With Pia de’ Tolomei, we find ourselves before yet another drama inspired by The Divine Comedy. The publicity for the film states: “This mournful story, immortalized by Dante in his Divine Comedy, is rendered here with a profound sense of art and with rare and wonderful effectiveness.” The film is perfectly in line with the production genre typical of FAI in its early years, when historical costume films and theatrical dramas represented the ideal “film d’arte”. A copy of the film was preserved at the Cineteca Nazionale. Since then, the original has been destroyed by irreversible decay. The original was a positive print from the period with stencil coloring. The film was preserved in black and white; traces of deterioration in the original print are visible in the opening credits.

Alessia Navantieri