Léonce Perret's Le Mystère des roches de Kador 1912 had played an importat role in breathing new life into a theme familiar from nineteenth-century melodrama of the villain scheming to inherit the ancient estates by disposing of all other candidates by whatever method proved most convenient. Contemporaneously the circus film, pioneered by the various Danish companies, was also enjoying a vogue. Neither genre had, at this time at least, much effect on the US and even in Europe both were especially popular in the Northern European countries.
So it was natural enough for the Italians, wishing to make a film that combined both these aspects of what the Germans called at this period Sensationsfilme, should invite the highly experienced Danish cinematographer Alfred Lind to undertake the task. He does an absolutely cracking job too. The plot does not really stand up to any close examination but the cinematography is superb - variety of shot, cross cutting where appropriate, camera angles of all sorts, camera movement too (limited but there), a range of effects not to be found, need one say, in the exactly contemporary Birth of a Nation and looks fowrard in many ways to the German cinematography of the.twenties.
One of the cousins disinherited by the machinations of the estate manager arrives at the family mansion and teams up with the faithful old retainer (there i always a faithful old retainer) and, after various attempts by the villain to do away with him, escapes with retainer (and lucky family skeleton) and, following a clue as to the whereabouts of his (female) cousin, supposedly abducted by gypsies, joins the Bartoli circus as the "jockey of death". The two cousins escape from together from the brutal gypsy couple but both sets of villains gang up against them......and the chase begins.
It is a shame that the surviving print, even restored, is not a bit sharper but it remains a high-voltage thriller of great quality.
Two women(Miss Evelyn and Trude Nick) seem to have played the role of the girl-acrobat (as they did in the 1916 sequel Il circo de la morte which I have not found. Both seem to have been circus performers but one presumably had more talents as an actress.
So it was natural enough for the Italians, wishing to make a film that combined both these aspects of what the Germans called at this period Sensationsfilme, should invite the highly experienced Danish cinematographer Alfred Lind to undertake the task. He does an absolutely cracking job too. The plot does not really stand up to any close examination but the cinematography is superb - variety of shot, cross cutting where appropriate, camera angles of all sorts, camera movement too (limited but there), a range of effects not to be found, need one say, in the exactly contemporary Birth of a Nation and looks fowrard in many ways to the German cinematography of the.twenties.
One of the cousins disinherited by the machinations of the estate manager arrives at the family mansion and teams up with the faithful old retainer (there i always a faithful old retainer) and, after various attempts by the villain to do away with him, escapes with retainer (and lucky family skeleton) and, following a clue as to the whereabouts of his (female) cousin, supposedly abducted by gypsies, joins the Bartoli circus as the "jockey of death". The two cousins escape from together from the brutal gypsy couple but both sets of villains gang up against them......and the chase begins.
It is a shame that the surviving print, even restored, is not a bit sharper but it remains a high-voltage thriller of great quality.
Two women(Miss Evelyn and Trude Nick) seem to have played the role of the girl-acrobat (as they did in the 1916 sequel Il circo de la morte which I have not found. Both seem to have been circus performers but one presumably had more talents as an actress.
