Translating History of Fashion on Screen
A study of Piero Tosi’s costumes in Senso and their power of divulgation as historiophoty
Flora Ferrara
Department of Media Studies 30 hp
Fashion Studies Master’s Thesis Spring semester 2020
Supervisor: Paula Von Wachenfeldt
Translating History of Fashion on Screen:
A study of Piero Tosi’s costumes in Senso and their power of divulgation as historiophoty
The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that historical costumes can be a valid tool to crystallize and disseminate visual knowledge about fashion and dress history. In the specific, this thesis argues that the screen representation of dress and fashion of the 1860s in the adaptation Senso (1954) provides an evocative contextualization of their past use and meaning for modern viewers. It also discusses the historical accuracy attained by one of the film’s costume designers, Piero Tosi, and his mediation between on-page story and reality. To do this, it visually and textually compares the film costumes, diverse historical documentation and the original novel the film is based on. This analysis is supported by an interdisciplinary theoretical framework: by postmodern history with the concept of historiophoty; by literature and adaptation studies with Genette’s palimpsests and Eco’s reflections on intersemiotic translation; and by costume studies and practitioners with the idea of historical accuracy as a progressive scale and costume as supporting the narrative and balancing the frame.
Keywords: History of fashion; costume; film; adaptation; historiophoty; Piero Tosi; historical accuracy; 1860s; literature; intersemiotic translation.
A big thank you to my family and friends whose support throughout this peculiar period of writing and isolating was crucial to see the light at the end of the tunnel
List of contents
Introduction ... 1
Research aims and questions ... 2
Materials ... 3
A note on terminology ... 5
Literature Review ... 5
Costumes, historical accuracy and bodily practice ... 6
Italian cinema and literature: Piero Tosi, Tirelli, Visconti and Senso ... 7
Nineteenth-century culture: fashion, art, opera, politics ... 9
Theoretical framework ... 11
Methodology ... 12
Outline ... 13
Chapter 1. On Theory ... 12
Costumes and Historical Accuracy ... 12
Literature and Adaptation: Genette’s hypertextuality and intersemiotic translation ... 19
Historiophoty: history on film ... 25
Chapter 2. ‘Magical’ realism: Piero Tosi’s approach and the adaptation of Senso ... 33
Piero Tosi and Sartoria Tirelli ... 34
Piero Tosi’s method ... 37
Senso on page and on screen ... 41
Chapter 3. The costumes of Senso: Forgery of 19th century fashion ... 46
The crinoline and state of undress ... 47
Revolution at the opera and practical wear ... 49
The Garibaldi shirt... 50
Dressing for the opera and ‘variations’ on the theme of the mantle ... 58
What then? ... 75
Conclusions ... 79
Appendixes ... 81
List of Illustrations ... 90
Bibliography ... 92
“A costume designer should be completely culturally literate…Painting, architecture, dress making. They should understand fabric, literature…Because we’re interpreters”
Deborah Nadoolman Landis
1
Introduction
This thesis deals with the representation of historical fashion on screen, that is how costume design for film translates and mediates historical dress for modern viewers. The aim is to demonstrate how historical costumes can influence the public divulgation of history of dress and fashion, also considering their historical accuracy or inaccuracy. This aspect is quite divisive as practitioners have different views: some costume designers would rather capture the spirit of the times with a more expressionist tone or anachronistic elements, like Milena Canonero in Marie Antoinette (2006) or Alexandra Byrne in Mary Queen of Scots (2018), while others would strive for philological detail by using authentic pieces of clothing or by creating almost perfect forgeries/copies, like Italian costume designer Piero Tosi. Besides these thought-provoking stances, this study is motivated also by the far- reaching and popular nature of the moving image which makes it important to comprehend how it can affect the knowledge and the heritage of dress history. In fact, considering that historical films and adaptations are an influential medium for knowing about past events and times and that in general the release of a movie always creates some buzz around it - attracting both popular and critical attention - then one could expect an increased focus on historical dress as well. Regardless of their previous knowledge about history of fashion, viewers most likely would at least think about the images seen on the screen, which also comprehend costumes. Otherwise, an absorption of visual portrayals of the past through cinema could also determine a historical consciousness of fashion based on costumes. In other words, historical costumes could initiate and cultivate the audience’s “visual literacy and familiarity” with fashion and dress history.1 Depending on how designers fashion the costumes, the visualization of the costumes by modern viewers could mean mentally linking them to a certain period in time, becoming more aware of history of fashion, but also, possibly, distorting it.
Historical films and adaptation have always attracted my attention since an early age and I think that this was nurtured by my love for reading, narratives and the art of story-telling. This enthusiasm for this genre of films awakened an interest in historical dress at first and more generally in fashion later. Only when starting to research for this thesis I became aware that my increasing approach to Fashion Studies had actually been filtered by costume. I believe that this early curiosity and awareness have thus influenced me greatly in my academic career both at undergraduate (I graduated with a thesis about analysing fashion in fiction) and graduate levels.2 Besides my personal responsiveness, the topic really deserves general attention. Costumes can be considered a hybrid field
1 J. Petrov, “Tableaux vivants: Influence of Theatre” in Fashion, History, Museums: Inventing the display of dress, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, London, 2019, p. 115, referring to Stephen Bann, The Clothing of Clio: A Study of the Representation of History in Nineteenth-Century Britain and France, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984, p.
58.
2 F. Ferrara, “The Profitable Reading of Clothes: Functions of Dress in three novels”, Bachelor’s thesis, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, 2016/2017, Academia.
2 of study. They sit at the crisscrossing of fashion and cinema studies which, in my view, has both positive and negative effects. The positive one is that costumes lend themselves to an enormous variety of critical connections, in relation to cultural, artistic and social trends in cinema and inevitably dialoguing with those in fashion. Thus, it constitutes such a fertile subcategory in this interdisciplinary field of study. The negative one is that often the two bigger sectors can importantly hinder an independent and specialised focus on costumes. Schools of thought and important themes
‘borrowed’ from cinema and fashion flood costumes studies. This can lead to their overlooking or decontextualization thus losing their sense of connection to their specific function in the story. They are seldom analysed per se and are often used to advance wider arguments within the fields that are not specifically tied to them as a primary material. Therefore, in this thesis I will try to customise relevant theories from different disciplines to help me staying grounded and advance arguments that are intrinsically rooted in their nature.
