Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism, but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Critic Jonathan Jones wrote that “no one did as much to shape Italian cinema as Luchino Visconti.”
Ivor Novello was a Welsh actor, dramatist, singer and composer who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century.
Gavin McGregor Rossdale is a British musician, best known as the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the rock band Bush. He helped form Bush in 1992; on the band's separation in 2002, he became the lead singer and guitarist for Institute and later began a solo career. He resumed his role in Bush when the band reunited in 2010. In 2013, he received the British Academy's Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement.
The Constant Nymph is a 1924 novel by Margaret Kennedy. It tells how a teenage girl falls in love with a family friend, who eventually marries her cousin. It explores the protagonists' complex family histories, focusing on class, education and creativity.
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by the British writer Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I, and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham and his seemingly perfect marriage, along with that of his two American friends. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, a literary technique that formed part of Ford's pioneering view of literary impressionism. Ford employs the device of the unreliable narrator to great effect, as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads the reader to believe. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life, specifically “the agonies Ford went through with his wife and his mistress in the six preceding years."
Nigel John Hess is a British composer, best known for his television, theatre and film soundtracks, including the theme tunes to Campion, Maigret, Wycliffe, Dangerfield, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, Badger and Ladies in Lavender.
Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani, collectively referred to as the Taviani brothers, were Italian film directors and screenwriters who collaborated on numerous film productions.
Maurice Elvey was one of the most prolific film directors in British history. He directed nearly 200 films between 1913 and 1957. During the silent film era he directed as many as twenty films per year. He also produced more than fifty films – his own as well as films directed by others.
Nina Kind Hakim Provatoroff, known by her stage name of Nina Vanna, was a Russian-born British film actress who appeared in a number of silent films during the 1920s.
Olga Engl was an Austrian-German stage and motion picture actress who appeared in nearly 200 films.
The Constant Nymph is a 1928 British silent film drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton. This was the first film adaptation of the 1924 best-selling and controversial novel The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy and the 1926 stage play version written by Kennedy and Basil Dean. The theme of adolescent sexuality reportedly discomfited the British film censors, until they were reassured that lead actress Poulton was in fact in her 20s.
Adrian Brunel was an English film director and screenwriter. Brunel's directorial career started in the silent era, and reached its peak in the latter half of the 1920s. His surviving work from the 1920s, both full-length feature films and shorts, is highly regarded by silent film historians for its distinctive innovation, sophistication and wit. With the arrival of talkies, Brunel's career ground to a halt and he was absent from the screen for several years before returning in the mid-1930s with a flurry of quota quickie productions, the majority of which are now classed as lost. Brunel's last credit as director was in a 1940 comedy film, although he worked for a few years more as a "fixer-up" for films directed or produced by friends in the industry.
Blighty is a 1927 British World War I silent drama film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ellaline Terriss, Lillian Hall-Davis and Jameson Thomas. The film was a Gainsborough Pictures production with screenplay by Eliot Stannard from a story by Ivor Montagu.
The Triumph of the Rat is a 1926 British silent film drama, directed by Graham Cutts for Gainsborough Pictures and starring Ivor Novello, Isabel Jeans and Nina Vanna.
The White Rose is a 1923 American silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith. The film was written, produced, and directed by Griffith, and stars Mae Marsh, Ivor Novello, Carol Dempster, and Neil Hamilton. Though this film is extant, it is one of Griffith's rarely seen films.
The Bohemian Girl is a 1922 British romance film directed by Harley Knoles and starring Gladys Cooper, Ivor Novello, and C. Aubrey Smith. It was inspired by the opera The Bohemian Girl by Michael William Balfe and Alfred Bunn, which was in turn based on a novel La Gitanilla by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally released at 70 minutes, the surviving print is missing the first two reels and small portion of the last, timing at 46 minutes.
Carnival is a 1921 British silent drama film directed by Harley Knoles and starring Matheson Lang, Ivor Novello and Hilda Bayley. During a production of William Shakespeare's Othello in Venice, an Italian actor suspects his wife of having an affair and plans to murder her on stage. It was based on a stage play of the year before, of which Matheson Lang was one of the writers. The film was a popular success, and was re-released the following year. In 1931, it was remade as a sound film, Carnival, directed by Herbert Wilcox.
Sessomatto, internationally released as How Funny Can Sex Be?, is a 1973 Italian anthology erotic comedy film directed by Dino Risi. All the segments have sex and sexual perversions as their main theme.
But the Flesh Is Weak is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy film directed by Jack Conway and written by Ivor Novello based on his 1928 play The Truth Game. The film stars Robert Montgomery, Nora Gregor, Heather Thatcher, Edward Everett Horton, C. Aubrey Smith and Nils Asther. The film was released on April 9, 1932, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. But the Flesh Is Weak was remade in 1941 as Free and Easy.
Miarka or Miarka: The Daughter of the Bear is a 1920 French silent drama film directed by Louis Mercanton and starring Ivor Novello. The film is also known by the alternative title of Gypsy Passion. It was shot on location in the Camargue region. It was based on a novel by Jean Richepin which was later turned into a sound film of the same name.
