In this introductory essay, we explain the layout and features of the Museum of Dreamworlds website, in order that you can see how to navigate it and make it useful for you. We explain the methods behind our inquiries and survey some of our research findings. We also indicate here some of our project’s other activities and future resources that we will be creating until and beyond the end point of the project in November 2027. We will be developing and extending this introduction as we continue to analyse the antiquity films in the BFI. At this stage, the website is also a work in progress so we would greatly welcome any questions you may have as well as suggestions for corrections, clarifications, additions or improvements, or notification of any malfunctions. We can be reached at: museumofdreamworlducl@gmail.com

Appearing in the Pathé catalogue in March 1908,  La Vestale (The Vestal) is a Pathé adaptation of Gaspare Spontini’s opera, based on a libretto by Barbet de Jouy. The film, credited to Albert Capellani, marks a revival of the opera of the same name. Famous during the Empire, Spontini’s version was rarely performed in the second half of the 19th century. Kicking off the revival of a classic work, the 1908 film La Vestale can be seen as a film produced for the sake of spectacle, its production methods mirroring those of the theatre. It can also be viewed as the end of an era. Indeed, Pathé did not participate in the adaptation of the bestsellers published during the same period, which were snapped up by other production companies, particularly Italian ones (Quo vadis?, The Last Days of Pompeii, and Fabiola or the Church of the Catacombs). In a sense, for the French company, Antiquity served as a backdrop rather than a narrative framework, and the focus of films such as La Vestale, Amour d’esclave, and also Idylle romaine, was primarily on romantic drama.

Nerone, also known as Nerone o l’incendio di Roma (Nero or the Burning of Rome in Anglophone distribution), directed by Luigi Maggi and Arturo Ambrosio in 1909, should be regarded as one of the true ‘gems’ of early Italian cinema. In a period that predates the triumphs of Cabiria (1914), Quo vadis? (1913), and other grand colossal or epics, Nerone stands out as a particularly striking example of a cinema whose strength lay in its power of synthesis. How do you capture, in just a quarter of an hour, the defining moments in the life of history’s most bloodthirsty emperor? How do you evoke the grandeur of ancient Rome using nothing more than painted backdrops? Fortunately, we have at our disposal a beautifully restored print of the film, allowing us to reflect on these questions. Yet the restoration process, too, holds its own mysteries…

Patrizia e schiava, known as Patrician and Slave or Afra in its Anglophone distribution (director unknown, Cines 1909) is one of the earliest films on Roman antiquity made by the Rome studio Cines. It is also an interesting film in several respects. Many props referring to ancient Roman furniture and sculpture used in this film would be recycled for years by the company and its associated organisations like Palatino Film and Unione Cinematografica Italiana. The aesthetically attractive ancient world to be found in this film therefore became the foundation for subsequent Cines’ films about Rome regardless of the period in which they were set. Patrizia e schiava, however, also appears disturbingly comfortable with the ancient institution of slavery and a racist representation of Africans. As in the British film about Pygmalion (see our text on Pygmalion and Galatea on this site), divine intervention creates a happy ending for the protagonist but here it also serves to construct a colonialist allegory about Italy’s victory over supposed dangers from across the sea.

The Vitagraph Company, established in New York City in 1897 as one of the first film production companies in the United States, had begun making film versions of historical narratives and literary classics in 1908. After several adaptations of Shakespeare and well-known ancient themes (Virginius, Saul and David) early in 1909, they produced The Way of the Cross in the summer of 1909. The basic premise parallels that of the Polish novel Quo Vadis, naming the Roman military officer protagonist Valerius instead of Vinicius, the Christian woman Leah instead of Lygia. But the conclusion parallels more closely the English melodrama The Sign of the Cross in that these protagonists submit to martyrdom in the arena to conclude the story. Director J. Stuart Blackton employed his characteristic scheme of creating multiple sets (17) and filling them with as many as 50 actors and extras in a single scene (e.g., the gladiatorial arena). The film resembles some of the others on this website by including black slaves and a tableau modeled after a widely familiar Gérôme painting. The lone copy of the film is held by the BFI, albeit with German intertitles as it comes from the Joye collection.

