#falci

Biancamaria Hubner and Emilio Vardannes in La congiura di San Marco by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: Italian postcard. G.B. Falci, Milano, No. 1920s. Biancamaria Hubner as Saita and Emilio Vardannes as the Inquisitor Stefano Donato in La congiura di San Marco (Domenico Gaido, 1924), the sequel to Il ponte dei sospiri (Domenico Gaido, 1921). The main role of Rolando Candiani, acted by Luciano Albertini in the original, was played in the sequel by Amleto Novelli. In this film Rolando Candiani (Novelli) has become Doge of Venice and his great aspiration is to satisfy all the needs of the Venetian people and to defend the integrity of the Venetian Republic. However, the followers of the ex-Doge Foscari conspire against him. But Candiano is helped by Scalabrino (Celio Bucchi), a gentleman who has become the head of a band of acrobats, and by Zanze (Bianca Stagno-Bellincioni) , a woman of the people. Together with a monkey these two manage to prevent all the traps of the enemies and to save Rolando. For several reasons almost all major parts were played out by new actors. Émile/ Emilio Vardannes, pseudonym of Antonin Bénevént (Paris, 13 January 1873 - Paris, 13 December 1951) was a French actor, director and screenwriter, who had a prolific career in Italian silent cinema. Vardannes was descended from the Bénévents, a well-known French family of circus and theatre artists. The same family also included the character actor Noël Roquevert (born Noël Bénévent), whose paternal uncle Vardannes was. Himself the son of a former health officer who became a dentist in Grenoble, Antonin Bénévent joined the army at the age of 19 and fought in the Algerian campaign between June 1892 and June 1896 in the 3rd Zouaves regiment where he was posted as a drummer. On his return to civilian life, he became a travelling actor with his brother Auguste (1862-1937), father of Noël Roquevert, in the Bénévent Theatre, a family theatre company that toured mainly in the west of France. He then went to Paris where he was hired at the Eden-Comédie, where he worked in 1907-1908 as dramatic and comic actor and took the pseudonym of Émile Vardannes. Thus Vardannes was already an established and experienced theatre actor, when in 1909 he was hired as an actor and film director by Pasquali & C. in Turin and then by Croce & C. in Milan. In 1911 he was hired by Itala Film, where he was employed as a comic actor, starring in the films of the Totò comic series (which he had already started at Pasquali and Croce), of which he himself was subject and director. In 1912, Vardannes moved on to Milano Films where he starred in a comic series as a new character named Bonifacio. He returned to Itala Film in 1913, where he was employed not only as a comedian, but also as a dramatic actor. He played the role of Hannibal in Itala's 1914 super-production, the epic Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone. Recalled to the French army in August 1914, Vardannes returned to France and was first posted to the territorial infantry before moving in May 1916 to the 20th Train Squadron where he was promoted to the rank of brigadier a year later. Demobilized in January 1919, he returned to Italy where he resumed his activities, acting in many of the Maciste films of 1920-1921, but also the Tolstoy adaptation Il cadavere vivente (1921) and the sequel to Il ponte dei sospiri: La congiura di San Marco (1924), starring Amleo Novelli. With Biancamaria Hubner, Vardannes acted in La congiura di San Marco, Saetta, principe per un giorno (Mario Camerini, 1924) starring Domenico Gambino, and Mario Guaita-Ausonia's last film La donna carnefice nel paese dell'oro (Guaita, 1926). As a director, in addition to the comedies, Vardannes' most important film was L'oro degli Aztechi (Aztec Gold), made in 1920 in co-direction with Umberto Mozzato. At the end of the silent era he returned to France, where under the pseudonym of Vardannes he had supporting parts in four late silent films and three early sound films, the last of which, Adieu Léonard by Pierre Prévert, was made in 1943. (Sources: Italian and French Wikipedia, IMDb)