19’ a 16 f/s. Imbibita e virata / Tinted and toned.
Film Notes
«The sad and pitiful passion which overtakes the soul of a well-born young man is manifested in this drama, skillfully conceived of and written by Guido Silvani, in which tragic and extremely moving fatality threatens.» («Rivista Pathé», 6/10/1912)
From its very title, the film brings up an issue which would be dealt with on more than one occasion by FAI films: the loss of honor. In 1913, three more films were made on that subject: L’onore del banchiere, L’onore riconquistato, Per l’onore di una donna. FAI was not founded with the sole aim of making films of high artistic value. It also intended to «educate» its audiences, to propose moral principles to follow. One of the film’s publicity slogans states this aim clearly: «Evident in this powerful film drama, as in all the others produced by the Pathé Consortium, is the intimate sense of educating, by showing vice at its ugliest, until it is fled from». Dall’amore al disonore was one of the first films to break away from the usual FAI production of period films. We are no longer dealing with adaptations of theatrical texts or novels; film dramas are now preferred, meaning a story written specifically for the cinema. Inspiration was taken from common events which took place in modern times; no longer set in noble palaces but in the bourgeois drawing rooms of the early 1900s. Daggers and magic potions were abandoned for pistols. The present print was restored in 1996, starting from an interpositive on safety stock, held by the Cinémathèque Française. The French print came from a first generation nitrate negative, and during duplication, the identification codes were maintained which originally distinguished the various reels of the unassembled negative. Thanks to these codes, it was possible to reconstruct the colors, thus the print is both tinted and toned. In regard to the intertitles, absent from the print, an original script, held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Alessia Navantieri, Michele Canosa