Lucio D'Ambra
Vintage Italian postcard. Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, No. 13. Photo by Fontana.
Lucio D'Ambra, pseudonym of Renato Eduardo Manganella (Rome, 1 September 1880 - Rome, 31 December 1939), was an Italian writer, director and film producer. According to some sources, his full name was Renato Tommaso Anacleto Manganella, while the date of birth is uncertain. D'Ambra was also a journalist, literary and theatre critic, playwright and artistic director of theatre companies (Ettore Petrolini reduced his play Ambasciatori to one of his shows) as well as a screenwriter for the cinema. An academic of Italy and author of novels (among others, I due modi di avere vent'anni, published by Arnoldo Mondadori in 1934), he had the writer and poet Tullio Colsalvatico as his secretary and was in contact with the philosopher and critic Adriano Tilgher, with whom he polemised at length. D'Ambra was also the animator of a literary salon that allowed him to come into contact with literary figures and personalities from the world of art (he was friends with the writer Arturo Olivieri Sangiacomo, the playwright Tito Marrone and the founder of the Bagutta Prize Marino Parenti, among others). In 1923, he founded the company called Teatro degli Italiani at the Teatro Eliseo in Rome, together with Mario Fumagalli and Santi Severino (which had little luck, however), whose aim was to promote Italian dramaturgy.
While occasionally already writing the script for the 1913 film Il bacio di Cirano by Carmine Gallone and starring Soava Gallone, in 1916 D'Ambra steadily started his film career as screenwriter for the company Medusa Film, first for the delicious Lubitsch-like comedy La signorina Ciclone (Augusto Genina, 1916) with Suzanne Armelle as a dynamic New Yorkese heiress who keeps all of her seven admirers on a leash like dogs but in the end prefers a European who possesses all seven sins the admirers represent individually. D'Ambra also wrote scripts for star vehicles, such as Effetti di luce (Ugo Falena, 1916) with Stacia Napierkowska and La chiamavano 'Cosetta' (Eugenio Perego, 1917) with Soava Gallone, La storia dei tredici (Carmine Gallone, 1917) and Carnevalesca (Amleto Palermi, 1918) both with Lyda Borelli, and so on. D'Ambra also scripted for Medusa Il re, le torri, gli alfieri (Ivo Illuminati, 1920), a now lost film which seems to have had affinities with Italian Futurism. It was based on D'Ambra's own novel. The story was a kind of dramatisation of a chess game, where the characters were dressed as the various pieces and moved around on a chessboard floor. For the company Do-Re-Mi D'Ambra directed in 1918-19 a series of films starring Mary Corwyn/ Maria Corvin: Napoleoncina (1918), Ballerine (1918), La commedia dal mio palco (1918), Passa il dramma a Lilliput (1919), and La valse bleue (1919), in which the actress often was paired with Romano Calò.
In 1919, in collaboration with the Piedmontese entrepreneur Alfredo Fasola, Lucio D'Ambra founded his own production company, D'Ambra-Film, with which directors Carmine Gallone, Augusto Genina and others collaborated, e.g. for Nemesis (Carmine Gallone, 1920) and La peccatrice senza peccato (Augusto Genina, 1922), both starring Soava Gallone. Yet, many films were directed by D'Ambra himself, such as Il girotondo degli undici lancieri (1919) with Mary Corwyn and Romano Calò, and the witty short comedy L'illustre attrice Cicala Formica (1920), with Lia Formia as a wannabe actress who to the frustration of her family pursues with all means to become a diva, but utterly fails. The film clearly mocked the Italian diva and epic films, amateurism in the film world, but also the Italian family. Yet, D'Ambra also directed serious drama, such as the Ugo Foscolo adaptation Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (1921), on a man's despair about his inability to obtain the woman of his dreams. Until 1922 D'Ambra continued to direct and script various films at his company, often with Lia Formia in the lead, the last one being Tragedia su tre carte (1922). Together with the collapse of the Italian film industry, D'Ambra's film adventures collapsed. From the late 1930s he returned but only as screenwriter, and only for a small amount of films.
On D'Ambra's film career, Italian scholar Gianni Rondolino wrote in the Enciclopedia Treccani: "A largely independent author and director, he was able to deal with themes and topics, situations and characters from the high society, but also from everyday life, with great fluency, in a style that took into account the linguistic peculiarities of cinema, skillfully using close-ups and camera movements, scenic effects and daring narrative solutions. His films, considered forerunners of those of Ernst Lubitsch for the lightness of touch and the environments described, constitute a not inconsiderable chapter in the history of Italian silent films, for their formal innovation, after the more conventional splendour of the previous years, among historical reconstructions, novels of appendices, melodramas and farces."
Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDb, Enciclopedia Treccani.
