Serge Nadejdine is one of the many Russian film directors who went to France after the revolution. We know hardly anything about his activities in his own country: he was born in 1880, he was supposedly an actor and director as well of a few films before 1917, but his name is inexistent in any catalogue. We are more certain about his activity as a dance teacher and scene director of some shows at the Alexander Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg. He shot four films in France between 1924 and 1925, then his name disappeared completely. Whilst many of his today famous colleagues’ films have been lost, Nadejdine’s four have fortunately reached us, and in the best of condition after a careful restoration at the Cinémathèque Française. Therefore today it is possible to see how a Russian managed to adapt Felix Pyat’s drama, Le chiffonier de Paris, the brilliant Nicolas Rimsky into the shoes of the adventurer Lord Hampton in La cible, and also into the role of the extravagant Théodore in L’heureuse mort.

This exhibition will show Naples au baiser de feu out of the four. Nadejdine came to shoot this film in Naples in 1924, bringing along with him two actors who seem to be perfect for the part: Gina Manès, in the role of a seductive Costanzella, and the truculent Gastone Modot in that of a crafty beggar, they are perfect.

The film has nothing to envy regarding the production of Notari, of Rotondo or of Del Colle: Nadejdine takes the cine-camera into Napoli in the 1920’s into all its solar splendour and its tragic social conditions. It should be noted that in a part of the tail end Teresa Fusco, the “zi Teresa” appears, from the famous restaurant of Borgo Marinari, where various scenes are shot.

It must be said that Nadejdine’s films were all shown at that time in Italy: La cible, Il bersaglio, Le chiffonier de Paris, Il delitto della Senna, L’heureure mort became La mort gaia.

Naples au baiser de feu did not pass censorship: now, 70 years later we are able to make up for this.