Biography
Italian poet/playwright Carmine Gallone began his professional career at Rome's Teatro Argentina in 1911. Two years later he established himself as a scenarist/screenwriter at the Cines studio. He built up a following with a series of "white telephone" dramas, so named because of their high-society ambience. Many of these starred his wife, Polish-born actress Soava. Having helmed several European costume dramas in the early 1930s, Gallone seemed the ideal choice to direct the Mussolini-dictated patriotic epic Scipio L'Africano (1936), the most expensive Italian film produced up to that time. Perhaps as a reaction to the overbearing pro-fascist propaganda of Scipio L'Africano, Gallone directed the violently anti-fascist film
Before Him All Rome Trembled in 1946. This effort has been described as "operatic," a tag which no doubt would have been flattering to Gallone who committed several famous operas (
Rigoletto,
Tosca etc.) to the screen during his career. Carmine Gallone spent his declining years turning out such surefire moneymakers as the "Don Camillo" films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide