Keywords

• The paper intends to explore the way Neapolitan silent cinema turned the myth of Parthenope into a symbol of a whole culture
• re-shaping a millenary heritage of female images coming from painting
• sculpture
• plates
• illustrations
• literature
• theater
• thus building innumerable narrative architectures round the siren. The siren represented both the bright side and the dark side of the moon and cinema investigated
• consciously and unconsciously
• the contradictory aspects of her fascinating power. Through the analysis of intertextual relations between cinema and other art forms
• we will try to prove that Neapolitan silent cinema gave a different version of the Divaâ€
• ™
• s image. The protagonists of this genre of cinema were common women
• at the same time archaic and modern
• linked to local identity and projected onto national traditions. The sirenâ€
• ™
• s archetype was the paradigm through which the womanâ€
• ™
• s image became a kaleidoscope susceptible to innumerable metamorphoses