{"id":153431,"date":"2025-09-22T16:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T16:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/153431\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T16:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T16:32:12","slug":"olivia-laing-on-danilo-donati-the-secret-magician-of-italian-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/153431\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivia Laing on Danilo Donati, \u2018the secret magician of Italian cinema\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

You probably don\u2019t know the name Danilo Donati, but you have almost certainly seen his work. He\u00a0was the secret magician of Italian cinema, responsible for turning the wildest visions of Fellini and Pasolini into tangible reality. He created costumes for some of the defining films of the 20th century, winning two Academy Awards. From the cross-dressing libertines in Pasolini\u2019s Sal\u00f2 (1975) to a swaggering Richard Burton in The Taming of the Shrew (1967) to the prisoners in striped pyjamas in Roberto Benigni\u2019s Life is Beautiful (1997), Donati had an outsized influence on the look of cinema and its peculiar visual power. When I came to write a novel about the death of Pasolini, I\u00a0realised he was the ideal person to cast as my hero.<\/p>\n

The first time I consciously noticed one of his costumes was in Pasolini\u2019s The Canterbury Tales (1972). I kept freezing the frame to examine a pouting boy, dressed in a particoloured velvet jacket with puffed shoulders, a standing collar and two shiny heraldic brooches on his chest. It was so sumptuous, so sexy, so totally bizarre, as if Hedi Slimane were making biker jackets for slutty medieval squires.<\/p>\n

\"RobinCostumes by Danilo Donati in The Canterbury Tales (1972), directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini \u00a9 Bridgeman Images<\/p>\n

The man responsible for this dazzling outfit was, in\u00a0Fellini\u2019s own words, \u201ca great connoisseur of art in the body of a variety show dresser\u201d. Donati was a master illusionist who rejected a career as a painter, serving an apprenticeship in television and opera before putting his\u00a0talents at the service of Pasolini and Fellini, two undisputed giants of Italian film. Unlike most costume designers of the period, he wasn\u2019t especially interested in creating historically accurate garments. Instead, he approached each project as an artist, creating clothes-as-sculpture that conveyed the radical essence of a film.<\/p>\n

It was as if Hedi Slimane were making biker jackets for slutty medieval squires<\/p>\n

His collaboration with Fellini began in 1969 with Satyricon, an erotic phantasmagoria of life in Ancient Rome with the winking tagline: \u201cRome. Before Christ. After Fellini.\u201d Donati\u2019s task was to produce \u201csomething timeless and unreal\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009to destroy any reference to factory-produced clothing\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009to remove everything, leaving only the metaphysical.\u201d The luridly draped coquettes and catamites he created pleased Fellini so much that he promptly invited Donati to design the sets as well as costumes for Roma (1972) and Casanova (1976).<\/p>\n

\"ADonati\u2019s creations for Fellini\u2019s Casanova (1976) \u00a9 Bridgeman Images<\/p>\n

For decades, Donati\u2019s centre of operations was Cinecitt\u00e0 in Rome. His workshop in Studio 16\u00a0was an alchemist\u2019s chamber where he might be found rolling out pastry on the cutting table, surrounded by bubbling vats of\u00a0dye. He forged rather than stitched his costumes, his passion\u00a0for cheap, unlikely materials amounting to a kind of Arte Povera of cinema. For the famous ecclesiastical fashion show in Roma, with its roller-skating cardinals and bicycling monsignors, the lace is made from the cardboard plates found under p\u00e2tisserie cakes, while the jewels are halved Christmas ornaments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Donati once said working with Fellini was \u201clike walking\u00a0on the edge of a knife blade\u201d, a balancing act that\u00a0demanded everything he had and drove him to fits of\u00a0fury and despair. He might be asked to create a whale in\u00a0three days, or produce a realistic Roman mosaic by morning (he used boiled sweets). \u201cYou must never listen to\u00a0Federico, only interpret,\u201d he concluded. \u201cIf you listen to\u00a0him, you only arrive at madness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TwoThe ecclesiastical fashion show in Fellini\u2019s Roma\u00a0(1972) \u00a9 Bridgeman Images<\/p>\n

