“A key-film to understand what happened between the end of the diva film and the advent of talkies in Italian cinema. Gallone, one of the few figures to pass the years of the great crisis unharmed realises a study in equilibrium between three different pressures: winks to the Regime (the Garibaldini in almost-black shirts, the intertitle Garibaldi duce vincitore, the ‘Risorgimento’ sentiments which are to be at the centre of so much of Italian cinema of the Thirties); the American and German lesson, of a cinema of adventure, full of action and spectacle, which Gallone, the most international of our directors had soon learned and the tie to national cinematographica tradition, the use of some actors (his wife Soava, the impenetrable Ghione, a sure Raimondo van Riel, Ignazio Lupi, a face which crosses tens of Italian films) and the recourse to Italian unity, with its unique landscapes and its folklore (see the great idea of the horse ride with torches which occupies almost a reel of the film).

The mix is not yet a total success, the version a bit love-story, a little far-west of the Resurgency results as indigestible in many parts, but the road towards the Italian adaptation to the styles of modern cinema has begun.

Moreover, the costumes of Poiret are splendid and in certain moments in Gallone a great vein emerges as raconteur of particulars which give some humanity to an overall picture as cold as an Italian primary school book”.

Gian Luca Farinelli