Considering historical accuracy in film costume is even more sectorial as I study a sub-genre of costumes and a precise approach to it. Moreover, I consider costume in terms of what it can convey about its historical and narrative referents. Therefore, my topic connects the field of costume studies to that of history of fashion. The latter is well established while the former is somewhat younger as an autonomous and self-sufficient discipline. In fact, it is only from the mid-2010s that new journals on the topic have started to be published and cycles of conferences being devoted specifically to approaching costume as a varied practice.3 (In)Accuracy and the relation to history of fashion might not seem a progressive and updated perspective in such a young discipline as costume studies. Still, I argue that the perspective of this study will expand notions of costumes’ communicative potential, and at the same time propose an alternative approach to the study fashion history as well.
Research aims and questions
In the specific, the aims of this study are, on one hand, to disclose how feminine costumes in the historical film and adaptation Senso (1954) can relate to history of dress and fashion, and on the other to reflect on the effects of their historical accuracy or inaccuracy. This study also intends to consider costumes as a product of a shared process of the construction of the mise-en-scène. Consequently, it also aims at understanding the work of the costume designer Piero Tosi that led to the final result seen in the frame and his relevant personal stance towards historical philology. The questions guiding my analysis thus are:
3 For instance, the Ingenta journals, Film, Fashion & Consumption from 2012, and the more specialised Studies in Costume & Performance, from 2016, and Critical Costume, a biennial cycle of conferences and exhibition not limited only to scholarly contributions nor film costumes, founded in 2013.
3
▪ What can historical costumes in Senso do for the understanding of dress and fashion history of the 1860s?
▪ Why should or should not historical accuracy of film costume design matter?
▪ What are the implications of the mediation materialised by Piero Tosi between history and fiction?
These questions exceptionally and critically put costumes and their costume designer ’in the limelight’ and at a multi-layered crossroad which has not been solidly explored yet. This develops a research which is not conducted around or beyond costumes but on and for costumes. Questions are posed in such a way to accept open answers inspired by the materials. Thus, not a simple and unilateral reply based on a pre-conceived thesis or argument forcing a certain theme or meaning through scholarly interpretation of costumes, as it can often occur.
Materials
The empirical sources that will be investigated comprehend three parts: the film selected for the analysis, the original text adapted for the screen, and the historical documentation that can be drawn from both visual and textual media (art, photography, fashion magazines, fashion history encyclopaedias etcetera). In relation to the first and third part, I will also use personal statements and comments by and on the costume designer Piero Tosi, available in catalogues, newspapers, interviews, academic papers.
The film selected is Luchino Visconti’s Senso (1954), freely based on Camillo Boito’s homonymous novella written in 1883 and set in Venice in the 1860s. The contextualisation of its production will be discussed as it influences the style and the outcome.
With regards to the historical documentation on fashion, for precise information about specific sartorial elements, two collections of illustrations from fashion plates and photographs are used.
One is W.C. Cunnington’s English Women Clothing in the Nineteenth Century.4 Despite the title, as Cunnington himself points out, fashion plates were often reprints from French magazines which have historically set the fashion trends in Europe and United States. This collection is very useful for it gathers both the descriptions and images from the fashion magazines and groups them on a yearly basis thus trends are easily dated and can be followed throughout the century. In this way, it is possible to find out when a particular garment started to be publicised. Descriptions indicate fabrics, common combinations of models, colours, occasions of wear, prices, hairstyles and headgear, understructures, other accessories. A glossary supports the reading of obsolete fashion terms. The magazines that cover the time frame under focus, the 1860s and the year 1866 in the specific, present
4 C. W. Cunnington, English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century: A Comprehensive Guide with 1,117 Illustrations, Dover Publications Inc, New York, 2013.
4 in this collection are: La Belle Assemblée (1806-1863), The World of Fashion (1828-1871), Punch (1841-1899), Illustrated London News (1844-1899), London & Paris Ladies’ Magazine of Fashion (1847, 1866-1871), Godey’s Lady’s Book (1865), Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (1854-1879), The Ladies’ Treasury (1858-1894), La Mode Illustrée (1862-1872), The Young Englishwoman (1864- 1876), Fun (1866-1876).
The other collection is Victorian and Edwardian Fashions from ‘La Mode Illustrée’ by Curator Emeritus of the Costume Collection of the Museum of the City of New York, Joanne Olian.5 She selected a wide range of illustrations from the pages of the French magazine La Mode Illustrée covering the years 1860 to 1914. The organisation of this collection is similar to Cunnington’s with plates ordered per year and with a glossary defining terms present in the descriptions. Her helpful
“Introduction” to the plates links together comments from contemporary artists, authors, poets, fashion leaders and journalists and important events and cultural influences to demonstrate that 19th century was for fashion a time of intense borrowings. From art, from the past, from theatre, from other countries, from politics. It thus functions also as secondary source.
Other documentation was sourced from the digital collections and archives of the Victoria &
Albert Museum, Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum and Palais Galliera Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris where I could research specific kinds of authentic garments and see how they looked in ‘real life’ and not only in the graphic reproductions of fashion plates. More information was found in specialized encyclopaedias and dictionaries like The Dictionary of Fashion History.6
Regarding costumes, I heavily rely on stills from a restored DVD edition of the film.7 I could find only one published sketch by Tosi for Senso and three pictures of an extant costume were gently shared with me digitally by the Florentine costume workshop Costumi d’Arte Peruzzi. Important information about his approach to historical costumes, his method, his experience working on Senso is provided by various other sources. These are: the interview “Hide in Plain Sight” published on the academic journal Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media and conducted by film and fashion scholar Drake Stutesman in 2003; a video-interview to him and to other colleagues and film experts about Senso included in the DVD bonus materials conducted in the same year; the 2009 documentary
“L’abito e il volto – Incontro con Piero Tosi” (The dress and the face-Meeting with Piero Tosi) directed by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) which interviews him and his collaborators and follows him in the classrooms of the CSC where he taught Costume for a long time;
5 J. Olian (ed. by), Victorian and Edwardian Fashions from "La Mode Illustrée", Dover Publications Inc, New York, 1998.
6 V. Cumming, C. W. Cunnington, P. E. Cunnington, The Dictionary of Fashion History, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2010.
