Mario Soldati: the films

Mario Soldati, a prominent figure in Italian cinema, was an author, journalist, screenwriter, actor and film and television director. The National Cinema Museum celebrates the 100th anniversary of Soldati’s birth with a series of images from its collections, a tribute to the filmmaker’s multifaceted career. Along the outside railing of the Mole Antonelliana, a collection of reproductions of posters, playbills and publicity shots from the films he made during his intense career bear witness to his preference for the literary universe. This leaning led to film versions of famous novels like Piccolo mondo antico (Old-Fashioned World) and Malombra by Fogazzaro, Eugenia Grandet by Balzac and La provinciale (The Wayward Wife) by Moravia. But Soldati was also interested in more popular genres and made films such as Jolanda, la figlia del corsaro nero (Jolanda, the Daughter of the Black Corsair), il sogno di Zorro, I tre corsari (Three Corsairs) and Botta e risposta (I’m in the Revue), an eccentric excursion into Italian-style musicals.
The attraction of the exhibit lies in this mixture of genres, styles and sources of reference that the artists reproduced on the posters and publicity playbills in symbiosis with the director’s style.
A catalog has been published for the exhibit.

The exhibit is available to be set up in other locations.