User Reviews

"The Italian" is among the great or near-great films of 1915 that are available today. The year was a turning point for the feature-length film, especially in America: Lois Weber's "Hypocrites", Cecil B. DeMille's "The Cheat" and, of course, D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" set new benchmarks for the art. Additionally, that year, Russian filmmaker Yevgeni Bauer made two of his best pictures, "After Death" and "Daydreams". The French serial "Les Vampires" also has its admirers today, although I disagree with them. The emergence of the feature-length film was led by Europe (mainly Denmark, France and Italy), but dominance of this market and, to a degree, the art shifted to across the Atlantic in 1915.

The most overriding artistic achievement of "The Italian" is its stunning and often innovative cinematography. There are some picturesque sunsets, mobile framing, including a brief overhead angled shot of the Italian racing to buy a wedding ring and another shot of him holding onto a moving car, and, in general, there is wise use of varied camera angles and expert lighting throughout. An especially amazing shot is a close-up of the Italian enraged as he slowly approaches the camera for an extreme close-up, à la D.W. Griffith's "Musketeers of Pig Alley" (1912). He's so enraged his environment even begins to shake around him.

Unfortunately, the cinematographer appears to be unknown. The director, although originally without credit in the film, is now known to have been Reginald Barker. Five or so of his other films made for Ince are also available today, but are rather unremarkable. "Civilization" (1916), which he worked on, was a large production, but a deeply flawed movie. By the way, I'd guess that one or more of the various cinematographers who worked on "Civilization" also photographed "The Italian".

Moreover, the entire production is very advanced for then. Venice and New York are well rendered despite the film being shot in Los Angeles (for romanticized Venice) and San Francisco (for the ethnic slums of New York). There are extensive flashbacks, although perhaps one or two too many. I especially like the clever framing of the narrative as being read in a book by a character played by the same actor, George Beban, who is also the lead in the inner, main narrative. The reading of the story is further briefly framed theatrically by the opening at the beginning and closing at the end of curtain drapes, which is reflected within the inner story during the revenge climax in the child's room, with the opening and closing of window curtains. Parallel editing, in-camera dissolves, irises and other transitions are handled expertly. Additionally, Beban and Clara Williams, as his wife, play their parts well.

On the other hand, "The Italian" does have a few drawbacks. The film's early moments of comedy clash rather disharmoniously with the latter parts of harsh and heavy melodrama, although the environmental changes from romanticized Italy to naturalistic New York works well—mostly because it's supported by the lighting and photography. The harsh dissolution of the American dream in this film, enhanced by the stark photography, must have been poignant to the immigrant classes who comprised a disproportionately large population of the movie-going public back then. The Corrigan character should have been foreshadowed more; his brief introduction campaigning for another politician seems inadequate for his later centrality to the Italian's revenge. In addition, the filmmakers were either medically naïf or careless to not explain the lack of breastfeeding of the infant and the unwarranted faith in the healing powers of quietness for the other child. Aside from the deficiencies in narrative, "The Italian" is exceptionally well made.

Probably Thomas Ince's masterpiece of these years was the six reel The Italian, released by Paramount at the beginning of 1915. It was hardly alone in protesting social conditions, as I outline in my Ince biography. Not only was the story an arresting one, but Reginald Barker's direction was the most advanced of the films made at the studio at the time. His belief that characterization on the screen grew out of the actor's rehearsals and complete embodiment of the role down to the smallest detail had found a perfect vehicle. The camera-work and angles are far more varied than usual, with a number of subjective shots, as well as shadows that heighten the sense of the protagonist's entrapment in events beyond his control.

Originally titled The Dago, The Italian was conceived as a vehicle for George Beban, a noted specialist in such portrayals, and the story was the result of a collaboration with the star, Barker, scenarist C. Gardner Sullivan, and producer Ince. The film opens with a reader picking up a volume of the same title, by T.H. Ince and C.G. Sullivan, providing a reflexive framing device commenting on authorship. The camera tracks in closer as he reclines on a divan and begins the book. Beppo Donetti (Beban), a gondolier, and Annette Ancello (Williams) are in love, but the aged but rich merchant Gallia is also a suitor. Annette's father Trudo (Burke) disdains the young man, forcing him to go away for a year to make his fortune before marrying Annette.

Immigrating to the United States, he sets up a boot black stand and becomes a friend of Big Bill Corrigan, the slum boss. Beppo sends for Annette, and Alderman Casey, part of the political machine, performs the wedding. However, when a heat wave strikes the city, and Beppo and Annette's child Tony needs pasteurized milk, Corrigan refuses to help. Later, learning that Corrigan's own child is near death, Beppo plans to kill her for revenge, but finds she reminds him of his own lost child.

The movie closes with Beppo in the graveyard by Tony's grave, "At the eternal bedside of his baby, where hate, revenge and bitterness melt to nothing in the crucible of sorrow." The close returns to the reader from the beginning, shaking his head in sadness, as a curtain closes. The themes are handled with subtlety, concentrating on the story of the characters and the personal tragedy that poverty creates, in a manner relevant to any ethnicity, while touching incidentally on the larger themes of class difference, immigration, and political bosses.

In some ways, "The Italian" is a rather archaic film. After all, the intertitle cards are descriptive, not dialog. In other words, like the earliest films, it describes what action the audience is seeing or is about to see and there is no dialog--just the actors pantomiming the story. In later silent films, this was rarely the case--with the dialog being much more important. However, despite this older style used in the film, "The Italian" is still an exceptional film--one that tells a tragic tale that is important because it shows a side of the American immigrant experience seldom talked about in films.

