Viva Italia

[Tony]

I was wondering if anyone has any info on this show, past the brief mentions in the books and articles on Welles; I know that Brazzi and De Sica are in it, and Lollabrigida is interviewed, and it was made for CBS but was never shown. Might anybody know any more? ???

[NoFake]

While I look through my books, here's a brief bit at imdb.com:
Portrait of Gina[/URL

[NoFake]

Hmmm... looks like the link didn't take. Here's another try: http://imdb.com under "Viva Italia," also known as "Portrait of Gina."

[Terry]

Didn't I send you a copy, Tony?

[Tony]

You sure did, Store; I'm just trying to do a little research on it, but there doesn't seem to be much. Please check my e-mail to you.
Tony

[Terry]

This is what Welles said in an interview. I do not know the date:

"It was made for CBS and sent to them, where there were cries of horror and disgust from [CBS President James T] Aubrey there, whose nickname you may remember was The Smiling Cobra. And that was the end of that. I don't think it was much good of a show, in that case The Smiling Cobra was right. I worked very hard on it and the result was a show that looked like it had been worked very hard on. It's all about the pin-up girls of Italy, and I suppose it was better than most. An essay, yeah, but not the same kind of thing."

And Jonathan Rosenbaum had this to say:

"In the late 1950s Welles left behind what is apparently the only surviving copy of this film in his hotel room at the Ritz in Paris. As the cans were unmarked, they wound up in the hotel's lost-and-found department and were eventually transferred to another storage area. Long thought to be lost, the film remained undiscovered until 1986."

[Tony]

Store: When I read stuff like this:

"In the late 1950s Welles left behind what is apparently the only surviving copy of this film in his hotel room at the Ritz in Paris. As the cans were unmarked, they wound up in the hotel's lost-and-found department and were eventually transferred to another storage area. Long thought to be lost, the film remained undiscovered until 1986."

then I think that God, or at least an angel, must be looking out for Welle's film cans, which he was famous for leaving in taxis, hotel rooms and labs all over the world. And when I think of the film thought to be lost that has been recovered over the years, such as It's All True, the original cut of Macbeth, the reoconstructed Mr. Arkadin, the reconstructed Touch of Evil, the film of Don Quixote that Bonanni and his wife saved from destruction, and Viva Italia, then I think it's qiute possible that Welles's work has "special protection" from above.

If the original Ambersons is found, I'm converting. :;):

[Tony]

Here's a little more info, the first from a Bazin interview in 1958, strongly evocative of F For Fake:

Welles: "Now I'm going to finish a film on Italian cinema, on Lollabrigida...A documentary in a very particular style, with drawings by Steinberg, a lot of still photographs, conversations, little stories...In fact, it's not at all a documentary. It's an essay, a personal essay.

Bazin: "An essay based on fact?

Welles: "Not on fact. It's based on fact as much as any essay, but...it's not trying to be factual, it's simply not telling lies. It's in the tradition of a diary, my reflections on a given subject, Lollabrigida, and not what she is in reality. And it's even more personal than giving my point of view; it truly is an essay.

(If anyone can decipher this last part, please let me know! :laugh: )

And here's Bogdanovich and Welles, c. 1970, with a much less philosophical Welles:

Bogdanovich: "What was the television documentary you prepared about Gina Lollabrigida?

Welles: "It was about the Roman movie world. She was the leading subject, but a lot of other people were in it- De Sica and so on. The film was made as a pilot for ABC of a proposed series, a sort of magazine- a serious one, not variety. And they hated it and that was that.

Bogdanovich: "Was it ever broadcast?

Welles: "No. They said it was technically incompetent and couldn't be shown. Had a lot of new ideas in it- done with Steinberg's drawings, many still photos, conversations, little stories- and they regarded that as technical incompetence. I spent a lot of time photographing movie posters. That bothered them too. It was made for that screen [TV], in the newspaper tradition. Me on a given subject, Lollabrigida, and not what she is in reality. An essay. Anyway, they hated it.

Note that a few words in the 2 interviews are almost identical...Hmmmm.... ???

