Acting
No biography available.
Directed by Giorgio Simonelli.
Italy's first flying film showed the strides that land had made in aviation, preparing for military action under Fascism.The 3 comrades of the plot have their differences but work together and 2 of them at least find romance back on earth.
Martha Eggerth heads the cast of Casta Diva, but the central character is famed Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, here played by American actor Phillips Holmes. Paying but scant attention the facts, the film concentrates on Bellini's colorful love life. Evidently the film went through several rewriting processes, as witness the curious performances of Donald Calthrop and Arthur Margetson, whose characters do complete about-faces halfway through the story. Amidst so many British accents, Martha Eggerth's Polish intonations seem out of place, but she photographs beautifully and sings quite well. Casta Diva was attractively filmed on location in Naples. Not to be confused with the 1954 remake (by Gallone himself) or to the English language version "The Divine Spark" (also directed by Gallone and starred by Eggerth).
Aboard the luxurious high-speed express “Freccia d’oro,” a jeweller carrying precious gems is targeted by thieves who take over the train, disabling alarms and barricading themselves in the baggage car. Meanwhile, a bridge ahead has collapsed, and the train is unaware due to the thieves’ isolation of the locomotive. Panic ensues among the passengers. Just as disaster looms, the young engineer sees a glowing cross in the fog, prompting him to stop the train in time. The cross is revealed to be a rosary from his mother, reflecting off the headlight. This divine sign saves everyone, and the thieves are captured.
In 1880s Paris, an attractive Russian art student befriends the famous writer Maupassant. She is taken to the ballrooms and cafés of Montmartre.
Paolo Bianchi, an average young man, picks up an underground newspaper on the street: he lives in northern Italy during the Nazi occupation and is mistaken for a communist, searched and beaten by the police. An influential friend manages to get him released, but now Paolo has a positive reputation among the partisans. To save him from further trouble, his friend gives him a document that corroborates his strong loyalty to the current regime: the safe passage he thus obtains helps, albeit inadvertently, the partisans on several occasions. Then the Allies arrive, accuse him of being a collaborator, and arrest him. His friend comes to his rescue.