Giovanni Cimara

Biography

Rome, 1 February 1889: Giovanni Cimara draws his first breath in the city whose stones would echo his footsteps for eight decades. Between silent-era masks and early television lenses he built a career that glimmered in three very different spotlights—La maschera di Venere (1919) announced him to a world still learning how to watch moving pictures; Regina della Scala (1937) crowned him in the heyday of Italian sound film; and, near the close of his road, the 1957 Jane Eyre let a new generation discover the quiet authority of his presence. Off-screen, two marriages—to Paola Fiorentini first, then to Lina Franceschi—wove private chapters into a public life. The curtain fell on 14 December 1970, back where it had risen, in the Eternal City that had always been his stage and his home.