by Peter Cowie
Peter Cowie is a former International Publishing Director of Variety, author of numerous books on the cinema, and chair of the annual panel on the Biennale College Cinema program in Venice. A long-time friend and colleague and an early supporter of The Film Verdict project, his enthusiasm and intelligence applied to film offers a constant source of inspiration for those seeking to a “third way” between art and commerce. In this three-part series, he reflects on the history of the Venice Film Festival and those who have shaped it.
PART 1
In my youth, I could never get to the Venice Festival, for the simple reason that it occurred during the very month that I was assembling my annual International Film Guide into page form. So the Mostra remained like a chimera on the horizon of filmgoing experience. At least until 1998, when Deborah Young asked me to fly in to moderate a panel during the festival. It proved a baptism of fire, as our principal guest, the charismatic mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, was running late. “He’ll be here in ten minutes”, an aide whispered into my ear. “Keep talking.” Then about twenty minutes later, another message, “He’s on his way…” Eventually he did climb on to the dais and proceeded to hold forth most eloquently – for what seemed like an eternity.
But my true engagement with the Mostra began almost twenty years ago, when the artistic director, Marco Müller, appointed me a member of the jury of the “Luigi De Laurentiis Award for a Debut Film”. We were accommodated in the legendary Hotel des Bains, with its sprawling gardens, pool, and glorious terraces. Our president was the idiosyncratic, inventive Canadian director, Guy Maddin. Our deliberations were as serene as the lagoon itself, although ruffled by a Russian member of the jury who insisted on watching the films on DVD in her hotel room.
That same year, we attended the world premiere of Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney’s film about Ed Murrow. “George” mania was at its height, and at the press conference earlier in the day one woman had appealed to Clooney “to have my baby.” That evening, the Sala Grande was packed to the eaves. As Clooney took his place in the balcony, you could hear the crowd outside the building chanting his name. The lights went down, the credits began, but the chanting grew from a rumble to what seemed like an uproar. Those without tickets were trying to force their way into the auditorium. With almost effortless cool, Clooney rose to his feet, waved to the projectionist, and the screening came to a halt. Clooney went downstairs and addressed the frustrated crowd. He must have calmed them, because when he returned to his seat, the film could begin once more. The incident captured for me the very personal nature of the Mostra, and the intimate relationship between artist/entertainer and his public in a way that could not have happened at a regular event.
Another image, this time from 2013, embodied the warmth and emotional power of the Mostra, when a portly Lech Walesa rose from his seat to acknowledge the applause for the 87-year-old Andrzej Wajda’s last great film, Walesa, Man of Hope. Raising the director’s hand high, Walesa seemed in awe of the occasion – art and politics fused in an unforgettable moment of rapture.
Many years later, the then President of the Biennale, Paolo Baratta, and the artistic director, Alberto Barbera, asked me to write a brief history of the festival to celebrate its 75th anniversary; and this was duly published by the Biennale.
The birth of the Mostra came about through a number of unrelated circumstances. The Biennale had been promoting the visual arts since 1893, and in the early 1930’s its president, Count Volpi, seized the opportunity to help the flagging fortunes of his two elegant hotels on the Venice Lido – the Excelsior and the Des Bains. Like Lenin in Russia before him, Mussolini saw in the cinema an instrument for enhancing Italy’s cultural prestige and saw to it that funds were made available to the Biennale from 1930 onwards, enabling the autonomous organization to launch first an International Festival of Contemporary Music, and then, in 1932, the “Mostra”, or “Exhibition”, as it became known informally in Italian film circles.
Part Two of this article will appear in tomorrow’s Venice daily.
Peter Cowie continues his reflections on the Venice Film Festival with an eyewitness account of its inauspicious inception.
PART 2
From the outset, the emphasis was placed on an international program that would reflect the most audacious and innovative experiments in filmmaking. Cannes may glory in attracting big stars and “Old Master” filmmakers. Berlin may stand for political commitment, and hence the meeting of Eastern and Western European cinema. But Venice has stayed loyal to the fundamental ideals of the Biennale itself. That much disdained cliché, “art for art’s sake”, can be applied to the Mostra without even a tinge of irony.
Few are alive who can recall the legendary heyday of the Mostra, prior to World War II. Bob Hawkins, who was a colleague of mine at Variety, and had grown up in Italy, remembers being taken at the age of nine to one of the early editions of the festival, in the mid-1930s. What remained in his mind across the decades was the sound of jackboots crunching across the gravel as Nazi officers made their way to their chairs at the open-air screenings in the Hotel Excelsior. Indeed, for Josef Goebbels, the Mostra was seen as the ideal art forum, all the more so after Mussolini became an ally of Hitler. Under pressure from Berlin, Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia was awarded the top prize in 1938 and aroused the ire and indignation of most Western nations. The Mostra’s reputation suffered a savage blow, from which it would really only recover at the end of the 1940s.
