Lacking Carmine Gallone's "Faust", the finest noir opera currently available on DVD is undoubtedly Mario Costa's 1948 movie version of "Pagliacci" in which Tito Gobbi (in no less than three roles) just manages to steal the limelight from Gina Lollobrigida, ideally cast as the super-beautiful Nedda. The unfortunate Afro Poli played Cannio to perfection. A fine singer himself, Poli spent much of his film career acting on-screen for not so handsome dubbers like, in this case, Galliano Masini — whose only other cinema venture was as the singing star of the 1938 "Star of the Sea", written and directed by one of Italy's great masters of the cinema, Corrado D'Errico. (Although D'Errico wrote and directed no less than 15 super-popular, extremely large-budget movies between 1929 and his death at the age of 39 in 1941, he was so totally forgotten just 15 years later that he's not even included in Italy's massive, seven-volume "Filmlexicon degli Autori e delle Opere". Such is fame in the movie world!}. The current DVD of the Mario Costa "Pagliacci" starts somewhat abruptly as it is missing the original introduction in which we are told something of the history of the Leoncavallo opera. Fortunately, the opera itself is presented intact. The sound, alas, is far from perfect, but that's how it was back in 1948. Fortunately, the voices do not suffer so much as the orchestra, and as the voices are the main item, this "Pagliacci" rates 8/10.
Review of Love of a Clown - Pagliacci
