Alfredo Bertone

Biography

Naples, 1893: a restless boy named Alfredo Bertone discovers the city’s noisy streets make the perfect proscenium. By twenty he’s swapped the harbor’s salt air for the glare of carbon-arc lamps, stepping in front of Giovanni Pastrone’s camera for the sprawling island-hopping fantasy The Extraordinary Adventures of Saturnino Farandola (1913). Two years later he outwits the devil himself in Giuseppe de Liguoro’s Beffa di Satana (1915), cementing a reputation for mixing charm with menace. After silent epics and continental tours, his final bow comes as the steadfast lover in The White Sister (1923). On 15 March 1927, while performing in Liège, Belgium, the curtain falls for good; Bertone exits at thirty-three, leaving the stage darker but forever flickering in the archives of Italian cinema.