The 80th Venice International Film Festival will dedicate its Pre-opening event to actress Gina Lollobrigida, the icon of Italian cinema who passed away last January.

The festival will host a double-feature screening of Portrait of Gina (1958, 27’) by Orson Welles, and La provinciale (1953, 113’) by Mario Soldati.

The two films are part of Venice Classics program of the 80th Venice International Film Festival and are part of the initiatives dedicated to the great actress Gina Lollobrigida. A project that also includes two photographic exhibitions in Rome and Venice and an award for young talents, which will be presented during the Venice Film Festival.

Portrait of Gina (1958) by Orson Welles, a fully completed pilot for a television series about “people and places” with Orson Welles as guide. Long thought to be lost, the film it’s an interview by Welles to Gina in her villa on the Appia antica. The film remain undiscovered until 1986, when it was screened at the Venice Film Festival, one year after Orson Welles’ death.

“In fact, it’s not really a documentary at all, but an essay, a personal essay. 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, Lollobrigida, and not what she is in reality. And it’s even more personal than living my point of view; it truly i san essay”. (Orson Welles, 1958)

La provinciale (The Wayward Wife, 1953) by Mario Soldati, is a literary drama about a woman, adapted from the eponymous novel by Alberto Moravia with a screenplay written by the director himself. Gina Lollobrigida, in the role of the main character Gemma, offers one of the finest performances of her career. The original camera negative was used to restore the film, integrated with a dupe for some of the missing or damaged frames. A dual-band soundtrack positive preserved in the archives of the Cineteca Nazionale was used for the soundtrack.

Portrait of Gina is one of Orson Welles’ most unusual projects, focusing on the American director in Rome as he interviews Gina Lollobrigida, as well as other personalities of Italian cinema such as Vittorio De Sica, Rossano Brazzi, Paola Mori and Anna Gruber, Lollobrigida’s lifelong friend.

“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 the end of that. 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.” (Orson Welles, 1970)

On La provinciale (The Wayward Wife): Gemma (Gina Lollobrigida), a working-class girl whose mother (Nanda Primavera) runs a boarding house, is in love with a wealthy young man, Paolo Sartori (Franco Interlenghi). But she cannot marry him because he is her illegitimate half-brother. She gets over her disappointment and resigns herself to marrying Professor Franco Vagnuzzi (Gabriele Ferzetti), for whom she has no real affection. Blackmailed by the Countess Elvira (Alda Mangini), Gemma becomes the lover of a certain Vittoni (Renato Baldini). Franco does not suspect anything. When Elvira threatens to follow the couple to Rome, where Franco is about to be transferred, an exasperated Gemma strikes at the woman and injures her. She succeeds in driving her away and is reconciled with Franco.

“To make La provinciale the way I wanted to, I had to fight to the death with the producer […]. Our quarrel was about this: there were two approaches to choose from, […]: one had been developed by a French screenwriter who had also made some very good movies […]. The Provinciale was well developed, but rather routinely, and the character of the girl’s husband was exactly as Moravia viewed him, an elderly, sentimental and romantic type. The other was mine with Bassani. I told him: “I’m making mine and I’m not making F.’s”, and the producer said: “no, I’m making F.’s, and I’m not making yours, otherwise, I’m not making the movie” so I answered: “All right then, we’re not making the movie”” (Mario Soldati)

The 80th Venice International Film Festival will take place at the Lido from August 30th to September 9th 2023, directed by Alberto Barbera.