In 1921, Titanus released a three-part serial based on a popular Italian novel from the turn of the 20th century: Nobody’s Children by Ruggero Rindi. The tale of lovers thwarted by class differences, of illegitimate children and parental recognition denied was a major success for producer Gustavo Lombardo and leading lady Leda Gys. Three decades later, their son Goffredo (himself born out of wedlock) returned to this material to lift the studio’s postwar fortunes. Nobody’s Children focuses on two symmetrical parent-child pairs: the foreman of a mine and his daughter, and the mine’s aristocratic owner and her son. The remake was conferred to Raffaello Matarazzo, the success of whose operatic melodramas had revitalized a career that began in the 1930s; he would come to consider Nobody’s Children his best film.