Known for Acting
Thanks to wartime smuggling Gioconda Perfetti, a roman fruit vendor, becomes very rich. She leaves her shop and moves to a magnificent villa which once belonged to a count. She also becomes involved with some very dubious characters who profit from her ignorance and cheat her out of her money.
The ordinary life of the prudent employee Mr. Travet accelerates as he and her wife meet his new chief.
A nanny, in order to give in to the invitation of a suitor who proposes a motorboat trip, leaves her child unattended on land. The trip ends in a dramatic dive into the water, and while the two inexperienced navigators are picked up unconscious by some fishermen, a good devil takes the little boy with him, whom he finds abandoned and crying on the shore. However, the disappearance is believed to be the result of a kidnapping and the poor devil, identified, risks going through a bad time if the nanny and her suitor, who have recovered, do not rush to justify him in time. The nanny finds in her marriage to her helmsman the compensation for the dismissal by the child's parents, and the good devil secures an honest job.
This is a 1920s Italian military comedy directed by Eugenio Perego, starring Bartolomeo Pagano and set amid drills and humorous misunderstandings. The film plays on the trope of the naive hero in a farcical and patriotic setting.
Maciste takes advantage again of a break of acting in order to wash away injustice and castigate the wicked, this time in the name of dynastic legitimacy. Otis, the prince of Sirdagna kingdom, lives undercover in a foreign land, waiting to ascend the throne; Stanos the evil ruler though, is willing to do anything in order to prevent the legitimate prince installation. The court is a dangerous place, Otis is young and naïf: in order to solve the situation, Maciste, following the advice of his friend Saetta, temporarily takes Otis’s place, and presents himself as the legitimate prince. The crowd, enamored by his good looks, applauds him immediately as the emperor.