Fregoli, superstar e mito / Fregoli, Superstar and Myth (1898-1899) (2015 digital restoration AFF / CNC)

Fregoli: Bianco e nero (IT 1898-1899). Photo © La Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia - Cineteca Nazionale – Collection CNC.

Fregoli donna (IT 1898-1899). Photo © La Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia - Cineteca Nazionale – Collection CNC.

Fregoli e signora al ristorante (IT 1898-1899). Photo © La Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia - Cineteca Nazionale – Collection CNC.

Fregoli: Giochi di prestigio (IT 1898-1899). Photo © La Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia - Cineteca Nazionale – Collection CNC.

Fregoli: segreto per vestirsi (IT 1898-1899). Photo © La Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia - Cineteca Nazionale – Collection CNC.

Fregoli trasformista (IT 1898-1899). Photo © La Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia - Cineteca Nazionale – Collection CNC.

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone.
Introduced by Arturo Brachetti.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi, with subtitles, grand piano: John Sweeney, 7 Oct 2015

William Barnes: Fregoli – Superstar and Myth (GCM catalog and website)

"Although his total film output did not exceed half an hour, Leopoldo Fregoli (1867-1936) deserves a place alongside the great European pioneers, Lumière, Méliès, and Paul. He pioneered new styles of exhibition, using film both in his stage act and independently as film-only shows. He brought his own ingenuity and humour to Méliès-style tricks. He anticipated associational montage. He used hand-applied colour creatively. He pioneered sound synchronization, providing his own voice from behind the screen. Above all, he was cinema’s first named star."

"On stage, Fregoli was the earliest great international popular superstar, packing theatres and earning millions in North and South America and in all Europe as far east as Russia. Fregoli was a “protean actor”, alone on the stage, playing innumerable roles in the course of his act, with instantaneous changes of costume and make-up effected behind minimal screens. It was not a new genre, but Fregoli’s energy, charm, vocal gifts, and the acute psychology he brought to each of his briefly-seen characters were unique. This solo show was not achieved easily: he travelled with 370 crates, weighing 30 tons, in four railway wagons, with 800 costumes, 1200 wigs, and 23 backstage assistants."

"Fregoli’s first encounter with film was in London. On 8 March 1897 he made his first appearance at the Alhambra, Leicester Square, where Robert W. Paul was still presenting his Animatographe, premiered on 25 March 1896. Paul persuaded Fregoli to let him film his Maestri d’operetta – impressions of Rossini, Verdi, Wagner, and Mascagni conducting the actual theatre orchestra. Fregoli’s Famous Impersonations of Composers (1898) was 400 feet long, and was available as ten 40-foot films, which were later reissued as five 80-foot films. It remained a big attraction in Paul’s catalogue for several years, and was no doubt the first film to have a cue sheet: “Accompanied by the proper music (particulars of which may be had on application), the series is entertaining to an educated audience, and quite suited to high-class concerts or Sunday exhibition” (cited in John Barnes, in The Beginnings of the Cinema in England, volume 3). Another film, of Fregoli in his dressing room, seems to have been shot around the same time, and was shown at the Crystal Palace – to the annoyance of the Alhambra management, who made a public announcement warning the public that this was a film and not Fregoli in person, but that he would soon return to the Alhambra. Both these films have disappeared, along with Méliès’ L’Homme Protée, who was almost certainly not Fregoli."

"Between his Alhambra appearances, he made a new South American tour, and in late 1897 appeared at the Théâtre Célestins in Lyon. Backstage he met Louis Lumière, who was enchanted by his performance: “How can you have so many souls in one body?” Fregoli was invited to spend two days at the Lumières’ factory, learning to use the Cinématographe, which fascinated him as it did so many other stage magicians, including Méliès himself. Lumière also took the opportunity to film Fregoli in Partie de cartes and Danse serpentine, and arranged for him to acquire a Cinématographe – which Fregoli cheekily rechristened the “Fregoligraph” (sometimes rendered as “Fregoliograph”, with or without a final “e”)."

"He evidently took delivery of the apparatus when he was en route for London, to open at the Alhambra on 20 June 1898. By 25 July he was ready to add the Fregoliograph [sic] as a new attraction, constituting the third part of his programme. There was still only one film, described by The Era as “a series of Cinematograph views by which Fregoli’s methods of quick changing are vividly depicted. We see the artist, with the assistance of his attendants, slipping off certain garments and assuming others in the ‘twinkling of an eye’”."

"Fregoli’s London engagement ended on 13 August, but “The Exposure of Fregoli by THE FREGOLIOGRAPH” was retained on the programme. To build the single film into an act in its own right, it was supplemented with unrelated films, including views of the war in the Sudan. The “Fregoliograph” remained on the Alhambra bill for eight weeks after Fregoli’s departure."

