Between 1912 and 1924, Italy produced over 65 films set in mythical Balkan kingdoms. The genre – the term as used here can be debated – was popularized internationally by Anthony Hope with his hugely successful novel The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), set in Ruritania and spawning a host of imitations. In Italy the generic term for an imaginary country in central or eastern Europe was Silistria, and the popularity of this phenomenon can be connected in some ways to the much-loved Queen Elena, born a princess of Montenegro, who married the future King Vittorio Emanuele III in 1896. While that’s an important factor in the Italian public’s demand for these sorts of Balkan-set romances, the vogue for Ruritanian/Silistrian stories needs to be seen in an international context, which is why the Giornate is dedicating a major retrospective to the topic in 2022.
Despite being directed by Carmine Gallone, L’ombra di un trono has largely been ignored, yet it has an intriguing unexplored history requiring continued research. The film is based on the novel Fleur d’ombre by Charles Foleÿ (1861-1956), first serialized in L’Echo de Paris beginning 21.11.1903. Foleÿ, a well-regarded writer first recognized by the Académie française in 1898, had clearly been following all the royal scandals of the era, many of which are directly referenced in the novel, including Sweden’s Prince Oscar Bernadotte, various wayward Hapsburg archdukes, and of course the tragedy at Mayerling. He also appears to have had a strong antipathy to the United Kingdom: the book’s setting in the “Grandes-Iles” is unmistakably Great Britain, with its nightmarish industrial urban blight and pollution-induced fog. It was never translated into Italian, most likely because Foleÿ mentions Countess Cesarina Gaddi Hercolani, who took the reigning house to court demanding support for the son she claimed to have had with King Umberto I.
The film changed location, however, to central or eastern Europe, identifiable by classic Ruritanian uniforms and other such trappings. We suspect that Gallone moved the setting in order to avoid offending the British market, and indeed it opened in the United Kingdom in June 1922. Apart from that, what’s on-screen closely follows the novel. Violette Miroy (we use the names as they appear in the book) is a young woman in Paris whose well-off parents recently died having largely spent all their resources. She meets the mysterious Georges and they fall in love, yet being a well-brought-up lady she insists on marriage; Georges is willing, but only if she doesn’t ask his surname. The wedding takes place and they have five happy years together, during which time she believes her husband is somehow connected to a royal family (the country is never named). Only once they’re in his native land, with their son Lolet, does Violette discover by chance that her husband is the second son of the Queen.
Prince Harold, the Crown Prince, is deeply envious of his younger brother, whose happiness with Violette is in stark contrast to his own betrothal to the haughty Princess Augusta. After a heart-to-heart with Violette, Harold realizes he’ll never be loved for himself alone, and in a fit of despair he kills himself. Georges is called to his mother’s side, and the formidable Queen – we don’t know who plays the role, but her quasi-supernatural presence and implacability elide closely with Foleÿ’s conception – insists the new heir apparent give up his wife, ordering Lolet kidnapped in order to convince Violette to renounce any thoughts of remaining married to her husband.
L’ombra di un trono has a complicated distribution history that still needs clarification: Italian sources date the film to 1921, but it was released first in France as Fleur d’ombre in September 1920, one year after Flammarion republished the novel. An advertisement in 1921 in the Italian journal La rivista cinematografica, no. 14, refers to the film Fior d’ombra as “in lavorazione” (in production), but shortly thereafter it’s rechristened L’ombra di un trono and appears to have been first distributed in Italy in 1922, with multiple reissues in the coming years, when it’s also called All’ombra di un trono. The Czech release took place in October 1925. Apart from the Czech 35mm print, a fragmentary 16mm nitrate negative also exists, at the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducrós Hicken in Buenos Aires.
The film’s star, Soava Gallone (1880-1957), remains one of the least studied of the Italian divas, and yet hers is a fascinating life. Born Stanisława Winawerówna in Łowicz to an intellectual Jewish family, she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she married her first husband, the noted scientist Mieczysław Wolfke. Adept at languages, she soon became a translator, notably rendering Sibilla Aleramo’s feminist novel Una donna (1906) into Polish in 1909; she maintained a lively correspondence with Aleramo well into the 1930s. Following her divorce from Wolfke she married Gallone in 1911, becoming his muse from the early 1910s throughout the 1920s, later maintaining an active role as her husband’s advisor. – Jay Weissberg, Amy Sargeant