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| Festival Year |
Festival Section |
| 2008 |
Film and History -- World War I : Austrian, Danish, and Italian Documentaries and Newsreels |
| Film Title |
GLORIA. APOTEOSI DEL SOLDATO IGNOTO |
| Alternative Title 1 |
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| Alternative Title 2 |
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| Alternative Title 3 |
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| Country |
Italy |
| Release Date |
1921 |
| Production Co. |
Federazione Cinematografica Italiana e dall'Unione Fototecnici Cinematografici |
| Director |
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| Format |
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Speed (fps) |
| 35mm |
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22 |
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| Footage |
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Time |
| 1680 m. |
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67' |
| Archive Source |
Cineteca Nazionale-Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Roma / La Cineteca del Friuli, Gemona. |
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| Print Notes |
Didascalie in italiano / Italian intertitles. |
| Other Information |
| Riprese effettuate a/Filmed in Trieste, Aquileia, Udine, Pordenone, Sacile, Conegliano, Venezia, Mestre, Montenegrotto, Pontelagoscuro, Ferrara, Firenze, Orvieto, Roma, Napoli, Milano, Genova, Bergamo, Catania, Torino |
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| Program Notes |
From 1914 to 1918 the world was at war. Armies and nations confronted one another on land and sea in a struggle whose blows did spare civilians. In this conflict, the Italian-Austrian war raged from the Stelvio to the Adriatic, involving the entire alpine arc, wide areas of the Po Valley, and the Carsian territory that is today on the borders between Italy, Austria, and Slovenia. For more than 40 months two powerful armies fought in the mountains and along terrains and rivers destined to become the very symbols of the conflict, such as Carso Isonzo, the Dolomites and the Altipiani, Monte Grappa, Montello, and Piave.
Around 650,000 Italian soldiers perished on the battlefield or in the hospitals for the sick and wounded set up behind the front lines. Many of them remained without name or identification, since often the course of the battle operations did not permit the collection and immediate identification of the fallen, a process which often became more difficult with the passage of time. The numerous military cemeteries which spread behind the lines suffered bombardments which scattered and finally fragmented the burial places. Especially during the so-called Offensive, great battles in which tens of thousands of men were engaged, obstacles and mistakes hindered an already exhausted military bureaucracy, making the identification of soldiers fallen on the battlefield, often buried in common graves and summarily recorded among the “missing”, extremely difficult. It was impossible, finally, to identify the names and graves of the majority of the 100,000 Italian prisoners who perished through privation and sickness in the various prison camps of Austria-Hungary and Germany.
At the close of the conflict the military authories undertook the merciful work of collecting and identifying corpses exhumed from the various military cemeteries and from innumerable improvised battlefield burials. Around 1500 cemeteries and 200,000 graves were reorganized, more than 70,000 corpses retrieved, and some thousands of the fallen identified, though 200,000 more remained unknown and without formal burial.
For the many families of the nameless fallen and for the entire country emerging prostrate from the conflict, Italy - like all the rest of the nations involved in the conflict: the fallen of the Great War numbered many millions, many unknown - instituted the symbolic figure of the Unknown Soldier, a religious and civil myth who could represent the sacrifice and the patriotism of a people in arms.
Eleven bodies of the unknown fallen, from the various fields of battle, were brought together in the basilica of Aquileia, where in a complex ritual the mother of a missing volunteer of Trieste, Maria Beramas, chose the nameless fallen warrior who should symbolize the sacrifice of the entire nation. Borne on a special train decorated with the symbols of victory, the chosen coffin travelled slowly from Trieste to Rome, through reverent crowds and indescribable scenes of patriotism and mourning.
The most imposing manifestation of a united Italy emerging from the war culminated on 4 November 1921 in Rome, in the presence of Vittore Emanuele III, with a great cortège and with the body of the Unknown Soldier interred with full honours in the Vittoriano, the royal mausoleum inaugurated in 1911, which became the National Altar for all Italians. The cameramen of the Italian Cinematographic Federation and of the Phototechnical Cinematographic Union were authorized to film all the phases of the ceremony. From this was edited the film Gloria, which was subsequently shown in all the principal Italian cities and also abroad, where it was greeted with patriotic approval by the emigrant communities. The profits from the film went to the National Committee for Orphans of the War. - LUCIO FABI
The restoration of Gloria has been undertaken by the Cineteca del Friuli, using material preserved in the Cineteca Nazionale of Rome: three prints and two positive fragments on nitrate base, each differing very much in length and editing, and with intertitles in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
An initial stage of restoration was carried out in 2000 using the unique print then available. Following the rediscovery of further prints, it was possible to integrate the original restoration work with 400 metres of missing footage.
The editing has been reconstructed following a chronological criterion and based on historical information about the organization of the event. The intertitles in other languages have been translated into Italian and reconstructed according to the original period graphic style. The restoration was carried out in the Bologna laboratory of L'Immagine Ritrovata in 2006-2007. - DAVIDE POZZI
We are grateful for the collaboration of Francesca Angelucci, Lucio Fabi, Franca Farina, Cristina D'Osualdo, Irela Nuñez del Pozo, Maria Assunta Pimpinelli, Davide Pozzi, Marianna De Sanctis, and Sergio Toffetti.
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