Only a 10-minute fragment is still available.
It opened on Sunday 16 June, 1929 at the "Corso" cinema in Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome and was a social event attended by personalities of politics and entertainment, with such a big crowd that it was difficult for crew members to even enter.
In Sole! most of the actors were non-professionals, and many were more or less debutants, especially the female actors. But it was also the beginning of a long career for scenographer Gastone Medin.
Alessandro Blasetti's directorial debut, it was, according to critics and archived reviews from that time, shot in a realistic style and mostly on location, and also mixed influences from German and Soviet cinema. It was received as a rebirth of Italian cinema at a time when Italian cinema under Fascism was in a crisis (few films had been produced that year for example). Mussolini allegedly said that it was "the dawn of Fascist film" after having seen it. Blasetti became the leading maker of Fascist film and went on to direct several more pro-Fascist propagandistic movies.
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