Mario Bonnard

City of Pain

The city of Pola is being evacuated after the peace conference of 1947 decided to assign the sovereignty to Tito's Yugoslavia. However the main character decides to stay, thinking that Communism might bring him a better future. Life turns to be hard for him and his family until he changes his mind, but he is killed before he can leave the country.

Parsifal

A fantasy film about the knight Parsifal, who has to protect the Holy Grail from wizards.

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love

The construction of great temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite, followed by new and high taxes and the arrival of a plague, create discontent in the population, and threatens the love between a sculptor and a slave.

The Last Days of Pompeii

Glaucus, a demobilized centurion returns home to Pompeii to find his father murdered by a gang of black-hooded Christian robbers that terrorizes the city and he decides to investigate the matter while the nearby volcano threatens to erupt.

Milizia territoriale

Satan

Ève cherche un père

Eve is to marry Jacques, the son of a general. But the general does not want a fatherless girl as a daughter-in-law. To remedy the problem Eve, who is the resourceful kind, sets about finding herself a father. She finds one in the person of a charming forty-five- year-old man. The brooding fiancé remains reluctant though and Eve is about to get engaged with her pseudo father when the latter suddenly remembers that he is ...Eve's real father!

I, His Father

An ex-boxer has trained his own son and leads him on to win the middle-weight championship of Italy. But the boy falls easy prey to a woman of light morals and renounces the hard work of sport to follow her to a winter luxury resort and at a certain moment, offers to marry her but she, not wanting to give up an advantageous connection, turns him down, advising the youth to not change the nature of their relationship. Then, the boy feeling the entire baseness of his situation, returns home to his parents who welcome him back with joy and takes up again a commitment to sport.

City of Pain

The city of Pola is being evacuated after the peace conference of 1947 decided to assign the sovereignty to Tito's Yugoslavia. However the main character decides to stay, thinking that Communism might bring him a better future. Life turns to be hard for him and his family until he changes his mind, but he is killed before he can leave the country.

Parsifal

A fantasy film about the knight Parsifal, who has to protect the Holy Grail from wizards.

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love

The construction of great temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite, followed by new and high taxes and the arrival of a plague, create discontent in the population, and threatens the love between a sculptor and a slave.

The Last Days of Pompeii

Glaucus, a demobilized centurion returns home to Pompeii to find his father murdered by a gang of black-hooded Christian robbers that terrorizes the city and he decides to investigate the matter while the nearby volcano threatens to erupt.

Milizia territoriale

Satan

Ève cherche un père

Eve is to marry Jacques, the son of a general. But the general does not want a fatherless girl as a daughter-in-law. To remedy the problem Eve, who is the resourceful kind, sets about finding herself a father. She finds one in the person of a charming forty-five- year-old man. The brooding fiancé remains reluctant though and Eve is about to get engaged with her pseudo father when the latter suddenly remembers that he is ...Eve's real father!

I, His Father

An ex-boxer has trained his own son and leads him on to win the middle-weight championship of Italy. But the boy falls easy prey to a woman of light morals and renounces the hard work of sport to follow her to a winter luxury resort and at a certain moment, offers to marry her but she, not wanting to give up an advantageous connection, turns him down, advising the youth to not change the nature of their relationship. Then, the boy feeling the entire baseness of his situation, returns home to his parents who welcome him back with joy and takes up again a commitment to sport.

I Sing for You Alone

Marcello, a shy tenor, is afraid of singing in public. Two friends of his think of having an elegant youth on the stage pretending to be singing while Marcello dubs him behind the scenes. The scam is successful but after a while Marcello summons the courage to go on stage himself.

Mi permette babbo!

While Rodolfo tries to become a lyric singer, his lifestyle deeply annoys his father-in-law.

Fra Diavolo

A sympathetic bandit chief supports the cause of freedom in Naples against the Bourbon King Ferdinand.

Farewell, My Beautiful Naples

In Naples, a local composer falls in love with an American tourist.

I figli non si vendono

I figli non si vendono (literally, Children must not be sold) is a 1952 Italian melodrama film by Mario Bonnard

The Last Performance

The impressive cast is headed by the great Heinrich George as Boris Stroganoff, an opera composer and conductor who’s also a notorious lothario. Albani is ballet dancer Viola Suroff, who’s put her career aside to look after her partner Maxim Sadi, a baritone with unspecified health issues that have kept him off stage. Stroganoff sets his sights on Viola and offers her a job in the corps de ballet for his new opera The Boyar, which she accepts provided Maxim is also hired. However, dancer Margot (called Myrra in the French version) maintains a seething passion for Stroganoff, as does Countess Geschow (called Countess Ziska on this print), both of whom are resentful when watching his interactions with Viola. Jealousies run high on opening night between all the characters and Stroganoff is shot mid-performance, but who is the killer: Maxim, Margot, or Geschow?I

No Women

Professor Branck invented Fortuna a machine providing absolute luck, fortune and success, to whoever uses it, provided they are a virgin. Trying the experiment, Lucien Lepur, a street vendor who has never known a woman before, becomes the man of all successes. But he soon regrets Micheline his fiancée and finds himself under the influence of Professor Branck. Helped by Casimir, Micheline snatches Lucien from Professor Branck. Falling into her arms, Lucien loses all his powers but wins love.

I Don't Know You Anymore

After an argument with her husband, an unsatisfied wife suffers from selective amnesia. She doesn't recognize the man she married and calls her doctor husband instead.

La marche nuptiale

Papà per una notte

The Peddler and the Lady

Peppino, a fishmonger on Campo de' Fiori, a famous Roman marketplace, works alongside Elide, a greengrocer, who has a soft spot for him, despite the fact they argue all day long... But neither Peppino, nor his friend Aurelio, the barber, are interested in getting married. Until he meets the beautiful Elsa...

Night of Love

In 1915, at a time when Austria, Germany and Italy were supposed to be allied, two Italian brothers are pitted against each other not only for divisive politics but also because they love the same girl, Anna, the niece of an Austrian lieutenant.

L'uomo del romanzo

The Betrothed

Based on the famous historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni, and set between 1628 and 1630 in Lombardy, Northern Italy, during the Spanish domination, the film displays the marriage between two young textile workers, Renzo and Lucia. The 1922 version is one of the most ambitious and spectacular films in all Italian silent cinema, with remarkable mass scenes and some images that sparked controversy.

Frine cortigiana d'Oriente

The Fight for the Matterhorn

Struggle for the Matterhorn (German: Der Kampf ums Matterhorn) is a 1928 German-Swiss silent drama film co-directed by Mario Bonnard and Nunzio Malasomma and starring Luis Trenker, Marcella Albani, and Alexandra Schmitt. The film is part of the popular cycle of mountain films of the 1920s and 1930s. Art direction was by Heinrich Richter. Based on a novel by Carl Haensel, the film depicts the battle between British and Italian climbers to be the first to climb the Matterhorn. Trenker later remade the film as The Challenge in 1938.