7 Senso, directed by L. Visconti, Lux Film, 1954, Collector’s Edition distributed by Cristaldi Film, 2007, DVD.
5 the catalogue Esercizi sulla Bellezza (Exercises on Beauty) with interviews to him and his students and presenting the pictures of the photo shootings, examinations for his seminars.8
A note on terminology
In this thesis, the term costume will be used to indicate the appearance of the actors on screen, thus encompassing garments, accessories, hair and make-up worn for their performance as characters of a story. Here, the term does not stand for ancient or folk garments. In terms of its function, it is independent and “antithetical” to fashion which is mainly created for public consumption, glamour and desirability.9 Moreover, I argue that costume is relevant for both history of fashion and history of dress and it may be the case that at some points I will mention one instead of the other for questions of brevity but this does not mean that I consider them interchangeable, though intertwined. Costume can be relevant for both histories because it can tell something, accurate or inaccurate, about the stylistic, sartorial characteristics of past ways of dressing, how dressed bodies looked in the past (history of dress) and also how dress was related to social behaviour in the past (history of fashion).10 Personally, I also distinguish accuracy from authenticity, as properties characterising two different types of objects, respectively, a contemporary-made article more or less resembling an antique one and a surviving historical artifact.
With regards to the different labels of historical film, period film, costume drama and so on which I have found distinguished in the literature, for the aims of this thesis the distinction is not relevant. Any type of film recreating a past world has implications on how we can potentially understand the use, look and context of fashion. Regardless of whether the film portrays a romantic story or focuses on ideological or political revolutions, still actors are dressed as their characters would in the given period.
Literature Review
The secondary literature used for this study ranges a variety of fields. Articles about costumes, historical accuracy and bodily experiences of fashion help me tackle the analysis of the film reflecting on how the different agents can relate to them (costume designers, actors, viewers). For background
8 D. Stutesman, P. Tosi, “Hide in Plain Sight: Interview with Piero Tosi”, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 47, n. 1, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 2006, pp. 106-121, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/frm.2006.0009;
“Speciale Interviste”, Senso, Cristaldi Film, 2007, DVD; CSC, L’abito e il volto - Incontro con Piero Tosi, CSC Productions, 2007, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y2Lr7EbqGA, accessed on 18/05/20; S.
Iachetti, A. Baldi (eds.), Esercizi sulla Bellezza: Piero Tosi e i seminari di acconciatura e trucco al CSC (Exercises on Beauty: Piero Tosi and his seminars on hairstyle and make-up at CSC), Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Roma, and Electa, Milano, 2008.
9 D. Nadoolman Landis, J. Kurland (eds.), “Fashion vs. Costume” in 50 designers 50 costumes: Concept to Character, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, 2004 and “Scene and Not Heard”, PhD diss., Royal College of Art, 2003, p. 31.
10 G. Riello, “The object of fashion: methodological approaches to the history of fashion”, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, vol. 3, n. 1, 2011, DOI: 10.3402/jac.v3i0.8865.
6 information about the film, like the situation of the film industry in Italy in the 1950s, the circumstances around the production of Senso and its makers in the specific, I rely on studies of visual, fashion and film cultures and, for its relation to the original text, on literary articles. Critical studies about 19th century fashion, society, politics, popular trends, art support me in drawing my critical arguments on the eloquence of costumes with regard to history of dress and fashion.
Costumes, historical accuracy and bodily practice
In general, the majority of scholarly papers discussing costumes is often in relation to other widespread themes discussed in costume and film studies such as fetishism, or to the interrelationship between fashion and cinema. This means that there is not a wide-researched scholarly and metacritical focus on the practice of costume, and what the costume designers mean to convey, or even more specifically, on their personal approach to historical accuracy – which obviously has relevance to the final outlook of costumes. I could find few exceptions and I will mention here those which more practically backed my research. Two of them partially form my theoretical framework and will be more deeply and extensively discussed in the corresponding chapter.
Another exception is a short article by dress and textile historian Doretta Davanzo Poli which shows a way of addressing historical accuracy by carrying out a “purely technical exercise” by meticulously reviewing the costumes from Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975).11 She examines many details from various characters’ costumes and stresses their philological adherence to historical sartorial elements, their anachronisms and extravagant deviations, their inspiration from works of art.
Her review is also based on contemporary literature (she inserts excerpts from Casanova’s memoirs) and on interviews to costume designer Milena Canonero retrieved from Internet. This article shows a profound knowledge of the history of fashion of 18th century and it states from the start its independence from the artistic results of the costumes, which received public recognition being awarded with an Oscar.12 Although it discusses a different time frame and thus it does not support me content-wise, this article provided some methodological grounds for my own analysis on historical accuracy based on the interplay of diverse sources and also helped me pin down the aims of the research. In fact, my intention is to investigate more in depth the relation between costume and history of fashion which in Davanzo Poli’s article is only briefly suggested, not being her main goal.
Moreover, through this article I could find the interesting reflections on costumes by Polish-born Italian director Alessandro Fersen, which form an important part of my theoretical framework.13
11 D. Davanzo Poli, “Les costumes de Barry Lyndon: Entre invention fantastique et réalité historique”, Arts and Artifacts in Movie, Technology, Aesthetics, Communication, vol. 7, Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa and Rome, 2010, pp. 95-102. My translation from French.
12 Id., p. 95.
13 Id., pp. 96 and 101.
7 Not directly related to the topic of costume, Joanne Entwistle’s encouragement to approach fashion and dress as bodily experiences in her The Fashioned Body triggered some reflections that help me answer my research questions.14 Entwistle argues that the study of dress should consider its subject as a “as situated bodily practice as a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding the complex dynamic relationship between the body, dress and culture”.15 The situatedness of sartorial behaviour and experiences means acknowledging their “historical and social constraints”.16 Each historical period had its own general bodily experiences determined by the
“structure” of the fashion system of the time, establishing what silhouette should be attained for fashionability, and each individual interpreted it with their “agency” through “dress”.17 Characters of a story portrayed in a realist style, as individual human beings, have their own bodily experiences of the past fashions and interpret it according their gender, class, culture etcetera. As it will be explained, Tosi was quite careful about this bodily and material quality in his creations as it fundamentally affected actors’ way of moving or even just ‘appearing’ in front of the camera. Therefore, I consider it valid to discuss his costumes acknowledging Entwistle’s notions of fashion and dress.
