Pisorno film studios in Tirrenia,
a so-called "Hollywood on the beach", which produced 160 films
between 1934 and 1969, is the focus of a new exhibition in
Pisa's Palazzo Blu, opening March 23 and running through July 7.
The exhibition, titled "Tirrenia City of Film, Pisorno -
Cosmopolitan 1934-1969" is the first show dedicated entirely to
the story of what Alberto Barbera, director of the Turin Cinema
Museum and Venice Film Festival, calls "one of the important
attempts to decentralise Italian cinema".
"This show is a reconstruction of a little-explored piece
of Italian cinema," Barbera said.
Some of the fabled directors who worked at the Pisorno
studios included Vittorio De Sica, Mario Monicelli, Joseph Losey
and Mauro Bolognini, as well as stars such as Sophia Loren,
Alida Valli, Amadeo Nazzari, the De Filippo brothers, Ugo
Tognazzi, Fred Astaire, Marcello Mastroianni, Macario and Edwige
Fenech.
The exhibition is free of charge and organised by the
Palazzo Blu Foundation in collaboration with the Turin National
Museum of Cinema.
It includes more than 600 items, from film clips to
advertising and promotional photos, scripts, magazines and sets.
The first film shot at Pisorno - a reference to the
combination of the names of cities Pisa and Livorno - was "Campo
di Maggio" in 1935, directed by Giovacchino Forzano, the
dramatist and famous libretto writer, who was an engine of
creation at the studios.
"Tirrenia, created in the beginning of the 1930s, was one
of the 'new cities', like Pontinia or Littoria, of the fascist
regime," said Cosimo Bracci Torsi, president of the Palazzo Blu
Foundation.
"It was born with a political decision and a precise urban
plan in which it was dedicated to the cinema and to seaside
towns," he said.
"Despite some large productions, it remained a homegrown
environment; it was an amateur Hollywood on the beach".
After Pisorno studios went bankrupt, Carlo Ponti took over
and changed the name to the more international-sounding
Cosmopolitan, and made some films with Sophia Loren, such as
Madame Sans-Gene.
The last film produced at the studios, which are now in
ruin, was in 1969 with Bolognini's "The Absolute Natural", but
the Taviani brothers made a tribute to the studios in their 1987
film "Good Morning Babilonia".
"We recreate the adventure of Tirrenia with sections in
which we've identified key moments," said Giulia Carluccio, the
show's curator and a professor of film history at the University
of Turin.
"It's a history of results but also of missed
opportunities. For example, the first James Bond film, Dr. No,
could have been filmed there. The producer Harry Saltzman went
to visit the studios, but he realised there were some things
missing, and so he made other choices for James Bond," she said.
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