EREDITÀ E CREATIVITÀ NELLA STORIA CINEMATOGRAFICA DI MARCO POLO

Abstract

Heritage and Creativity in the Cinematographic History of Marco Polo. The story of Marco Polo's travels, known as Il Milione, has not been preserved in a single original text, but rather in several codices that differ in language, information and style, depending on the recipient and the cultural and political context to which they belonged. The author of the stories himself not only collaborated with the first writer, but also allowed the circulation of variants and interpretive rewrites. Starting from these premises which legitimize subsequent interpretations and adaptations, the present study analyses all the cinematographic transpositions of Marco Polo’s story and myth, from those for the big screen to television series and even animated cartoons. They cover different cinematographic genres and sub-genres and range from schematization of the hypo-text and divesting it of meaning, to transforming it into a partially re-fictionalized epic construct. Using different technical means and achieving very unequal aesthetic results, all these productions are in fact interesting as products of a certain historical, cultural, and political context and as a way of relating on the one hand to the story, the era, and the figure of Marco Polo, and on the other hand even to each other. Furthermore, these differences in approach and treatment of the hypo-text, as well as in the reception of the hypertext, necessarily lead to the conclusion that Il Milione and the myth of Marco Polo continue to represent a generous generative source of epic narratives in images.

Article history: Received 03 September 2025; Revised 21 December 2025; Accepted 26 January 2026; Available online 30 June 2026; Available print 30 June 2026.