Dante Ferretti, a movie life

Leonardo Di Caprio called him the greatest set designer of his era. Pier Paolo Pasolini, more laconic than a good Friulian, limited himself to calling him a genius. Martin Scorsese has simply admitted that his career would not have been the same without the contribution of his sets. We speak, of course, of Dante Ferretti , one of the greatest talents that Italy has given to world cinema.

Eleven times nominated for an Oscar, winner of three Ferretti statuettes, eighty years old last February, he decided to tell his story and to tell his passion for the Seventh art in " Imagining first " (Jimenez Edizioni, 2022, pp. 272 ), a book born from the collaboration with the writer David Miliozzi . However, one thing needs to be clarified immediately: we are not dealing with the usual celebratory biography because Ferretti certainly does not need to self-celebrate. His career speaks volumes about him and for him.

The book is rather an exciting story of the long journey of an Italian who, starting from the provinces, was able not only to conquer the world, but above all to realize a dream thanks to the talent combined with an abnegation for the work of a great craftsman, even before as an artist.

“Imagining first”, the expression that gives the volume its title, is Ferretti's way of making us understand what it means to be set designer: it means imagining the world that the viewer will see on the screen . But imagination is not enough because that world must then be created, made into a real scene and this requires respect for the effort that shines through in Ferretti's entire story.

A story that begins with the first birth, on February 23, 1943 in Macerata, and continues with a second "coming into the world", in April 1944.

But did the great set designer really have two births, as the subtitle of the book states, or did he want to impress readers with a "special effect"?

«No trick - says Dante Ferretti -, in April 1944 Macerata was bombed and my house was hit by a bomb. I was just over a year old and I was left under the rubble. I was saved by a sideboard which overturned sideways and protected the cradle where I was lying from the collapse of the ceiling. They found me safe and sound after more than a day under the rubble.

A movie miracle…

«In a certain sense, the scenography and the furnishings of my house saved me».

When was your link with cinema born?

«Cinema has always been my great passion. Since I was a boy, whenever I could, I stole a few coins from my father's pockets and went to see a movie. In fact, sometimes I saw two or three during the afternoon. In the 1950s there were many cinemas even in a small city like Macerata and there was no lack of choice».

Didn't they complain at home about these cinematic afternoons?

«I was saying that I was going to study with some friends. The knots came home to roost at the end of the year when I was perpetually postponed in some subject. I gave the worst…in gymnastics where I often took two».

Instead of becoming a director or an actor, love for scenography: how do you explain it?

"I can't explain it. In cinema I was always struck by the setting, internal and external, it made no difference to me. I was wondering who created those scenes and those atmospheres. Finally, a sculptor friend of my father's, a futurist artist, told me that all that was done by the set designer. I understood that this was what I wanted to do with my life."

From Macerata to the cinema the road was long even in Italy full of life of the economic boom. How did the leap to the seventh art come about?

«I told my father that I wanted to go to Rome and attend the Academy of Fine Arts. He looked at me as if to say: 'Do you struggle at school and do you want to go to the Academy?' However, he promised me that if I was promoted to the baccalaureate he would let me go to Rome. Otherwise I would have had to stay and work in the family carpentry. I set to study and got top marks in virtually all subjects. Only in gymnastics did I get a narrow pass! At that point my father was convinced to let me go.

Rome, early 1960s, the Academy…

"Exact. But together with the Academy I also collaborated with an architect who was a cinema set designer. He was always very busy and seeing that I was doing well with the drawings and sketches he asked me to replace him on the set when he couldn't. I found myself working on two films that were being shot – guess what – in Ancona, not far from home. I made myself noticed and began to be called as assistant set designer in increasingly important films. I was not yet twenty…».

He soon began working with the major directors of the day. Can you name us?

«I made nine films with Pier Paolo Pasolini and six with Federico Fellini. And then Elio Petri, Ettore Scola, Marco Ferreri, Liliana Cavani, Franco Zeffirelli».

How did you meet Hollywood?

The first American film was The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, directed in 1988 by Terry Gilliam. It is a film that I love very much and that made Martin Scorsese notice me, who wanted me for The Age of Innocence in 1993. Then came other films and three Oscars, always won together with my wife, Francesca Lo Schiavo, who takes care of the furnishings of the sets».

You and your wife are a bit like the Oscar couple of Italian cinema…

"We have been married for fifty years and we met in Sardinia".

He tells us?

«We met for the first time at Fabrizio De André's house in Portobello. Before, I frequented other areas of Sardinia and it was the director Elio Petri who made me discover Gallura. Now Francesca and I have a beautiful house in Portobello, a house to which we are very close».

Arrived at eighty, he wrote his autobiography: is it time to rest?

"Absolutely not. As I always say, I'm not eighty, but only fifty plus VAT. A VAT, among other things, much lower than that in force in Italy!».