Amelia Chellini

Biography

On a summer afternoon in Florence—June 16, 1880—Amelia Chellini drew her first breath and, almost simultaneously, a flair for the dramatic that would light up Italian screens for three decades. From the flickering silence of Il cuore non invecchia (1913) to the wartime whimsy of L’allegro fantasma (1941), she glided between eras, a shape-shifting presence in black-and-white. Along the way she wed Didaco Chellini, turning a private romance into a shared surname that audiences would one day murmur in darkened theatres. Her final curtain fell in Rome on May 31, 1944, but the light she kindled in La damigella di Bard and beyond still flares each time the projector whirs.