Alberto Collo

Monna Violante, wed by her father to the rich merchant Floridoro, falls in love with Spallatonda, the buffoon of count Giano, one her suitors.

Assunta and Michele are in love, but others come between them and jealousy arises. Assunta Spina stands out as an early landmark of naturalistic acting and a blueprint for the Italian Neorealist films to come.

Thibault de Croucy campaigns against the Jews, in the circle of rue Royale, before learning that he is the son of one of them: the prominent banker Gotlieb had been his mother's lover — an adaptation of an Henri Bernstein play first presented in Paris in 1908. The legendary French director André Antoine, working in Italy after the war, struggles to import his usual style, remaining close to the Italian melodramas of the 1910s. Taking a more incisive path than Bernstein, he frontally accuses the Catholic Church of being responsible for antisemitism. Not received well by Italian critics, the film's release is short-lived. A unique element was found by Philippe Esnault in the collections of the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome in 1973 and served as the basis for a 2005 restoration.

A poor farmer is invited to the King's court and tries to prevent the princess' marriage to a villanious knight.

A rich merchant, Antonio is depressed for no good reason, until his good friend Bassanio comes to tell him how he's in love with Portia. Portia's father has died and left a very strange will: only the man that picks the correct casket out of three (silver, gold, and lead) can marry her. Bassanio, unfortunately, is strapped for cash with which to go wooing, and Antonio wants to help, so Antonio borrows the money from Shylock, the money-lender. But Shylock has been nursing a grudge against Antonio's insults, and makes unusual terms to the loan. And when Antonio's business fails, those terms threaten his life, and it's up to Bassanio and Portia to save him.

In L'innamorata, Almirante is at the zenith of her career, starring as Mara Flores, a vampish society lady, who casts her eyes on Carlo, an electrical engineer and director of a powerplant. Although attracted to Mara, he rejects her, and she immediately turns around and sinks her fangs in his best friend and future brother-in-law, Franco. Not possessing Carlo's self-composure, Franco takes up with Mara, and it leads him to his ruin and death. Now, Carlo does fall under Mara's spell, and as their passion intensifies, it becomes clear that there will be no happy end to this story.