"Fregoli was meanwhile distracted by a Berlin season, and by furnishing his palatial new villa in Asti (which included a photographic studio), where most of his subsequent films were probably made. He introduced the Fregoligraph to Italy on his triumphant return to Rome, after years of absence, in late 1898, at the Valle and Costanzi theatres. Now he announced “10 quadri”, which constituted the fourth and final part of his act. The films were back-projected on a screen measuring 4 x 5 metres, framed in coloured lights. To enliven the screening they might be projected backwards and upside-down."

"By 1899 he was also exhibiting the Fregoligraph as a pure cinema show. Aldo Bernardini has traced a programme of 15 Fregoligraph films (plus Grafofono) at the Olympia caffè-concerto in Rome, at the same time as Fregoli himself, with Fregoligraph, was playing in Genoa. Clearly, then, he had more than one projector: two were recorded as being destroyed along with all Fregoli’s stage equipment in the conflagration of the Théâtre Trianon in Paris in 1900."

"By the early years of the century, one-minute films were passé and the Fregoligraph quietly disappeared from the show. Fregoli abruptly chose to retire in 1924. He spent his last years in Viareggio, where he died in 1936. Fregoli’s influence gave psychiatry the Fregoli Syndrome, and in theatre extends to the present, through his most worthy successor, Arturo Brachetti."

"During the Giornate a foyer exhibition will trace Fregoli’s career on stage and in film." – William Barnes

The Films

"On his retirement in 1924, Fregoli abruptly put all his professional materials – sets, costumes, wigs, and presumably films – in store in Genoa, and within weeks everything was sold and had vanished. Not until the 1950s did this group of original nitrate films reappear in Viareggio, to be subsequently acquired by the Cineteca Nazionale of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia of Rome. These Roman holdings were restored in 1995 under the auspices of the LUMIERE Project by Les Archives françaises du film du CNC, Bois d’Arcy,* who have now prepared the new digital transfer being shown in this year’s Giornate programme. The films have been transferred from 35 mm at 16 frames per second, and their original 35 mm lengths in metres have been included in the listings for each of the films."

"The films are a heterogeneous collection: some look like rejected attempts, while others are clearly fit for public screening. Their order on the CNC’s DCP roughly follows the numbering assigned
to them by Livio Luppi in 1995, based on the labels on the original Lumière cans in which (sometimes evidently misplaced) they were found. However, it is more revealing to consider them
in the stylistic groupings adopted in the listing below."

"No camera operator is identified: the proposition of Vico D’Incerti, in 1951, that Fregoli was assisted on camera by the 20-year-old Luca Comerio is not substantiated, but in his memoirs Fregoli
acknowledges a certain Müller as his technical collaborator. "

* Fregoli’s speed and dynamism were inevitably appealing to the Futurists, and he is briefly mentioned in Marinetti’s Manifesto del Varietà (1913). In his ground-breaking 2002 Giornate
programme “The Italian Avant-Garde, or, an Unwitting Avant-Garde” Carlo Montanaro included 13 of Fregoli’s surviving 20 films in their original 35 mm format.

Unless otherwise noted, the Fregoli-directed films have the common credit: IT 1898-99; D+SC+C: Leopoldo Fregoli. The codes “CNC” and “F” respectively indicate the running order of the present digital compilation and the numbers assigned in the Luppi filmography.

THE ORDER OF THE FILMS IN THE CATALOGUE (THE FILMS WERE SCREENED IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ORDER, SEE BELOW)

1. Films shot in slightly variable stock set comprising decorated flats with curtained doorway in centre, evidently built outdoors. This series probably represents the earliest surviving Fregoli films.
BARBIERE MALDESTRO [FREGOLI IN PALCOSCENICO] (9.2m, 30"; CNC 3; F03)
FREGOLI AL RISTORANTE I (15.1 m, 49"; CNC 8; F10)
FREGOLI AL RISTORANTE II (11 m, 36"; CNC 9; F11)
FREGOLI TRASFORMISTA (14.7 m, 48"; CNC 14; F18)
SIGNORA AL RISTORANTE (8.5 m, 28"; CNC 18; F24)
GIOCHI DI PRESTIGIO (15.5 m, 50"; hand-coloured; CNC 21; F27)

2. Films in “interior” sets, constructed outdoors
FREGOLI DONNA [FREGOLI RETROSCENA; IL BOUQUET DI FIORI DI FREGOLI] (14.5 m, 47"; CNC 1; F01)
BURLA AL MARITO I (15.2 m, 50"; CNC 5; F06)
BURLA AL MARITO II (15.4 m, 50"; CNC 4; F21)
FREGOLI BARBIERE MAGO (18.4 m, 60"; CNC 11; F14)
MAESTRI DI MUSICA (16.7 m, 54"; CNC 13; F16)
SEGRETO PER VESTIRSI (CON AIUTO) (8.5 m, 28”. CNC 19, CNC 20; F25)

