EXCLUSIVE: Italian director Pietro Marcello’s biopic Duse about iconic stage actress Eleonora Duse – the Italian Sarah Bernhardt rival who captivated playwrights such as Anton Chekhov, Luigi Pirandello and Bernard Shaw – world premieres in Competition in Venice next week.
The work focuses on a period in Duse’s life between World War One and the rise of fascism when the actress attempts to stage a comeback after a period in which it looked like she was on the verge of retirement.
Deadline can reveal a clip of French Italian actress Valeria Bruni Tedeschi giving a virtuoso performance as the titular Duse as she announces her decision to return to the stage.
Tedeschi is joined in the cast by Noémie Merlant as Duse’s only daughter Enrichetta Marchetti, Fausto Russo Alesi as poet and lover Gabriele D’Annunzio and Noémie Lvovsky as Bernhardt.
Born in northern Italy in 1858, Duse was the daughter of touring actors and took to the stage at an early age, playing Cosette in a theater adapation of Émile Zola’s Les Misérables at the age of four.
She gained recognition in Europe before also touring South America, Russia and U.S. in the 1890s, and is particularly associated with the works of Gabriele D’Annunzio, who was briefly her lover, as well as that of Henrik Ibsen.
Anton Chekhov was reportedly so impressed by Duse that he modelled Madame Arkadina in his play The Seagull on the actress.
In the backdrop, her life was tumultuous and also marked by poor personal and financial health. In 2021, at the age of 63-years-old, she began touring again in a bid to pay off debts, and would die in a hotel in Pittsburgh of pneumonia on July 30 1923 while in the road.
Marcello’s recent credits include the literary adaptations Scarlet and Martin Eden as well as the documentary For Lucio.
“Eleonora Duse’s story struck me immediately for the human contradictions that characterized her existence: the conflictual relationship between her desire to live a ‘normal’ life and her destiny as an actress forced, from an early age, to play the lives of other,” said Marcello.
He said Tedeschi was his only choice of actress to play Duse.
“In her, I found that creative fire, that inner strength I was looking for. Valeria is not only an extraordinary actress, she is also a director and a professional partner with whom I was able to share every decision,” he said.
Duse is produced by Palomar (a Mediawan company) and Avventurosa with Rai Cinema and Piperfilm, in coproduction with Ad Vitam Films.
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