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NARRATOR: This three-reel version of The Winter's Tale was made by the Italian production company, Milano, founded in Milan in 1908. The film gives significant prominence to Paulina, played

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by Pina Fabbri, who, as her cameo introduction here shows, was able to take the gaze of the camera with some considerable poise and control. And our other prefatory introduction

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is to Leontes, played by Signor Visocchi, seen here with his hunched and haunted look, and it will be his piercing acts of distorted looking and his emotional vicissitudes that will drive

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much of the drama that follows. It was an inventive ruse to bookend the dramatic action with a sequence featuring Shakespeare himself. It wasn't the first time Shakespeare

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had made an appearance on film. George Mélies probably scooped those pioneering honours in his inventive film Shakespeare Writing Julius Caesar in 1907. But having Shakespeare read the play to his friends,

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apparently indicates a desire to anchor the dramatic action in the authority of the Shakespearean words, words that will, of course, actually be largely absent from the drama we're about to see.

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And so the action of the play proper begins. The film was directed by Baldassarre Negroni, who had previously worked in Rome with Cines and with the Celio film company, and who didn't just direct

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Milano, but was also made artistic director for the company in 1914. As one of the leading Italian film production companies, Milano was committed to historical and moral subjects,

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and to departing from painted backdrops whenever possible in the pursuit of all that was true, real and tangible. And we'll see plenty of substantial sets and location shoots in this film to illustrate how Milano made good

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on that ambition. Their Company pedigree rested in literary, historical and dramatic titles of some distinct beauty. And here we see Leontes' legibly changeable

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face as polixenes responds warmly, though decorously with a courtly kiss of the hand to Hermione's request that he should remain as their guest a little longer.

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For Leontes, the seeds of his jealousy are now sown, and his world can no longer contain any peace. The fraught tension in his body is conspicuous, though he still at this stage able to counterfeit civility

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when necessary. The scale of the production is in evidence in this visually rather busy scene, and the film was much praised in review for its aesthetics.

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The Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly gave this glowing report-- the Milano Company have done a lot of artistic things for the screen that have helped to advance our industry,

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and we cannot call to mind any of their productions, which deserves more direct merit as an artistic entity than The Winter's Tale, a cleverly edited version of one of Shakespeare's immortal dramas.

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From whichever point of view one looks at it, the production pleases, and pleases all the more because the Company have not spared themselves to give it all that wealth of circumstance and pageantry it demands.

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What we should be concerned with is this, the review continues, is the Milano production worthy of the material taken in hand? And the answer to all who see the film, we believe,

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will be an emphatic affirmative. It is splendidly acted and magnificently staged. In this scene, Hermione talks chastely with Polixenes at the far end of the scenic balcony overlooking the sea,

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while Leontes, the seated figure radiating anxiety and near-field, clearly interprets their conversation in a very different light. As ever in The Winter's Tale, ways of looking

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are under scrutiny here. We see what Leontes sees, but, of course, what he sees and what we see are nothing akin. Unable to contain himself, he rises.

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He manages to summon sufficient courtesy to acknowledge the two other courtiers in near-field, while ignoring his wife and brother, King, in depth of field before exiting frame right to find a place of solitude

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where he can express the full extent of the jealousy now eating him. This mid-shot is more psychologically investigative, nicely suggesting the ways in which this is less

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a drama about action than about reaction. Coache's face and whole body tension give expression to how wracked he now is, and the lighting here is rather fine.

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As Leontes walks distraught along the shoreline to be joined in a moment by Camilo, it's worth reflecting on the acting challenge this film poses.

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Jealousy is perhaps the least kinetic emotion, and yet it must be expressed in visually legible ways. The ballet choreographer Christopher wheeldon, who mounted The Winter's Tale for the Royal Ballet

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at Covent Garden, told me how useful he had found the image of Leontes' eating the spider as a suggestive metaphor through which to construct the shapes and atmosphere

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of his wordless Leontes'. Coache's Leontes doesn't have the expressive outlet of dance available to him, and yet I think the clear sense of something terribly wrong

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indwelling him is persuasively communicated scene by scene. Of course, the scale of the acting can look big from a contemporary perspective, but it is not wild, cartoonish, or ill disciplined.

