The Joker's Banquet (La Cena Della Beffe)

“Much more in Blasetti's usual vein, and a really outstanding film.... Based on a famous play of fourteenth-century Florence, this is historical drama at its best with its involved intrigues, riotous passions, bloody revenges, elaborate hoaxes and all the glittering panoply of an age considerably more dramatic and extravert than our own. Minstrels, singing their traditional songs, night watchmen calling the hours; the story-tellers with their much-repeated but ever-welcome tales; the criers bringing the citizens the news of the day - all these and hundreds more of the picturesque aspects of the period throng the screen, and the handling of the principal scenes was extraordinarily good...”

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