Quite important for finalising my own arguments is the chapter “Tableaux Vivants: The Influence of Theatre” in Julia Petrov’s Fashion, History, Museums: Inventing the Display of Dress.18 Petrov discusses the theatricalization of historical fashion in exhibitions, also drawing comparison between their effects on visitors with those of historical films on spectators. I do not essentially disagree with her critical views on the inhibition of the viewer’s critical engagement with history of fashion in hyper-realistically staged exhibitions. Nonetheless, in my analysis, I will readjust and compensate, if not really contrast, this argument by opposing to it the cases of Tosi’s costumes.
Italian cinema and literature: Piero Tosi, Tirelli, Visconti and Senso
Despite the lack of academic research studies on historical accuracy in costume design, many sources can be found on well-known costume designers because closely linked to the film and fashion industries. In fact, many sources about the interrelationships of these fields mention costume designer Piero Tosi. Plus, to the book and film Senso were dedicated articles and chapters that focused on a variety of themes and on the direction of Luchino Visconti.
Very useful are Eugenia Paulicelli’s comprehensive chapters on film and fashion cultures and industries in Rome in the period between 1950s and 1960s termed Hollywood on the Tiber, in the volumes Film, Fashion, and the 1960s and Italian Style: Fashion & Film from Early Cinema to the
14 J. Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Social Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central.
15 Entwistle, p. 34.
16 Ibid.
17 Id., p. 57.
18 J. Petrov, "Tableaux Vivants: The Influence of Theater" in Fashion, History, Museums: Inventing the Display of Dress, London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019, pp. 113–136, DOI: 10.5040/9781350049024.ch-006.
8 Digital Age.19 She explains how the combination of post-war foreign investments and Italian artisanal expertise led to a cultural and industrial boom, enabling young figures and enterprises such as costume designer Piero Tosi and costume workshops like Tirelli Costumi to emerge. She also interviews Tirelli’s associate Dino Trappetti, helpful for his insights on Tosi and Tirelli’s archive of historical dresses and costumes.20
More evidence about the significance of Tosi and Tirelli’s contribution to the legacy of dress history is found in the catalogue Donazione Tirelli: La vita nel costume, il costume nella vita (Tirelli Donation: life in costume, costume in life). It is a photographical presentation of the donation of authentic pieces of clothing from 18th century to 20th century and historical costumes by Tirelli to the Galleria del Costume di Palazzo Pitti in Florence introduced by comments by Umberto Tirelli himself, museum art directors and fashion historians.21 Analogous is fashion historian and scholar Sofia Gnoli’s chapter on Tirelli’s fashion collectionism which explains origins and sources of his acquisitions showing the distinctiveness of his archive, one of the biggest in Europe.22
Very important was film and media scholar Ivo Blom’s worthy monography on Luchino Visconti’s cinema, Reframing Luchino Visconti: Film and Art.23 Especially his chapter “Costume and Painting in Senso” is fundamental for two reasons: thanks to his thorough interviews to Tosi he provides detailed information on the whole production process of the film which would have been hard to retrieve otherwise; and for his study on costume through the perspective of art history and media, drawing new comparisons between costumes and paintings and commenting on art as Visconti’s source for his film. Blom does provide comments on the materiality and artistic influences of the costumes which have importantly informed my research, but in the context of his study these are aimed to discuss Visconti’s use of 19th-century European art as visual schema for all sectors of the mise-en-scène. Therefore, his is a starting point for my own analysis. The originality and independence of my own study from his take on costumes is granted by the two different approaches and aims. I focus more specifically on sartorial details and elaborate more extensively on costume’s relation to history of fashion. Moreover, he is less interested in the original novel which he mentions briefly while I analyse costumes also against Boito’s sartorial descriptions.
19 E. Paulicelli, "Fashion, Film, and Rome" in E. Paulicelli, D. Stutesman, L. Wallenberg (eds.), Film, Fashion, and the 1960s, Indiana University Press Bloomington, 2017, pp. 91-111, DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt2005rf6.10; and “Rome, Fashion, Film” in Italian Style: Fashion & Film From Early Cinema to the Digital Age. Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2016, pp. 157-184.
20 Paulicelli, “Appendices: Dressing the Dreams: Interview with Dino Trappetti—Tirelli Costumi Rome, December 2015”, Italian Style, pp. 207-214.
21 U. Tirelli, M.C. Poma (ed. by), Donazione Tirelli: la vita nel costume, il costume nella vita, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 1986.
22 S. Gnoli, “Il collezionismo di moda di Umberto Tirelli” in P. Colaiacomo (ed. by), Fatto in Italia: la cultura del made in Italy (1960-2000) (Made in Italy: the culture of the made-in-Italy 1960-200), Meltemi, Rome, 2006, pp. 121-132.
23 I. Blom, Reframing Luchino Visconti: Film and Art, Sidestone Press, Leiden, 2017.
9 The chapter “One Senso for two countesses” by film specialist Caterina D’Amico de Carvalho’s in Fashioning Cinema: Women and Style at the Venice Film Festival also focuses specifically on this film.24 It very briefly provides an overview of its cultural and historical context, its artistic influences and themes, its relation to the original text, and to a certain extent the costume designers’ work. The volume is the catalogue of an exhibition about the relation of Venice and fashion, in film and on the red carpet. It is the only record I have found of the display of costumes from Senso, and information about two costumes and a sketch by Piero Tosi are provided.25
Finally, the article “Senso da Camillo Boito a Luchino Visconti: storie di un’Italia mancata”
(Senso from Camillo Boito to Luchino Visconti: stories of a missed Italy) elaborates on how the story of Senso is treated by Boito and Visconti, especially focusing on their difference and similarities approaching the historical and political subplot, and considering the reception of the film in this regard.26 This enabled me to be informed about external circumstances to the writing of the book and the production and reception of the film which I would not have been able to detect only from the reading of the original story or from the vision of the film, and it greatly informs the analysis of the costumes as well, as they also are affected by and reflect this theme.
Nineteenth-century culture: fashion, art, opera, politics
With regards to critical approaches to fashion, my analysis is stimulated, enhanced and informed by different specialised studies.
One of these is the catalogue of the Met exhibition Impressionism, Fashion & Modernism.27 Apart from presenting fashionable Impressionist portraits and paintings of scenes from 19th century society, it conducts critical analyses of the paintings in relation to dress and contextualises fashion with media other than art like contemporary critical essays and articles about social mores and events, the sartorial behaviour of the models. This is another example, like the afore-mentioned article by Davanzo Poli, of how the study of fashion is fundamentally based on mixed sources and my study gained many insights on fashion like those on the varied use of crinoline.
