Italian postcard, no. 927. Photo: Vettori, Bologna.
Italian postcard. Photo: Tiber Film. Gastone Monaldi as Cicueracchio and Alberto Collo as his son Luigi, just before they are executed by the Austrian army in Ciceruacchio (Emilio Ghione, 1915). Caption: And Ciceruacchio said: Luigi, my son! Let your courage at this moment be the same as when I separated you from your mother. Like never before, the ardent faith of the fatherland will bring you happily to your death.
Italian postcard. Caricature by Sandro Properzi, edited by the journal Le Maschere. Sandro Properzi was not only a prolific Italian caricaturist and designer of postcards, sheet music, and posters (e.g. for Poltrona Frau), he was also the art director of the films L'Inferno (1911) - faithfully recreating the settings from Gustave Doré's art, La Sacra Bibbia (1920) and I quattro moschettieri (1936). Properzi was also an artist who exhibited his paintings and watercolors at the yearly exhibition of the Permanente in Milano in 1915, 1923, and 1925.
Able to bring to the stage the most violent passions of the Roman people
Gastone Monaldi was born in Passignano sul Trasimeno, in 1882. Descended from a noble Perugian family, Gastone was the son of Marquis Gino Monaldi, an opera impresario and commentator on Verdi's operas, and the ballerina Cesira Presiotti. Gastone enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine and was about to graduate. But, ppassionate about theatre since childhood, he felt the desire to abandon everything and he devoted himself to the stage.
A pupil of Ferruccio Garavaglia, he was in Giacinta Pezzana's company at the time when they were trying to revive Roman dialectical theatre in 1908. An impetuous and passionate character, Gastone was able to bring to the stage the most violent passions of the Roman people and embody their deepest feelings: honour, love, jealousy, and revenge. He was able to immerse himself perfectly in the difficult social reality of early twentieth-century Rome, with its slums and underworld. He made the figure of the 'bullo' (bully) his own (a bully that was not a caricature, but one of those that populated the crime columns of the newspapers of the time), which he brought into the limelight with great effectiveness, earning considerable popular success.
Some of his most important titles are: 'Giggi er bullo' (satirised by the well-known Petrolini comedy), 'I vaschi della buiosa', 'Nino er boja!', 'Er più de Trestevere' (which retraced the life of Tinèa, a well-known Roman bully), 'L'Ombra paurosa', 'A lo sbarajo' in collaboration with Nino Ilari, and also 'Cielo senza stelle', and 'La festa del bacio', written in collaboration with Ciprelli, Giustiniani, Ojetti and Smith.
In 1908 he took part in the first performance of D'Annunzio's 'La nave' (The Ship) and in 1909 he set up his own company, known as the 'Teatro del Popolo' (Theatre of the People), which was soon highly regarded by the critics of the time'. From 1912, the company included Fernanda Battiferri, who was to become his wife in April 1918.
The company performed all over Italy and even in America, during a tour that was enormously successful, thanks also to the numerous Italian colonies and to the fascination that, in the age of gangsters, the Roman bullies (who made it a point of honour not to use the 'cacafòco', the gun, but always the knife) and the stories of the Italian underworld could exercise in the New World. In the meantime, Gastone had begun his collaboration in the world of silent films, which would lead him, within ten years, to take part in around thirty films, some of which he directed himself.
Italian postcard. Photo: Tiber Film. Gastone Monaldi as Cicueracchio in Ciceruacchio (Emilio Ghione, 1915). Caption: People of Rome! Do you want to bend to slavery by the stranger? No! Do you want to swear with me to die for freedom? Yes! Yes!
Italian postcard. Photo: Tiber Film. Gastone Monaldi as Ciceruacchio in the Italian WWI historical propaganda film Ciceruacchio (Emilio Ghione, 1915). Caption: The opulent Papal Court. Ciceruacchio with Pius IX. It is not known who played the pope. Ciceruacchio/Martire del piombo austriaco (Martyr of Austrian bullets) was an Italian historical film, dealing with victims of the Austrian occupation of Italy, and intended to raise anti-Austrians sentiment during the First World War (when the Northwest part of Italy - the present province of Friuli - was still under Austrian occupation).