The film begins in Venice. Beppo is a happy gondolier but his future father-in-law wants his daughter to marry someone who can afford to care for her. So, Beppo immigrates to American to make his fortune. After a year of hard work, he pays for Annette to join him and life seems very good--especially when they are blessed with a son. However, through a series of small tragedies, Beppo is arrested and the child dies. Later, after his release, Beppo decides to seek revenge on the uncaring Alderman to whom he'd appealed for help--but who rebuffed him so cruelly. This Alderman now has a sick child and Beppo decides to show him what it is like to lose someone he loves. Can the decent man, Beppo, actually follow through with such a horrid plan?! This film is a bit overly melodramatic but also very effective, as it pulls the viewer into Beppo's world and creates much sympathy for the guy. While this might no excite most modern viewers, it is a very well made silent and a must-see for lovers of the genre.

George Beban had made a career out of playing ethnic characters when Thomas Ince signed him in 1914 to star in an original motion picture with the working title "The Dago". There was much publicity when it was announced that the crew would travel to Italy to shoot some scenes but they only got as far as Venice, California. A very similar plotline to Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" which revebrations were still being felt ten years after publication - that American streets weren't paved with gold and it was a pretty scary place for an unskilled and uneducated migrant.

Beginning with the star George Beban, resplendent in a smoking jacket (patrons were not allowed to mistake the real star for the part he was playing) he begins to read "The Italian" and is transported into the story of an Italian peasant and his love for Annette. He is a gondolier and often takes tourists through the beautiful scenic countryside, hearing their tales of America where every man is a king. Annette also arouses the interest of the rich merchant Gallia and her father gives Beppo a year to make good. He goes to America and is soon recruited by a mob boss Corrigan to persuade his migrant friends to vote for a candidate "the working man's friend" and with the money he earns he sends for Annette!! Initially life is lovely - the marriage ceremony is a riot as Beppo forgets the ring and for Annette, life is a whirl of new faces and experiences.

Time passes and life in the slums takes it's toll (ghetto scenes were filmed on location in Los Angeles and San Francisco). The city endures a massive heat wave and their little baby is succumbing not only to the weather but the impure food - the doctor says they must only have pasteurized milk. Beppo's search for the elusive milk sets up a train of circumstances which see him robbed, thrown in prison and returning home to a wife grieving the death of their baby. All the while showing how, as a migrant, he is treated as a second class citizen - the thieves are believed by the police, his notes to Annette are discarded by a smirking prison guard and when he appeals to Corrigan (who is shown with his own family) he is kicked to the gutter!!

Weeks later Corrigan's own child is near death and must have absolute quiet, Beppo is tempted to wreak a terrible vengeance. There is a wonderful use of natural lighting - early scenes where the lovers walk the hills during sunset and when doors open, lights illumine the darkness of poverty.

Clara Williams was one of the principal actresses at Inceville along with Louise Glaum - she eventually married the film's director Reginald Barker and retired from acting. Her success in "The Italian" found her typecast in ethnic roles. Even though not a glamour girl she had a beautiful sincerity that highlighted her performances.

This is really a very old-fashioned film for 1915 and, when one compares it with the excellent short films Ince was producing in 1912-1913,really marks something of a regression. Designed presumably to appeal to New Yorkers' nostalgie de la boue with regard to their immigrant origins, the film sentimentalises everything. First we have the absurd pastoral picture of impoverished post-war Italy, then an almost equally sentimentalised view of the Italian quarter in New York (far from being remotely "neo-realist" this is simply the "picturesque poverty" that became a Hollywood trademark)up to the moment when disaster strikes during a heatwave.

Here the film turns abruptly to mawkish melodrama, fulfilling its principal intention to be a "facial", that is the much loved but by this time distinctly old-fashioned vaudeville act where a performer goes through the gamut of facial expressions. This is exactly what Beban had been doing in vaudeville, nearly always with an "ethnic" flavour (the Italian labourer mourning his dead child was already a long-standing speciality), and it is exactly what he produces here in his first film. (For more on the persistence of the "facial" see my note on A Great Love 1916). The film ends with a preposterous revenge-plot (savage grimaces, Mr. Beban) whose outcome can be seen coming a mile away (villain's heart melted by sight of helpless child), a nonsensical concoction required by the "facial" genre which depends for its effect on such rapid switches in emotional register.

Emigration/immigration was an important issue in the years between the outbreak of the First World War and the passing of the Emergency Quota Act 1921 (later revised as The Immigration Act 1924 designed to severely curtail immigration to the US especially "poor" immigration from southern and eastern Europe. The subject crops up in many comedy shorts, of which Chaplin's The Immigrant is the best and the best known. There is also a superb (and genuinely "neo-realist") Italian film L'Emigrante by Febo Mari which also came out in 1915 but which sadly only seems to survive in part. But as a contribution to the debate, this Ince/Barker film (unlike the Mari film or, for that matter, in its own way, Chaplin's comedy)has absolutely nothing worthwhile to say....

It is worth noting that this regressive tendency in US film is very clearly associated with techniques often quite wrongly identified (on simple-minded formalist grounds - "editing is good (even when it's bad)") as "progressive" - the fashion for sentimentalising close-ups most obviously but also the studio lighting techniques derived from glamour photography and the overuse of what might be called "the mini-flashback" (particularly irritating and ineffective in this film).