In relation to the Metropolitan Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, their websites are important sources where to find specific articles on artifacts in their public collections. For example, I accessed the articles on the photographs of Countess Castiglione and on the commissioned painting
24 C. D’Amico de Carvalho, “One Senso for two countesses” in F. Giacomotti (ed. by), Fashioning Cinema: Women and Style at the Venice Film Festival (Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, 1 September – 6 January 2013), Silvana Editoriale, Milano, 2012, pp. 36-39.
25 “Senso”, Fashioning Cinema, pp. 54-67.
26 A. Iacoacci, “Senso da Camillo Boito a Luchino Visconti: storie di un’Italia mancata” in M. Spedicato, F. Danieli (eds.), Si quaeris caelum, Edizioni Universitarie Romane, Rome, 2017, pp. 119-149.
27 G. Groom (ed. by), Impressionism, Fashion & Modernism (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 26 February – 27 May, 2013), The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2012.
10 of Napoleon III’s visit to Algeria from the Metropolitan website, and those on understructures, mantles, jewels from the Victoria & Albert’s.28
On the specific topic of the Garibaldi blouse I found Mischa Honeck’s article “Garibaldi’s Shirt: Fashion and the Making and Unmaking of Revolutionary Bodies” in Transatlantic Revolutionary Cultures, 1789-1861 clarifying the process of popularization of clothes such this
‘niche’ garment.29 This was possible only in the context of 19th century when geographical and cultural distance no longer mattered for the global spread of fashion thanks to the modernization of mass media, enabling more conspicuous appropriations.
On the note of appropriation, I mention Adam Gezcy’s volume Fashion and Orientalism:
Dress, Textiles and Culture From the 17th to the 21st Century supporting me in the research on the mantles and shawls. It effectively explains the complex and contradictory influences of extravagant Orientalism on fashion and rise of standardization for ready-made industry on fashion.30
Nancy Green’s Ready-to-Wear Ready-to-Work and Lou Taylor’ section on outerwear in de La Haye and Wilson’s Defining Dress are also useful for the research on mantles being the first category of female garment entering serialised production.31
Concerning the social significance of opera in 19th century, where the first important scene of the film is set, I could draw important information about class differences and conventions mainly in the volume The Operatic State: Cultural Policy and the Opera House by Ruth Bereson.32
To conclude, information about the groups of women active in the circles of freedom fighters in the Veneto region during the last period of Austrian occupation was most principally derived from the Venice national library Biblioteca Marciana. On their website, they published an article and a
28 M. Daniel, “The Countess da Castiglione”, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/coca/hd_coca.htm, accessed on 01/06/20, “Study for "Visit of the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress to Algeria", https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/441375, L. Johnston, “Corsets & Crinolines in Victorian Fashion”, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/corsets-and-crinolines-in-victorian-fashion/, accessed on 30/05/20, Victoria and Albert Museum, “A history of jewellery”, https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/a-history-of-jewellery, accessed on 01/06/20, and “Brooch”, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O298989/brooch-unknown/, accessed on 01/06/20, “Mantle”, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O74556/mantle-unknown/, accessed on 07/06/20.
29 M. Honeck, “Garibaldi’s Shirt: Fashion and the Making and Unmaking” in C. A. Lerg, H. Tóth (eds.), Transatlantic Revolutionary Cultures, 1789-1861, Koninklijke Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2018, pp. 140-165, DOI:
10.1163/9789004351561_007.
30 A. Geczy, Fashion and Orientalism: Dress, Textiles and Culture From the 17th to the 21st Century, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2013.
31 N. Green, Ready-to-Wear Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 1997 and L. Taylor, “Wool, cloth, gender and women’s dress” in A. de La Haye, E. Wilson (ed. by), Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning, and Identity, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1999, pp. 30-47.
32 R. Berenson, The Operatic State: Cultural Policy and the Opera House, Routledge, London and New York, 2002.
11 series of original documentation and commentaries recording women’s inclusion and fundamental support in occasion of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification in 2011.33
Theoretical framework
The theoretical framework draws from a variety of disciplines: costume studies, adaptation studies crossing the fields of semiotics and literature, and history. The first chapter extensively discusses the theory which guided the analysis and here I will only very briefly present it.
In consideration of the aim of acknowledging costumes as a result of a shared construction of the mise-en-scène, I feel the necessity to rely partially on the often-overlooked perspective of practitioners. These are the director Alessandro Fersen, active in the second half of 20th century, Deborah Nadoolman Landis and Sarah Jablon-Roberts, two costume designers who have dedicated also to a scholarly approach to costume with their PhDs. Fersen considers the characters’ costumes as turning ordinary, everyday and temporary ways of dressing into a “lasting artistic document”, and I use this concept for arguing the capacity of costumes to ‘crystallize’ history of fashion.34 Nadoolman Landis defines costume with a two-fold function: to support the narrative and to balance the frame through colour, silhouette and texture.35 In the context of period movies, these purposes can extensively but not exclusively involve researching historical sartorial conventions. Jablon-Roberts outlines a definition of historical accuracy encompassing all elements of bodily appearance, including gestures, movements, textures, accessories, materials, colours and so on.36 Her conclusion is that it is a luxury and more often an ideal that of making all elements accurate.37
Genette’s metaphor of palimpsests for the various relations that recent literary texts establish with older ones is used to propose an analogous relation between costumes and historical dresses.
Moreover, I argue that categories of texts he identified - like parodies, travesties, pastiches and, most specifically for this thesis, forgeries – could be easily envisaged being applied to different approaches to historical costume design. Eco and Dusi’s works on adaptation provide the grounds to tackle important aspects of this kind of transposition, like the inevitable differences between the original text, Boito’s novella, and the filmic interpretation.
33 Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, “8. La resistenza degli uomini e quella delle donne” (The Resistence of men and women), https://marciana.venezia.sbn.it/la-biblioteca/il-patrimonio/patrimonio-librario/i-libri-raccontano/percorso- didattico-aspettando/la-resistenza-degli-uomini, accessed on 02/06/20.
