A treat for lovers of seeing the old filmmaking world in action. Very little of the film has survived (less than a fifth), but it is just enough to penetrate Ambrosio’s studios, glimpse the cameraman turning the crank before ladies of the 1700s, spy on a mise-en-scène of Madama Butterfly, step into a costume workshop, see how even transportation demonstrates the abyss between stars and extras. There is even a plot (imagine a prelude to All About Eve but sweeter), which we will take the luxury here of calling it superfluous. Who knows if the screenwriter appeared in the complete version? Note the name Piccolini (an iteration of small in Italian) connected to metteur en scène. A quick blow to a job considered of little importance?

Spergiura! with an exclamation point. More than an objective observation, it is an accusation made in a moment of anger. But who makes this accusation? And are we expected to share the underlying moral judgment? Certainty wavers. Fact: Bianca Maria is no angel, she cheats on her husband with a handsome officer and swears on the cross that she is pure as a lily. But what adjective (with a lot of exclamation points) could we use to describe the cuckolded spouse? His revenge (a recurring theme in Frusta’s films, almost to the point of obsession) is wicked and fiendish and planned down to the last detail: to wall up his wife’s lover alive. It is just as cruel seeing the poor man who opens the door believing it will lead to a way out but instead finds a brick wall that means certain death. Loosely based on Balzac’s Grande Bretèche, this movie launched Ambrosio’s ‘Serie d’Oro’.

While Jesus preaches in the background, a prostitute in a languid horizontal position in the front row enjoys the attention of Judas full of desire. This great opening scene admirably expresses the two kinds of ecstasy that make the world move. And a directorial idea that the film unwaveringly follows: the Saviour always lingers in the background at a safe distance without ever crossing into the real world. Despite him, History continues to be shaped and stamped with seal of sex. On various other occasions, Frusta would reiterate that that is the way the world works (as confirmation see Galileo Galilei).

Only the first reel of the film with the plot’s beginning still exists. Two young women with a shared past of poverty, humble home and street work meet anew. Now, they live in two different worlds: one is a middle-class wife and mother, and the other found fortune in the demi-monde. The drama is set into action by the harsh system of rules the bourgeois woman alone must follow: a milieu of restricted movement, because if you make the wrong step you fall, are expelled and lose everything. So happy to see these three hundred metres of meticulous photography and a breathtaking egret hat that we do not miss the rest so much. We know how it will end: good (forgiveness) and bad (death).

Mariann Lewinsky

In Frusta’s cinema, disguise often conceals truth. The Queen of Nineveh hides behind the curtains to poison her husband and share power with the man she wanted. She couldn’t prevent a priest from carrying her son off to an unpleasant grotto a la Méliès. She opposed a deceptive false god, which emerged from a cloud of smoke to shock people who riot only on demand. And in the end, compelled by male cowardice, she did what she had always done: take things into her own hands. Dressed in the clothes (costume) of a warrior, she advances on the staircase for her life and fatally falls on the blade of her son. Totally evil? Of course: but also, like any great tragic figure, a secret treasure trove we can’t help admiring.

The visual ploy in the first part of the film is sensational: the apartment building is a dollhouse with the front walls removed. It creates a kind of split-screen displaying four flats (plus the centre stairwell) to be explored for connections. But the film’s second part is even more disconcerting. Based on a doctor’s recommendation, good Cornelius happily sends his wife to a thermal baths in the hopes of curing what he presumes to be her infertility problem. Coincidentally, the doctor happens to be in the vicinity, and the two-timed husband ends up with offspring (not his own) in his arms. Here Frusta builds the story around a very mischievous visual metaphor: a pitcher that appears and disappears several times: empty and ready to be filled, overflowing with gushing liquid.