Augusto Genina

Plot Synopsis (by Hal Erickson)
Unlike most Italian films of the 1940s, Augusto Genina’s Cielo Sulla Palude opened in Venice rather than Rome. The film’s American title was Heaven Over the Marshes, and indeed most of the story is set in the disease-ridden Pontine Marshes on the outskirts of Rome. This was the home of Maria Goretti, a pious young girl who was murdered by her would-be seducer. For reasons elucidated in the course of the film, Maria’s short time on earth made her worthy of Sainthood, which was actually bestowed upon her shortly after the release of this film. Maria Goretti is well-played by Ines Orsini. Cielo Sulla Palude served as the comeback feature for director Augusto Genina, whose previous pro-fascist films had caused him to be blacklisted after WW II.Read More »

From IMDb:
Lucienne, typist and gorgeous bathing beauty, decides to enter the ‘Miss Europe’ pageant sponsored by the French newspaper she works for. She finds her jealous lover Andre violently disapproves of such events and tries to withdraw, but it’s too late; she’s even then being named Miss France. The night Andre planned to propose to her, she’s being whisked off to the Miss Europe finals in Spain, where admirers swarm around her. Win or lose, what will the harvest be?Read More »

Four prominent men take under their wing a young Parisian flower girl.
With the help of her Pygmalions she becomes a famous cabaret singer. She falls in love with a charming gambler, Henri, who becomes her first lover. Abandoned by him, and after years spent in Russia with Prince Vladimir, Frou-Frou returns to France, where she has to rebuild her own life by singing in second-order theaters.
She then meets and has a relationship with a painter, Michel, by whom she has a daughter. After Michel’s suicide she devotes herself to her.Read More »