Cenere - Production

Production

When Eleonora Duse was approached in 1916 to appear in a film adaptation of Cenere, she had been absent from performing on stage for seven years. Duse expressed deep respect for the source material and its potential as a film. She later explained her return to acting in this production by stating: “I have been persuaded to create the character of Rosalia Derios, from the novel by Grazia Deledda, because it seemed to me that in the sorrowful figure of the mother, all sacrifice for her son, a figure moving in an austere and solemn landscape, would assume the total and clear plastic and spiritual significance that the silent theater must force itself to realize.”

Duse co-wrote the screenplay for Cenere with Febo Mari, her director and co-star. The film was shot over a four-month period on locations across Sardinia.

Duse initially had hopes for Cenere to open a new career in film acting. But upon seeing the finished film, she was disappointed in both the production and her performance. "I made the same mistake that nearly everyone has made," she said after viewing herself on screen. "But something quite different is needed. I am too old for it. Isn't it a pity?" Duse would later write to the French singer Yvette Guilbert with the request not to see “that stupid thing, because you’ll find nothing, or almost nothing, of me in that film.”