t’s striking how little we know about Elvira Notari, so much so that her very name is virtually unknown to most. Born in 1875 and raised in early-twentieth-century Naples – the colorful, lively Naples of clichés so entrenched in the global imagination – she was Italy’s first woman director and among the first to build an artistic bridge to Italians in America.
With storytelling that was both authentically realistic and popular, she eased the homesickness of thousands of immigrants while also fixing in place the classic image of Little Italies – an image that reads antiquated and stereotyped today but reflected reality then. It’s a real shame that we know so little and that her extensive filmography – extraordinary for its time, its limited means, and for being the work of a woman – has been almost entirely lost. It’s as if every history of Italian cinema were missing its first chapter.
