The Iron Crown
| The Iron Crown | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Alessandro Blasetti |
| Written by | Alessandro Blasetti Renato Castellani Corrado Pavolini Guglielmo Zorzi Giuseppe Zucca |
| Starring |
Massimo Girotti Gino Cervi |
| Music by | Alessandro Cicognini |
| Cinematography |
Mario Craveri Václav Vích |
| Edited by | Mario Serandrei |
| Distributed by | Lux film |
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Release date
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September 1941 |
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Running time
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97 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
The Iron Crown (Italian: La corona di ferro) is a 1941 Italian adventure written and directed by Alessandro Blasetti, starring Massimo Girotti and Gino Cervi. The narrative revolves a sacred iron crown and a king who is prophesised to lose his kingdom to his grandson. It blends motifs from several European myths, legends and modern works of popular fiction. The film won a Coppa Mussolini award, which is the ancestor to the Golden Lion.
Sedemondo (Gino Cervi) succeeds his brother Licinio (Massimo Girotti) upon his death as king of Kindaor, and a messenger bearing a crown made from a nail from the true cross requests permission to cross the kingdom. The crown by legend will stay wherever injustice and corruption prevail. Sedemondo takes it to a gorge where it is swallowed by the earth.
A wise woman prophesies to the king that his wife will bear a daughter and Licinio's widow (Elisa Cegani) a son, that the two will fall in love, and the son take the kingdom from Sedemondo. When he gets home, he is told that his wife has given birth to a boy (the daughter having been switched with the child of Licinio) and so believes the prophesy to be invalid. He raises both the boy Arminio and girl Elsa. After some strife between the Sedemondo and Arminio, the king orders Arminio to be taken to the gorge and slain.
Twenty years later, with Arminio (Massimo Girotti) having grown up in the forest, Sedemondo arranges a tournament to determine who will marry Elsa (Elisa Cegani). Tundra (Luisa Ferida) leads the resistance among the people against the king. The tournament, with various characters attending in disguise, sets up whether the prophesy will come to pass.
The film had an unusually large budget and was filmed on elaborate sets at the newly built Cinecittà studios. It stands out in Blasetti's filmography, as several of his most famous films instead were shot on location and used non-professional actors.The Iron Crown belongs to what is sometimes regarded as a tetralogy of films by Blasetti which deal with mythological themes. The other three films are Ettore Fieramosca from 1938, Un'avventura di Salvator Rosa from 1940 and The Jester's Supper from 1942.
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