Bruce Loeb on Piano. (Flower of Evil). A stage actress, Lyda Borelli's meteoric film career consisted of only thirteen films before her retirement upon marrying a count. More than any of the divas, Borelli was known for the extraordinary physicality of her acting. "Her on-screen presence, always recognizable, relies upon a highly complex and artificial gestural language that remains unmistakably her own." (Eva Vittadello) "She is," Antonio Gramsci wrote at the time, "the actress par excellence of film, in which the only language is the human body with its endlessly refreshed plasticity." In Fior di male Borelli plays a young prostitute who abandons her child and is haunted by the memory of a mark on his arm. Later, she forms a new family with an aging count. But fate will bring her face to face with the boy, now a man, with the mark on his arm.