Clara, the daughter of the Marquis de Beaulieu, who has lost his entire fortune, is forced to forgo her wedding with the Duke de Bligny. To escape poverty, she agrees to marry Philippe Derblay, a young man of humble origins who has become the owner of an ironworks through his hard work. Clara considers Philippe a parvenu and looks down on him, but the man manages to show her how wrong her prejudice is and win her heart. The film is based on the novel Le maître des forges by Georges Ohnet, one of the most successful and prolific authors of feuilletons. Published in 1882, the works was immediately successful and just two years later Ohnet had written a theatrical version. The definitive fame of the work came through cinema: between 1914 (the year The Iron Master was directed by Travers Vale) and 1958 (Il padrone delle ferriere by Anton Giulio Majano) at least five films have been based on the novel by the French author, making use of its simple and linear dramatic construction.
The film will be screened in a renewed version by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema and Cineteca di Bologna.
Biography
film director
Eugenio Perego
Eugenio Perego
(Milan,
1876-Rome, 1944) began
working in the world of cinema in the early 1910s, adapting texts and
writing
screenplays for Film d’Arte Italiana and later for Pasquali
Films. A part-time
actor for Itala Films, in 1915 he began devoting himself to directing
at Milano
Films, where he also worked as adapter and screenwriter. In a short
time he
made a name for himself as a valid metteur-enscène
with a brilliant and humorous vein, and
directed mainly comedies. He ended his professional activity in the
1920s at
Lombardo in Naples, where he directed Leda Gys in nine successful
films. The
rise of talkies put an end to his career.
FILMOGRAFIA
L’appetito
vien mangiando (1915), Partita
doppia (1916), Così
è la vita (1917), Il giardino incantato
(1918), Il padrone delle
ferriere (1919), Il supplizio del silenzio (1920),
Le tre
illusioni (1921), La trappola (1922), Santarellina
(1923), Vedi
Napule e po’ mori! (1924), Napoli
è una canzone (1927), Napule...e
niente cchiù (1928), Rondine (1929).