皮耶羅·格拉爾迪 Piero Gherardi

Piero Gherardi collaborated with Federico Fellini on his major films of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The styles of these films show an infusion of new artistic qualities into the established practices of neorealist films of the late 1940s. In La dolce vita , 8?, and Juliet of the Spirits , there still was the use of some actual locations and some nonprofessional actors, characteristics of the neorealist movement. But Gherardi and Fellini brought certain surrealistic images into their films, such as the opening of La dolce vita , in which a statue of Christ with outstretched arms is suspended from a helicopter. Though such a situation is plausible the image is striking and memorable because it juxtaposes familiar objects with an unusual context. The sets and costumes of 8? and Juliet of the Spirits established the dreamlike quality of the films. The spa in 8? is not a real location but a set, modeled not on an existing place but on the memories of one Gherardi had visited as a child. Similarly, the train station is a memory—all the viewer sees are a locomotive, a platform, and some steam. In Juliet of the Spirits the conservative heroine's surroundings are mostly white, while the interiors of the house of her liberated friend Suzy are red, yellow, and violet. Juliet's house, an environment of purity, is contrasted to Suzy's, which has the atmosphere of circus and brothel. Gherardi considered a costume as more than a mere covering for a character; it reveals that character and defines the personality. Likewise, his sets did more than give documentary information about a place. Gherardi often mixed the ordinary with the simplified or the surrealistic. In so doing, he emphasized the artificial quality of films and helped to focus attention on characters and situations whose components were as complex as the visual elements.