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It's stylized but affectingly communicative, of depths of inner torment and of the warping effect that can have on behaviour. The animal skins that form part of the set dressing here

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help to alert us to a sense of danger building. Camilo pleads to be excused the dreadful commission to kill Polixenes, though apparently then buckles when Leontes makes it a direct test of loyalty,

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Leontes sinks back onto his chaise longue in horrified transport at the treacherous world he believes himself to be inhabiting. But Camilo is not going to follow through on his commission

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to poison Polixenes, and instead, in this visibly word-heavy scene, he warns Polixenes of the danger and passionately urges him, with some significant gestural investment,

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to flee the Sicilian court. Milano had good penetration into the lucrative British and French markets in the 1910s and early teens, and made some inroads into the vast American one too,

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although it did not have quite the commercial impact there that some other Italian production companies had, for example, Ambrosio, Itala and Cines. But this film was much admired in each country of exhibition.

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In Britain, the Westminster Gazette reported that the production is thoroughly engrossing, well acted and magnificently mounted, and the bioscope that the mounting throughout is brilliant

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and the costumes are rich and picturesque. Polixenes here is finally persuaded of the danger, and his fine Velvet robe is nicely showcased as he sweeps out with Camilo.

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This pleasing exterior shot shows Polixenes and Camilo being rowed away from the shores of Sicilia, observed from the rocks on the far side of the outcrop by two lords, who will confer conspiratorially

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at the surreptitious flight they are witnessing before disappearing to report to Leontes. The camera pans right here, tracking the progress of the rowing boat to reveal the larger boat that awaits them,

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a boat that will carry them to Bohemia and safety. Those lords in the previous scene watching Polixenes flight, continue the theme of looking and ways of looking that this production makes

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central to its thematic interests. The film, like the play it adapts, finds ways of inviting reflection on what one sees and what filters are in place to determine what that means.

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And here Leontes looks at the Hermione, we to be innocent, and sees only a duplicitous wife. Hermione pushes away his accusation, and appeals to heaven in her own support.

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What we get here is a masterclass in gestural eloquence, and here Paulina moves from covering her ears as if unwilling to hear Leontes's ugly accusations to trying,

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by contrast, to make him pay heed to her. Alongside the release of this film, Milano produced what a French trade paper referred to as a [SPEAKING FRENCH], which could be,

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[SPEAKING FRENCH], a superb explanatory brochure that could be sent on demand. Given the other tie-in publications, we know were accompanying the release

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of Italian films in the period. It's a reasonable guess that The Winter's Tale souvenir brochure would have been a well illustrated number. And if anyone knows of one that survives anywhere in the world,

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please do be in touch. I haven't been able to find one to date, but I'd so love to see it. So here, at Antigonus's suggestion,

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messengers are dispatched to seek the Oracle on the subject of Hermione. This Leontes does troubled inwardness well. The film understands that the emotional pulse of this tale

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now lies in faces and in the context of its three reels, it can allow time for faces to narrate the emotional tide of things. And so, off go the messengers to Delphi.

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Looking back at the troubled Sicilian court as they set off on their trip to seek Apollo's pronouncement. And here, in another act of looking back, though more furtive this time,

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we see Paulina in a hooded Cape, arrive at the gaol to visit the imprisoned Hermione. Her eyes stand out, rather wonderfully plaintive and beautiful, framed as they are by her dark Hood.

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The drawbridge she crosses provides a suitably intimidating location, expressive of the neurosis that is now governing Leontes's treatment of Hermione. She's not just imprisoned, but imprisoned in a high security

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moated castle. Nevertheless, Paulina manages to bribe her way in. And in the succeeding shot inside the castle, she then has to wait while a portcullis is effortfully

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raised. We're made to understand the ferocity of Leontes's imprisonment, by having to negotiate with Paulina, the multiple layers of security that stand between Hermione

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and her past life. And like an on screen proxy for us, Paulina focuses the painful humiliation of that. I find the aesthetics of this scene memorably striking.

