EN
“A few decades ago, Alberto Capellani was an obscure name and very few of his films were known to survive. With the two retrospectives of his found and restored films at the Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna in 2010 and 2011, it became clear that he was a director on a level with D. W. Griffith, Louis Feuillade, and Victor Sjöström. Germinal is probably his masterpiece, one of the great films that made 1913 the annus mirabilis of early cinema. Its relatively restrained acting, gritty realism suitable to Zola’s novel, and skillfully long takes are unique for this era. It deserves to be seen on the big screen.”
Kristin Thompson
“Capellani is a director of this 19th century. His films films allow us to participate in the cultural life of the 19th century: they give us access to its imaginary worlds, its entertainments and its fantasies. There are féerie subjects, with special effects and apotheoses (La Légende de Polichinelle, 1907). There is the fascination with the ancient world and its decadence – veil dances, shimmering colours, goblets of hemlock (Amour d’esclave, 1907) – and the “local colour”, be it Cuba (Feast of Life, 1916), Elizabethan England (Marie Stuart, 1908) or Paris, recreated in Studios in the U.S.A (The Virtuous Model, 1919). There are realistic reconstruction of events that took place in 1796 (Le courrier de Lyon, 1911), and monumental frescoes of war and social struggle. (Quatre-vingt-treize and Germinal).”
Mariann Lewinsky
