The Railway Owner
About The Railway Owner
The Marquis de Beaulieu dies ruined. His daughter Clara (Pina Menichelli) loses the Duke of Bligny (Luigi Serventi), who switches to Athenaïde Moulinet (Lina Millefleurs), daughter of a cocoa magnate who will cover the duke's gambling debts. Clara marries Philippe Derblay (Amleto Novelli), the ironmaster who has loved her, to strike back. On the wedding day he sees that he is only a substitute and shuts her out of everything but public appearances. She comes to love him and does not say so. While he is away, Bligny returns. The men duel. Clara steps between them and is wounded in the hand.
Cast & crew
More about The Railway Owner
Eugenio Perego directed for Itala Film. Giuseppe Maria Viti wrote the screenplay from Georges Ohnet's 1882 novel Le Maître de forges. Antonino Cufaro photographed it. Unione Cinematografica Italiana distributed it. The Italian title is Il padrone delle ferriere. Release was 25 February 1919. Maria Caserini plays the marquise. The English title calls Derblay a railway owner. Ferriere are ironworks.
Themes
Making
Itala, the Turin company, produced the picture near the end of its run. Perego staged it as a bourgeois melodrama rather than as a costume spectacle.
Look
Antonino Cufaro photographed the Itala production.
Preservation
A print survives and has circulated under the Italian title.
Notes
- Ohnet died in 1918, the year before the film opened.
- Myriam De Gaudi plays a Derblay relative. Isabel De Lizaso is also credited.
- Anton Giulio Majano remade the novel in Italy in 1959, in Technicolor, with Virna Lisi and Antonio Vilar.
- The novel had already been filmed in the United States in 1914 and 1917.
Scenes
- Derblay realizes, on the wedding day, that Clara married him to spite the duke.
- Clara takes the blow meant for her husband and is hit in the hand.
Influenced by
- Le Maître de forges (Georges Ohnet, 1882)
Influenced
- Il padrone delle ferriere (1959)
