The Faun
About The Faun
Sculptor Mariotti leaves his model Fede alone and goes to the casino to meet another woman. She finds his lover's note and falls asleep. In the dream, the marble faun in the studio comes to life and tells her that from the heart down all men are beasts. Princess Femmina, the lover, and her husband the prince come to pick a statue against Mariotti's gambling debts, and she chooses the faun because Fede clings to it. The statue falls from the cart, lives again, and runs to the woods with Fede, where they build a hut. Mariotti finds them. The faun beats him, then is shot in the back. Fede tries to bargain the princess's love letter for the statue, collapses, and wakes on the studio sofa. An hour has passed.
Cast & crew
More about The Faun
Febo Mari wrote and directed Il fauno for Ambrosio and plays the faun. Arturo Ambrosio produced. Giovanni Riva carved the statue, using Mari as the model. The Italian release was in 1917.
Themes
Making
Mari had been with Ambrosio since 1912, acting and writing, and he formed his own Mari Film the next year, 1918. The faun statue was made for this picture rather than borrowed from a studio prop room.
Reviews
In 1994, at the time of a restoration, Paolo Cherchi Usai called Giuseppe Vitrotti's tinted photography one of the most dazzling color films to survive from the silent era.
Look
Giuseppe Paolo Vitrotti shot it in black and white at 1.33:1. The release print is tinted, which is what Cherchi Usai was praising.
Music
Silent. No composer is credited.
Preservation
A tinted restoration was in circulation by 1994, when Paolo Cherchi Usai wrote about Vitrotti's photography. The Giornate del Cinema Muto programmed the film in 2017.
Notes
- The characters are named as ideas: Fede (faith), Arte (art), Femmina (the female), Astuzia (cunning).
- Nietta Mordeglia, billed as Antonietta Mordeglia, is Fede. Vasco Creti is the sculptor. Helena Makowska is Princess Femmina. Oreste Bilancia is Prince Mierbo.
- Ernesto Vaser plays the carter. The gambler is credited to Giuseppe Pierozzi on some lists and Umberto Scalpellini on the Giornate del Cinema Muto note.
- An intertitle has the faun say, "From the heart down all men are like me — beasts.
- The hunter who shoots him is called, in another title, "the son of Cain.
Scenes
- Fede finds the princess's note in Mariotti's jacket and sleeps on the studio sofa.
- The faun steps off the pedestal and speaks to her.
- The statue falls from the cart, breaks, and runs into the woods with Fede.
- The sculptor is beaten, then shoots the faun in the back.
- She wakes, and only an hour has passed.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Il Fauno (1917) .webm)
Quotes
From the heart down all men are like me — beasts.
