En
Fr
In the aftermath of World War I, former actress Eleonora Duse returns to the stage, confronted with the limitations of her own body and the realities of power that contradict her utopian ideals.
How did you approach this biopic dedicated to this great figure of Italian theater ?
Marco Graziaplena : One of the themes Pietro explores in this twilight film is how Duse, the greatest Italian actress of her time, and D’Annunzio, the greatest Italian writer, were swept away by the irreparable violence of World War I.
Through this updating of the past, the film looks at the present from a historical perspective. It is therefore not a biopic in the classic sense of the term, but rather an evocation of an era that closed the 19th century with the First World War and fascism. Similarly, the character played by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is very loosely based on the real Eleonora Duse. Certain elements are taken from her life, but as the film progressed—in a very naturalistic way—we ended up filming our lead actress playing her own version of the character in the moment. It was extremely fascinating for me to find myself filming this kind of period documentary about a contemporary actress reinterpreting the life of another actress... all filmed to fit in intimately with archive footage from the 1920s.
Did you use the archives as a basis for making the film ?
MG : They feature strongly in the film, but they were selected after shooting. They were meticulously chosen by Pietro with the help of the national archives of the Istituto Luce, the Cineteca del Friuli, Bologna, and Milan. They were then colorized using several digital techniques by Luce’s restoration services and our VFX team, Freak Lab, to fit into the film. For example, those frequent train shots throughout the film. An event on the other side of the Alps, corresponding to the journey across the country in November 1921 of a train carrying the remains of the unknown soldier, which left Aquileia (not far from Udine in Friuli, in the northeast of the peninsula) to reach Rome. But our use of archival footage did not stop at simply inserting it into the edit. For example, in all the scenes where the actors are traveling (by train or car), we never shot any footage. Once again, archive footage was used in the background, with a perspective that is not exactly the same as the archive footage was all chosen after shooting. Pietro even took this idea further by inserting an excerpt from one of his previous films into one of the train sequences through a window. The aim was always to look at our contemporary era in the light of past history and to reinforce this essential link between the significant periods of human history. Our images will be the archives of future generations and will bear witness to our era.
How should we approach a period movie like this one in 2025 ?
MG : The film was shot mainly in Venice and Rome over nine weeks with a fairly substantial amount of preparation, as is often the case with period films. During location scouting, particularly for the theater scenes for which we obtained the legendary La Fenice opera house, we were immediately confronted with an overwhelming reference : Senso. Just think, Visconti himself had shot the opening of his melodrama in this setting, with the rest of the film taking place almost entirely in Venice during the Austrian occupation... so the comparison could be quite complex for us. We therefore watched the film several times, as a natural counter-reference.
But did you still have images in your head ?
MG : We discussed it at length with Pietro beforehand. We tried to build a common ground of references so that we could agree on the shoot. He is an archivist and documentary filmmaker by training. And we are both big fans of the Russian school of documentary filmmaking. We watched a lot of Klimov and Šepit’ko’s films, among others, even though we love Mikhalkov’s humor.
The goal is to achieve something similar to free jazz. The director, actors, and cinematographer each work in their own field at the same pace, leaving room for improvisation. This requires synchronization and a deep understanding of each other.
Our inspirations are also literary and musical ; Russian culture has been essential to our artistic development and is a cultural reference for this film.
We love the mix of heroic, nihilistic, and lyrical styles of the characters in the novels of Lermontov and Turgenev, and we sought to reproduce these sensations in our images. We adore the “working-class” side of Shostakovich, who was forced to write music for films to earn a living.
We talked a lot about history while preparing this film, particularly the Battle of Stalingrad, which was a terrible defeat for the Italian army, fighting alongside Hitler, due to the cold and hunger : Pietro wanted to make a clear reference to this when Duse says, "Maybe we were wrong," followed by Mussolini’s declaration of war, which marked Italy’s entry into World War II.
How did you shoot the film ?
MG : First, I have to tell you about Pietro, who is a very atypical director !
An unconditional lover of cinema, he frames many of his shots himself and is also a collector of filming equipment. He owns several film cameras (Arri 416, Aaton A-Minima, Bolex, Arri 16ST, and an Arri 2C), which we used to shoot this film, along with his lenses (Zeiss S16 11-110 zoom, Cooke Panchro S16, Russian Lomo Foton and Optika Elite lenses, as well as Bolex Switar and Schneider zoom lenses). But his passion doesn’t stop there. He also develops his own film reels at home when he shoots with his own equipment for his documentary work. He even process film himself, at home in the evenings while working on the editing of Duse during the day ! It’s a really unique collaboration when you’re a cinematographer, as he’s quite demanding technically !
