Stefano Pittaluga (2 February 1887 – 26 April 1932) was an Italian

film producer A film producer is a person who oversees film production. Either employed by a production company or working independently, producers plan and coordinate various aspects of film production, such as selecting the script, coordinating writing, di ...

, one of several figures who helped revive Italian film production in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Originally a

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

-based owner of

cinemas A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall (Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...

, Pittaluga began to expand his business after 1924. He gained enormous power in the

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations * Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...

sector by securing the rights to release the films of the

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

companies

Warner Brothers Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American Film studio, film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, Califo ...

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

and First National. Pittaluga also moved into the film production business around the same time, acquiring studios in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

. Pittaluga was able to re-invest the profits he made from releasing foreign films into domestic production. He produced a series of films featuring pulp

Strongman In the 19th century, the term strongman referred to an exhibitor of strength or similar circus performers who performed feats of strength. More recently, strength athletics, also known as strongman competitions, have grown in popularity. Thes ...

characters including Sansone and Saetta and particularly

Maciste Maciste () is one of the oldest recurring characters of cinema, created by Gabriele d'Annunzio and Giovanni Pastrone. He is featured throughout the history of the cinema of Italy from the 1910s to the mid-1960s. He is usually depicted as a Hercu ...

. The films led to him being the most commercially successful Italian producer of the era. Pittaluga's power grew in 1926 when he acquired the traditional leading production outfit

Cines The Società Italiana Cines (''Italian Cines Company'') is a film company specializing in production and distribution of films. The company was founded on 1 April 1906. A major force in the European film industry before the First World War, the c ...

from the conglomerate

Unione Cinematografica Italiana The Unione Cinematografica Italiana (UCI) was an Italian film production and distribution consortium of the silent era. Following the end of the First World War, a group of eleven leading Italian companies joined forces in a single conglomerate ...

. Following on the heels of the development of

sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...

in America, Britain and Germany, Pittaluga had the

Cines Studios The Cines Studios were film production studios located in the Italian capital Rome. They were established on Via Veio in 1930 by Stefano Pittaluga, head of the Cines film company, at the beginning of the sound era. It produced Italy's first sound ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

fitted for sound production. Cines produced the first Italian sound film ''

The Song of Love ''The Song of Love'' (also known as ''Le chant d'amour'' or ''Love Song'') is a 1914 painting by Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. It is one of the most famous works by Chirico and an early example of the surrealist style, thoug ...

'' (1930), although another of the company's films ''

Resurrection Resurrection or anastasis is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and is resurrected. Reincarnation is a similar process hypothesized by other religions, which ...

'' (1931) was actually made earlier but released later. Cines became the dominant force of the early sound era.Moliterno p.84 Under Pittaluga the company specialised in releasing musicals and comedies. Much of the companies' output, often remakes of German or Hungarian films, were later branded "

White Telephone ''Telefoni Bianchi'' (; white telephones) films, also called deco films, were made by Italian film industry in the 1930s and the 1940s in imitation of American comedies of the time in a sharp contrast to the other important style of the era, cal ...

" films. After Pittaluga's sudden death in 1932 the company continued to release the same kind of populist films, and were only overtaken when the

Fascist Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...

government of

Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...

invested large sums of money in production and constructed the vast

Cinecittà Cinecittà Studios (; Italian for Cinema City Studios), is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres (99 acres), it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios we ...

complex in Rome.

References

Bibliography

* Moliterno, Gino. ''Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema''. Scarecrow Press, 2008. * Ricci, Steven. ''Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922–1943''. University of California Press, 2008.

External links

* 1887 births 1932 deaths Italian film producers Film people from Genoa {{Italy-film-bio-stub