And then in 1951, Kurosawa’s Rashomon landed like a UFO in the competition. Not only did it win the Golden Lion, but its aesthetic audacity and complex structure seemed perfectly in tune with the aims of the Biennale itself. Suddenly Japanese cinema was all the rage, and in successive years such masterpieces as Mizoguchi’s The Life of O’Haru, Ugetsu, and Sansho the Bailiff, as well as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, had their European premieres in Venice.
First-time visitors to the festival can be startled to find that the Palazzo del Cinema (including the Sala Grande) dates back to 1937 – as does the Casino building alongside it. Of course, both structures have been refurbished, but each retains its period look. While the Hotel Excelsior kept its significance as a hub for social and business gatherings during the Mostra, the Palazzo del Cinema and the Casino fast became the engine-room of the festival. There is still something engaging about the 1930s modernism of these buildings, especially the Sala Grande, which was designed by the engineer Luigi Quagliata.
My long hours of research in the Biennale’s archives in Mestre taught me many things. First and foremost, that the commercial importance of the Mostra has long been underestimated. As early as 1950, a fledgling market came into being under the guidance of the artistic director of the period, Antonio Petrucci, and its offerings included Antonioni’s maiden feature, Cronaca di un amore. But for decades, Venice declined to establish a “Film Market” of the kind launched in Cannes, in Santa Monica, in Berlin, and of course at the MIFED in Milan.
So the festival was unfairly dismissed as almost “anti-industry”. In fact, apart from what I’d call the “years of austerity” (1969-1978) following the decision to abandon prizes at the Mostra, the stars and their studios came to Venice by the score, revelling in the uniquely beautiful setting. They found themselves under less pressure than at Cannes or even Berlin. And over many a Bellini or Campari on the terraces of the Excelsior or the Des Bains, agents and producers would confer, with ideas germinating and ready for discussion in the months ahead. Nor was the festival ever really restricted to the Lido: directors would give interviews on the terraces of the legendary Venetian hotels – the Danieli, the Bauer Palazzo, the Cipriani, the Gritti Palace – the list goes on.
Peter Cowie’s story of the Venice Film Festival concludes in tomorrow’s TFV daily.
Peter Cowie concludes his history of the festival with a look into the future.
PART 3
In the new century, Venice finally came up with a formula that answered the need for a market. Under the leadership of first Marco Müller, and then Alberto Barbera, the Mostra decided to get involved at the conceptual, rather than “finished sales” stage. By the beginning of 2012, the main thrust of the modern Venice Mostra had taken shape. Two key initiatives marked the partnership of Paolo Baratta, as president of the Biennale, and Alberto Barbera as artistic director.
The first step was the establishment of a quasi-market, the “Venice Production Bridge”, where deal makers could gather before flying on to the more commercially oriented Toronto festival. Under the leadership of Pascal Diot, this would soon comprise “Final Cut in Venice” (projects seeking completion funds and facilities), a “Book Adaptation Rights Market”, and a “Gap Financing Market”.
The second significant development was the Biennale College Cinema. Each year four feature films would emerge from the chrysalis of this programme, each financed wholly by the Biennale to the tune of €150,000 (and since 2022, €200,000), and guided along the way by a fleet of tutors and film industry experts to ensure that each film could reach its maximum potential – as well as being completed in time for a world premiere screening in Venice during the festival. Several of these films have enjoyed distribution and festival exposure around the world – among them Tim Sutton’s Memphis, Alessandro Aronadio’s Hotel Salvation, Anna Rose Holmer’s The Fits, Kohki Hasei’s Blanka, or Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection.
One of the delights of the Venice Festival has been the ability to get into virtually any screening – providing you plan ahead with prudence. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, you need to be a dab hand with a smartphone, negotiating the programme online and ensuring you don’t reserve seats for movies that are being shown at the same time in different venues! Almost all the screening venues at the Mostra can be accessed in a few minutes one from another.
Then there are the lovable quirks and oddities of the Mostra. Only in Venice, for example, could a former leper colony (the Isola Lazaretto Vecchio) be used to present the Venice Immersive section of the Mostra. Or the time-hallowed practice of announcing the presence of each member of a film’s delegation just before the premiere screening in the Sala Grande. And not forgetting the astute measures introduced during the 2020 and 2021 festivals, in the midst of the pandemic, such as discreetly but firmly taking the temperature of everyone entering the festival area, and leaving a seat free on either side of each spectator in the auditorium.
Alberto Barbera and his team, staunchly supported by Roberto Cicutto, the current president of the Biennale, have maintained the size of the Mostra within bounds, avoiding the gigantism of certain other festivals, making each annual gathering a voyage of discovery rather than ten days of mere consumption. And, if this cornucopia of international films proves insufficient, you can always visit the Biennale, held in the Giardini and the Arsenale (a short boat ride from the Lido), as well as Forte Marghera. This year it’s Architecture, under the rubric “Laboratory of the Future”. Come to think of it, that description can also be applied to the Mostra.
END.