3. Films in “exterior” sets, constructed outdoors
PERE COTTE (18.4 m, 60"; CNC 10; F13)
BIANCO E NERO (cast: Fregoli?; 12.3 m, 40"; CNC 17; F22)

4. Films shot in exterior locations
ERMETE NOVELLI LEGGE IL GIORNALE (C: without Fregoli, with Ermete Novelli; 16.9 m, 55"; CNC 2; F02)
SOGNO NUOVO / NOVELLI IN FAMIGLIA(C: without Fregoli, with Ermete Novelli, his wife Olga Giannini, their son Alessandro, their dog; 16.9 m, 55"; CNC 6; F07)
LA SERENATA DI FREGOLI / FREGOLI IN CAMPAGNA / FREGOLI CHITARRISTA (15.1 m, 49"; CNC 12; F15)
FREGOLI SOLDATO I (14.9 m, 49"; CNC 15; F19)
FREGOLI SOLDATO II (15.9 m, 52"; CNC 16; F20)
BAGNI DI MARE / BAGNI FINE DI SECOLO (13.9 m, 45"; CNC 7; F09)

5. Films of Fregoli by Lumière
PARTIE DE CARTES (Lumière – FR 1897) Cast: Leopoldo Fregoli; 35 mm, 13.8 m, 45" (16 fps). Lumière no. 764.
DANSE SERPENTINE (Lumière – FR 1897) Cast: Leopoldo Fregoli; 35 mm, 12.3 m, 40" (16 fps). Lumière no. 765.

THE FILMS WERE SCREENED IN PORDENONE IN THE FOLLOWING ORDER:

