“Well, I have been enraptured. I saw the lamps, the white-hot iron of Michel Strogoff is ravaging my pupils. Ah! I need not to worry! I want instead to think about the joys of life. I see, I want to see the dancers. They have watched the beacons all this time. And I imagine that now they are no longer dancing and are rubbing their eyes in meaningless wonderment”.

(Louis Delluc, Ecrits)

“Perspective is the true protagonist of Urbino’s Flagellazione, as parallel editing is the true protagonist of Griffith’s Intolerance […]. And it is also possible that similar high moments or intuitions of this kind might be found – even without their author’s knowledge – in works considered of minor importance. I am thinking about a couple of movies no one would remember, both interpreted by Ivan Mosjoukine after his début in France: a marvellous Michel Strogoff and Il leone dei Mongoli. Their plot per se was not important; a particularly effective sequence, a camera movement, an unexpected but perfect technical solution would suffice, where, by overcoming the obvious trait of function, one is suddenly moved from prose to poetry in an instant.

Attilio Bertolucci, in Attilio Bertolucci. Autoritratto del poeta da giovane critico cinematografico, ed. by Fabien S. Gerard, Berenice, no. 20, 1987