The first period of splendor of the Italian cinema began in the decade of 1910, when it was constituted like pioneer of spectacular historical overproductions.

Until then, the Italian cinematographic industry had been a pale shade of the French, adopting of its neighbor more advanced not only the ideas, but also the actors (the more popular comedian Italian of the beginnings of the cinema, Cretinetti, was in fact French, André Deed, whom he was known in his country like Boireau). But with the fall of Troy (1910, of Giovanni Pastrone), the last days of Pompeya (1913, of Mario Caserini) and Cabiria (1914, of Pastrone), the Italian companies Ambrosio and Cines successfully sent commercial a entirely new form of cinematographic spectacle to the world-wide market, including the United States. And not less important, at least for the internal market, they were melodramas carried out by the famous divas Lyda Borelli (Fior I gave male, 1915, of Carmine Gallone) and Francesca Bertini (Assunta Spina, 1914, of Gustavo Serena).

The I World war supposed the sudden end of this brief period of glory. In 1919 a torrent of imports of the United States on the brink of madness took to the Italian industry the bankruptcy. The production was diminishing throughout the Twenties and at the end of that decade every year was only made a handful of films.

The situation improved in the decade of 1930. The arrival of the sonorous one increased the demand of cinema spoken in Italian, and the facist government, who until then had not seen in the documentary and noticiarios cinema more than a propagandistic vehicle through, took part to support the industry. Unlike its homologous German, the Italian facist regime did not try to turn the cinema a nationalistic spectacle. Although some facist films became, beginning with the one of Alessandro Blasetti, Sole (1928), in general, the government was marked as objective to impel a self-sufficient cinematographic industry and the construction of great studies began. Some directors who had emigrated, like Augusto Genina or Carmine Gallone, returned to their country, and some foreign producer as Max Ophuls rolled in Italy exquisite the signora I even gave tutti (1934). The comedies and melodramas were specially popular. Films like Darò milione (1935, of Mario Camerini), carried out by jovencísimo Vittorio de Sica, reached a similar international recognition to the one of the comedies of Frank Capra or Preston Sturges.