The 1916 silent film Cenere (Ashes) features the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse (1858-1924) in her only cinematic role. In her meditative approach to her craft, she reprised for the screen all the "mother roles" she had created for the theater.

Marking the film's 100th anniversary, this collection of essays brings together for the first time in English a range of scholarship. The difficulties involved in the making of the film are explored--Duse's perfectionism was too advanced for the Italian movie industry of the 1910s. Her work is discussed within the creative, political and historical context of the silent movie industry as it developed in wartime Italy.