It’s 1910 and a silence movie team is on the film set where they prepare their next production: they rehearse and shoot a film. It’s a work between production, preparing, comedy, tragedy, reality and film illusion.


In the Prologue, the audience and members of the film production team are warned that the performance they are going to see is based on real events and devoid of pretense.


Act One

A group of actors come to the production place: Canio, the head of company, his wife Nedda, Tonio, who also is the film director, and Peppe. They invite everyone on stage and in the auditorium to see their show. They start to shoot. The actors are asked out for a drink. Canio and Peppe accept the invitation. Left alone with Nedda, Tonio takes the chance to confess his feelings for her. Nedda scorns him and drives him away. They start to play between shooting the film, rehearsal, and reality: alone, Nedda is visited by Silvio, a member of the film team who has been in love with her and wants her to leave Canio for him. Nedda reluctantly yields to his passionate pleas. Undiscovered, Tonio watches the scene and goes to fetch Canio. Canio almost catches the lovers out, but Silvio manages to get away unexposed. Canio confronts Nedda who would not reveal her lover’s name to her husband. Their quarrel is interrupted by Peppe who reminds them to get ready for the next film sequence shooting and the performance. Broken-hearted, Canio still has to carry on with the show.


Act Two

One and all, the film team members, the onlookers and the audience come to see the commedia dell’arte and the funny movements of the films. Here Nedda plays an adulterous Colombina, an actress from different movies, who also plays with her men — her husband the Pagliaccio (played by Canio) and the seducer Arlecchino (played by Peppe), while Tonio plays a foolish servant Taddeo in love with Colombina. Colombina has a date with Arlecchino. Taddeo is only happy to help the lovers. Arlecchino suggests that Colombina feeds Pagliaccio a sleeping draught and elopes. Colombina reacts with exactly the same words Canio heard from Nedda when she agreed to elope with Silvio. Triggered, Canio gets out of character and interrogates his own wife, not Colombina, right on the stage. Nedda tries to resume the show, but eventually gets dragged into the argument. The spectators are awed by the authenticity of emotion on display. Defied by Nedda, Canio stabs her to death. Her dying scream is for Silvio. Canio kills the identified lover too.


The comedy is over, the film is shot between comedy, tragedy, rehearsals, film shooting and reality — a symbol of life.