Cléopâtre, as the first in the Pathé studio’s Série d’Art, places the queen theatrically at the centre of a resplendent Orientalist tableau filled with pharaonic monuments, lotus leaf pillars, exotic canopies and couches, black slaves, leopard skins and feathered fans, all showcased in stencil colour. Digging into the archaeology of this Egyptian environment played out before a French camera in a cold January exposes its colonialist tropes: the dangerous queen seduces Mark Antony but is overcome by Octavian, the true embodiment of the masculine West. However, the colonial rhetoric of the film turns out to be more complicated when compared with the Pathé film Le caprice du vainqueur with which it had been paired. Here Julius Caesar, as the embodiment of the Western imperialist in Egypt, is cruel and licentious. His demand that an innocent girl dance before him results in an uprising by the Egyptian people who burn down the palace and oust him from it. Overturning the discourses of colonialism, the West is here temporarily defeated by the East. This analysis explores how these two films shape Roman Egypt according to a complex, distinctively French, brand of Orientalism played out within a late nineteenth-century French culture of Egyptomania.

At the turn of the 19th century, Pompeii’s remarkable preservation made it a focal point for exploring and visualising ancient Roman life, particularly in early Italian silent cinema. This essay examines the 1913 Pasquali Film Jone, ovvero Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, directed by Giovanni Enrico Vidali. The film combines three-dimensional sets with authentic locations and draws extensively on archaeological evidence, nineteenth-century paintings, and literary sources to reconstruct Pompeii’s urban and domestic spaces. Outdoor scenes depict streets, the Forum, and exedra seating, highlighting public life, while interiors, including triclinia, cubicula, and atria, illustrate elite domestic practices, luxury, and social hierarchy. The Villa of Diomed and the Temple of Isis emphasise refinement and exoticism, while amphitheatre sequences, with live animals and staged crowds, underscore spectacle and civic culture. By integrating archaeological accuracy with artistic and cinematic conventions, the Pasquali film transforms Pompeii into both a historical reconstruction and a dramatic stage, allowing audiences to witness daily life, ritual, and catastrophe.

Selling the Italian epic Cabiria (1914) to British audiences in and beyond 1914, given its colonial rescue fantasy and its spectacular celebration of a nationalist war of empire in Africa, was a significant challenge. Cabiria was purchased for British consumption in April 1914 but not shown in the UK until more than a year later. British programmes that survive in the BFI National Archive and contemporary press reports demonstrate that Cabiria was successfully screened across the country only from 1915 to 1916. Its advertising to British audiences and its consumption across this period of the Great War is situated in stark contrast to its circulation in Italy. It is now recognised that exclusive focus on national cinemas and the specific history of their film production and exhibition overlooks the dynamic, transnational character of the silent era. This essay aims to put the United Kingdom more firmly on the map of Cabiria’s cultural geography and demonstrate that, in the cultural context of cinema-going in Britian during the first world war, Cabiria becomes almost a different film from the one shown in Italy or in other Anglophone cultures and takes on quite distinct meanings.

Silent films depicting antiquity utilized a range of representational strategies to vividly reconstruct Graeco-Roman architecture, thereby facilitating a temporal transport for audiences to the ancient past. One of the most prominent techniques was monumentality, which was used to create impressive sets and reflected advancements in film technology. This approach became a recurring feature in many films of the 1920s. The main set for the silent epic Quo Vadis (1924) set in the reign of the emperor Nero was the monumental palace created for the exhibition Mostra dell'Agricoltura, dell'Industria e delle Arti Applicate (Exhibition of Agriculture, Industry, and Applied Arts) held in 1923 at the Galoppatoio inside the Villa Borghese gardens in Rome. The architect Armando Brasini-renowned for his eclectic style rooted in Fascist architecture-designed the exhibition spaces. Brasini’s work drew inspiration from ancient Roman and Italian Baroque architecture, incorporating elements that evoked the poetic quality of ruins, a hallmark of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s visionary drawings. This article explores Brasini’s architectural contribution to the film, with a focus on the representation of Nero’s palace and examines his influence on the rise of a monumental aesthetic in silent films portraying antiquity.

This article explores Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei (1926) as the culmination of silent-era cinematic representations of Pompeii, arguing that the film transforms cinematic fiction into a valuable source for understanding ancient architecture and urban life. By the 1920s, these layers converged in large-scale historical epics, enabling cinema to function as a medium of virtual time travel in which the spectator assumes the role of a beholder-traveller. Through close analysis of scenography, the article examines the reconstruction of streets, the Forum, public buildings, domestic interiors, baths, and the amphitheatre. It demonstrates how spatial organisation, architectural accuracy, decorative detail, and crowd scenes created immersive environments that animated Pompeii as a lived city rather than a static ruin. While acknowledging moments where fictional composition departs from archaeological precision, the article emphasises the film’s exceptional attention to material culture and its partial use of real locations. Ultimately, the study contends that Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei (1926) represents both the apex and the conclusion of silent Pompeii cinema, where spectacle, architecture, and narrative converge to produce a cinematic document of enduring archaeological and cultural significance.