Rina de Liguoro and Victor Varconi in THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (1926)
So this week I made a small sample of silent PEPLUM films, many of which are lost, hard to find or forgotten but, oddly enough, were the foundation of the genre 30 or so years later.
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Too bad that silent films made up for their lack of spoken dialogue by egregious over-acting.
There was of course plenty of music, including full symphony orchestras at certain really important theaters.
Many of the musicians were talented Jewish refugees fleeing the chaos of post-WWI Europe. The advent of sound was a disaster for them.
Sets in big budget silents were often very elaborate. Two strip Technicolor and tinting were sometimes used with quite good results.
Many movie palaces of the 1920s favoured an architectural style known as "Portuguese Baroque." This involved gorp on top of gorp to impress their predominantly working class audiences.
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