The Gallant Adventure of a Provincial (1908) Luca Comerio

The Gallant Adventure of a Provincial (also known as Avventura galante di un provinciale) is a 1908 comedy film directed and produced by *Luca Comerio and starring Luigi Maggi, Lydia De Roberti, Umberto Mozzato. It is most probably the first Italian film that we could define as GBLT-themed . The critics of the time were not at all enthusiastic about it. In an article in the Rivista Fono-Cinematografia of Naples it was defined as a 'film in bad taste and, technically speaking, not without flaws'.
(00:08) A provincial man, visiting Milan, meets a beautiful lady in a café who immediately yields to his advances. (01:25) The man invites her to follow him to his hotel. (01:50) But once in the room, the provincial discovers that the lady is actually a gentleman and runs away in horror, while the other robs him of everything he left in the room.
Transvestism was never foreign to the theater and inevitably transmitted to the cinema, one of the earliest examples being in • Par le trou de la serr... , in the scene in which the peeping tom spies a woman undressing only to discover that she is a man. Comerio may have been inspired by this film for his gallant adventure.
The film was shot in Milan, although we do not know the exact locations.
#lucacomerio #earlyitaliancinema
Luca Fortunato Comerio (Milan, 19 November 1878 - Mombello di Limbiate, 5 July 1940) was an Italian photographer and filmmaker, a pioneer of the Italian film industry.
Passionate about painting, at the age of only twelve he began working as an assistant to the painter-photographer Belisario Croci. In 1894 he bought his first camera with which he portrayed the King of Italy Umberto I visiting the city of Como. He devoted himself to journalistic photography and in May 1898 documented the popular uprisings in Milan and their repression.
In 1907 he went to Paris where he bought a camera from Pathé and with it documented King Victor Emmanuel III's cruise in the Mediterranean; he thus became the official photographer of the Italian royals. In September 1907, he founded his own film production company, Comerio & Co., which the following year merged with another company, SAFFI, to form SAFFI-Comerio. As a producer-director Comerio devoted himself above all to documentaries and reportage, in 1908 documenting the Messina earthquake, but also to short comic films such as The Gallant Adventure of a Provincial (1908). He took part in the Italian expedition to Libya in 1911 as a photographer and cameraman. He was probably the first filmmaker in history to document the war at the front.
Thanks to the fame he gained on this occasion, he obtained a special licence to film Italian military operations during the Great War. In 1918 he documented the entry of the Italian army into Trento and with the large amount of footage he made the feature film Sulle Alpi riconsacrate (1922).
He documented the taking of Fiume and made two sound documentaries in the 1930s, but with the crisis in Italian filmmaking, he found himself out of work. After turning in vain to both the Istituto LUCE and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in search of employment, he retired to private life. Plagued by poor health and financial straits, he died in July 1940. The Giornale Luce of 15 July 1940 is dedicated to his death: • La morte di Luca Comer...