Mario Voller-Buzzi

Biography

Turin, 6 July 1886: the city’s electric trams were still a novelty when Mario Voller-Buzzi drew his first breath. By his twenties he had stepped from the stage into the flicker of early Italian cinema, slipping on the mask of Renzo for the 1913 epic *The Betrothed*, prowling through the shadows of *Satana* in 1912, and later coaxing tears as the devoted lamplighter in 1918’s *Il lampionaro del Ponte Vecchio*. Between performances he stood behind the camera as well, guiding actors through the newborn art of moving pictures. Eighty years after that summer birthday, on 22 February 1966, the lights dimmed for the final time; Turin kept its trams running, but the city’s screens had lost one of their earliest storytellers.