2022 · Director: Saverio Costanzo
Production Designer: Laura Pozzaglio
Wildside — Rome, Italy
SUPERVISING ART DIRECTOR
FINALLY DOWN
Rome, 1953. A shy young woman follows her sister to Cinecittà for an audition and is swept into a transformative night alongside glamorous Hollywood stars. Inspired by the real unsolved murder of Wilma
Montesi. Premiered in competition at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. Cast: Lily James, Willem
Dafoe, Joe Keery.
One of the most ambitious Italian film sets in recent years. Two distinct worlds were built: post-war Rome reconstructed in exterior locations, and the Cinecittà studios of the 1950s where a full Egyptian peplum epic was shot within the film. The centrepiece was the Temple of Thebes — eleven weeks of construction, a sixty-metre palace flanked by sculpted rock walls, a monumental staircase decorated with hieroglyphics, earth and sand covering the ground. The rocks were built on wooden walkways clad in polystyrene, worked with acetone to reproduce ancient weathered stone.
✦ From the set: All exterior sets had been dressed in summer heat — tons of sand laid over concrete to bring 1950s Cinecittà back to life. Then a sudden summer storm hit. In minutes, everything was washed away.
The crew rebuilt from scratch.
