Category:Poppea--cinema (subject)

Cinema (Home Page)

Works of cinema related to Poppea.

<Fiction : Poppea (art) -- Poppea (literature) -- Poppea (music)>

Overview

Since 1896, Poppea has been the protagonist in numerous films. When the first movies were produced, Nero was already a well-established character in fiction and the recent and enormous success of the novel Quo Vadis (1895) and the play The Sign of the Cross (1896) only strengthened his association with Christian Origins. The first shorts focused on some episodes from the life of Nero taken either from classical sources or from the "Quo Vadis" narrative. Guazzoni's production of "Quo Vadis" (1913) amazed international audiences as one of the first feature films and launched Nero as a leading character in international cinema. While the 1925 Quo Vadis gy Gabriellino D'Annunzio did not live up to the expectations, The Sign of the Cross (1932) by Cecil B. DeMile was another smashing success, with its shocking combination of sex-violence-religion. Twenty years later the Quo Vadis (1951) by Melvyn LeRoy would reach the same international acclaim. Two other major productions of Quo Vadis would follow, in 1985 and 2001.

Besides the cruel villain, there has always been his caricature in Italian cinema, since the 1910s with two shorts produced by Cines. Other spoofs were made in the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s.

Only in 2004 the mini-series Imperium: Nero tried for the first time to give a different portrait of Nero, by describing him as an idealist and generous youth, gradually forced into a spiral of violence and corruption.

Performing Nero (cinema & television)

The best actors have been called to play the demanding role of Nero, as that of a schizophrenic maniac, drunk with power. Charles Laughton in 1932 and Peter Ustinov in 1951 gave the two most memorable performances. Other famous actors left their mark, from Emil Jannings in 1925 to Klaus Maria Brandauer in 1985.

In Italian cinema, there is also a long traditions of spoofs of the character by popular comedians. In the 1910s two short comedies were produced by Cines with Ferdinand Guillaume (Tontolini) in 1910 and Raymond Dandy (Kri-Kri) in 1912. Then in 1930 came Ettore Petrolini, whose Nerone caricature was widely perceived as a parody of Mussolini. After WW2 Alberto Sordi in 1956 and Pippo Franco in 1976 offered two further examples of this tradition.

External links

• Giuseppe Pucci, Nerone Superstar (2011)