Romola

Romola (1924)

In Renaissance Florence, a Florentine trader meets a shipwrecked stranger, who introduces himself as Tito Melema, a young Italianate-Greek scholar. Tito becomes acquainted with several other Florentines, including Nello the barber and a young girl named Tessa. He is also introduced to a blind scholar named Bardo de' Bardi, and his daughter Romola. As Tito becomes settled in Florence, assisting Bardo with classical studies, he falls in love with Romola.

Date of release
1924-12-06
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (6)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
Drama, History
Director
Henry King

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Italy

Romola is a 1924 American silent drama film directed by Henry King and shot on location in Italy. The film stars Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, William Powell, and Ronald Colman, and is based on the 1863 George Eliot novel of the same name.

Production

Romola was part of a 1920s boomlet for American silent films shot on locations outside the United States. Such films were intended to attract American viewers through exotic locales, enhance the artistic prestige of directors, and make American films more appealing to foreign audiences.

William Powell later described the production of Romola as a 29-week comedy of errors starting with the capsizing of the boat for the pirate sequence at the onset of filming. Because no one in the company spoke Italian, the quest to obtain tights for Powell and Colman culminated in a two-week detour to Milan to a theatrical tailor for La Scala Opera House.

The shoot later became an idyll, with plenty of time to savor the pleasures of Florence and learn Italian, thanks to a relaxed production schedule.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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