Photo: Riso amaro (Bitter Rice), 1948, dir. Giuseppe de Santis. Courtesy Collection Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin.
In stylish attire and flicking her hair around dramatically, Penelope Parkin headed to Islington to check out a top show.
Cinema Italia at the Estorick Collection until January 25, 2004, charts the lineage of Italian film from the early 1900s to the present day including classics such as Visconti’s ‘Death In Venice’ and ‘The Leopard’.
In typical Italian style, many of those on display are vividly coloured and depict colourful scenes of passion and violence. All the better to attract the viewing public, especially before the event of colour TV in 1967!
Photo: Ossessione (Obsession), 1943, dir. Luchino Visconti. Courtesy British Film Institute.
Gallery One is devoted to directors Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini. Posters on display date from the 1950s and include those for Rosellini’s ‘Stromboli’ starring Ingrid Bergman as a Lithuanian refugee and Fellini’s ‘La Strada’ better known in Britain as ‘The Road’.
In contrast to these angst ridden post-war epics, a curvaceous Sophia Loren dominates gallery two, which is dedicated to posters of 60s style Fellini hits as well as classics by Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti in an era that symbolized the Italian film industry at its peak.
Loren is depicted in several posters including that of ‘Ieri, Oggi, Domani’ or ‘Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’ (1963) which tells the story of three very different woman and the men they attract. She plays all three characters herself.
In fact, many Italian 60s epics had a social message, including Pietro Germi’s biggest hit ‘Divorzio D’Italiana’ or ‘Divorce Italian Style’.
Photo: La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life), 1959, dir. Federico Fellini. Courtesy Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York.
Visconti is the undoubted maestro here however, with films such as the classic ‘Il Gattopardo’ or ‘The Leopard’ which chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina (played by Burt Lancaster) and his family in 1860s Sicily.
A video screen shows clips of many of the Italian movies depicted in the exhibition including scenes from ‘The Leopard’.
Moving upstairs to the 70s one is hit struck by the plethora of spaghetti westerns produced in Italy including the first ever made: ‘Per Un Pugno Di Dollari’ or ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, 1964 which launched Clint Eastwood’s career.
Many more were to follow. On the back of Eastwood’s debut as the Man With No Name, more than 300 spaghetti westerns were produced in Italy between 1964 and 1972.
Photo: Per qualche dollaro in piu (For A Few Dollars More), 1965, dir. Sergio Leone. Courtesy British Film Institute.
They included ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968), ‘For a Few Dollars More’ (1965), ‘Duck, You Sucker’ (1971) and ‘The Good, the Bad and The Ugly’ (1966). Sixty-six were released in 1967 alone!
Astoundingly the man behind most of them, Sergio Leone, turned down offers to direct the best-known Italian film of all time, Mafia epic ‘The Godfather’ (1972) in favour of his dream project ‘Once Upon A Time In America’ (1984).
…all the better for Francis Ford Coppola.
This is an exhibition for film buffs, graphic artists and those requiring a crash course in Italian cinema. If you’re going to Islington it’s well worth a visit though perhaps not one for the kids!
