Italy
VIA VENETO SET
CREDITS
doc - 85'
Texts and direction: Italo Moscati
Collaboration: Miriam Merlonghi
Editing: Fabrizio Valverde
Original music: Alessandro Molinari
Narrating voice: Francesco Pannofino
Production: RaiSatCinema World, Istituto Luce, RaiTeche
SYNOPSIS
It is a fresque of Rome and cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. Fellinian “Dolce vita” but also Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, Gloria Swanson, Jane Mansfield, Charlton Heston, the muscle boys, miss Italia and so on…but also ex Faruk and the Arabian princes, the great industrialists and business men, the latin lovers, the playboys, the strip-tease artists, the magicians, the gays, the soubrettes, the murderers and the murdered or the disappeared women. Via Veneto, a symbol-street and a faceted reality. Pages of history, of life. Via Veneto is also the background to many films, beyond Fellini’s one. For example, we can remember Sciuscià that opens with a scene shot in Via Veneto among the shoeblacks of the post-war period. From these beautiful images starts the documentary film which covers the years to 1963, when the working of Cleopatra was finished, with Burton and Taylor, whose artistic and sentimental vicissitudes spread in via Veneto. But there are also images and stories of great people of art, of journalism, of aristocracy, of fashion, in an amusing, instructive comparison between past and present. A comparison counterpointed by the most significant episodes of crime news or the scandals that make society tremble. The tale develops through the documents of Istituto Luce and of RaiTeche and RaiSatCinema. There are documents dating back to the 1920s and there are many also from the recent years. The filmed documents are backed up by “paparazzi’s” photographs. In front of their cameras all the protagonists of those years have passed.
One of the aims of the film is travelling towards the myth, the legend of Via Veneto, created by Fellini’s film marking the end of the so-called Hollywood on Tiber. The central idea is to show only images in which is necessarily visibile even a foreshortened image of Via Veneto. That is to say, Via Veneto, limelight, walkdown. A fresh, spectacular, intense tale.
THE DIRECTOR
Italo Moscati, writer, director, scriptwriter. Among his films , Il portiere di notte and Milarepa by Liliana Cavani; among the documentary TV films, L’amore in Italia by Luigi Comencini. He has directed, the tv movie Gioco perverso, the serial Stelle in fiamme, the documentary films A New York! A New York! A New York!, Piccoli graffiti, Roma cinema, Il sogno del futuro, Il castello di sabbia, Passione nere, Cuore di Tv, Trilogia della paura: La guerra perfetta- Maschere- Nomadi, Adolescenti ovvero Principianti assoluti, Viziati 1 e 2, Il paese mancato, Occhi sgranati. He has written ten comedies, all represented also in important festivals. Recently he has published: Anna Magnani- Vita, amori e carriera di un’attrice che guarda dritto negli occhi, Vittorio De Sica-Vitalità, passione e talento in un’Italia dolceamara, Sophia Loren-Storia dell’ultima diva, Pasolini passione-Vita senza fine di un artista trasparente, I Piccoli Mozart- Wolfi e Nannerl, una storia di bambini prodigio, Gioco perverso- La vera storia di Osvaldo Valenti e Luisa Ferida, da Cinecittà alla guerra civile.
