DISCUSSING BOOKS

Images From The History Of Cinema

It is a critical review of two books by the Italian film scholar Matilda Tortora from the university in Cosenza. The history of film has recently been gaining in importance. As old stories and beliefs lose their credibility and the consciousness about the irreparable loss of an immense part of film heritage grows, Tortora offers an analysis of each and every trace of film history. There was a time when, wrapped with a chocolate bar you could also find a picture with a scene from some film. Tortora’s book Cinema fondente (2001) is much in the same way an album of photographs with scenes from famous, mostly Italian films that were screened in the chocolate country, Spain. Here we find Garden of Passion (Eugenio Perego, 1916), Fabiola (Enrico Guazzoni, 1918), Carnavalesca (Amleto Palermi, 1918), Tosca (Alfredo De Antoni, 1918), Woman in Love (Gennaro Righelli, 1920), and one film by Francis Ford, brother of the famous John. The book Au Pays Noir — film Pathé en pochette: 1903-1905 (2002) is based on the visual material created by the company Pathe, which sold postcards with scenes from movies issued in series with colorized photographies and a short text explaining the context of the scene. The company also produced identical stickers for children’s albums. The title of the book comes from the film Au Pays noir (directed by Ferdinand Zecca), which could be translated as ’in the black land’, but also as ’in the mines’ or even ’at the bottom’. It was probably the first movie dealing with mine workers’ hardships and was inspired by Emile Zola’s novels.

Ante Peterlić