34 A. Fersen, “Relazione di Alessandro Fersen” (Alessandro Fersen’s report) in Atti del Convegno Internazionale della moda del cinema e del teatro (Proceedings of the International Conference of Fashion, Cinema and Theatre), Venezia, 8-9 settembre 1951, Centro Internazionale delle Arti e del Costume Palazzo Grassi. Page numbers not given.
35 D. Nadoolman Landis, “Scene and Not Heard: The Role of Costume in the Cinematic Storytelling Process”, PhD diss., The Royal College of Art, 2003, p. 2 and 50 designers/50 Costumes: From Concept to Character, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, 2004.
36 S. Jablon-Roberts and E. Sanders, “The Underlying Definition of Historical Accuracy, Dress, vol. 45, n. 2, 2019, pp.
107-125, DOI: 10.1080/03612112.2018.1537647
37 Ibid.
12 From history, I drew the crucial notion of historiophoty, the visual parallel of historiography, and the idea that cinema is a valid way of commenting history by post-modernist historians Hayden White and Robert Rosenstone. This in order to validate costumes as a visual (and material) representation of historical fashion and dress.
Methodology
The method adopted is qualitative and mixed given the varied nature of the primary sources. A comparative analysis of the materials will be carried out considering the theoretical framework and research questions. This entails also visual and textual analysis because primary sources comprehend both images – film stills, fashion representation in the press and art - and texts – the short novel and Tosi’s interviews. Comparison is not uncommon in translation studies where the original and destination texts are aligned and their differences and similarities observed.38 In this way, a
“descriptively deduced comparative scheme” establishes if there is any recurrence of analogous situations and elements in the story.39 This leads to the “selection” of the features considered
“appropriate to the communicative aim”.40 The selective passage happens in both the action of translation itself and in the analysis of translation.41
The adaptation practices transforming the original text on screen will be discussed as they influence the mise-en-scène, thus costumes as well. A pre-determination narrowing the scope of my research was the decision to mainly focus on Piero Tosi’s costumes – those of secondary characters and extras – even though in two instances I will also focus on two of the protagonist’s dresses, because of their significance for aspects of historical fashion, dramatic effect and because one of these was in reality created by Tosi, and not by his collaborator Marcel Escoffier.
Therefore, a first viewing of the film led to a noticing of certain recurring or highly expressive sartorial elements that I consider worth elaborate on. This means that I do not cover all the costumes present in each scene, but that only after a first examination of this primary source I observed certain units of the filmic image that, personally, are remarkable for their recurrence or effect and thus selected them for the analysis. By this, I do not mean that other aspects or elements that I overlook are not relevant or worth analysing, but that I inevitably have a subjective point of view which makes me notice something different from anyone else. Thus, the pertinence of these aspects of costumes and history of fashion that I choose to discuss is not only in relation to the scope and aims of the research but also determined by my individual, limited perspective.
38 N. Dusi, “1. Teorie dell’adattamento” (Adaptation theories) in Il cinema come traduzione: Da un medium all’altro:
letteratura, cinema, pittura (Cinema as translation: from a medium to another one: literature, cinema, art), UTET Libreria, Torino, 2003, p. 27.
39 Dusi, p. 27, his emphasis.
40 Id, p. 47.
41 Ibid.
13 These elements are compared to ‘analogous’ ones in the original text, when it describes sartorial behaviours, and to primary sources of fashion. This comparison is informed and framed by the costume designer’s own approach. My identification and selection resulted in a focus on important aspects of historical dress and fashion, like class differences and transnational cultural influences.
Thinking how costumes represent these aspects is done without a prescriptive agenda in mind – how it should or could have conveyed history of fashion – but with the intention to understand the process that led to their specific relation in the movie and what can costumes tell about past fashion phenomena.
Outline
In the first chapter, I present and summarize the relevant theories framing my study and critically discuss them in relation to my own subject. I start by the theoretical arguments of authoritative practitioners in the field of cinema, theatre and costume with Fersen, Landis and Jablon-Roberts.
Then, I present literary, semiotic and adaptation studies by Genette with his Palimpsests and Eco’s study intersemiotic translations with supplementary notions by Dusi. I finish with the concept of historiophoty and Rosenstone’s arguments validating the study of history through cinema, or better, the study of historical representation according to cinema’s unique conventions.
In the second chapter, I present the figure of Piero Tosi, his significance for both costume design and fashion history and frame his approach with my own theoretical framework. I very briefly describe the situation of the film industry in Italy in the 1950s and Visconti’s vision conditioning the production of Senso. Then, I outline the characteristics, plot and setting of the two different versions of the story, and explain how these differ from each other using Genette’s categories of transposition practices.
In the third chapter, I carry out the analysis of the costumes focusing on elements of structure with crinoline, practical wear with the female shirtwaist being influenced by male and military clothing, formal wear for the opera, and the eclectic use of mantles, a garment which can be associated to the interplay of an early serialization and standardization in feminine wear with an extravagant Orientalist taste.
In the Conclusions, I wrap up the study by commenting the limitations of this research and inviting potential continuations and widenings of its scope.
In the APPENDIX, I insert supplementary material and visual sources mentioned in the text but less strictly relevant for the analysis, and also few pictures of the extant costumes.
12
Chapter 1. On Theory
The subject of costumes in historical films and adaptations presents manifold aspects to consider, which invite to study and to be inspired by theories and reflections coming from different disciplines and thinkers. My theoretical perspective is built not only on older and more recent views on costumes, from the well-established Theatre Studies to the younger independent Costume Studies, but also on concepts and relations described in Literature and interlingual and intersemiotic Translation. In fact, costumes are inserted in the highly communicative systems of fictional texts, which rely on non- verbal tools as well, plus I consider them analogous to translations in terms of, invisibility of their producers, necessary compromises and (un)faithfulness to the original source. Moreover, discussions between historians help me establishing the validity that films can have in terms of expanding and conveying knowledge about history which I consider being relevant to costumes in relation to history of fashion as well.
