Mario Bonnard (24 December 1889 – 22 March 1965) was an Italian actor and film director.
Bonnard was born and died in Rome.
He began his cinematic career as an actor becoming a popular romantic lead in numerous silent films made before World War I.
In 1917, he ventured into film directing for the first time.
Before the arrival of sound films he worked for a period in Germany in films directed by Luis Trenker.
Back in Italy in 1932, he became a prolific director working with the major stars of the time as: Assia Noris, Elsa Merlini, Amedeo Nazzari, and Luisa Ferida.
Il feroce Saladino (1937) was the most popular of his films of the 1930s.
During the war he continued to work.
In the post World War II period his films, ranging from comedies to period dramas enjoyed much success.
However, today he's no longer well known.
One of his last films was The Last Days of Pompeii (1959).
An illness made him leave production early, so the film was completed by Sergio Leone.
His brother was the composer Giulio Bonnard, who frequently wrote film scores for Mario's productions.
The leader of a gang of Spanish mercenaries falls for a beautiful princess. Thing get dicey, however, when an imprisoned leader is freed and comes calling.
Glaucus, a demobilized centurion returns home to Pompeii to find his father murdered by a gang of black-hooded Christian robbers that terrorizes the city and he decides to investigate the matter while the nearby volcano threatens to erupt.
A gangster comes back to Rome after many years and meets his old flame and their daughter.
Peppino, a fishmonger on Campo de' Fiori, a famous Roman marketplace, works alongside Elide, a greengrocer, who has a soft spot for him, despite the fact they argue all day long... But neither Peppino, nor his friend Aurelio, the barber, are interested in getting married. Until he meets the beautiful Elsa...
Struggle for the Matterhorn (German: Der Kampf ums Matterhorn) is a 1928 German-Swiss silent drama film co-directed by Mario Bonnard and Nunzio Malasomma and starring Luis Trenker, Marcella Albani, and Alexandra Schmitt. The film is part of the popular cycle of mountain films of the 1920s and 1930s. Art direction was by Heinrich Richter. Based on a novel by Carl Haensel, the film depicts the battle between British and Italian climbers to be the first to climb the Matterhorn. Trenker later remade the film as The Challenge in 1938.