[Le Chiffre]

Here's "Viva Italia (Portrait of Gina)", in three parts on Youtube. This 30-minute program plays like a 7th episode of the "Around the World" series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7R5CBG5rJM

From Joseph McBride’s “Whatever Happened to Orson Welles”:

‘An indication of how warily Welles was viewed by the suits who ran the entertainment business in that era was offered by ABC president Leonard H. Goldenson, who recalled that the network was “desperate for programming and experimenting with all kinds of strange ideas. We were trying to come up with something totally different. One of our worst ideas was giving Orson Welles $200,000 to do a pilot…Welles was vague about what he planned to do. But he was THE Orson Welles, and nobody pressed him too hard. I should have known better.” More than a year later, “Welles turned up with a single reel of 16mm film.” Goldenson seems not to remember “Viva Italia/Portrait of Gina” accurately, describing it as “very poorly done, little more than a home movie of splendid homes and ostentatious yachts, belonging to obscure European royalty.” Perhaps his fuzziness bears out Welles’s own recollection that the executive who watched and rejected the film was not Goldenson, but his head of programming, the notorious Jim “The Smiling Cobra” Aubrey. But Goldenson leaves no doubt about the contempt with which Welles’s work was viewed by the network: “In plain language, Orson Welles conned us out of $200,000.”’

[Wellesnet]

Nice writeup on Viva Italia in Film Threat:
http://www.filmthreat.com/features/2351/

Make Mine Criterion:
http://makeminecriterion.wordpress.com/ ... lles-1958/

[tadao]

This screened at the BFI on August 19th, 2015 as part of Stefan Droessler's 'Around the World' programme and I thought it a real highlight of that selection. It was entirely new to me and was shown from a very good element, slightly more complete than the YouTube version which truncates the end credits and omits the opening sequence, which uses the Trivision rotating billboard in a stylish fashion, like the flashy interstitial adcaps, and is followed by introductory on-camera remarks from Welles also missing from YouTube.

I was struck by how closely the playful narrative and editing style feels uniform with F For Fake; the opening reel with the Italian pin-ups stills montage, and Rossano Brazzi semi-interview employ very much the same mode of fast-paced montage trickery from the later film, reminding me in particular of the intercutting between de Hory and Irving, and Welles's self-insertion into sequences that Reichenbach shot alone. I think Herr Droessler in the introduction made the comparison to the MacLiammoir/Edwards segment in Filming Othello too. Paola Mori's persona in a brief appearance with a 16mm camera even seems to prefigure the same kind of depiction of interlocutor/collaborator/muse expanded on for Oja in that film, and de Sica in conversation at the edit table is also evocative of Fake and Filming Othello.

The energetic inventiveness settles into a more staid mode for the interview with Gina Lollabrigida's penpal and the actress herself, and I can see that these could read to TV execs as incompetent in technique and uninteresting in subject matter. They don't make such a feature of their artifice and mediation, which to me feels like one of the great strengths of the earlier part of the film and of Fake. To me it's a piece that is brilliant in parts and prefigures the later completed and mooted essay films, and is well worth a look if like me, it had previously passed you by!

[Tony]

I just watched "Viva Italia" (that's it's title in the closing credits) and I noticed that it uses the same musical theme (the Third Man theme) as does the "Around the World with Orson Welles". In addition, at the end of the show Welles mentions "We'll be meeting soon again, I hope, somewhere else in the world". It looks as though Welles were trying to restart the series; I was wondering if anyone else has any info on this acquired in the last few years.

In addition, I was really amazed at how this program really hops along, what with Welles speaking a mile a minute and interrupting all the time; it's really an interesting oddity- and so annoying since the first 20 minutes are spent with Welles interviewing everyone except Lollabrigida, and then leaving only five minutes for the great one; still, it's not actually called "Portrait of Gina". I would love for all of Welles's tv programs to be put out together in a box set...

[Terry]

It's turned up again on Youtube in the best-quality copy I've yet seen (a VHS rip with PAL speedup and the need for some cropping - download it and play it at 96% speed if you can.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AwApM-yLH8

[Le Chiffre]

Another great find, Terry! This is not only the best looking recording of this show that I've seen, but it's also the first time I've ever seen the complete show. In all other recordings of it, the beginning and end were missing.

Maybe someday we'll even get to watch it without the German subs!