Much like the above writeup, most sources these days tend to minimize the involvement in this film of turbonationalist writer/poet/occasional dictator Gabriele D'Annunzio, obviously due to discomfort with his quasi-fascist ideology; the screenplay is frequently attributed to its director, Pastrone, as indeed above. However, at the time of its release this was clearly not seen to be the case: the film was called »the masterpiece of D'Annunzio«, and you'll find that on some period posters his is the only name to appear, along with the film's title. Given that everyone agrees that D'Annunzio named the film and characters, wrote all the intertitle narration and »dialogue«, and that beyond that the film is ultimately based on a pair of novels (Flaubert's Salammbô and another Carthaginian adventure yarn, by the sadly neglected Salgari), it's also hard to see what part of the screenplay is supposed to be Pastrone's work exactly. Most sources when pressed additionally concur that D'Annunzio was responsible for determining the music and at least part of the visual/scenic arrangements. (It's worth remembering that in 1914 the director-as-auteur theory was still fifty years away from being hatched, and the screenwriter was more often, correctly to my mind, regarded as the chief creative responsible for a film.)
In short, this film, rightly considered an early masterpiece of cinema, was substantially the work of a man now held in infamy. Some people evidently find the idea that people they disapprove of can create great art to be objectionable or even unacceptable; however, it seems clear to me that a better and more mature approach is to just admit it. The world not only has a right to be complicated, it is whether you like it or not.
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