Stars of Italian Cinema: Unseen Archives

The exhibition ‘Stars of Italian Cinema: Unknown Archives’ includes previously unpublished pictures from one of the largest photo archive collections of Italian cinema from the 1950s to 1970s.
Film and photography enthusiasts created the Latitude cultural association to administer this archive of more than 65,000 negatives. Their task is to conserve and augment its funds. Latitude plans to digitise the entire archive in the near future and create an electronic database to provide researchers and cinephiles with broad access to the materials preserved, while also providing opportunities for exhibition.
We are specially honoured to be the first to show a few of the masterpieces the archive has at its disposal to the viewing public.
Photographs included in this exposition were taken in the 1950s, when Italian cinema enjoyed an unprecedented heyday. The authors of these pictures are mostly unknown, but thanks to them we can immerse ourselves in the remarkable, mischievous, sparkling and at the same time very homely atmosphere that reigned on the set of films that are now world classics.
In these photographs we see the legendary figures of Italian cinema — Federico Fellini, Giulietta Masina, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi and many others — at the beginning of their stellar career. The pictures give us access to another, more private side to the work of the ‘stars’ — and this is their value and great charm.
The exhibition includes shots taken on the sets of Federico Fellini’s films ‘La Strada’ (1954) and ‘Nights of Cabiria’ (1957), recognised masterpieces of world cinema and recipients of all possible cinematographic awards, with the main role performed by Giulietta Masina, the director’s wife and muse. Everyone remembers the tragic stories of characters played by Masina, and it is therefore even more interesting to see her ‘offscreen’ — she is funny and also breath-taking, so unlike her heroines.
Photographs taken during the filming of ‘Lucky to Be a Woman’ (1956) directed by Alessandro Blasetti, whose stars are the young Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, allow a completely new look at Loren the voluptuous diva: here she is weary, coquettish, bored and funny.
Pictures that illustrate the process of filming comedies like ‘Cops and Robbers’ (1951) and ‘A Day in Court’ (1954), beloved by Italians but not so well-known in Russia, show the director-actor tandem of Steno (Stefano Vanzina) and Alberto Sordi, whose whimsical character Nando Mericoni, nicknamed ‘the American’, constantly confuses real life with the world of American films. The character proved so popular with the public that a year later he was the protagonist of a new film, ‘An American in Rome’. Several photos from the shoot are also included in the exhibition.