“Whenever Carmine Gallone was questioned about the beginning of his career, he invariably declared, and the superficial interviewers slavishly reported – that his debut in film directing had begun with Lyda Borelli’s films, pleasantly missing out the part about his work as an actor (eg. in I Corvi, in which he acted alongside Hesperia and his wife Soava), and the time spent as an art director for half a dozen sailor-type films which Cines had entrusted him with, and that most of them were made between 1913 and 1914, almost all shot externally on the Amalfi coast, and Campane di Sorrento is almost surely among these.

‘Matilde, who wove words and loved in the luminous and charming Sorrento vespers, goes to distant America with her fiancé Giovanni in search of fortune and wealth…’. This is how the publicity leaflet which Cines presents to the spectators begins ‘visions of a spectacular fire at sea, a miraculous rescue and an eternal love which finds sublimation in the peaceful waves’.

A gloomy subject, which however in the realisation of its core, finds a narrative which can still be appreciated today. The interpreter is Matilde Di Marzio, a Neopolitan who had begun as a lyrical singer, but who gained a fair amount of success in those years in the cinema”.

(Vittorio Martinelli)