“The poet Bing declaims his own verses on the cliffs overlooking sea. He is convinced that only a return to nature can allow him to recover his innate freedom. For this reason, when the peasants ask him why he throws his magnificent poems into the sea he answers that only the sea can understand him. For this reason, when they say that the right place for a great poet like him is the city with its honours and luxury, he answers that he prefers the sincere desolation of the countryside. A young peasant girl appears, and is quickly noticed by some high dignitaries of dubious aspect. It is difficult to say what occurs at this point and how many reels are missing: in all probability the girl is kidnapped and taken away by sea. In fact we later find Bing, now blind, who passes his days on the cliffs waiting for the voice of the sea to bring him news of his loved one. But the young girl is safe and the two are reunited: Bing returns to a world which, in the absence of the he woman loved, was not worth seeing. A short list of remarkable things of this fragment: a remarkable irony. An endless passion for fading in and out. A great reserve in following the main plot which pushes the director to have us make the story of the protagonists out through the filter of the actions of secondary characters (exemplary in this sense is the last scene in which the meeting of the two stars is almost suggested in the background while the camera seems to want to dissimulate its interest, concentrating on the housework being done by a secondary character)”.

Giacomo Manzoli