Wild Blood: Italy’s Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida
One 7 Movies’ DVD release of a WWII era drama is a bit of a surprise, given the label’s catalogue tends to be heavy in horror and sexploitation titles, many with less than desirable source prints and transfers.
The Jester’s Supper / La cena delle beffe (1942) is a taut film adaptation of Sem Benelli’s cruel revenge trale, directed by Alessandro Blasetti, and starring Osvaldo Valenti – a popular actor during the 1930s & 1940s who was executed with his lover / occasional co-star Luisa Ferida by partisans, days before Italy’s liberation during WWII.
That tragic, grim backstory – love and danger in Fascist WII Italy – formed the basis of Marco Tullio Giordana’s docu-drama Wild Blood / Sangepazzo (2008), a less than satisfactory film starring Luca Zingaretti and Monica Bellucci as the doomed couple.
Certainly from the poster campaign, there’s no effort to even describe the film’s plot nor indicate its principle historic figures – perhaps the studio’s ploy to sell the drama to international audiences as a Monica Bellucci romance, seen embracing not her co-star, but another (younger) actor.
There’s probably a clean transfer of Jester in Italy (if not Europe), but One 7 Movie’s disc is an adequate source for North American buyers, and perhaps the film’s release will seed a small interest in Valenti’s work.
With the exception of the long out-of-print Too Bad She’s Bad / Peccato Che Sia Una Canaglia (1955), a comedy starring Vittorio De Sica, Sophia Loren, and Marcello Mastroianni, The Jester’s Supper is also the lone sampling of Blasetti’s filmography in North America.
Cheers,
Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com
Category: EDITOR'S BLOG
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