Ghione sums up his film: “I began my work [at Itala-Film] with the film Sua Eccellenza la Morte (…) giving myself an odious role [Za], which in its livid illumination of love, of crime and of renunciation, once more provoked regard and admiration”. A fragment of the film preserved at Gosfilmofond in Moscow is all that is known to survive. (…) Ghione’s direction is descriptive, meticulous, so as often to become prolix (along with the intertitles). The portrayal of the Princi­pal characters is very careful, so that the two parts filmed hardly suffices to contain it. Often the director chooses to construct the story through alternating montage, thus emphasising the difference between the world of Albaspina and the squalid surroundings of the mother and of Za la Mort. The reading of the “description” added to the filmed parts reveals a narrative model which does not anticipate the reassuring finale we generally expect in novelette literature. The final tragedy is confirmation of the negative course which the film takes from the entry of Za la Mort. The normalisation of the most improbable and disquieting aspects forcefully revolutionises the expectation of the public, who are often fulfilled by the punishment of the malefactor, or his catharsis.

Denis Liotti