Lucio D'Ambra
Vintage Italian postcard. Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, No. 13. Photo by Fontana.
Lucio D'Ambra, pseudonym of Renato Eduardo Manganella (Rome, 1 September 1880 - Rome, 31 December 1939), was an Italian writer, director and film producer. According to some sources, his full name was Renato Tommaso Anacleto Manganella, while the date of birth is uncertain. D'Ambra was also a journalist, literary and theatre critic, playwright and artistic director of theatre companies (Ettore Petrolini reduced his play Ambasciatori to one of his shows) as well as a screenwriter for the cinema. An academic of Italy and author of novels (among others, I due modi di avere vent'anni, published by Arnoldo Mondadori in 1934), he had the writer and poet Tullio Colsalvatico as his secretary and was in contact with the philosopher and critic Adriano Tilgher, with whom he polemised at length. D'Ambra was also the animator of a literary salon that allowed him to come into contact with literary figures and personalities from the world of art (he was friends with the writer Arturo Olivieri Sangiacomo, the playwright Tito Marrone and the founder of the Bagutta Prize Marino Parenti, among others). In 1923, he founded the company called Teatro degli Italiani at the Teatro Eliseo in Rome, together with Mario Fumagalli and Santi Severino (which had little luck, however), whose aim was to promote Italian dramaturgy.
While occasionally already writing the script for the 1913 film Il bacio di Cirano by Carmine Gallone and starring Soava Gallone, in 1916 D'Ambra steadily started his film career as screenwriter for the company Medusa Film, first for the delicious Lubitsch-like comedy La signorina Ciclone (Augusto Genina, 1916) with Suzanne Armelle as a dynamic New Yorkese heiress who keeps all of her seven admirers on a leash like dogs but in the end prefers a European who possesses all seven sins the admirers represent individually. D'Ambra also wrote scripts for star vehicles, such as Effetti di luce (Ugo Falena, 1916) with Stacia Napierkowska and La chiamavano 'Cosetta' (Eugenio Perego, 1917) with Soava Gallone, La storia dei tredici (Carmine Gallone, 1917) and Carnevalesca (Amleto Palermi, 1918) both with Lyda Borelli, and so on. D'Ambra also scripted for Medusa Il re, le torri, gli alfieri (Ivo Illuminati, 1920), a now lost film which seems to have had affinities with Italian Futurism. It was based on D'Ambra's own novel. The story was a kind of dramatisation of a chess game, where the characters were dressed as the various pieces and moved around on a chessboard floor. For the company Do-Re-Mi D'Ambra directed in 1918-19 a series of films starring Mary Corwyn/ Maria Corvin: Napoleoncina (1918), Ballerine (1918), La commedia dal mio palco (1918), Passa il dramma a Lilliput (1919), and La valse bleue (1919), in which the actress often was paired with Romano Calò.
In 1919, in collaboration with the Piedmontese entrepreneur Alfredo Fasola, Lucio D'Ambra founded his own production company, D'Ambra-Film, with which directors Carmine Gallone, Augusto Genina and others collaborated, e.g. for Nemesis (Carmine Gallone, 1920) and La peccatrice senza peccato (Augusto Genina, 1922), both starring Soava Gallone. Yet, many films were directed by D'Ambra himself, such as Il girotondo degli undici lancieri (1919) with Mary Corwyn and Romano Calò, and the witty short comedy L'illustre attrice Cicala Formica (1920), with Lia Formia as a wannabe actress who to the frustration of her family pursues with all means to become a diva, but utterly fails. The film clearly mocked the Italian diva and epic films, amateurism in the film world, but also the Italian family. Yet, D'Ambra also directed serious drama, such as the Ugo Foscolo adaptation Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (1921), on a man's despair about his inability to obtain the woman of his dreams. Until 1922 D'Ambra continued to direct and script various films at his company, often with Lia Formia in the lead, the last one being Tragedia su tre carte (1922). Together with the collapse of the Italian film industry, D'Ambra's film adventures collapsed. From the late 1930s he returned but only as screenwriter, and only for a small amount of films.
On D'Ambra's film career, Italian scholar Gianni Rondolino wrote in the Enciclopedia Treccani: "A largely independent author and director, he was able to deal with themes and topics, situations and characters from the high society, but also from everyday life, with great fluency, in a style that took into account the linguistic peculiarities of cinema, skillfully using close-ups and camera movements, scenic effects and daring narrative solutions. His films, considered forerunners of those of Ernst Lubitsch for the lightness of touch and the environments described, constitute a not inconsiderable chapter in the history of Italian silent films, for their formal innovation, after the more conventional splendour of the previous years, among historical reconstructions, novels of appendices, melodramas and farces."
Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDb, Enciclopedia Treccani.