Actors - Francesca Bertini

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Francesca Bertini

	Actors - Francesca Bertini

Francesca Bertini (born in Florence April 11, 1892; died October 13, 1985 in Rome) born Elena Seracini Vitiello, was an Italian silent film actress. She was one of the most successful silent film stars in the first quarter of the twentieth-century.

Biography

Daughter of a comedy theatre actress, she starts performing on stages since childhood, especially in Naples where her family was settled. In 1904 at the age of 21 moved to Rome where she improved her acting skills especially on theatre stages, attempting also to perform in the just-born Italian movie production. Her first important movie was under the direction of Baldassarre Negroni in 1913, Histoire d'un pierrot. Gradually she developed her beauty and elegance, plus a strong personality, intense and charming, which will be the key of her success as silent movies actress. With Assunta Spina in 1915 she took care of the scripts as well as she performed the main main character. She developed the current way of acting of movie actresses by making it more sober, banning the marked gestures or the Diva mincing ways. She is one of the first film actresses to focus on reality, rather that on an acting steroetype, an anticipation of the Neorealistic canons. The expression of authentic feelings was the key of her success through many films. She could performed with success the languid decadence heroine as well as the popular common woman. Other important roles were Odette, Fedora, Tosca and the Lady of the Camellias.

She stepped into sound movies as well, but in the meantime the Italian cinema had much changed (the period of Telefoni bianchi comedies) and entered somehow in a period of crisis with the Fascism censorship. It definetely had a period of stop with Second world war. After the war a new generation of directors and actors took in hand the Italian filming industry. Nevertheless Bertini by that time was still very popular and she was still considered as one of the best living actresses. After the end of the war Fox Film Corporation in Hollywood offered to sign a contract with her, but she refused: she was married to the rich Swiss bankman Paul Cartier and she wanted to move with him to Swiss. When her husband died she moved back to Rome where she will until death. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci could convince her to come out from her stubborn silence, accepting to have a role in his movie Novecento. She died at the age of 93.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Francesca Bertini ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Francesca Bertini; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay