Scipione l'africano (1937)

Director:

Carmine Gallone

Writers:

Carmine Gallone (story) &
Camillo Mariani Dell'Aguillara (story) ...

Release Date:

21 September 1939 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | History | War

Plot:

Mussolini's government, in addition to making the railroads run on time (and other items not so good)...

Plot Keywords:

Hannibal | Punic Wars | Elephant | Elephant Stampede | Propaganda

Awards:

1 win

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Annibale Ninchi	...	Publius Cornelius Scipio
Camillo Pilotto	...	Hannibal
Fosco Giachetti	...	Captain Massinissa
Francesca Braggiotti	...	Queen Sophonisba
Marcello Giorda	...	King Syphace
Guglielmo Barnabò	...	Furius, fat Roman
Isa Miranda	...	Velia, a Roman woman
Memo Benassi	...	Cato
Franco Coop	...	Mezio, Roman soldier
Ciro Galvani	...	Quinto Fabio Massimo
Carlo Lombardi	...	Lucio
Marcello Spada	...	Arunte
Piero Carnabuci	...	Il Reduce della Battaglia
Carlo Ninchi	...	Lelius
Lamberto Picasso	...	Hasdrubal, advisor to Hannibal

Also Known As:

Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal (USA) (video title)
Scipio the African
The Defeat of Hannibal

Runtime:

USA:83 min | Italy:117 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16

Company:

Consorzione 'Scipio l'Africano'

Trivia:

One of the earliest known uses of the zoom lens.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Extras wearing wristwatches, even though the film is set thousands of years before they were invented.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Splendor (1989)

Obsolete.

Fascism stifles creativity.Both German and Italian cinemas of the 1935-1939 era could not produce one single masterpiece.Had they had an Eisenstein,there could have been an "Alexandre Nevski" ,a contemporary movie of Scipione.Both movies are propaganda movies,but it's hard to consider Gallone's movie a work of art.

"Scipione l'Africano" is some kind of breviary of the ideology of the Mussolini years:personality cult(Scipione's boldness against the senate's listlessness), a huge -and this is an euphemism - misogyny (Scipione's wife who briefly appears is relegated to the mother's role,baby in arms,par excellence the woman's raison d'être;on the other hand,the wicked queen Sofonisbe who dabbles in politics is even slagged of by her husband:"when she entered my life,wisdom walked away") and a blatant over-simplification:the Romans are noble,they treat their prisoners with great consideration while Hannibal and his clique are lecherous brutes.

Strangely,the movies leaves little room to anecdote:only a bland couple,both the cruel barbarians' prisoners is featured outside the historical characters.The actors 'playing recalls the silent movies,almost ten years after "the jazz singer"!The final scenes are admittedly spectacular but they have been dwarfed by the great epics of the late fifties/early sixties.

NB:"Cartagine in fiamme" (1960) by the same director is neither a sequel nor an improvement.