The American writer’s symbolic yet vividly rendered story depicts a maker of small objects of ‘delicate ingenuity’ whose fellow townspeople refuse to recognize him as an artist.

The film, a swirling drama of love and death, is loosely adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1860 novel The Marble Faun. Princess Maria (Elena Sangro) is married to the Duke of Helgoland (Ugo ...