Pina Menichelli

Who was Pina Menichelli?

Giuseppa Iolanda Menichelli, known as Pina Menichelli, was an Italian actress and silent film star. After a career in theatre and a series of small film roles, Menichelli was launched as a film star when Giovanni Pastrone gave her the lead role in Il Fuoco. Over the next nine years, Menichelli made a series of films, often trading on her image as a diva and on her passionate, decadent eroticism. Menichelli became a global star, and one of the most appreciated actress in Italian cinema, before her retirement in 1924, aged 34.

Since her death, restorations of Menichelli's surviving films have been shown at important film festivals, and her filmography has been re-assembled and re-evaluated by film historians.