Gagarin’s message to Anna Magnani was remembered at the Venice Film Festival

At the oldest film review for the premiere of “Commandante” put up a submarine

During the 80th Venice Film Festival, the Excelsior Hotel on the Lido Island opened the exhibition Anna and Gina. It is dedicated to two outstanding Italian actresses at once and is connected with their death. 50 years have passed since the death of Anna Magnani. And in January of this year, Gina Lollobrigida died.

Anna and Gina are presented in different years of their brilliant career next to outstanding directors. Among archival black-and-white photographs there are two paired portraits of actresses. A conditional Magnani chair is also on display. These usually represent filmmakers on the set. The French artist of Tunisian origin Lis Sam saw the ephemeral magic of butterflies in Magnani and made a portrait of the actress from them. The assertion of its ephemeral nature is highly controversial. Still, the acting nature of Magnani is completely different. You look closely at the portrait and see just life-sized butterflies, but as soon as you move away, the familiar image of the actress appears.

At the exhibition, they remembered that Yuri Gagarin sent Magnani a greeting from space. In it, the first cosmonaut paid tribute to universal brotherhood, peace, art and … Anna Magnani. There were legends about this, but no one really knew if it was really so. Magnani was the greatest tragic actress of her time, starring in films by Pasolini, Rossellini, Visconti, Fellini, etc. became a symbol of Italian neorealism. In 1947, she was awarded in Venice for the best actress in the film “Deputy Angelina”. The program “Venetian Classics” on September 2 shows the film “The Most Beautiful” by Luchino Visconti in 1951 with her participation. But the public and journalists are not eager to go there, preferring new pictures of today’s idols, modern Italian cinema, which does not even come close to what the great predecessors did. So the only session for which there are still places is this one.

The organizers of the exhibition also paid tribute to the Italian star Gina Lollobrigide, who passed away on January 16, 2023. Her photographs with Yuri Gagarin went around the world. Gina, he also expressed his admiration, but not from space, but on Earth during their meeting at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1961, where the Italian diva came. She herself asked to be introduced to Gagarin. They walked around Moscow, and the first cosmonaut wrote to Gina in one of the photographs: “I saw many stars in the sky. But there is no one like you.” There is no photo with Gagarin at the Venice exhibition, but his words are quoted. Orson Welles’ Portrait of Gina, filmed in 1958, was shown in Venice Classics. Lollobrigida lived a great life and died at the age of 95. Magnani is more than 20 years older and left this world at 65.

In the center of Venice, next to the Giardini Gardens, another object related to cinema was installed. A 1940 submarine was moored to the shore, where modern sailors now keep watch. Nearby on the embankment is a portrait of the actor Pierfrancesco Favino in the image of submarine captain Salvatore Todaro from the film Comandante by Edoardo De Angelis, which opened the festival. The picture was created in the co-production of Italy and Belgium and refers to the real events of 1940 related to the Second World War. Salvatore and his team rescue the crew of a wrecked ship, risking their own lives and guided by moral principles. Under the laws of war, this should not have been done, but the captain showed mercy. The scene where people are drowning in the cold sea, knocking on the hull of the ship, praying for salvation, is the only one alive in this crudely made picture, it is the only one that gives rise to at least some emotions. Basically, viewers see not “war soldiers”, but textured artists trying their best to be courageous and convincing on the screen. But he is a hero of a completely different era. The picture is of very modest artistic merit and is not entirely suitable for the opening of an anniversary festival of this class. Obviously, it was important to the directorate for completely different reasons, from an ideological point of view. And besides, on an emergency basis, she replaced a picture that had dropped out of the program, which became a victim of the Hollywood strike. So the film about salvation itself became a salvation for the festival in extreme circumstances.