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Inside the prison, Hermione lies asleep in postnatal recovery while waiting ladies care for the new baby. There's a high pathos in Hermione's languid, despairing pose, and the light

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falls on the scene, almost as in a Vermeer painting animating the faces of the women and the baby, drawing out both the beauty and the tragic pathos of the scene. Paulina lifts the baby girl, registering the joy life even

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in these most harsh of conditions, and her face is a study in dramatic charge. Hermione is near lifeless passivity, an indication of things to come, is now counterposed

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with Paulina's initiative taking activity as she takes the baby in a desperate attempt to try and catch at the heartstrings of its father, the king.

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In a nicely framed, tight-in shot of the castle gate, we see first the nervous gaoler and then Paulina herself emerge, carrying her secret bundle. Back in the Sicilian court, Leontes's brooding

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is interrupted by Paulina's dramatic arrival. She takes up her position in centre frame, a dark cloaked figure surrounded by lighter hues, and berates him, bringing news of the birth of the baby

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daughter in prison before making her big reveal in a dramatic gesture, removing her Cape to show the baby she hopes might soften the king's heart. But Leontes is only the more incensed

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by the presence of the baby he believes to be a bastard child, and Antigonus is ordered to take the baby. The sequence now moves in to a closer focus on Paulina and Leontes, the two faces that are both the emotional motor

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and the aesthetic centre of the film. This is not a subtle or polite Paulina. This is an envenomed one. Trying to put the fear of God into Leontes.

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Courtly decorum has been overtaken by a disruptive explosion of pain and ire. As Paulina makes her exit, Leontes now emotes without checking himself, no longer

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able to sustain any kingly performance of self-control. Like us, his courtiers are the observers of this drama, standing outside any immediate participation in it. They therefore become part of the multiple

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filters the film offers, through which we might make sense of this extravagant tale. Back in his private apartments and in a performance moment played out in a passionately high key,

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Leontes harries and bullies Antigonus into accepting the commission to take the child off to its death. It's a really heightened performance style we see here, but it is not frantic, and it's not

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without its own moments of suspension, and of enjoying the held moment. This is the sort of performance possibility that the enhanced time available on a three reeler

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makes possible moments of reflection as well as plot furthering action. And so it is that the kind but hapless Antigonus finds himself sitting on a fleece on board a ship,

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cradling the new baby princess in his arms, ruing her fate, and calling down blessings on her head. And as Hermione stands trial, listens to false accusations, and in due course faints at the treatment she receives

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at the hands of her husband, seen there in his full regalia in left of frame. Let me share with you some other details about the film's release.

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In Italy, it was referred to ahead of release as [SPEAKING ITALIAN] de Shakespeare, but post-release as [SPEAKING ITALIAN] and was much praised.

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In France, it was released as [SPEAKING FRENCH] and was hailed [SPEAKING FRENCH], a wonder in taste and feeling. In the US, where it was known under its English title

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The Winter's Tale, the motion picture news reported that the story is powerful and contains many very beautiful settings, but it is its surviving British reviews

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that are the most strikingly enthusiastic. The cinema news and property Gazette called it an artistic triumph of no mean order, insisting that it is assured of an enthusiastic reception

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by every cinema audience of the educated class. The review concluded that all lovers of Shakespeare will welcome the opportunity to see it screened. The Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly

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added that it is assured an enthusiastic reception in every high class cinema in the country. It was clearly considered an excellent calling card for the company and to be doing good ambassadorial service

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for the film industry as a whole in showing what was possible in cinematic art, working with prestigious Shakespearean sources, and in the process courting a better class of moving picture patron.

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So into these busy planes of action, with Hermione still in her faint in midfield and watchers and observers of the court fidgeting and whispering in depth of field,

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Cleomenes and Deion, the messengers from the Oracle, arrive back with their Delphic pronouncement on Hermione's guilt. The judicial officer breaks the seal and reads out to the court the judgement,

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which is word for word, lifted from Shakespeare. Hermione is chaste, Polixenes, blameless. Camilo a true subject. Leontes a jealous tyrant, his innocent babe truly begotten,

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and the King shall live without an heir. If that which is lost be not found. Hermione revives and gives thanks to the heavens, and there's much general rejoicing in all but Leontes.

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But a crucial section of film is then missing from the surviving print, and the action that this contained would have been Leontes's renewed denouncement

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of Hermione, in hubristic defiance of the Oracle. News being brought in of the death of Leontes and Hermione's child, a child with not as it happens, previously met in the film and Hermione's own renewed collapse

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under the weight of accusation and the grief of having lost her child. And so here, as we enjoy the sumptuous bed on which Hermione lies, faint and Paulina's solicitors care of her,

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we are taken behind the scenes of the Shakespeare play, as it were, to see some of the stage action that Shakespeare chooses not to show. And this section also sets the scene

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for the production's first major departure from Shakespeare's plot. And so, somewhere beyond the establishment, safety and semblance of regulation of the palace in a different area

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of town in which turbans are worn and illicit substances produced, a wise woman of the peasant orders supplies Paulina with the potion that has been promised

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by the previous intertitle. Paulina is assured of its properties and exits with it. While the wise woman is allowed a final on screen moment to enjoy her own pride in her occult knowledge

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that will serve the turn here. Paulina takes the potion under her cloak back to Hermione, whose health seems to be failing fast. In her interventionist approach to Leontes and Hermione story,

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she has become, in effect, a composite of Paulina and of friar Laurence from Romeo and Juliet. And the sequence allows Paulina to feel the momentousness of the moment as she extracts the bottle that

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will now determine the shape of the story to come. Hermione's distress is evident, as is Paulina's sense of responsibility, as she ponders whether or not she should administer the potion that might perhaps

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buy some time for this broken family about which she cares so passionately. Paulina's role in events is placed front and centre in this production.

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An actress, Pina Fabri, is more than able to shoulder that responsibility. Although she is herself horrified at the death sleep into which Hermione has now slipped,

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Paulina is just able to summon enough self-possession to turn on Leontes, who now experiences a new depth of grief for the innocent wife whom he has abused and lost. Although in this production, Paulina

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is given a significantly enhanced responsibility for the drama by actively inducing the feigned death that will drive Leontes to despair and then in due course, make possible the act of restoration to come.

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Fabri's performance makes it clear that this Paulina feels acutely the weight of that responsibility also. Director Negroni and his team at Milano

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clearly had an eye for the suggestive location and dramatic lighting, as this visually very striking scene demonstrates. Backlit by bright sunshine and so

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seen more or less in silhouette, Hermione's shrouded body is carried through caves to her tomb, and a hooded Paulina surreptitiously follows to observe exactly where Hermione is taken.

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Shakespeare's source for The Winter's Tale was Robert Greene's prose romance Pandosto, or The Triumph of Time, first published in 1588. In that source tale, Bellaria, the wrongly

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accused wife dies and is buried in a tomb with solemn obsequies. Although in Shakespeare Leontes's talks about the grave he will make for his dead wife and son, and swears to visit daily the chapel where they lie,

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it's conjured as an off stage space in Shakespeare. In showing the entombing of Hermione here and with all due ceremony. This production seems to connect more with the green sauce

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tale at this point. As Leontes weeps over the loss of his wife and at his own guilt, there's perhaps a hint of the gospel narrative conjured

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through the effortful sealing of the stone tomb. And, of course, Paulina's nervous glances at the tomb speak volumes about the ruse that in this version of the tale, as opposed to the Shakespearean version,

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we, the audience, are made privy to. In Shakespeare, the final coup de théatre is one reserved for its offstage as well as its onstage audience. In this adaptation, by contrast, we

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have been given insider knowledge of Paulina's secret scheme. And so we know what sort of ending she must have in mind for the programme of rehabilitation on which she now

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sets, a theatrically despairing Leontes. And the renewed presence of the potion supplying wise woman in left of frame at the end of the scene, perhaps quietly trails the ending

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that is in store for Hermione. In line with the productions interest in angles of vision and in the power inherent in acts of looking, Antigonus's arrival on the shores of Bohemia

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is shot from the implied point of view of an interpolated gang of robbers, who watch him from a shore side cave and who are waiting to ambush him.

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As Antigonus leaves the baby out in the Wildes of Bohemia and calls down blessings upon her head, it is perhaps worth noting that the film is unafraid of some radical rewrites in this section.

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Gone, therefore, are the sea storm and the reported shipwreck, and gone is the most famous stage direction in Shakespeare exit, pursued by a bear, no stage direction, no bear.

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And in their place, instead, we have this gang of robbers. They set upon Antigonus viciously, but in order to protect, little Perdita, he will not reveal what his bundle of treasure

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was, nor where it has been hidden. The burning crater of a volcano is another distinctly on the Shakespearean addition. It's not clear what was gained from replacing

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a bear with a volcano, but perhaps the terrifying aesthetic possibilities of a burning crater seemed more feasible to conjure. And the faces of the brigands reacting to the explosions

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taking place. Take account of the scale of the improbable things that happen in this tale. It's a tale filled with causes for amazement,

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and the film is not slow to provide on screen proxies for us to help register that amazement. And so, in this nicely dappled, sunlit Glade, the shepherds find the baby and the bag of treasures that

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are suggestive of high birth. And as the film showcases one dramatic effect after another, we now see Antigonus's ship on fire, the result of the robbers' act of arson.

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Old Father Time appears with his sickle and his large hourglass, and makes his way cautiously but inexorably, across a ridge, caught by a gentle pan right of the camera. His presence reminds us of the passing

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of the years in which young Perdita has had a chance to grow up in rural Bohemia. So as we land in the bucolic setting of Bohemia 16 years on, Perdita's natural beauty and unaffected charm

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now become the focus. I don't know the identity of this actress, but I believe it to be the same actress who played Titania in the Italian Midsummer Night's Dream of the year

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before that starred Socrates Tomasi as Lysander. Here she is, barefoot and seen running with a celebratory sense of freedom, unconstricted by the more formal exigencies of court life.

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Yet another character emerges from a hiding place or clandestine point of observation, as Florizel finds a moment to approach Perdita. What is missing from this Bohemia

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is Autolycus, whose subplot is cut entirely, and in his absence, all of the Bohemian action is a little saccharin, until Polixenes and Camilo turn up to add complexity to the joy.

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The disguised King and Leontes's old friend Camilo now emerge from a glade on the hunt for Polixenes' son, and what they see is the touching image of these two seemingly rustic lovers.

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This is a sentimentalised vision of rustic happiness. The simple things in life: beautiful, wholesome, untarnished by the ways of the court, and with its own beauty, and Garland's dancing and a little suggestion

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of joyous but nubile women. And then into this world of smocks and garlands and the unencumbered happiness of the betrothal feast, comes one bent on upsetting it.

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In 1910, the American independent film Company, Thanhouser had put out a one reel Winter's Tale that compressed the action of the play into a packed plot romp and added a sardonic fool figure to Leontes's court, who

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seems as much as anything else, like a character parachuted in from the world of King Lear. Thanhouser's fool interestingly acted as a lightning rod for audience reactions

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to the range of dramatic, fearsome and touching things that take place in Cecilia. There is no such additional full figure in the Milano Winter's Tale, and of course, the Autolycus subplot

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has vanished without trace also. But there is some gentle fun to be had with Perdita's father and brother Shepard's. And in another significant departure from Shakespeare,

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the secret of Perdita's birth is resolved in Bohemia, rather than needing to wait until the last act and the moment of discovery and revelation back in Cecilia. To prove their story, they produce the fine stuffs

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that were found with Perdita 16 years previously. Perdita herself is visible in the background, following as an observer the story of her own discovery. And amongst all the other Trifles and fine things,

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is a coin that attracts their particular attention. It's a coin from Cecilia which bears the head of Leontes, King of Cecilia, and Polixenes becomes excited about Perdita's profile

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and compares her and the coin as surely the oddest test of paternity ever devised. The coin bears the inscription, leonis di Siciliae. The photographic quality of this close up they

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must have been very proud of. And so Perdita is appropriated by the party and taken from her shepherd family in order to make the voyage to Cecilia.

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But her shepherd brother and shepherd father are none the less then assured a place on the ship, and the trip to Cecilia by the kindly Camilo. With Polixenes and Florizel happily

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reunited in the beautiful high vaulted colonnade in Bohemia, another piece of Sicilian action is thereby taken out of commission. Despite Camillo's support, Perdita

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is visibly nervous about how the King will respond to her as a future daughter-in-law. But Polixenes is fully reconciled to Perdita as a future daughter-in-law, now that it

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is known she is a princess, and the scene ends happily. There's a lot of visual variety in this film: rustic scenes, bucolic bliss, boats, volcanoes, drawbridges, courtly splendour, and now horses also.

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But it's not a film so seduced by its own beautiful scenery, though it's not short on that, that it forgets to draw out the drama of the human face, and the potential of the emotional moment.

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It's lovely having some real water scenes in a production of The Winter's Tale, however apocryphal, the existence of a seacoast in Bohemia, the fiction of the tale depends upon the proximity and accessibility

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of the water in both places. And so the royal party of visitors is rowed ashore from the productions generic boat. And it is Perdita who looks most excited to claim

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her place in this world. And in this impressive and grandiose landscape at the foot of giant statues, Camilo temporarily leaves Perdita in order to go and find Paulina.

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Paulina is discovered lost in her own thoughts in a building that has crumbling elements of ruin about it, a place that has been scarred and untended. But Paulina is then summoned back into the moment

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by hearing the good old Camilo's voice. The reunion with Perdita has an acute poignancy about it, partly because of Paulina's own unwitting role in precipitating the banishment of Perdita,

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16 years previously, and partly because Paulina clearly responds to Perdita as the child of Hermione. The film is so invested in Paulina, not just as adjunct to someone else's story,

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but as the centre of her own, that the iconic charge of this reunion is as if it were itself the reconstituting of the central, devastated family. It seems a little indecorous to intrude too much

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on each of these scenes of reunion in turn. So I'm going to duck out now until the final moments of miraculous restoration. This is such a striking shot, as Paulina

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peeks through a heavy drape from one of the Royal apartments into the reunions happening on our side of the curtain. And we can just glimpse something lying down behind her, but as yet, we have no precise information about this.

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So instrumental is Paulina to this reunion, not just as events manager as it were, but also as emotional core in some way that by the end of this scene, we almost feel as if a surrogate family has already

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been reconstituted. And as we return to the tomb again, the gospel resonances are hard to miss. And at this moment, when Shakespeare gives us

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the magic of the statue, it's difficult to understand why Milano didn't reach gratefully for that device. An empty tomb, which is what we have here, is a highly resonant image, but a statue coming to life

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is a highly cinematic device, as it plays with the relationship between the still and the moving in ways that catch suggestively at the birth of cinema itself. But here it is evident that Paulina

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has choreographed a body trick of the most demanding kind. With an imperious point, father and daughter are instructed to return to the royal apartments, where further disclosures will be made.

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Having prepared her audience appropriately, she pulls back the curtain to reveal Hermione, still in the death sleep that the potion put her into 16 years previously.

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We must assume another crucial bit of footage is missing here, the moment in which Hermione is actually awoken and summoned back to life. But as we rejoin the action after the hiatus,

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Hermione is evidently already awake and enjoying being restored to husband, daughter, and friend. And in the final cameo, Paulina's centrality as the orchestrator and emotional hub is not in doubt.

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And then in the epilogue, we return to the bookending shot of Shakespeare, who puts down the book as warm applause erupts.