The Years of La Dolce Vita, Estorick Collection

Italy has been considered the best country in the world a few times over the course of history, and the years following World War II were one such period. The conditions were down to luck, but what materialised was down to both skill and genius. From Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini in film, to Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni in visual art, and to Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo in poetry, the arts of this period were nothing short of miraculous in form. The Estorick presents an exhibition drawing on these golden years, relying largely on the vast archive of the photojournalist Marcello Geppetti, who is credited for having taken over one million pictures.

A key player in the world of glamour and scandal in Fellini’s Italy, Geppetti is compared to Weegee and Henry Cartier-Bresson in his immediacy and ability to capture the ‘decisive moment’. His difference, however, is his approach. Where Cartier-Bresson seems to have been awarded with an unshatterable armour of Art, Geppetti was one of the inspirations for the character Paparazzo in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita; he was a snoop no matter how arty. His pictures, true to the spirit of La Dolce Vita, are of the rich and famous, acting wildly and unscripted. His most famous works show Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton kissing on the top of a yacht, and Anita Ekberg firing a bow and arrow at photographers. The latter event is described in Life magazine, 31 October 1960:

“Annoyed by photographers who dogged her from a nightclub, she dashed into her villa, emerged with a bow and a clutch of arrows which she unleashed against men and vehicles. When a photographer tried to disarm her she dropped the bow and went for him, manicured nails high and shapely knee low. Then she spotted another photographer recording the scene, picked up her bow and got him high and outside with a well-aimed arrow.”

The photographers, roundly beaten by such an onslaught, had to hand over their film. True to the nature of Paparazzo, Geppetti handed her a blank roll.

What a great vignette! Such a scoundrel! This will be what makes The Years of La Dolce Vita so incredible, and why Geppetti is a different breed from the tabloid photographers taking upskirt shots and long-lensing Kylie Minogue. While certainly dubious, Geppetti’s photos are well famed, beautifully composed and – as time heals all scruffiness – beautifully old. They are a socio-historic document of a time when the rich and famous were seen to behave, for the first time, like human beings with un-rehearsed emotion. Previously unseen due to the chaos of his archive, this exhibition will, like those he documented, be hard to ignore.