Future Eva on the Red Carpet
The ‘minor’ history of La Biennale di Venezia’s Venice Film Festival has often crossed paths with the greater History of the Twentieth Century, blending into it or reflecting its events – like in a reverse mirror – necessarily leaving some trace on its apparently bright and immaculate surface. The complicated interactions with the Nazi-Fascist regime in the 1930s, the reconstruction period following World War II (consisting in exciting artistic results and less glorious low-grade bureaucratic incidents), the phantoms of the Cold War that rippled the still waters of the lagoon, the lasting reverberations of the protest that began with the May ’68 demonstrations and continued for an entire decade, the political diatribe caused by the Biennale of Dissent in the second half of the 1970s. And naturally, the profound, though perhaps less obvious, reflections of the change in customs, morals, habits and social behaviour that characterized the various phases in the growth of the country, which was neither linear nor progressive, but distinguished by rapid leaps forward and sudden stops and steps back, which the Venice Film Festival duly recorded, like a sensitive seismograph.
There are other ways to review the eighty-eight years that separate us from the first edition of the Venice Film Festival, back in the year 1932 of what is known as the Short Twentieth Century, which would have infinite reasons to pray to be forgotten. But in this case, we are pleased to remember because one of the many beautiful things it brought with it is the invention of film festivals, those great collective events of which the Festival in Venice was the prototype and sole paradigm, to be copied and imitated, to compete with and rival in a contest fortunately regulated by fair play and bon ton. Of the many threads running through this history of success, downfall and resurrection, we have chosen one for this temporary exhibition at Forte Marghera, the title of which allows no uncertain interpretations. It is evident that the history of cinema, from the moment that it ceased to be just a curious sideshow to become the most florid industry of mass communication and entertainment, its history, as I was saying, appears inextricably intertwined with the history of the leading men and divas who were one of the major attractions for audiences around the world.
It is no coincidence, furthermore, that the first big stars were mostly women: the process of transforming actors into stars seems to have been closely linked to femininity and to the image of a future Eve, arising from a synthesis between the prima donna of opera fame and the representation of women offered by nineteenth-century European culture (primarily in painting, literature and poetry). Scholars sustain that women could be made into divas more easily than men, because they were the embodiment of some of the fundamental themes of mass culture, such as the aspiration to beauty, youth and the search for love. It was easier and more profitable, by virtue of their natural fascination, to idealise them, to shape them as desired depending on need, to make them less real and more abstract, easier to venerate and be venerated. Not coincidentally, in the liturgy of the festivals-collective rituals which have long replaced other celebrations once delegated to places with a long history of socialization such as church parishes and political parties – the red carpet is a central and essential moment, and has become a touchstone even for those who cannot afford it.
So let’s allow ourselves the pleasure to review, along this short itinerary of 92 images from the Historic Archives of La Biennale di Venezia – ASAC, the history of the Biennale Cinema through the filter of glamour and allure offered by the portraits of some of the many Divas who, for ten days every year, transformed the section of street leading from the Hotel Excelsior to the Palazzo del Cinema into a Venetian version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. Until the spotlights shine on the 77. Venice International Film Festival, the first festival to take place following the long and painful lockdown that brought the world to its knees. The reopening starts in Venice, where (almost) everything began. The rebirth of cinema, which too many had prematurely given up on, too.
