L’Uragano
R: Ubaldo Maria Del Colle. D: Mario Casaleggio, Annita D’Armero, Lydia De Roberti, Ubaldo Maria Del Colle, Antonio Grisanti. P: Pasquali & C. It 1911

“Founded as Pasquali & Tempo in 1908 by accountant, journalist, director, and producer Ernesto Maria Pasquali and a few Turinese businessmen, Pasquali was to become one of the most aggressive and ambitious Italian film companies. Initially, the company released a number of quality films without owning studios. In July 1910, however, through administrative restructuring and refinancing, Pasquali & Tempo became Pasquali & C. It immediately built its own studios – three, all at once, equipped with artificial lighting – and began turning known and unknown actors and directors into household names. First it created an outstanding screen couple by luring away Alberto Capozzi and Lydia De Roberti from Ambrosio Film, protagonists of Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1908). Pasquali also hired other notable actors such as Mary Cleo Tarlarini, Gustavo Serena, Maria Jacobini, and Ubaldo Maria Del Colle, the last of which soon also worked as a director. The films released in this period include the poignant modern drama, Calvario (1911), possibly one of the company’s first multiple-reel-films, as well as the romantic adventure, La prigione infuocata, and the vengeful melodrama, L’Uragano, both directed in 1911 by Del Colle. Between 1911 and 1914, Pasquali had its most productive period. In 1912, Ferdinand Guillaume was hired away from Cines, where he had become famous as Tontolini, to launch the comic series, Polidor (1912-1915), and become Italian cinema’s most celebrated film comedian. (…)
In 1913, Pasquali opened a branch in Rome and hired Enrico Vidali as artistic director. Vidali distinguished himself by directing two of the company’s most remarkable international hits, the six-reel Spartaco (1913) and, aided by De Colle, the nine-reel Jone o gli ultimi goirni di Pompei (1913), produced in only 26 days in open competition with Ambrosio’s much-publicized production of the same title. Pasquali slightly altered the film title to avoid, in vain, a lawsuit from Ambrosio. The success of both films in the world market, where they often competed with the same title, showcased the winning equation of highbrow entertainment and spectacular feature-lenght productions.”
Giorgio Bertellini in: Richard Abel (ed.): Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. Taylor & Francis 2005, p. 500

Per il babbo
R: Umberto Paradisi. D: Tonino Giolino, Giovanni Enrico Vidali, Maria Gandini, Attilio De Virgiliis. P: Pasquali & C. It 1913
Print: Museo Nazionale del Cinema

“In the first Twentieth Century in Turin, the little boy Tonino goes to the Pasquali film studio in order to draw the salary of his father, who has been sick since three months. Bad news are waiting for him: the father has been fired because he was absent for too long. However Tonino, walking in the Valentino park, sees a troupe filming and he candidates himself to substitute the protagonist. The little boy has a natural talent which allows him to earn some money. The film closes with an happy end: the Pasquali film studio will hire Tonino only during the school vacations and will call back his father as a bookkeeper. The dramatic plot, but with a happy ending, even in its simplicity, is unusual and interesting because it illustrates an image of the silver screen far from the star system, the affluence and the high society. The adventures of Tonino are also a narrative pretext for the Pasquali film studios to explicitly put on their own studios.
The preservation of Per il babbo was carried out by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino, based on an tinted nitrate print that was bought in 1997 from a private collector. From] the nitrate print, a dupe negative and a positive print colored with the Desmet method were printed on safety film. The restoration was carried out in 1997 at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna.”
Museo Nazionale del Cinema

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