Nov 24, 2017
Italian silent film star and diva, Pina Menichelli, Il giardino incantato, directed by Eugenio Perego, 1918.
Collezione Fondo Turconi, Pavia.
Giuseppa Iolanda Menichelli (1890-1984), known as Pina Menichelli, was an Italian actress and silent film star. After a career in theatre and a series of small film roles, Pina Menichelli was launched as a film star when Giovanni Pastrone gave her the lead role in The Fire (1916). Over the next nine years, Menichelli made a series of films, often trading on her image as a diva and on her passionate, decadent eroticism. Pina Menichelli became a global star, and one of the most appreciated actresses in Italian cinema, before her retirement in 1924, aged 34. (x)