They offer a warning about the danger of too much compliance<\/p>\n

His relationship with Pasolini was different. If Fellini was the great dictator, controlling every aspect of his films, Pasolini was a natural collaborator who, having picked his team, gave them the liberty to do their jobs. They started working together in 1964, on The Gospel According to St Matthew, and their collaboration continued until Pasolini\u2019s murder<\/a> in 1975. Both men were gay, and both had come of\u00a0age under the horrors of fascism: hard facts that made an indelible bond between them.<\/p>\n

Working with Pasolini allowed Donati to be at his most\u00a0original, to expand the vocabulary of cinema by way\u00a0of clothes. For Oedipus Rex (1967), he constructed the costumes by weaving rags, hand-dyeing them in strange shades of peach and brown. He made hats and masks from shells, grass and feathers. To get the right texture for the soldiers\u2019 helmets he stirred sawdust into black paint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AlidaAlida Valli as Merope in Oedipus Rex (1967), directed by Pasolini \u00a9 Alamy\"SergioSergio Fascetti and Renata Moar in Pasolini\u2019s Sal\u00f2 (1975) \u00a9 Alamy<\/p>\n

While I was writing my novel, I realised many of Donati\u2019s costumes still exist, preserved at Sartoria Farani, a Roman atelier established by Donati\u2019s close friend and collaborator Piero Farani in 1962. It\u2019s now under the stewardship of Luigi Piccolo, who told me tales of Donati\u2019s charisma, talent and formidable capacity for bearing grudges while simultaneously modelling a soldier\u2019s helmet and a remarkable undergarment made from shells and knotted strips of tea-coloured rags.<\/p>\n

\"OliviaOlivia Lang\u2019s new novel The Silver Book, to be published on 6 November <\/p>\n

I set The Silver Book in 1975, during the making of Fellini\u2019s Casanova and Pasolini\u2019s Sal\u00f2. It was Donati\u2019s annus mirabilis. He brought to life the decadent, deadening vacuity of Europe in the 18th century, and\u00a0he also created the visual language for Pasolini\u2019s nightmarish masque of fascism, his terrifying and prophetic final film. On the one hand foaming pink lace, and on the other garments to portray power and submission, annihilation and total control.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has watched Sal\u00f2 will remember the clothes of the young victims: bourgeois, conventional, demure. I saw them again at Farani, a rail of cream-coloured schoolgirl dresses with neat white collars and cuffs. They wouldn\u2019t have looked out of place at Prada. Of all Donati\u2019s films these clothes are perhaps the most prescient and powerful; they offer a warning about the fatal danger of too much compliance, too much obedience, when fascism storms the gates.<\/p>\n

\"CapucineSatyricon (1969) was Donati\u2019s first film with Fellini \u00a9 Bridgeman Images<\/p>\n

Donati never stopped making movies. He died in 2001, at work on Roberto Begnini\u2019s Pinocchio. In his last years he also wrote a novel, Il\u00a0Coprifuoco (The Curfew), which was nominated for the 2001 Strega Prize. He despaired about cinema towards the end, disgusted by the phoney effects of CGI, but he\u2019s had an unexpected afterlife in fashion. Multiple designers have attested to his influence, from Karl\u00a0Lagerfeld\u2019s Casanova-themed collection for Chlo\u00e9 in 1977 to Moschino\u2019s AW19 show at Cinecitt\u00e0, inspired by Satyricon, a film much referenced by Dolce & Gabbana too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/a><\/p>\n

I thought of him in particular when I watched Gwendoline Christie weaving and jerking down the runway in the Margiela Artisanal Haute Couture SS24 show. Her face was\u00a0like porcelain. She looked like a\u00a0giant doll, a lovely automaton, and I immediately recalled the most gorgeous of all Donati\u2019s inventions: the dancing doll Rosalba, who waltzes on the frozen Grand Canal at the end of Casanova.<\/p>\n

Cinema was like that, you see. It\u00a0was a repository of dreams, built by hand by people like Donati: a man who dedicated his life to producing illusions that don\u2019t lie, that are beautiful, provocative and\u00a0sustaining still.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Silver Book<\/a> will be published by Hamish Hamilton on\u00a06\u00a0November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You probably don\u2019t know the name Danilo Donati, but you have almost certainly seen his work. He\u00a0was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-153431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}