1. FREGOLI DONNA [FREGOLI RETROSCENA; IL BOUQUET DI FIORI DI FREGOLI] (14.5 m, 47"; CNC 1; F01). Filmed in “interior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: A bouquet behind which Fregoli changes from woman to man, and man to woman.
2. ERMETE NOVELLI LEGGE IL GIORNALE (C: without Fregoli, with Ermete Novelli; 16.9 m, 55"; CNC 2; F02). Filmed in exterior locations. - AA: In medium shot, Ermete Novelli is seated at a table, keeps changing newspapers, laughing at them.
3. BARBIERE MALDESTRO [FREGOLI IN PALCOSCENICO] (9.2m, 30"; CNC 3; F03). Shot in slightly variable stock set comprising decorated flats with curtained doorway in centre, evidently built outdoors. Probably among the earliest surviving Fregoli films. - AA: At the clumsy barber's, head washed.
4. BURLA AL MARITO I (15.2 m, 50"; CNC 5; F06). Filmed in “interior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: A prank to the husband: switching from woman to man.
5. BURLA AL MARITO II (15.4 m, 50"; CNC 4; F21). Filmed in “interior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: A prank to the husband: the lady friend turns out to be Fregoli.
6. SOGNO NUOVO / NOVELLI IN FAMIGLIA. (C: without Fregoli, with Ermete Novelli, his wife Olga Giannini, their son Alessandro, their dog; 16.9 m, 55"; CNC 6; F07). Filmed in exterior locations. - AA: Non-fiction: family happiness at the Ermete Novelli family.
7. BAGNI DI MARE / BAGNI FINE DI SECOLO (13.9 m, 45"; CNC 7; F09). Filmed in exterior locations.- AA: Non-fiction: holiday fun: boating, splashing into the water, swimming.
8. FREGOLI AL RISTORANTE I (15.1 m, 49"; CNC 8; F10). Shot in slightly variable stock set comprising decorated flats with curtained doorway in centre, evidently built outdoors. Probably among the earliest surviving Fregoli films. - AA: Drinking, cutting fruit, everything is taken away.
9. FREGOLI AL RISTORANTE II (11 m, 36"; CNC 9; F11). Shot in slightly variable stock set comprising decorated flats with curtained doorway in centre, evidently built outdoors. Probably among the earliest surviving Fregoli films. - AA: At the restaurant, everything is taken away.
10. PERE COTTE (18.4 m, 60"; CNC 10; F13). Filmed in “exterior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: Baked pears. 8 films are eating. A vanishing trick.
11. FREGOLI BARBIERE MAGO (18.4 m, 60"; CNC 11; F14). Filmed in “interior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: The magic barber. A huge hair and beard, all cut. They grow again in an instant.
12. LA SERENATA DI FREGOLI / FREGOLI IN CAMPAGNA / FREGOLI CHITARRISTA (15.1 m, 49"; CNC 12; F15). Filmed in exterior locations. - AA: Serenading with a guitar under the window. The policeman gets to sing, Fregoli playing the guitar.
13. MAESTRI DI MUSICA (16.7 m, 54"; CNC 13; F16). Filmed in “interior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: Lightning fast impressions of Rossini, Wagner, Verdi, Mascagni. John Sweeney was up to task with [The Thieving Magpie?], The Ride of the Valkyries, The Anvil Chorus, and Cavalleria rusticana.
14. FREGOLI TRASFORMISTA (14.7 m, 48"; CNC 14; F18). Shot in slightly variable stock set comprising decorated flats with curtained doorway in centre, evidently built outdoors. Probably among the earliest surviving Fregoli films. - AA: Fregoli took his clothes off and transformed into many others.
15. FREGOLI SOLDATO I (14.9 m, 49"; CNC 15; F19). Filmed in exterior locations. - AA: The park bench gag: the soldier has to stand up to salute, the bench plank gets out of balance, and the lady falls on the ground. Fregoli does here what comedy serialists such as Cretinetti did ten years later.
16. FREGOLI SOLDATO II (15.9 m, 52"; CNC 16; F20). Filmed in exterior locations. - AA: See above. Here the lady has a baby in her arms.
17. BIANCO E NERO (cast: Fregoli?; 12.3 m, 40"; CNC 17; F22). Filmed in “exterior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: Black and white. Pranks with the hats of two men who meet on the streets. One gets white flour into his hat and on his face, the other black soot.
18. FREGOLI E SIGNORA AL RISTORANTE (8.5 m, 28"; CNC 18; F24). Shot in slightly variable stock set comprising decorated flats with curtained doorway in centre, evidently built outdoors. Probably among the earliest surviving Fregoli films. - AA: The lady at the restaurant. A fleeting fragment.
19. SEGRETO PER VESTIRSI (CON AIUTO) (8.5 m, 28”. CNC 19, CNC 20; F25). Filmed in “interior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: A secret to dressing (with a little help). How to change clothes lighting fast backstage.
20. SEGRETO PER VESTIRSI (CON AIUTO) II. Filmed in “interior” sets, constructed outdoors. - AA: A secret to dressing (with a little help). How to change clothes lighting fast backstage.
21. GIOCHI DI PRESTIGIO (15.5 m, 50"; hand-coloured; CNC 21; F27). Shot in slightly variable stock set comprising decorated flats with curtained doorway in centre, evidently built outdoors. Probably among the earliest surviving Fregoli films. - AA: Prestigious tricks. There is no end to the flowers. Wonderful colour: orange, sepia, etc.
22. PARTIE DE CARTES (Lumière – FR 1897) C: Leopoldo Fregoli; 35 mm, 13.8 m, 45" (16 fps). Lumière no. 764. - AA: The famous Lumière film: Fregoli, indeed, is the most prominent player.
23. DANSE SERPENTINE (Lumière – FR 1897) C: Leopoldo Fregoli; 35 mm, 12.3 m, 40" (16 fps). Lumière no. 765. - AA: A Lumière serpentine dance number starring Fregoli.

AA: Who was the first film star?

The master of transformations Leopold Fregoli was an international superstar of the stage who made also a series of films which were screened usually only in his own shows - on the biggest stages of the world everywhere.

The bodybuilder Eugen Sandow had appeared in films by Skladanowsky and Edison, but there was not a series of "Eugen Sandow films", as there certainly was by Leopoldo Fregoli starting in 1898.

Mariann Lewinsky has claimed in her Cento anni fà series in Bologna that the first film stars appeared in 1909 - Stacia Napierkowska and Cretinetti / André Deed.

And let's not forget Georges Méliès who was both the producer-director and the star of his own film series starting in 1896 (produced, appropriately, by his Star Film company). (But already Edgar Morin tracked a transition from Star Films to film stars).

Leopold Fregoli made a lot of films, and they all vanished due to the fact that Fregoli himself abandoned them. There are so many of these tragic cases of entire abandoned film legacies - R. W. Paul, Georges Méliès, Edwin Thanhouser, Leopold Fregoli...

A stash of secondary material, outtakes, et cetera, survives, and we saw it all here today.

Introduced by Arturo Brachetti, Fregoli's spiritual heir, a master of transformations himself since decades now.

Most of these films I also saw in Le Giornate's brilliant Avanguardia italiana series in Sacile in 2002 curated by Carlo Montanaro. Now we saw the entire set in 2015 digital restorations from AFF / CNC.

An invaluable treasure trove of a fabulous artist.