Martha Eggerth heads the cast of Casta Diva, but the central character is famed Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, here played by American actor Phillips Holmes. Paying but scant attention the facts, the film concentrates on Bellini's colorful love life. Evidently the film went through several rewriting processes, as witness the curious performances of Donald Calthrop and Arthur Margetson, whose characters do complete about-faces halfway through the story. Amidst so many British accents, Martha Eggerth's Polish intonations seem out of place, but she photographs beautifully and sings quite well. Casta Diva was attractively filmed on location in Naples.
Not to be confused with the 1954 remake (by Gallone himself) or to the English language version "The Divine Spark" (also directed by Gallone and starred by Eggerth).
In Manhattan’s Upper West Side, rival gangs of Polish-Americans and newly arrived Puerto Ricans clash for control of the neighborhood, even as two young members from opposite sides fall dangerously in love.
In New York City's gritty East Village, a group of bohemians strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.
In occupied Silesia, resistance is organizing. In close contact with the miners and led by an engineer, a group of partisans prepare the sabotage of the steel combine.
A little girl listens to a violinist playing on the bank of a river. The little girl wants to learn to play the instrument and asks the musician to teach her.
Men on horseback and their dogs are hot on the trail of a sly fox. In this takeoff on the old Pied Piper fable, the hungry fox gets in the way of the flute playing.
A brilliant but deranged neurosurgeon becomes obsessively fixated on a judge's daughter. With the help of an escaped criminal whose face he has surgically deformed, the mad man lures her, her father, and her fiancé to his isolated, castle-like home.
A family of out-of-work vaudeville performers are finding hard times in the east, so after hearing about the success of a fellow player in Hollywood, they decide to relocate to the movie capitol.
Cheyenne joins El Diablo's gang looking for his long time missing wife and daughter. After saving Romero from the gang he returns to get Connie who he now realizes is his daughter.
