viewer. In the same period Bragaglia realizes other works such as Il mio cadavere (1917), Perfido incanto (1918) and the short film Dramma nell'Olimpo (1917), all of which have been lost. Another lost film is Il re, le torri, gli alfieri by Ivo Illuminati, where the characters were dressed like chess figures and moved on a checkerboard floor. The Italian film industry struggled against rising foreign competition in the years following World War I. Several major studios, among them Cines and Ambrosio, formed the Unione Cinematografica Italiana to coordinate a national strategy for film production. This effort was largely unsuccessful, however, due to a wide disconnect between production and exhibition (some films were not released until several years after they were produced). Major figures Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Anton Giulio Bragaglia Riccardo Cassano Film of Italian futurism Vita futurista ("Futurist life"), directed by Arnaldo Ginna and Lucio Venna (1916), lost film Un dramma nell'Olimpo ("A drama in Olympus"), directed by Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1917), lost film Il mio cadavere ("My Corpse"), directed by Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1917), lost film Thaïs ("Thaïs"), directed by Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1917), only 35 min. of the original 70 min. runtime survive Il re, le torri, gli alfieri ("The king, the rook, the bishop"), directed by Ivo Illuminati (1917), lost film Il perfido incanto ("The Wicked Enchantment"), directed by Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1918), lost film Gallery from Thaïs (1917) Influence Italian futurism did not produce works in the cinema that immediately lived up to their revolutionary aims, but the importance of the movement as a source of inspiration for all subsequent avant-gardes was enormous. It influenced Russian Futurist cinema and German Expressionism. In Germany, films such as Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) or Metropolis (1926) have the Italian Futurist movement as a source of profound inspiration, and the same can be said of the French avant-gardes, especially René Clair. Traces of futurism are also frequent and lasting in commercial cinema. Still in the 1930s, Mario Camerini's film What Scoundrels Men Are! (1932) contained a whirlwind of optical illusions at a frenetic pace, with uses such as acceleration, split-screen and overlays. When interviewed about her favorite film of all times, famed movie critic Pauline Kael stated that the director Dimitri Kirsanoff, in his silent experimental film Ménilmontant "developed a technique that suggests the movement known in painting as Futurism". Also in the dreamlike visions of some of