So, the film was shot almost entirely in 16mm, sometimes using a 35mm Arricam camera for wide shots and VFX, avoiding the use of too short focal lengths as is the case with 16mm. The film was then developed at the Cinecittà laboratory in Rome. Rushes were made on a Black Magic scanner. Then negatives to Arriscan for the final cut, in 2K for the 16mm and 4K and 2K for the 35mm shots I mentioned
Why did you choose this difference in post-production chain between 16mm in 2K and 35mm in 4K ?
MG : I think that this combination helped us enormously on this film. In the case of Duse, and for this initial idea of making a documentary that could connect with the archive footage, I think Super 16 was the only possible choice. Pietro is a true craftsman ; it would be inconceivable for him to shoot digitally.
The 4K scan of the 35mm was intended for VFX, the rest of the 35mm was in 2K to make the definition more similar to 16mm. Scanning 16mm in 4K doesn’t really add definition, rather you see more grain.
The mix of 16mm and 35mm also distances us from the rendering that has become a kind of new standard in cinema. Even choosing to shoot in 35mm and scan in 4K can, in some ways, really be confused with digital shooting as modern cameras can provide. The size of the negative, which is much smaller, the relationship to the focal length... here we are dealing with something completely different, especially when compared to the recent hype for Full Frame that has taken over film people.
The film relies heavily on close-ups... with a fairly long focal length, quite far from the actors.
MG : We shot a lot, mostly with two cameras, and sometimes three or even four cameras for certain scenes, such as those at La Fenice or during World War I. Pietro wanted to give the actors as much freedom as possible and, once again, capture the moment as if in a documentary. This setup led me to use Angénieux Optimo EZ2 and EZ1 30-90mm and 15-40mm zooms most of the time to be very responsive, integrating them with a series of Cooke SK4 and Cooke Panchro 35mm lenses. As the Angénieux zooms are very bright (T.2), they were perfect in S16mm to make the most of the natural light. These zooms also allowed us to maintain a certain physical distance from the actors and not get in each other’s way between the camera fields. Even though we still shot quite a few wide shots—as explained in 35mm for reasons of focal length being too short in 16mm—it was during editing that the final form of the film took shape, and where Pietro effectively focused on the faces. There are very few long telephoto lenses in this film. But we ended sometimes with an Angenieux HR 25-250,on the camera, which is very light.
What about film stock and emulsions ?
MG : When you shoot in Venice, you have to meticulously prepare your equipment every day because the truck is often an hour away by boat. As a result, I chose to simplify film management as much as possible by shooting with only two films, 500T and 200T. Since no conversion filters were used outdoors during the day, the switch was then made during calibration. The priority was to be inventive and light on this film.
The sequence where Duse is summoned by Mussolini is one of the film’s great moments..
MG : It is indeed a key sequence, both historically and dramatically. It’s a kind of duel surrounded by a whole group of characters in Mussolini’s office.
It’s one of the sequences we chose to film a little wider than the others, with a very frontal angle to reinforce this confrontation. What I really like about this scene is the wig. It’s the only scene where Duse puts on this long brown wig to go to the meeting, and takes it off at the end. She realizes she’s been tricked by Il Duce, but at the same time... hasn’t she perhaps been playing a character in front of him ? This sequence and the next one with D’Annunzio are the key points in the film about the relationship between art and power, and how historical events disrupt and render obsolete the place of art in society. What makes sense today and resonates with the world will often not make the same sense tomorrow. This scene was shot in Rome, in a government building constructed during the Mussolini era. It is one of the only sequences in the film where there are no spotlights. We were on the fifth floor of this ministerial building, which was extremely difficult to access and where it was impossible to place anything outside. I relied solely on the large north-facing windows. I often tried to film without artificial light on this film, but unfortunately our interior daytime shots often had windows that were too narrow to do so.
Any other particular memories ?
MG : The final sequence in the small boat in Venice laguna. There was just enough room for the actresses and the director, who also did the framing. We chose to shoot with an Aaton A-Minima equipped with a small Angénieux zoom lens, which has a very interesting minimum focus, to be as compact as possible. This configuration is so compact that we were able to get shots that I don’t think would have been possible otherwise. It’s almost like being with a camera, but with the rendering of 16mm film. A magical moment.
(Interview by François Reumont, for the AFC)
