FACCE DA CINEMA.

A large exhibition on the historical archives of Luxardo’s Studio

The portraits of the main characters of the celluloid world, in shootings by Elio, Elda and Aldo Luxardo, retrieve the legendary years after the world, up to the Dolce Vita.

from the 3rd of November 2008 to the 11th of January 2009

Chiostro del Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci di Milano

“Close-ups are usually the culminating points in which the person’s character is revealed. And in close-ups, hair occupies such a large part of the image that every single curl aquires expressive powers: each curl must thus be calculated and measured, like in painting or sculpture. Not one hair can be left to chance. And even if the artist portrays himself as disheveled, untidy, and scruffy, this dishevelment, untidiness, and scruffiness must be calculated and measured, in order not to offend the pubblic or appear as involuntary…” With these words, Mario Soldati describes the backstage, the unseen, monotonous, tedious, and repetitive facet of the role of the diva, in 1935 (24 ore in uno studio fotografico: 24 hours on a movie set). These were shimmering, glamorous, perfect and unattainable divas, who enchanted seamstresses and secretaries, from the pages of magazines, in an Italy which was still largely untouched by what we call “modern culture”. A feminine Italy, still wrapped in its “apron”: in the countryside, in the school, in orphanages, factories, offices, in swamps, and from there, to altars. And schools, orphanages, factories, offices, and swamps are the very locations which served as our first film sets, competing with the shiny, metallic, and silky soundstages of early Italian cinema, of those films which were still labeled “ungheresi”, Hungarian. This was an Italy in which only the movie star could elevate the persona of the secretary, substituting the boring uniform with luxurious satin gowns and dreamy suits. In those years, perfumes, like fashion, were exclusively French, but within the glamourous page of “Domus”, the architectural magazine directed by Giò Ponti, between ads for the new “electric fridge” and garden forniture, one could find the an ad for the perfume Come tu mi vuoi (As you want me) featuring, on the bottle, the face of Greta Garbo (and the copy could be attributed to Pirandello). Whithin the same magazine, Alberto Lattuada, a student of architecture at the Centro Sperimentale, had his own column, Quadernetto del Cinema, in 1938, which always had the latest information on new divas (Vera Zorina, Carole Lombard), on the new “scandalous” pictures, of the great French director Duvuvier. Even Soldati, the author whom we cited earlier, was an expert of starlets. Indeed, he might have had a brief affair with one of those much loved actresses, who were so sought after by artists and collectors. The 24 hours which Soldati, as a writer, dedicates to cinema – before handing over to it the next 40 years of his life, as a director – are epically witty, a “diva’s day” to be celebrated every year, like that dedicated to Leopold Bloom by Irish literature fans. After the hair comes the makeup. “Like a painter holds his palette, he holds the foundation tray in his left hand, and it looks just like a normal box watercolors. The 20 or 30 little colored circles present a rainbow of colors, ranging from tan to brick red, to light pink, to canary yellow. More than a painter, he seems like a sculptor. Initially, the actress sits still and expressionless like moldable material. It is the make-up artist who gradually, molding her, gives her strength, an expression, a character…” All this talk about faces – molded, shaped, combed, painted, luminous, or, in one word, beautiful – should not seem strange. These are the cinema faces of Luxardo. A brand, a trademark, a style. The luxardo face constitutes, on its own, a language and the mark of an era. Firstly, the use of black-and-white: exceptional, softened by beautifully defined grays, like will never see them again. Then the pose: a proud three-quarter angle, which lets the light flow from left to right without obstacles, fully bathing the planes of the face, making them smooth and toned, almost surreal. Next in the shimmer, the perfection in the details, the chiseled waves of hair (think of Rossano Brazzi). And finally, the makeup, beneath the well-styled locks, the eye-line gently curled upwards, the intensity of the lips: even the darkness of black-and-white cannot conceal an idea of what the natural shade was. Pink if the eyes required lots of makeup, intense red if they were underlined by just a curl of lashes, made so by the (almost extinct) eyelash curler. After all, this was the time of lighting magicians in cinema. Never again have we seen lighting like this. The Luxardo photographs encapsulated, in a single moment, in a single timeless smile, all that was happening on movie screens in every cinema in Italy at the time. A vision, say, of Mastroianni, even more charismatic than his personification of the journalist Marcello Rubini, waiting on Via Veneto for whoever was the diva at the time, blonde, tall, American, in a fur coat, on the arm of her American husband, a boxer, ready for the usual brawl (or was it Walter Chiari?). The sign of a time, we said earlier, in which passing by Via del Tritone meant stopping to look at the actor photos of the Luxardos, from under the spider-web of the cables powering trams, inside which generations of girls would press their faces to the glass, trying to catch a glimpse of the passing studio. Where as movie posters were colorful, awkward, and conventionally fictitious (one could never find the poster’s scene in the film) the Luxardo portraits, in their perfection, answered the prayers of the many who studied the faces and lives of these stars with infinitely greater devotion than the subjects of a school system which still was optional. And surely it did so for the little bride who arrived on from Sicily on her honeymoon, with a photo af the White Sheik in her purse, unaware that she will meet him, shortly after, on a swing among the huge pine trees of Fregene, and between the waves. Until Rotella and the nouveaux realistes, film posters, which were far from the clarity, credibility, and realism if not objectivity of photos, could not be taken seriously, in the transition years from the 50’s to the next decade. These were gullible years, jolly, full of hope, and of dark news headlines (the Montesi case was never solved, and became paradigmatic of the political frictions within the majority), of photo-romances and of beauty. A poor, but oh so beautiful Italy, so elevated by the language of Luxardo! Maurizio Arena, Renato Salvatori, and others who had lost their youthful mommy’s boy look, acquired that special aura, that specific gloss of the actor’s portrait. Because Luxardo seemed to want to leave nothing to psychology: to those without character, he surely gave one of his own. A Luxardo soul, precisely, lucent starting with the very name. Lux. Ardo. Two luminous syllables, a concentrate of natural and artificial. In the black and the white of the building facades of Via del Tritone, the glances of modern celebrities would dart around obliquely. Vittorio Gassman, torbidly bad and gorgeous, Giovanna Ralli, a home-made look, ‘la Lollo’ super-glammed-up, Marisa Allasio bejeweled. While Flaiano, in his satirical solitude, describes Via Veneto as a beach, brightened by the large stripy parasols of the cafés, and freshened by the metallic waves of the cars (Cardarelli had probably just hung up his coat at the Caffè de Paris), he also writes in his diary – June 1958 – words that have a particularity special meaning for us: “I’m working with Fellini and Tullio Pinelli, we’re dusting off an old idea for a film, the one with the young provincial who comes to Rome to be a journalist. Fellini wants to adapt it for nowadays, to give a portrait to this “café society” which romps between eroticism, alienation, boredom, and sudden well-being (…) The film’s title will be La Dolce Vita…” .

Antonella Greco