A Workshop by Francesco Pitassio
In the left aisle of the Saint James Basilica in Prague’s Old Town there is the funeral monument of Chancellor Václav Vratislav from Mitrovice (1714-1716), the work of the great Baroque sculptor Ferdinand Maxmilián Brokof (1688-1731). It is an allegorical composition, in the center of which the figure of the chancellor is placed, asleep in the arms of a woman; above him, on the left, the figure of a Fame points to his coat of arms, below on the left the crying female figure of Contemplation. But it is on the right side of the statue that mostly attracts the attention, because of the plastic violence of the figure: Chronos, depicted looking the opposite way from the chancellor and wielding an hourglass in his direction instead, bearded and with receding flesh, with two huge feathered wings drawing a semicircle around the composition. The Greek deity of the Hesiodic Theogony, confused or overlapped with the Orphic one, illustrates an inescapable and devouring notion of Time, also embraced in the Western figurative tradition: an old man ready to devour fame, glory, and youth. How is time, its inexorable flow and the marks it engrains on human bodies, conceived and represented? How do the bodies of actresses and actors bear the traces of the biological transformation associated with the passing of time, and what effect does this have on the stories they contribute to tell and on their careers?
In the late 1950s, the French intellectual Edgar Morin dedicated a pioneering book to the analysis of stardom, The stars (1957). In this work, Morin successfully attempts to establish an anthropology of stardom, opening the volume with a chapter entitled “The Time of the Stars.” If divas and stars in modern media society concretize eternal concerns, categories and substances (the Double, eroticism, adventure, strength), their forms are nevertheless changeable over time: at the dawn of the phenomenon, stars have an almost otherworldly and mythological nature on a narrative level and represent an ideal of eternal youth; at the time Morin writes, however, “stars tend to become profane, but without losing their mythical basic qualities. […]. The canons of beauty-youth that set the ideal age of 20-25 for divas and 25-30 for stars become more elastic.” What about today? What has changed? In the year Le star came out, the average life expectancy in France was 68.9 years, in the United States 69.4, in Italy 67.8. In 1913, when stardom took hold simultaneously, albeit in different forms, in Europe and the United States, it was 51.3, 53.5 and 48.4, respectively. In 2021, a French person can reasonably expect to live to 82.5 years, a U.S. person to 77.2 and an Italian to even reach 82.9! Human forms of existence in the affluent society have radically changed from millennia-old balances. And with them the way we portray ourselves. But not only that. The evolution of media has also accompanied this transition, with generations of movie viewers remaining loyal to cinema, growing old with it, while later generations have identified other forms of entertainment, representation, and storytelling. For example, in the United States, while in the mid-1930s nearly 65 % of the population visited a movie theater each week, three decades later less than 10 % of potential viewers paid a ticket to see a movie on the big screen. Since then, and without considering the crisis due to Covid, such percentages have remained essentially stable. If contemporary statistical data confirm a predominantly youth presence in theaters and motivate the production centrality of genres addressed to it (animation, action movies, super-heroes and horror), a category that did not exist in the golden age of stardom, the one including people over-65 years of age, has a relevance unseen a few decades ago. What is the consequence of this transformation?
When Gloria Swanson plays in Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1951) Norma Desmond, the silent film star, has just turned 52. Yet, the character of the diva excluded from production with the advent of sound and locked up in her own luxurious mansion, obsessed with the desire to return to the set, bears on her the traits of a monstrous and deviant, voracious and deranged senility: the only way to truly return to the set for Norma is to embrace to the core her own madness. Seventy years later, at the same age, René Zellweger embodies the celebrated star and singer Judy Garland, in Judy (R. Goold, 2019), who passed away when she was three years younger than the actress who plays her role, and for this performance she received the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. A year later, the same award is given to Frances McDormand, aged over 60, for her performance as Fern in Nomadland (C. Zhao, 2020), in the same year when Sofia Loren, almost ninety-years old, is awarded the David di Donatello for La vita davanti a sé (E. Ponti, 2020). Bodies, characters, and stories on screens have changed along with our communities and the ideas we have about ourselves, and European cinema has often taken up the challenge in the most courageous and disturbing way. Amour (M. Haneke, 2012), centered entirely around the mishaps of the body and mind of an elderly couple played by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, both over eighty, is perhaps the most lucid and excruciating example of this. Trying to think about who we are and how we think about ourselves (also) through cinema can tell us something about what we can (still) do and be.
In conversation with Roberta Torre
During the Workshop, Francesco Pitassio will dialogue with director Roberta Torre on the themes of stardom and senility with reference to her film The Fabulous Ones (2022).
Le favolose / The Fabulous Ones (2022)
It often happens that, at death’s door, transsexuals are deprived of their identity. Families are ashamed; their funerals take place in great secrecy and the male name given to them at birth is engraved on their gravestones. This is exactly what happened to Antonia. Her friends gather to invoke her, in an attempt to give Antonia her denied femininity. The protagonists, stars of the boundless trans constellation, give life to this story by telling their own experiences, reliving the memories of their journeys.
ROBERTA TORRE
Director, screenwriter, writer, Roberta Torre is recognised as one of the most eclectic artists on the Italian scene. She was born in Milan where, after studying philosophy, she trained at Paolo Grassi and Luchino Visconti. She debuted with two musicals: Tano da morire, the first about the Mafia, and Sud Side Story. His films have won awards at major festivals, including Venice, Cannes and Sundance. She won several David di Donatello and Nastri d’Argento awards with Tano da morire (1998), Angela (2001), Mare Nero (2006), I baci mai dati (2010), Riccardo va all’Inferno (2017).
