Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) is one of the preeminent figures of the modern European theater. His masterpiece, Six Characters in Search of an Author, set loose a riot during its first performance in Rome in 1921. This play about six unfortunate characters abandoned by their author in the middle of a tawdry drama, is an unsettling, supremely self-conscious work that is ultimately about theatrical artifice and artistic creation itself.

Pirandello and Film examines Pirandello's many efforts--none of them finally successful--to transform Six...