Portrait of Gina

1986 documentary film

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Portrait of Gina, or Viva Italia is a 1958 documentary film by Orson Welles. It was funded by ABC TV. Around 30 minutes long, it follows a similar style to The Fountain of Youth (1958) and F for Fake (1973).

It was intended to be the pilot for a television series called Around the World with Orson Welles, which is also the name of a series Welles made in 1955 for British commercial television. The film is about Italy (Welles's third wife, Paola Mori was of Italian nationality) where the filmmaker lived and worked intermittently for about 20 years (roughly 1947–1969). The film discusses both negative and positive aspects of Italian culture. Actress Gina Lollobrigida, who is interviewed at the end of the film, has refused it to be allowed a public release, reportedly because she was displeased by its portrayal of her as an ambitious young actress. Vittorio De Sica, Rossano Brazzi, Anna Gruber, and Welles' wife, Paola Mori, are also briefly interviewed, and the film moves along at a rapid speed.

## History

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When Welles submitted the film to ABC, they complained that they only received one reel of unorthodox material which they deemed unshowable, and it was never broadcast. Two years earlier, Welles had made another TV program, on Alexandre Dumas, père. It too was rejected as being unorthodox, while a further program made in 1956, The Fountain of Youth, was originally rejected on similar grounds (although it ended up getting a late-night screening in 1958, resulting in a Peabody Award).

In the late 1950s, Welles left the only copy of Viva Italia in his hotel room at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris. The film cans were unmarked, and ended up in the hotel's lost-and-found department and were eventually moved to a storage facility. The film was thought to be permanently lost until it was discovered in 1986. It was at that point that it was finally given a public showing at the Venice Film Festival, which is where Lollobrigida saw it and took legal recourse to have it banned, which she succeeded in doing. Between the Italian film festival screening and the completion of Lollobrigida's legal proceedings, the film did have one broadcast on German television (with German subtitles), and so despite the Lollobrigida ban, bootleg recordings of this broadcast continue to circulate.

## Reception

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After it screened at the Venice Film Festival, film critic Nigel Andrews called the film "an inspired piece of editing charlatanry as a Welles growling out questions from a New York studio pretends to be interviewing Vittorio de Sica and others in sunny Italy. The piece is filmed with whirlwind wit, revolving atlases and snatches of the Harry Lime theme."[1]

## See also

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* List of American films of 1958

## References

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1. ^ Andrews, Nigel, "Down and Out On the Adriatic". Financial Times, September 6, 1986.

* Bazin, Andre: Orson Welles: A Critical View. Foreword by François Truffaut; profile by Jean Cocteau; translated from the French by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Harper & Row, 1978.
* Welles, Orson, and Bogdanovich, Peter: This is Orson Welles. Jonathan Rosenbaum, editor. HarperCollins, 1992; reprinted by DaCapo, 1998.

## External links

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* Portrait of Gina at IMDb

* v
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Orson Welles

* Filmography
* Radio credits
* Theatre credits
* Discography
* Bibliography
* Unrealized projects

Feature films|

* Citizen Kane (1941)
* The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
* The Stranger (1946)
* The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
* Macbeth (1948)
* Othello (1951)
* Mr. Arkadin (1955)
* Touch of Evil (1958)
* The Trial (1962)
* Chimes at Midnight (1965)
* The Immortal Story (1968)
* F for Fake (1973)
* Filming Othello (1978)
* The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

Shorts|

* Twelfth Night (1933)
* The Hearts of Age (1934)
* Citizen Kane trailer (1940)
* Around the World (1946)
* The Miracle of St. Anne (1950)
* Magic Trick (1953)
* The Dominici Affair (1955)
* Portrait of Gina (1958)
* An Evening with Orson Welles (1970)
* Orson's Bag
* Vienna (1968)
* The Merchant of Venice (1969)
* One Man Band (1968–1971)
* Moby Dick (1971)
* Orson Welles' Magic Show (1976–1985)
* The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh (1984)

Unfinished films|

* Too Much Johnson (1938)
* It's All True (1942)
* Don Quixote (1957–1969)
* The Heroine (1967)
* The Deep (1967–1970)
* Filming 'The Trial' (1981)
* The Dreamers (1980–1982)

Partly directed|

* Journey into Fear (1943)
* Follow the Boys (1944)
* Black Magic (1949)
* Three Cases of Murder (1955)
* David and Goliath (1960)
* The Southern Star (1969)

Adaptations|

* Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
* Treasure Island (1972)
* Cradle Will Rock (1999)
* The Big Brass Ring (1999)

Television|

* Orson Welles' Sketch Book (1955)
* Around the World with Orson Welles (1955)
* Orson Welles and People (1956)
* The Fountain of Youth (1958)
* In the Land of Don Quixote (1964)
* The Orson Welles Show (1979)

Theatre|

* Marching Song (1932)
* Bright Lucifer
* Voodoo Macbeth (1936)
* Horse Eats Hat (1936)
* The Cradle Will Rock (1937)
* Caesar (1937–1938)
* Too Much Johnson (1938)
* Native Son (1941)
* The Mercury Wonder Show (1943)
* Around the World (1946)
* Othello (1951)
* The Lady in the Ice (1953)
* Moby Dick—Rehearsed (1955)
* Rhinoceros (1960)

Radio|

* Les Misérables (1937)
* The Shadow (1937–1938)
* The Mercury Theatre on the Air (1938)
* "Dracula" (1938)
* "The War of the Worlds" (1938)
* The Campbell Playhouse (1938–1940)
* The Orson Welles Show (1941–1942)
* Ceiling Unlimited (1942–1943)
* Hello Americans (1942–1943)
* The Orson Welles Almanac (1944)
* This Is My Best (1945)
* Orson Welles Commentaries (1945–1946)
* The Mercury Summer Theatre of the Air (1946)
* The Adventures of Harry Lime (1951–1952)
* The Black Museum (1951–52)

Spoken-word|

* The Happy Prince (1946)
* The Begatting of the President (1970)

Books|

* This Is Orson Welles (1992)
* Les Bravades (1996)

Related|

* Mercury Theatre
* Rita Hayworth (second wife)
* Paola Mori (third wife)
* Beatrice Welles (daughter)
* Oja Kodar
* Frozen Peas
* Orson Welles Paul Masson advertisements
* It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles (1993)
* Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014)
* They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)
* Orson Welles (crater)

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