Rome re-lives the Dolce Vita in photography exhibit

Two hundred photographs and magazine covers on show at an exhibit opening on Wednesday depict the golden age of Italian cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, as the country reveled in its Dolce Vita age.

Trajan’s Market, a large complex of ruins overlooking the Roman forum in the city centre, hosts on its walls pictures of Italian icons like film-maker Federico Fellini, sitting at the dinner table with actor Anthony Quinn and his wife Giulietta Masina, or foreign stars like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall on a runway at Rome’s airport. “We didn’t want any staged pictures, but natural ones, of stars with their fans or during mundane events,” Marco Panella, the curator of the exhibit, told AFP.

Panella believes Rome’s golden age for movies began in 1949 with the marriage in Italy of US actors Tyrone Power and Linda Christian, followed by production house MGM’s decision to shoot the epic blockbuster “Quo Vadis” in Rome’s Cinecitta’ studios.

La Dolce Vita was a “world of rites and Via Veneto, with its bars and its news-stands, was its center,” Panella said, referring to the central street in Rome home to the largest luxury hotels.

AFP