Campogalliani, Carlo

(1885-1974)

   Actor and director. Campogalliani began as an actor during the early silent period, first appearing as the Fool in Giuseppe De Liguoro's adaptation of King Lear made for Milano Films in 1910. After roles in a number of major silent films, including Luigi Maggi's Satana (Satan, 1912) and Mario Caserini's Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (The Last Days of Pompeii, 1913), he played the lead in Edoardo Bencivenga's Napoleone, epopea napoleonica (Napoleon, 1914), before graduating to directing on Il violino di Ketty (Ketty's Violin, 1914), in which he also acted with his wife, Letizia Quaranta. He directed his wife in another half a dozen crime thrillers and made several of the Maciste films before founding his own production company, Campogalliani Film, in 1920. In 1922 he and Quaranta moved to South America, where he made films in Argentina and Brazil while also touring with his own theater company. Having returned to Europe in 1927, he worked in Germany for several years before returning to Italy at the beginning of the sound era to direct Cortile (Courtyard, 1930) and Medico per forza (The Doctor in Spite of Himself, 1931), two of the very few films to feature the renowned comic stage actor Petrolini. After making an animated version of The Four Musketeers (I quattro moschettieri, 1936), which reputedly involved the construction and manipulation of more than 3,000 marionettes, he made what many regard as his finest film, Montevergine (also known as La grande luce The Great Light, 1939), which was awarded the Fascist Cup at the Venice Festival in 1939. In the postwar period, he worked across a range of the popular genres, from light comedies and gothic mysteries to a number of sentimental melodramas adapted from the novels of Carolina Invernizio. Before retiring from the industry altogether in the early 1960s, he produced two well-respected sword-and-sandal epics, Maciste nella valle dei re (Son of Samson, 1960) and Ursus (Ursus, Son of Hercules, 1961). His last film, Rosmunda e Alboino (Sword of the Conqueror, 1961), was a historical adventure fantasy set in the early Middle Ages.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira