Ultimi bagliori di un crepuscolo? La sceneggiatura italiana nei primi anni venti, tra crisi e innovazione: il caso di Tempesta in un cranio (1921)

In studies on early Italian cinema, the years between 1919 (year of the foundation of the Uci) and 1922 (year in which national production is halved) are often described as a phase of transition from the golden age to the dramatic crisis of the 1920s. This description, although founded,risks obscuring the experiences and initiatives that in those years proposed a reaction to this decline. A reconsideration of this period from the point of view of the history of the screenplay yields a contradictory but not inert picture. The now mature development of writing techniques for cinema facilitates, in many cases, a comparison with the Hollywood shooting script. This comparison is particularly evident in the six athletic-adventurous comedies featuring and directed by Carlo Campogalliani – a key figure in Italian popular cinema up to the 1950s – between 1921 and 1922. The recent restoration of the first title in the series, Tempesta in un cranio (Storm in a skull, 1921), and its correlation with the film’s screenplay o.er the possibility, almost unique for the period in question, not only to study from the inside a project that was written to be viewed, also in relation to contemporary US script models, but in addition to evaluate and interpret the autonomy or functionality of such writing with respect to staging.