Spent the night in Glasgow with our friends Nicola and Donald, watching movies — while we were settling in I ran DIVA DOLOROSA as a kind of moving wallpaper, since Nicola had seen and enjoyed ASSUNTA SPINA (1915) with Francesca Bertini.
This compendium doc features acres of kohl-smeared women, alternately languid and berserk, embodying the nlack romanticism school of Italian film (someone in Bologna was wondering at the Italian tendency to colour-code their genres, citing the giallo and pink neorealism — I add the white telephone film to that list, but I forgot about black r.).
Anyway, Italians had by far the best intertitles and fashions and camera movies in the teens…
‘True passion is a flame… It reaches up to the sky but only for a brief moment!’
‘Your brother loves me… Why shouldn’t he lay down his life for that?’
‘You or your brother, only one of you will touch the rose of my mouth.’
shadowplay 