[1] This type of old-fashioned classical drama, often infused with thinly-veiled Axis sympathies, was to indirectly pave the way for the Italian Neorealism movement, which rejected the melodrama style and consigned it to the industry's past.
In 1915 Italy joined the Allied side in the First World War, and passage was arranged to take young migrant Italians back to their native country to fight.
As the Second World War approached, Umberto Sclanizza attempted to evacuate his family; his mother had gone to live in Egypt after her divorce, where she had remarried and given birth to a daughter, Ida Ruffato, in 1900.
[4] His films included: Un' Avventura di Salvator Rosa (An Adventure of Salvator Rosa) (1940); Sei bambine ed il Perseo (Perseus and the six children) (1940); Il Re d'Inghilterra non paga (The King of England Will Not Pay) (1941); Don Buonaparte (1941); Don Cesare di Bazan (1942) aka La Lama del giustiziere, (The Executioner's Blade Italy: reissue title).
The film movement that emerged from the turmoil, characterised by Italian Neorealism, had little need of classical practitioners like Umberto Sclanizza and Giovacchino Forzano, whose careers never recovered from the association with Fascism.