page_title: Pina Menichelli
section_title: Screen breakthrough: Il Fuoco and Tigre Reale
hierarchical_section_title: Pina Menichelli / Biography / Screen breakthrough: Il Fuoco and Tigre Reale
caption_attribution_description: English: Screenshot of Pina Menichelli in Tigre Reale (1916), Itala films, Turin.
context_page_description: Giuseppa Iolanda Menichelli, known professionally as Pina Menichelli, was an Italian actress. After a career in theatre and a series of small film roles, Menichelli was launched as a film star when Giovanni Pastrone gave her the lead role in The Fire. Over the next nine years, Menichelli made a series of films, often trading on her image as a diva and on her passionate, decadent eroticism. Menichelli became a global star, and one of the most appreciated actresses in Italian cinema, before her retirement in 1924, aged 34.
  Since her death, restorations of Menichelli's surviving films have been shown at important film festivals, and her filmography has been re-assembled and re-evaluated by film historians.
context_section_description: In 1915, Giovanni Pastrone decided to launch Menichelli as a film star, and gave her the lead role in Il Fuoco (The Fire), which was a global popular and critical success. This acclaim catapulted Menichelli into the ranks of the lavishly-paid cinema divas, such as Francesca Bertini and Lyda Borelli. The film bore no formal relation to Gabriele d'Annunzio's novel of the same name, and was developed from a screenplay by Febo Mari, Menichelli's co-star. However, the film was full of d'Annunzian themes of violent passion, power and decadence. The film is divided into three parts: La Favilla (the spark), La Vampa (the flame/blaze) and Il Cenere (the ashes), which correspond with the three phases of the relationship between Menichelli's aristocratic poet and Mari's impoverished painter. The original poster for Il Fuoco depicts a key moment in the film. Menichelli's character knocks over an oil lamp, and asks Mari's character to choose between love and all-consuming passion, and he chooses the latter. Menichelli's feathered hat, long capes and fierce gestures make her seem like an owl and reinforce one of the film's motifs; the link between the femme fatale and birds of prey. Menichelli earned the nickname 'Our Lady of Spasms' for her abrupt gestures in this film.
  In 1916, Menichelli's status as a screen diva was cemented by Tigre Reale (Royal Tiger), directed by Giovanni Pastrone. The screenplay was loosely adapted from a novel by Giovanni Verga, who refused to have his name appear on the poster or in the film's credits. The plot concerns a diplomat, La Ferlita (Alberto Nepoti), who falls in love with the Russian Countess Natka (Menichelli). Natka frequently encourages then rejects La Ferlita, and their love story is broken up by a long flashback to Natka's previous relationship with a young revolutionary called Dolski (Febo Mari). Amid some beautiful snow scenes, Countess Natka's chance encounter with Dolski leads to a passionate romance. Exiled to Siberia, Dolski betrays Natka and kills himself when Natka finds him. After telling La Ferlita the story, Natka then disappears for several months, and La Ferlita is unable to find her. When the countess and the diplomat eventually meet, they are locked in a room in a huge theatre and hotel, which goes up in flames.  The impressive scenes of the fire were made with the help of expert cinematographer Segundo de Chomon. The film's structure demonstrates Pastrone's secure grasp of cinematic form. Pastrone made excellent use of extended flashbacks and highlighted the parallels in the narrative with an effective system of montage. Tigre Reale was a huge commercial success.
  In Il Fuoco and Tigre Reale, Menichelli impressed cinema audiences with her, "...erotic charge, seductive glances and provocative body movements," and established herself as the femme fatale of Italian silent cinema. Both Il Fuoco and Tigre Reale are perfect examples of what Aldo Bernardini defined as, "tailcoat cinema." Both films allowed audiences a passport into the exciting lives of the upper-classes; an imaginary world of luxury where it was possible to transgress Italian society's strict moral codes.  More widely, both films have also been mentioned as classics of the diva genre, although Menichelli's acting style was very different from the more theatrical styles of Francesca Bertini and Lyda Borelli. While Bertini rejected close-ups in the early part of her career, Menichelli managed to express a lot of emotion in them.  Unlike Bertini, Menichelli did not claim to be the 'creator' of her character, and worked under the orders of her directors.
caption: Menichelli in Tigre Reale (1916).
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