Cheer up when you come home after a long day with sore feet and blisters. Your feet aren’t the problem. It’s your shoes.
And it comes from the master, the late Salvatore Ferragamo. In Luca Guadagnino’s loving documentary Salvatore: The Shoemaker of Dreams, he talks about his entire career: I have bad shoes. “
Now, whether you can afford a pair of Ferragamo’s to help your feet live their best life is another matter. It’s interesting to see how relentlessly they researched the human foot to create the perfect pair of shoes with all-important comfort. “I love my feet,” he writes. “They talk to me.” He studied anatomy as a night student at the University of Southern California, where he would ask professors questions about the skeleton, but only the legs.
It uses Ferragamo’s own voice from the recording and his 1955 memoir narrated by actor Michael Stuhlbarg to create Guadagnino’s often charming, unashamedly adored, and perhaps somewhat overstuffed It’s just one of the countless great anecdotes packed into the research of the designer. Working with the Ferragamo family, the director was able to choose from an amazing wealth of material. From family foundations and museum archives, dozens of families to interview, top cultural commentators, and great old Hollywood footage, you can almost feel it. Guadagnino strives to understand everything. Also, he knows that some of us watch movies about Hollywood, fashion and especially great shoes all day long.
And especially if you like shoes that tell a story, these are great shoes. Glittering gold sandals. Ferragamo pioneered platform his soles and wedge heels). Shoe lovers will enjoy a segment where they see this shoe being made today. Cut, glued, and hammered step-by-step, it looks stunningly modern.
Then there are the dangerously defiantly sexy shoes worn by Gloria Swanson in 1928’s Sadie Thompson. This is her high-heeled black pumps with straps around her ankles and a large white bow that screams “Look at me!”
The story begins in the village of Bonito near Naples, where Ferragamo spent his youth as the 11th of 14 siblings. He proves his worth by refuting his father’s idea that shoemaking is a dull profession and making nifty shoes in one night for his sister’s confirmation. At the age of nine, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, at the age of 11 he made shoes, and at the age of 16 he boarded a ship bound for America. After a quick stop in Boston, he hops on a train and heads west — to Santa Barbara, where the fledgling film industry is on the rise. Director Martin Scorsese, the best of many commentators, said in California: You can make yourself 3 or 4 more times.
Watching the early westerns, Ferragamo knew he could make better cowboy boots. After that, he graduates all sorts of movie shoes, including her 12,000 sandals in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 silent epic The Ten Commandments. His name has grown and his fan base includes the biggest stars of the day — Swanson, Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks (and later, everyone from Greta Garbo to Audrey Hepburn to Marilyn Monroe). B) He moved to Hollywood where he lives. He stopped by Charlie Chaplin and Valentino and chatted in Italian. He establishes his own shop, a star magnet.
Guadagnino tells us about the history of Hollywood itself, not to mention the birth of the “movie star” and the role fashion played in it. (It’s a lot of fun.) Then, in 1927, Ferragamo returned to Italy, and he chose Florence as the base for his plans to use Italian artisan labor to make shoes for American customers. It’s a plan with risks and early setbacks. In 1933 he declared bankruptcy and rebuilt, eventually buying a gorgeous 13th-century palace for the company. This is a triumph of his confidence.
Despite countless interviews with family members, it doesn’t always delve deeply into the man’s character and personal life. That eventually changes when he meets his bride, Wanda, a young woman from
After the sudden death of her husband from an illness in 1960, Wanda, 38 and a mother of six children, takes over the business and oversees its expansion into a global luxury brand. . Wanda Her Ferragamo died in 2018 at the age of 96 (luckily she was interviewed for the film). She never worked in her life, and her years at the top of a business empire would have been a compelling element of this story.
But it has to be another movie.
“Salvatore: The Shoemaker of Dreams” was rated PG by the Motion Picture Institute of America for “smoking and thought-provoking references”. Running time: 120 minutes. 2.5 out of 4 stars.
MPAA PG definition: Parental guidance is recommended.
Viewing method
what: “Salvatore: Dream Shoemaker”
when and where: 3:00 PM Friday, January 13, Annenberg Theater (Palm Springs Art Museum), 101 N. Museum Drive, Palm Springs
when and where: 2:15 PM Saturday, January 14, Regal Cinemas, 789 E. Tahquitz Canyon Way, Palm Springs
cost: General seating $13
More information: psfilmfest.org
