La Corona di Ferro/The Iron Crown (Film 1941)

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. Audio in Italian with English subtitles.

The narrative revolves a sacred iron crown and a king who is prophesied to lose his kingdom to his nephew. 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. 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.

The Italian actress Vittoria Carpi in an uncredited role shows a bare breast for moments in the film, and may have been the first actress to do so in an Italian sound film. However, the credit for this is normally given to Clara Calamai in Blasetti's next film, La cena delle beffe (1941), probably because Calamai is the protagonist of that film.

Luisa Ferida, who plays Kavaora, mother of Tundra & Tundra, and Osvaldo Valenti who plays Eriberto, were a couple in real life. They were both stars of the Italian cinema of the period. Luisa Ferida was one of divas in Italian cinema during decade 1935-1945 and she was the highest paid movie star of that period. In 1939, while working on Un Avventura di Salvator Rosa (1940), directed by Alessandro Blasetti, she met the actor Osvaldo Valenti. The pair became romantically involved and had a son.

They are remembered for their tragic death; in fact during the period of anti-fascist vendettas, immediately after Italian Civil War, they were assassinated, as was later proved by the Milan Court of Appeal, by shooting following a summary trial carried out by some partisans: she was pregnant when she was shot with her lover, the actor Osvaldo Valenti, as accused of alleged and hypothetical participation in war crimes and torture in connection with so-called Koch gang, facts of which she was then deemed innocent after the war. Valenti, who was a member of Decima Flottiglia MAS, had been linked with many Fascist officials - most notably the infamous Pietro Koch, the infamous leader of the Koch gang, a group notorious for its anti-partisan activity in the Republic of Salò - and personalities for years and he eventually joined the Italian Republic of Salò, and for this reasons he was on the partisans' hit list. He was finally arrested in Milan, alongside a pregnant Ferida in April 1945. They were both sentenced to be executed and shot immediately, without any proper trial.

Cast & Characters:
Elisa Cegani as the mother of Elsa & Elsa
Luisa Ferida as Kavaora, mother of Tundra & Tundra
Rina Morelli as the wise old woman
Gino Cervi as Sedemondo, the king of Kindaor
Massimo Girotti as Licinio & Arminio, his son
Osvaldo Valenti as Eriberto
Paolo Stoppa as Trifilli
Primo Carnera as Klasa, the servant of Tundra
Dina Perbellini as Elsa's nurse