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October 01, 2006

Dante's impasto: Ferretti's designs for Scorsese, Fellini, Pasolini

The Black Dahlia's on its way out of theaters, but production design great Dante Ferretti tells the FT's Nigel Andrews a few dozen highlights of his long career: "The history of Italian cinema in the mid-to-late 20th century can be summed up in two words. Dante Ferretti. The history of Italian-American cinema in the 21st century - and for a few years before - can also be summed up in two words. Dante Ferretti. The 63-year-old production designer has crafted more important movies than you have had hot dates at the arthouse. While you were necking in the back row during the latest Pasolini or Fellini (ah memories!), Ferretti was up there on screen... His job, he unabashedly proclaims, is second in the pecking order only to the director. “After him the first person they call on is the designer. He has to discuss the look of the film, the colour, the style. He has to scout for locations. I work many times with the same directors, but I’m like a chameleon. Every story has a different look, sometimes even if they are set in the same period.” And of his final work with Pasolini? "Salo was Pasolini’s Sadeian nightmare set in Mussolini’s model republic. Its sexuality and cruelty suggested a turmoil in the filmmaker’s life and prefigured, for many, his murder in a notorious gay cruising ground outside Rome... After Salo he gave me another script before he died. It was called 'Theological Pornographic Colossal.' I still have it. I read it only once. I can’t tell you more.” But [Ferretti's] expression, growing visibly more sombre even 30 years on, tells one a lot." [Image from Ferretti's decor for Jonathan Miller's production of La Bohème.]

Posted by Ray Pride at October 1, 2006 01:13 AM

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