Actress Fabienne Fabrèges scripted for herself the role of an evil woman who drives the basically nice men around her to commit crimes, to become drug dealers, thieves, murderers. Not the greatest film of 1916 and not the best actress ever, but there are other qualities, and very worthwhile ones. The Dutch distribution print is beautifully complete and was duplicated in 1994 by Haghefilm via a color internegative. Signori Giurati… represents to perfection the highly evolved visual style of Italian silent cinema of the 1910s, with sophisticated shot compositions, attractive settings – a drug den cum brothel among them – and a conscious use of color, of tinting and toning, including a firework scene with five color changes.
Starting in 1910, Fabienne Fabrèges appeared in many Gaumont productions, usually directed by Léonce Perret. In 1916 she moved to Turin and was hired by Corona Films; her Italian career seems to have been very successful – she appeared in ten films in 1917 – until 1920. According to the research done by Elena Nepoti for the Women Film Pioneers Project, Fabrèges moved to Great Britain in 1923 and returned to the theater, her original profession and passion.

Mariann Lewinsky

Only a brief fragment survives from the beginning of this film, which we assume to be a moving romantic melodrama: Diana Karenne plays the piano surrounded by a group of admirers in evening dress. She is a beautiful and slightly spoiled heiress, the kind of woman for whom Italian silent cinema reserved unfortunate turns of fate in order to elevate her to the status of tragic heroine. Diana is no exception: she must suffer through her father’s suicide, financial ruin and a tormented love for Alberto Capozzi, the male lead of whom there remains no trace. The model is, obviously, Ma l’amor mio non muore! (1913) but Karenne, who had only recently made her screen debut, does not seem intimidated by Borelli’s shadow. Even the few minutes remaining make clear that she proposes her own reinterpretation of the genre’s themes and motifs: from astonished grief over her father’s death to desperate wanderings through dark and impoverished alley- ways. It is an expressive palette around which Pasquali weaves his discreet direction, paying particular attention to lighting effects.

Stella Dagna

Léonce Perret directed several pratriotic films for Gaumont, among them La Voix de la France (1914), Françaises Veillez! (1915), Une page de gloire (1915), Marraines de France, Les Poilus de la revanche and Debout les morts (all in 1916). Laurent Véray remarked that the director often put female figures at the center, women “that do not ressemble the heroines of popular melodrama nor the intrepid adventuresses like athletic Josette Andriot or sensual Musidora. They are ordinary women, usually of the lower classes, and war has disrupted their lives”. The Marraines (godmothers) de France knit socks and write letters to the soldiers, and the mother in Une Page de gloire saves the flag of the regiment and wraps it around her baby, but there is a limit to what patriotisme can accomplish, and Perret shows it in L’Angélus de Victoire. The boy is drafted and dies in the war, the girl goes out of her mind.

Mariann Lewinsky