Costumes and Historical Accuracy
One of the viewpoints on costumes which has strengthened my intuitions and had a great impact on my own interpretation is that of Polish-born Italian dramatist, actor and director, Alessandro Fersen, active from the 1940s to the 1980s. I was able to read his reflections on costume thanks to the prompt helpfulness of the library of the Center of Studies of History of Fashion, Textiles and Costume in Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice, which could forward me the proceedings of his speech. In 1951, the then-existing International Centre of Arts and Costumes of Palazzo Grassi in Venice held a congress on fashion in cinema and theatre and invited known directors, production designers, actors, journalists etcetera; some of them directly addressed the issue of costumes and their relation to fashion.1
Fersen built his reflections on a now popular passage from Charles Baudelaire’s Painter of Modern Life (1863). It is an excerpt from the section “Modernity” where the poet asserts that art should not overlook and scorn the transitory because, together with the eternal, it makes up beauty which would be abstract and undefinable without the ephemerality of fashion. The aim of modern art, according to Baudelaire, is to find the poetic, the beautiful, the eternal in the transitory. Therefore, he reproaches contemporary artists for copying gesture, costume and look of the past to insert them in a modern painting. He is quite clear when he declares “[w]oe to him who studies the antique for anything else but pure art, logic and general method!” since being too acquainted with the past makes lose contact with one’s own current “circumstance”.2 This statement would incontestably make any
1 A. Fersen, “Relazione di Alessandro Fersen” (Alessandro Fersen’s report) in Atti del Convegno Internazionale della moda del cinema e del teatro (Proceedings of the International Conference of Fashion, Cinema and Theatre), Venezia, 8-9 settembre 1951, Centro Internazionale delle Arti e del Costume Palazzo Grassi. Page numbers not given. Contextual information on the conference was available thanks to the article by Davanzo Poli, pp. 95-96.
2 C. Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863) in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. and ed. by Jonathan Maine, Phaidon Press, London, 1995, p. 14.
13 historical representation inadequate for the present and its contemporary artistic endeavours. It would be worth noting, though, that only few decades later the most technologically advanced artistic medium of that time, the cinematographer, would have been extensively used exactly for the portrayal of historical figures and events.3 Nonetheless, Baudelaire himself is not so blunt throughout his essay.
His critical views towards historicity are found in “Modernity”, which is an advocacy for the rise of an artistic taste closer to the sensibility of his times, but in the previous section “Beauty, Fashion and Happiness” he seems more ambivalent when mentioning historical costumes.
A rhetorical examination of 18th century fashion plates triggers Baudelaire in imagining the dresses beyond their current stiffness given by the engravings.4 He fantasizes about a hypothetical play set in the past and describes how past fashion, thanks to this historical dramatization, can come alive in front of the spectator.5 This “resurrection” is possible when “intelligent” actors and actresses wear historical costumes thus fill the stiff and apparently “laughable” garments with their “living flesh” for the spectator to witness them in action.6 Baudelaire concludes this vision explaining that then “[w]ithout losing anything of its ghostly attraction, the past will recover the light and movement of life and will become present”.7 It would seem that the use of historical dresses is unacceptable when the artist exploits it for “subjects of a general nature and applicable to all ages” as he objects in
“Modernity”, but if the subject specifically comes from the past, it serves the purpose of making spectators understand an old ideal of beauty, that is as interesting as the present.8
Fersen agrees with Baudelaire’s ideas as he explains that art, showing what is eternal through ordinary appearances, then attributes to the latter a sense of “universality” and “consistent and intense truth” which did not have beforehand.9 This view, inspired by Baudelaire’s words, frames his perspective on costumes which can be considered acting in a similar way towards history of fashion because:
If characters, who move on stage and on screen, must document in the most profound way the sensibility of an epoch, then their clothing – in its cut, colour and design – needs to express the human nature which had been forming in that particular historical period. Only by commenting and almost accentuating gestures, contingent attitudes and the variable mimicry of the human body, in what they have of most intimately specific, the character’s dress becomes ‘costume’, shifts from momentary fashion to lasting artistic document. And thanks to this subtle and often
3 R. Rosenstone, “Chapter 2: To see the past” in History on Film/Film on History, Routledge, 2012, p. 13.
4 Baudelaire, pp. 1-2.
5 Baudelaire, p. 2.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Id., p. 12.
9 Fersen, my translation from Italian.
14 elusive surpassing of daily life it contributes to complete the essential and indelible portrait of a certain society.10
In these terms, it seems right to imagine that the work of costume designers in creating the sartorial context to the emotions and actions of characters fitting a given historical period should have effect on how history of fashion can be absorbed. Costume perpetuates it but, in order to do this, must also be different. The actions of “commenting” and “almost accentuating” that Fersen mentions are the practices he believes make it possible for fashion and everyday day dress to be recognised through time. His words support me in preparing the grounds for the discourse about a mediation between the two elements which is necessary for their intrinsic differentiation but also for the unique crystallization of history of fashion and dress.11 He explains further the artistic nature of costumes and what makes them differ from fashion:12
[Costume] becomes a true creation of art in fact only as long as the characters’ clothing transcends common realism to reach […] a more profound and poetic truth. Then dress […] ceases to be the chronicle of a style of clothing and comes to be its symbol and legend.
Thanks to this transfiguring action, to this mysterious alchemy, which transforms, often with minimal tweaks, a turmoil of fleeting fashions into a constant image of a form of life, there is a metamorphosis of daily dress into historical costume, of an occasional and anonymous way of dressing into a model gifted with a vigorous and original vitality.13
It is a widely held opinion that costumes should not simply copy historical dresses and Fersen aligns with this idea with which I agree but that I also intend to problematize. In fact, on one hand this view wants to challenge the idea that historically accurate costumes are more brilliant than imaginative ones, on the other, it stigmatises historically accurate costumes as either inappropriate, banal or limiting for the narrative context.14 Nonetheless, Fersen offers a nuanced position as a jumping-off point: the mediation of costume as “transfiguring action” can be “subtle and elusive”, executed through “minimal tweaks”. The concept of costumes crystallizing history of fashion importantly
10 Fersen, my translation of the text from Italian, his emphasis.
11 This statement does not intend to exclude other ways in which history of fashion can be diffused (art, exhibitions, etc.).
Moreover, also contemporary artworks like portraits can distort the reality of sartorial norms and still be taken as accurate representations. P. Bignami, “Il costume storico? Un abito fantastico” (The historical costume? A fantastic dress) in Bignami and Ossicini (eds.), Il quadrimensionale instabile: Manuale per lo studio del costume teatrale (The unstable quadrimensional: Handbook for the study of theatrical costume), UTET Università, Torino, 2010, p. 6.
12 Fersen also explains how fashion has an artistic nature, always leaning on Beaudelaire’s concepts, when its models represent the exemplary and stylised essence of a particular taste and psychology.
