We never give up on the dream of rediscovering films, even in extraordinary cases like Nino Martoglio’s Sperduti nel buio (1914) or Alessandro Blasetti’s Sole (1929). And just when what we are looking for becomes even more elusive, a little bit like the Holy Grail for the knights of the round table, some dark angle of a basement (in this case, the warehouse of a printing facility in Rome) restores our faith in being on the right trail, that our search is not in vain. We have found a kind of image diary of the making of Sole – the first “behind the scenes”, or perhaps the only remaining one, of Italian silent film; a puzzle of exceptional takes in excellent conditions that allow us to reconstruct the film’s various phases, put a face and often a name to those who participated in this adventure such as the marquis Roberto Lucifero, vice president of Augustus, the film’s production company, the duke Marcello Caracciolo di Laurino, assistant art director and the duke Giuseppe Caracciolo di Torchiarolo, director of photography. We have the opportunity to see the Pontine Marshes before they were drained and to identify some of the locations where exterior shots were taken. It is thrilling to watch Blasetti working on the set, joking with the actors and the crew, and to see his pride in demonstrating his new lighting equipment from Berlin or showing off the film studio in via Mondovì in Rome to important visitors, such as Augusto Turati, the secretary of the Partito Nazionale Fascista. The screen tests of unknown and embarrassed aspiring actors and actresses are moving; their close-ups and big close-ups are marked by expressionist like camerawork mixed with a painterly taste in lighting similar to Caravaggio. Eighty years after the making of Blasetti’s first film, these images are striking for the freshness and energy they still convey. They enthusiastically tell us about a group of young people including Goffredo Alessandrini, Gastone Medin and Aldo Vergano, allof whom made a powerful contribution to the rebirth of Italian cinema. The long POV shot of the marshy landscape from the window of a moving car expresses a break from the traditional Italian idea of cinema and draws inspiration from Russian visual experimentation, especially the work of Dziga Vertov. Even though Blasetti did not see Russian cinema before making Sole, his prior experience as a writer for the magazine “Cinematografo” gave him the opportunity to experience and process the ideas and techniques of European avant-garde film. The screening of this backstage view will be preceded by a short montage of interviews and unseen documents from the Blasetti archive pertaining to the story of this film’s making. The students of Scuola Officinema – La Bottega dei Mestieri di Bologna contributed to compiling this dossier, responding with enthusiasm to a project about Alessandro Blasetti – a particularly fitting tribute to a man who, among his many accomplishments, was one of the founders of the first Italian film school, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.

Michela Zegna