NAPOLI NEW YORK
2023 · Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Production Designer: Rita Rabassini
Paco Cinematografica — Trieste / Rijeka, Italy / Croatia
SUPERVISING ART DIRECTOR
Naples, 1949. Two orphaned children secretly board a ship bound for New York, dreaming of escaping post-war poverty. Based on an unproduced screenplay by Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli, discovered seventy years later. Dir. Gabriele Salvatores, Academy Award winner for Mediterraneo. Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Dea Lanzaro, Antonio Guerra.
✦ From the set: Trieste's brick architecture and port districts became 1940s New York. Tito's yacht became an Italian ocean liner. A city became another city. A dictator's vessel became a vessel of hope.
The production required the transformation of three distinct worlds. The bombed streets of wartime Naples were filmed on location. Trieste — with its brick architecture and historic port — became 1940s New York.
The third element was the ship: after an extensive search across Europe, the production located the former yacht of Josip Broz Tito, moored in Kraljevica, Croatia — the only available vessel with a profile close to a 1940s Italian ocean liner. As Supervising Art Director, Romolo Pompa led its complete scenic transformation into a transatlantic bound for New York.