13 Id., my emphasis.
14 Bignami, pp. 4-6; M. Canonero’s interview on http://www.archiviokubrick.it/testimonianze/persone/canonero.html, cited by Davanzo Poli, p. 95, and interviews conducted by S. Jablon-Roberts and E. Sanders, “The Underlying Definition of Historical Accuracy, Dress, vol. 45, n. 2, 2019, pp. 107-125, DOI: 10.1080/03612112.2018.1537647, p. 123.
15 underlies this thesis, and it is with these premises that I am going to approach this mediation in the analysis.15
Alongside Fersen’s more philosophical view on historical costumes, a more concrete outlook at costume by another practitioner contributes to form its definition for this study. Costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis is a well-established figure in both the professional field (she designed for iconic movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Blues Brothers) and the educational one (she is the founding director of the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at UCLA and an advocate of her sector calling for full recognition of the role of costume designer); she wrote her PhD dissertation and many volumes on costume design eagerly explaining her profession and what costumes are and are not.16 Her works are a valuable source for researchers as an academic study can thus benefit from the perspective of an experienced practitioner.
In fact, she is firmly critical towards scholars who attribute sense to costumes solely depending on their discipline and personal connotations, completely disregarding the perspectives of those who designed and imbued costumes with meaning in the first place.17 She vindicates a focus on costumes that does not decontextualize them from the story they serve and from the creative background from which they emerged, which is determined most importantly by the director’s stylistic choices.18 It is the purpose of this study to try to analyse costumes respecting and recognizing the operations of the costume designer, which are also one of the focuses of the thesis, and without disregarding the original intentions of the film.
According to Nadoolman Landis, costumes are “tools” to paint the “portrait” of characters whose “voice” already exists on the script.19 Their purpose is two-fold: to support the narrative and to balance the frame through colour, silhouette and texture.20 They serve the story by clearly
“reveal[ing]” the characters to the audience; they show a “heightened reality” since they are designed in a “magnified theatrical scale” - as Fersen also explained when saying that they surpass daily life - and carefully enhanced by the choice of fabrics and cuts considering that they will be distorted and flattened by the two-dimensional array.21 Nonetheless, Nadoolman Landis also states that successful costumes should be “invisible”, “unnoticed” and “accepted…as truthful” by the audience (this applies
15 The term ‘crystallization’ is not uncommon in the field of cinema. Gilles Deleuze uses the “crystal-image” based on Bergson’s philosophy about time in his Cinema II: Time-Image [1985], Bloomsbury Academic, London & New York, 2013, pp. 82-86.
16 D. Nadoolman Landis, “Scene and Not Heard: The Role of Costume in the Cinematic Storytelling Process”, PhD diss., The Royal College of Art, 2003; 50 designers/50 Costumes: From Concept to Character, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, 2004; Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design, 2007; Hollywood Sketchbook:
A Century of Costume Illustration, 2012; Hollywood Costume, 2012, the catalogue of the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition, which she curated and opened in 2012.
17 Nadoolman Landis, “Scene and Not Heard”, pp. 28-29 and 33-34.
18 Ibid.
19 Nadoolman Landis, “Scene and Not Heard”, p. 199.
20 Nadoolman Landis, “Scene and Not Heard”, p. 2 and “Costume Design is Story-telling” in 50 Designers/50 Costumes.
21 Id., “Scene and Not Heard”, p. 3 and “Fashion vs. Costume” in 50 Designers/50 Costumes.
16 especially for contemporary movies but it concerns period ones too) which means that they should blend in with the character and the setting and not look incongruous or distracting.22 The first goal is that costume should be credible, believable for the “dramatic situation” in which the character is inserted that involves period as well.23 Costumes materialize “the psychological, social, emotional”
state of characters and, in order to do this, designers must study them in depth and research extensively in a phase of “serious, painstaking documentation”.24 This is an important point of divergence from fashion designers who design for glamour without knowing the most intimate aspects of those wearing their creations and how they will use them, while costumes are originally designed to appear in a most specific way.25 They should not be glamourous or actually be comfortable or expensive, they only “have to look” as such, if necessary for the script.26 Costumes enable a “recognition” of characters at a “pre-verbal state” and thus function also as a “visual shorthand”.27 Every detail is studied and the smaller sartorial element that might appear in a close-up is meaningful; the costume designer co-works with other departments to “fill” the frame as a painter.28 In fact, all the aspects of the costumes – colour, silhouette and texture – apart from helping actors in their commitment to character, “provide balance and symmetry to the frame” and convey the mood of the scene.29 No matter in what period the film is set and to which genre it belongs, a dense research process is the basis for attaining a conceptualization of the costumes: it entails “astute observation, analysis and imagination” in dealing with the information given by the script and the film director and in drawing any useful reference from other visual arts and literature, nature and memories, other movies and so on.30 Limited time for research and variable resources often lead costume designers to find compromises and “unconventional solutions” to meet the goals and demands set out by the director and the contextual conditions.31
Nadoolman Landis does not focus specifically and extensively on historical costumes but effectively explains her stance towards this topic in few instances and addresses it when analysing her colleague’s Milena Canonero’s work in Tucker (1988), a film by Francis Ford Coppola set in the 1940s. In her literature review, she reproachfully presents a variety of ‘types’ of books on costume (the glossy picture books, the studies of culture historians, the biographies of costume designers and some periodicals). She addressed the topic in her critique of one of these, Maeder’s Hollywood and
22 Nadoolman Landis, “Scene and Noth Heard”, pp. 23 and 34, and “Period vs. Modern: What defines costume design?”
in 50 Designers/50 Costumes.
23 Id., Scene and Not Heard”, pp. 199-200.
24 Id., “Scene and Not Heard”, pp. 22 and 46: and “Introduction” in 50 designers/50 Costumes.
25 Id., “Scene and Not Heard”, p. 23-24, quoting Hollywood costume designer Adrian.
26 Id., “Fashion vs. Costume” in 50 Designers/50 Costumes.
27 Id., “Costume Design is Story-telling” in 50 Designers/50 Costumes.
28 Id., “Scene and Not Heard”, p. 2 and “Painting the frame” in 50 Designers/50 Costumes.
29 Id., “Scene and Not Heard”, p. 2.
30 Id., “The research process” in 50 Designers/50 Costumes.
31 Ibid.
