To celebrate my (as far as I know) permanent return to Brussels, I considered subscribing to, or at least going to a screening at, La Cinematek, the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, where classic films are preserved and screened every day.
I didn’t find any screening I fancied, and I’m still considering supporting the institution with a subscription (that only entitles to a reduced entry ticket), but out of curiosity I followed the link to its Official YouTube channel.

The majority of the videos on the channel are recordings of Q&As held at the local auditorium, trailers of restored films, and historical documents of life in Belgium at the beginning of the 20th Century, but included are also public domain short silent films, such as classics by Georges Méliès.
Among them, I was surprised to find a short film featuring Cretinetti: I have always thought Cretinetti (an Italian, slightly light-hearted term for ‘idiot’) was the name given in Italy to some American silent film comedian (similar to the way Larry Semon was renamed Ridolini); the fact that this character was called Cretinetti on a francophone website made me want to know more.
It turns out that the character actually was an Italian creation, originating in the collaboration between director Giovanni Pastrone and French actor André Deed, who had previously worked with Méliès himself!

From there, I proceeded to know more about the director: Giovanni Pastrone was the director of one of the most well-known (not that I knew much about it, as will be soon abundantly clear) Italian silent films, the epic Cabiria, the first film in cinema history to have used a dolly effect.

The next thing I learnt, the script for Cabiria, written by Pastrone, was revised and enriched by none other than Gabriele D’Annunzio, a major Italian poet, war ‘hero’, hedonist, and substantially inventor of Fascism. I was never a fan of the guy - and not only because of the fact I had to study his work in high school - but if you happen to visit the western side of Lake Garda in northern Italy, a tour of his villa is well worth the time (spoiler alert: there’s a ship in the gardens).

This link between the writer and Italian cinema was unexpected, but not as surprising as to learn that he’s the de facto creator of the character of Maciste, maybe the first recurring character in cinema (I haven’t done a lot of research): a ‘muscle man’ who, in the original draft for Cabiria, was actually Hercules, until D’Annunzio decided to rename him to sound more sophisticated, I guess (I don’t think anybody held intellectual property rights on Hercules).
I knew Maciste as the main hero in dozens of Italian ‘sword-and-sandal’ second or third-rate films, and finding out his actual origins was almost shocking.

My brain then made the leap from Maciste to Ursus: another ‘superhero’ of peplum films in the sixties. In his case, I knew the character had literary origins in Henryk Sienkiewicz’ novel Quo Vadis, adapted in the well-known 1951 epic film by the Mervyn LeRoy (and previously, twice in silent films: one - apparently the first blockbuster - from 1913)another ‘superhero’ of peplum films in the sixties. In his case, I knew the character had literary origins in Henryk Sienkiewicz’ novel Quo Vadis, adapted in the well-known 1951 epic film by the Mervyn LeRoy (and previously, twice in Italian silent films: one - apparently one of the first blockbusters - from 1913, and a 1924 version co-directed by Gabriellino D’Annunzio, one of the sons of the poet - this time, a commercial failure).

Apparently all the superheroes of the time then ‘converged’, Avengers-style (or, perhaps, Expendables-style), in Hercules, Samson, Maciste, and Ursus: the Invincibles, because franchises are not a recent phenomenon.