1960s Rome
was one of the most romantic and explosive periods in contemporary Italian
cinema and the glamour of celebrity. The era has held a great allure and
charisma even until today, decades later. An exhibition has brought this
seductive age to the London Estorick Collection gallery running until the end
of June.
The
exhibition features some of the most beautiful and captivating images captured during
the sixties of some of the most iconic and stunning movie stars and celebrities
of the time. This was the time of the true Hollywood movie star during the
Golden Age, where glamour and elegance ruled.
The images
included in the exhibition were taken by an Italian press photographer,
Marcello Geppetti, in the sixties. The 80 black and white photographs account
icons like Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, Jane Mansfield and Audrey Hepburn recreating
in the glamorous bars and restaurants lining Rome’s most elite and fashionable
streets.
Geppetti is
also said to have been a part of the inspiration for the character Paparazzo, a
photographer veering through the streets on a scooter to catch a sight of the illustrious
lives of the rich and famous, in Federico Fellini’s 1960 classic Italian film La Dolce Vita.
The
exhibition, titled The Years of La Dolce Vita: The Birth of Celebrity
Culture in Focus, also includes the infamous image of Richard Burton and
Elizabeth Taylor engaged in a passionate kiss while vacationing on a boat off
the Italian coast. Their relationship mesmerised the world with their fiery and
turbulent marriage after meeting on the sets of the movie, Cleopatra, in 1963.
The appeal of
Geppetti’s images is that they capture the scintillating fast-life that gave
rise to the obsession with celebrity that still prevails today – although
Hollywood, unfortunately, might have lost some of that lustre.
