Abstract

This essay investigates for the first time the relationship between the literary work and personality of Annie Vivanti and post-war Italian diva-film cinema. It focuses particularly on some long-distance connections with Francesca Bertini's films, the author's lawsuit for plagiarism filed against the production of La piovra (Edoardo Bencivenga 1920), and the realization of Marion artista di caffè-concerto (Roberto Roberti 1920), based on Vivanti's homonymous novel (1891). The meeting point between the greatest Italian diva productions and the most popular writer of the time is marked by the centrality of female characters, that are unconventional and outrageous, destructive and persecuted, and that were soon after abandoned by the Italian cinema and literature. In the following decades, the fatal creatures and dark ladies of Hollywood movies will come to life from their ashes.