- Reputedly, in 1915 she earned $175,000-a record for the time; Mary Pickford wouldn't catch up until the following year.
- In 1982 the director Gianfranco Mingozzi directed a documentary about Bertini, L'ultima diva: Francesca Bertini (1982), an amazing, fascinating look at this larger than life figure from early Italian film and pre-Communist, pre-Fascist, pre-World War Italy.
- Born in Florence, she was daughter of a comic theatre actress.
- When her husband died, she moved back to Rome, where she would remain until her death.
- She was one of the most successful silent film stars in the first quarter of the twentieth-century.
- After the war, a new generation of directors and actors took over the Italian film industry. Nevertheless, Bertini was still very popular and considered one of the best living actresses.
- She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather than on a dramatic stereotype, an anticipation of Neorealistic canons.
- In 1974 Bernardo Bertolucci was able to convince her to emerge from her stubborn silence, accepting a role in his movie Novecento.
- Bertini began performing on stages as a child, particularly in Naples, where her family was settled.
- In 1904, she moved to Rome, where she improved her acting skills, especially on theatre stages, and attempted to perform in the just-born Italian movie production.
- Bertini was popular internationally, her sophistication emulated around the world by women moviegoers.
- The expression of authentic feelings was the key of her success through many films. She could perform with success the languid decadent heroine as well as the popular common woman.
- With Assunta Spina (1915) in 1915 she took care of the scripts as well as performing the role of the main character.
- Her first important movie, Pierrot the Prodigal (1914), was under the direction of Baldassarre Negroni in 1913.
- She stepped into sound movies as well, but in the meantime the Italian cinema had changed greatly (the period of Telefoni bianchi comedies) and entered into a period of crisis with Fascism and censorship. It experienced a definite hiatus with World War II.
- She developed the current acting techniques of movie actresses by making it more sober, banning broad gestures or the mincing ways of the Diva.
- After the end of the war, the Fox Film Corporation in Hollywood offered to sign a contract with her, but she refused: she was married to the wealthy Swiss banker Paul Cartier and wanted to move with him to Switzerland.
- In 1969 she published her autobiography, "The rest does not count".
- Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong, intense, and charming personality, which would be the key of her success as a silent movie actress.
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