Silent Cinema Quo Vadis?

Quo Vadis?  1 December 2024 14:15 in the BFI National Film Theatre 1

• Introduction by Dr Aylin Atacan and live piano accompaniment
• Blog by Maria Wyke

As part of the project, BFI arranged for a screening in Bryony Dixon’s regular Silent Cinema strand at BFI Southbank of the 1924 Quo Vadis? More than 200 people turned up to watch this epic Italian silent accompanied with great energy by Neil Brand. 

Magnificent and disturbing, the 1924 Quo Vadis? revels in the debauchery we expect from Ancient Rome. A spectacle on the grandest scale, it features a cast of thousands and a Nero played with satanic glee by Emil Jannings. The film opens with him lying resplendent in his monumental palace (the set was the Palace of Festivities, a fabulous faux Roman villa built for a trade exhibition), peering with sadistic amusement at a half-dressed girl being thrown into the fountain to fatten his lampreys for dinner! 

This film has been restored by Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam) in 2002 in collaboration with Fondazione Cineteca Italiana (Milano) and Fondazione Scuola Nazionale di Cinema – Cineteca Nazionale (Roma). Special thanks to Museo Nazionale del Cinema-Fondazione Maria Adriana Prolo (Torino) and National Film and Television Archive (London).