Prince of Foxes

Prince of Foxes is a 1949 American historical adventure film adapted from Samuel Shellabarger's novel Prince of Foxes. The movie starred Tyrone Power as Orsini and Orson Welles as Cesare Borgia. It was nominated for two Oscars during the 22nd Academy Awards: Best Black and White Cinematography (Leon Shamroy) and Best Costume Design, Black and White (Vittorio Nino Novarese). Plot In August 1500, Andrea Orsini, an artistic minor nobleman who is equally skilled with the brush, the sword, words, and women, serves the Machiavellian Prince Cesare Borgia as a soldier. Pleased with Andrea's ability to "follow my mind and keep his eyes fixed on the ultimate goal", Borgia selects Andrea to accomplish an intrigue: arrange the marriage of his widowed sister, Lucrezia (whose husband he has just had assassinated for the purpose), to Alfonso d'Este, the son of the Duke Ercole d'Este of Ferrara. By doing so, Borgia will remove Ferrara as an impediment to conquest of central Italy. In being selected, however, Andrea earns the enmity of Don Esteban Ramirez, an ambitious mercenary captain and rival. Andrea travels to Venice to sell some of his paintings to raise money for expenses. He meets the lovely Camilla di Baglione, young wife of the elderly Count Marc Antonio Varano of Citta del Monte, and smitten with her, gallantly gives her a painting he was haggling to sell for a hundred ducats. Soon after, an assassin attempts to kill Andrea, but he thwarts the attack and spares the assassin to learn who hired him: the Duke Ercole d'Este. He hires the assassin, Mario Belli, as part of his own entourage. Resuming the mission, Andrea stops to visit the farm of a blacksmith's widow, reputed to be hiding gold stolen by her bandit son. She is actually his mother, and he is in fact Andrea Zoppo, not the noble Orsini he pretends to be. The reunion is a rocky one, because the mother does not approve of her son's evil ways. Belli spies on them through a window. Andrea continues to Ferrara, where he succeeds in arranging the marriage by intimidating the duke and flattering Alfonso.