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-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 varia ...
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,
Universal Pictures and
First National. Pittaluga also moved into the film production business around the same time, acquiring studios in
Turin. 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 characters including
Sansone and
Saetta and particularly
Maciste. 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 from the conglomerate
Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Following on the heels of the development of
sound film 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 so ...
in
Rome fitted for sound production. Cines produced the first Italian sound film ''
The Song of Love'' (1930), although another of the company's films ''
Resurrection'' (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 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