Known for Acting
This propaganda film was partly inspired by the story of the first Italian heavyweight champion Primo Carnera who, after winning the title with Al Capone’s help in 1933, was beaten the following year by the Jewish Max Bear and then again by the ‘Brown Bomber’ Detroit Joe Lewis in June 1935, on the eve of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. This match provoked numerous racial skirmishes on the streets of Harlem between the Black community and pro-Fascist Italian-Americans. The film overturns historical facts and here, obviously, it is the white boxer who wins in order to demonstrate the superiority of the “Aryan Italians” over the “sinister Jewish entrepreneurs” and the “savage Afro-American fans in Yankee Stadium”. In the film, these were played by South African prisoners-of-war interred in a work camp, which the German and Italian propaganda ministries had set up near Cinecittà “for cinematic purposes”.
This film relates the story of Russian Princess Fedora (Louise Ferida), in Czarist times, whose royal lover is assassinated on the eve of their marriage. She pledges vengeance, only to become the victim of her vow when she falls in love again.
In Florence, at the time of Lorenzo de Medici, known also as Lorenzo the Magnificent, the aristocrat brothers Chiaramantesi rule with an iron fist the streets of the city. Ruthless and fierce, the two brothers have chosen as their special victim the innocent and harmless Giannetto. Even though determined to not react to the cruel pranks of the brothers, Giannetto is forced to take a stand when Ginevra, a beautiful girl that works in the Chiaramantesi household, is dragged into the game. To defend his honor and protect the girl, Giannetto works out a fiendish plot that will end in blood and madness.
Venice Film Festival 1942
Nadia, a young Soviet journalist who is passing through Pompeii, discovers the power that comes from the Catholic faith when the painter she loves, Paolo, and who saved her from drowning during the shipwreck of the cruise in which they met, is at the gates of death because of a serious illness whose symptoms are similar to those of leprosy.
Directed by Gennaro Righelli.
