"Back from the front in 1916, after injury, I felt attracted to, like several other writers and journalists, to the movies and for two years I wrote about scenarios scenarios, some of which had some luck. One day in 1917 came to see the lawyer Eugene Priest (a former journalist, the late nineteenth century had the reputation of valiant and combative music critic under the pseudonym Casardi TO) and the playwright Ugo Moth, which, by few years, had left the theater art dumb luck and ran with the "Film Thespis." They were asking a new subject for film. The lawyer did not lose to priests talk.
- You must prepare a Brother Sun: a great film, religiously and historically unassailable, to obtain the placet good of the Church. The illustrious master Louis Mancini composed the music. Film-work must succeed. The artistic director is Hugh Moth, helped by you and the artist Duilio Cambellotti for the staging and costumes. We give you four months to the plot and script. Do you accept?
accepted, never imagining that I was going to the trouble and do not measure accountability. It was not until more Later, after consulting the bibliography Franciscan and have collected the most reliable sources on the life of the saint, which included a daring and dangerous as I had committed, and then I came back to mind the words of a few years earlier by Ferdinand Martini a conference on the subject of Francesco da Rimini d'Annunzio: "To try to rise up to such high figures, such as that sung in the supreme poem, it is to run the risk of tumbling down pretty far."
But now I was in the game. So I began by rereading the Fioretti, then I went to the first and second Life Among Celano, in Speculum perfectionis of Brother Leo, and I finally sank Franciscan in the vast bibliography of the Middle Ages and modern times. The works of Prudentius, the Baron de Segura, Roger Bonghi of Schurer of Goetz, dell'Alvisi of Tarducci of touch, Gebhart, Mazzoni of Teza, the Mestica of De la Rive, and the Sabatier Above all, the Danish Joergensen, who in Life of St. Francis of Assisi and Franciscan Pilgrimage has raised perhaps the most shining monument to the glory of Francis Bernardone, they gradually revived before my eyes all a magnificent world of Italian life in the Middle Ages, of which the poor man was the great immortal light. And I set to work. I could be the Saint of Assisi in three different ways: either comply with the law, or dramatizing the life of Francis in his progressive detachment from the things of this world, or showing that life in its historical episodes. I chose the third way. But because it was without doubt the most difficult for a composer of film that needs a degree of continuity of action and conduct of some interest, the time with the second. I put it in Brother Sun history and drama inextricably bound together. I will add that it was not the life of the saint who intended to play in the film, but rather to reconstruct, through moments synthetic and representative, with painstaking historical accuracy, the giant figure of him and his time, full of darkness and effulgence. And aims further, making the son of a wealthy merchant of Assisi, not the protagonist, as was intended in the cinema, but one of many characters in the vast context that I proposed to animate: a framework made of the crowd, the big colorful crowd the middle ages waved in his dark huge melting pot.
Turns Brother Sun, in the front row, from left to right: Ugo Moth, Silvia Malinverni and Duilio Cambellotti.
Gubbio, September 1917 (photo by Giorgio Ricci)
Gubbio, September 1917 (photo by Giorgio Ricci)
Six months later the scenario was ready and Ugo Moth, Duilio Cambellotti and I pitched our tents at Assisi, with a small army of actors, extras, operators, secretaries. And there, carefully chosen sites, and after I had some long talks with writer Joergensen, who now usually spend a few months of the year in the homeland of the saint, and some Franciscan fathers of deep learning, we began to turn the external Brother Sun, front and cloisters of the Basilica, and two processions in the Basilica itself, in the convent of Santa Chiara, on pei sides of the mountain, and then in Gubbio, Perugia and Lake Trasimeno. Were the main performers in the film dramatic actor Uberto Palmarini, who embodied the figure of the little tern of Assisi, Silvia Malinverni, which was clearly of Scifi, Rina Calabria, in the role of his sister Agnese, la ballerina Lucienne Myosa, nella parte di una cortigiana che si redime, Bruno Emanuel Palmi, in quella di Frate Elia.
Per almeno un mese Assisi e Gubbio offrirono il più bizzarro degli spettacoli, tra la viva e chiassosa curiosità degli abitanti e ancor più dei forestieri, che si stropicciavano sbalorditi gli occhi nel veder passare per le strade e le piazze ed entrare ed uscire dai templi inaspettati personaggi in costumi pittoreschi del 1200, e suore e fraticelli al braccio di soldatacci di ventura...
Ma lo spettacolo più caratteristico, ed anche commovente, era offerto dai veri francescani, i quali si facevano in quattro per aiutarci nella presa di talune scene, e ci fornivano perfino paramenti sacri; e pieni di premura held back the crowd of onlookers in the scenes of processions in front of the temple. They were really the smart, humble, precious to our employees and not easy no small effort. I remember the nuns in Santa Clara, who live in close confinement, at some point, because it was very hot, they distribute the guardian of her sister actresses and actors of cold drinks and biscuits. The processing of
Brother Sun then continued in the soundstage of "Thespis Movie" in Rome, almost four months. The first film, billed as the Franciscan refund in four songs by Mario Corsi, with sacred poem for orchestra and chorus of Luigi Mancinelli, took place June 7, 1918 Augusteo, granted for the first time for such a sight, and rose to true art event. He directed the orchestra maximum dell'Augusteo the same master Luigi Mancinelli. Attended by Princes of the House of Savoy, Ministers, senior officials and all the Roma intellectual elite of the time. The success of the film and music were great. The Italian press, which then was not concerned with the film except as paid advertising, he for once an exception to the rule, and dedicated to Brother Sun whole columns, signed by more critical and dramatic music: Fausto Maria Martini, the Tribune, Godfrey Bellonci the Journal of Italy and others.
Brother Sun also represents a new application of cinematografo dal punto di vista musicale. Per la prima volta la musica entrava in un film come elemento integrativo, esercitandovi funzioni di imperio. Mentre nel primo grande film religioso realizzato in Italia, il Christus , la musica del maestro Fino si era aggiunta alla composizione cinematografica del Salvatori, accompagnandola e divenendone un vero e proprio commento, nel Frate Sole la musica era parte essenziale dello spettacolo. Frate Sole - scrisse in un lungo articolo critico Alberto Gasco - segna indubbiamente una data nell'evoluzione del poema musicale cinematografico, al quale arriderà forse un avvenire mirifico .
Furono inni al musicista insigne e all'ideatore del film che ricorda oggi l'apparizione revival of the old Franciscan defined (still reproduce an opinion of others, a well-known critic) "the most significant work of a new orientation toward a kind of exploitation cinema cultural orientation assumes that art changes the eve of its purchase ultimate art form, with their ways and their needs. " To crown the success of Brother Sun came shortly after the solemn and official recognition of the Vatican, with a memorable performance of the film in the main hall of the Palace of the Chancellery, the presence of a dozen cardinals and archbishops and a host of senior officials and dignitaries of the papal court. I guarantee that the exceptional performance of the superb and wide sala, in cui aveva avuto sede dopo il 1848 il primo Parlamento formato da Pio IX, gremita di un pubblico così eletto e così entusiastico (ci furono molti applausi) superava di gran lunga quello che si proiettava sullo schermo, accompagnato da una grossa orchestra diretta dallo stesso maestro Mancinelli.
Ricordo che dopo la proiezione i Cardinali e gli altri eminenti Monsignori vollero esprimere il loro vivo compiacimento al maestro Mancinelli, a Ugo Falena e a me, e dissero che dal cinematografo la Chiesa poteva aspettarsi, come l'Arte, grandi nobilissime cose.»
Mario Corsi (Cinema, fascicolo 43, 10 aprile 1938)
Una scena del film
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