Ermente Zaconni — Motography’s Gallery of Picture Players (1913) 🇺🇸

Ermente Zaconni [Ermete Zacconi] is the Italian actor who took leading roles in Itala’s “Palace of Flames” and “The Dread of Doom,” to correctly portray death. This done, he retired for a short rest to his villa in Italy.

Zaconni’s work is marked by an absence of the overabundance of gestures and facial expressions so apparent in many of the foreign pictures.

He is known as the “Mansfield of Italy,” and has long been associated with Duse [Eleonora Duse] in her notable successes.

Zaconni is a native of the north of Italy, and his abhorrence of many gestures and facial contortions is inherent, as it is claimed that it is the people of the south of Italy who transgress in this big particular.

To Zaconni this transgression is a crime against art, a crime of which he is absolutely guiltless. His head, not his hands, dominate his work both on the screen and the stage, and he believes that the actor should rely, to a certain extent, on the imagination of the people.

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Collection: Motography Magazine, May 1913