Salomé
About Salomé
Ugo Falena’s short follows the Oscar Wilde telling. John the Baptist is held in a cistern, and a visit from Vitellius brings a procession. A serving girl spills wine on Herod; women revelers tie her to a stake and stab her, and her body stays in view while Salomé dances. Vittoria Lepanto drops a scarlet robe, dances in seven veils, and throws herself at Herod’s feet. John’s head is brought in on a platter. The copy described on Bible Films Blog ends there.
Cast & crew
More about Salomé
Ugo Falena directed and produced the short for Film d’Arte Italiana. Pathé is the distributor listed on Wikidata. English Wikipedia dates the release to July 1910. Vittoria Lepanto plays Salomé, Laura Orette plays Herodias (Erodiade), Ciro Galvani plays John (Johannes), and Achille Vitti plays the tetrarch.
Themes
Technique
Surviving prints are stencil-colored. On the copy Matt Page describes, Salomé’s robe is scarlet, and Romans in the Vitellius procession wear leopard skins.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A stencil-colored copy survives. The English Wikipedia video runs 8 minutes 1 second.
Notes
- Francesca Bertini and Gastone Monaldi are in the Wikipedia cast. No roles are given for them there.
- A video copy on the English Wikipedia page runs 8 minutes 1 second. Wikidata lists 12 minutes.
- Matt Page, on Bible Films Blog in June 2018, notes that the cistern is a pit below ground, unlike the above-ground cistern in the play and the opera.
- The same note says seven silent Salome films had already appeared before 1910, four of them in 1908.
Scenes
- Women revelers stab the serving girl who spilled wine, and her body remains during the dance.
- Lepanto drops the scarlet robe and dances in seven veils.
- John’s head arrives on a platter.
Influenced by
- Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, as described by Matt Page on Bible Films Blog
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Salome (1910).webm)