Italian postcard. Photo: Tiber Film. Gastone Monaldi in Ciceruacchio (Emilio Ghione, 1915). Caption: A sweet dream that became an even sweeter reality. Center, Gastone Monaldi as the title character. The woman left of him maybe Fernanda Battiferri.
Italian postcard. Photo: Tiber Film. Gastone Monaldi as Cicueracchio and Alberto Collo as his son Luigi in Ciceruacchio (Emilio Ghione, 1915). Caption: The arrest of Angelo Brunetti named Ciceruacchio and his son.
Historical films for Cines and Film d'arte italiana
In 1910 Gastone Monaldi started his film career at Film d'arte italiana, the Roman succursale of Pathé Frères. Here, Monaldi was directed by Ugo Falena in e.g. Il ratto delle Sabine/The Rape of the Sabines (1910) and Salomè (1910) with Vittoria Lepanto. He acted in films with Francesca Bertini in the female lead such as Folchetto di Narbona/Folchetto of Narbonne (Ugo Falena, 1910) and Pia de'Tolomei/Pia dei Tolomei (Gerolamo Lo Savio, 1910). Parallel, Monaldi started in 1910 also a film career at the Cines company, in e.g. Amore e liberta/For Love and Country (Mario Caserini, 1910), La sposa del Nilo/The Bride of the Nile (Enrico Guazzoni, 1911) with Bruto Castellani, Antigone (Mario Caserini, 1911), and several films for which the director is unknown such as La bella Galleana/Beautiful Galliana (1911), and Più che la morte/Stronger than Death (1912).
He often played in the historical genre, for which both companies were well-known. Mostly, he acted as an antagonist to the female or male leading actor. In the two-reeler railroad drama I due macchinisti/Two Engine Drivers (Enrique Santos, 1912), Monaldi played the bad guy opposite Amleto Novelli as the male lead. Novelli by that time had become Cines' leading male actor and would become the lead of Guazzoni's mega-epic Quo vadis? (Enrico Guazzoni, 1913), while Monaldi instead would have a break.
In 1915, after Italy had joined the Allies in the First World war, Monaldi returned to the sets in a series of war propaganda films by Emilio Ghione, made for Tiber Film: Tresa, Cicueraccchio, Spine e lagrime/Thorns and tears, and Il naufragatore/The castaway, with Monaldi's wife Fernanda Battiferri co-acting. After some incidental films in 1916-1917, Monaldi had another break, after which he returned with his own company Monaldi Film, for which he directed his last seven films in 1919-1920, again with Battiferri in the female lead and Monaldi himself as the male star.
In 1918 Monaldi directed on the stage Augusto Jandolo's 'Meo Patacca'. On 15 December 1923, at the Teatro Morgana in Rome. Monaldi's company also gave the first performance in Italian of Luigi Pirandello's 'Il Berretto a sonagli' (The Rattlesnake Cap). His popularity was such that on 22 July 1927 Mussolini sent him a letter admonishing him to use in the right way the great communicative and propaganda tool he identified in the theatre.
Gastone Monaldi passed away in Sarteano in the Italian region Tuscany in 1932. He was the father of the actress Gisella Monaldi. Many of his plays are kept in the Burcardo Library and Theatre Museum. A street in Rome near EUR is named after Monaldi.
Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. 115.
Italian postcard. Photo: Tiber Film. Gastone Monaldi as Cicueracchio in Ciceruacchio (Emilio Ghione, 1915). Caption: Drinking the wine of the Castelli [romani], I greet you all, beautiful people of Trastevere!
Italian postcard. Photo: Tiber Film. Gastone Monaldi as Ciceruacchio and Alberto Collo as his son Luigi are shot by an Austrian squadron in Ciceruacchio (Emilio Ghione, 1915). Caption: The most coward spirit of the Austrians, our eternal enemies, like always and still does confirm its cowardice.
Sources: Aldo Bernardini (Cinema Muto Italiano Protagonisti - Italian), Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.