Subject
The excerpt catalogued is from “La grande bellezza” (The Great Beauty), a 2013 film directed by Paolo Sorrentino, with screenplay by Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello, considered a masterpiece of world cinematography, having won an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA for best foreign film, four European Film Awards, nine David di Donatello and five Nastri d’Argento.
The director draws on Rome’s Parco degli Acquedotti, between the Via Tuscolana and the Appia Antica, as the setting for one of the film’s most ironic and cynical scenes. The backdrop consists of the monumental arches of the aqueduct known to posterity as the Acqua Clodio, for Claudius, emperor who finished the construction and inaugurated it in 52 AD, although the works were in fact planned and begun in 38 AD under Caligula. At the summit of the aqueduct, two superimposed conduits carried waters from the springs of the Aniene Valley into the city, in the final tract uniting the Acqua Clodio and the Acqua Anio Novus in respective conduits. A performance by a naked body artist, Talia Concept (Anita Kravos), her head beneath a transparent veil, takes place at the foot of the mighty arches constructed of squared blocks of tuff, some 28 metres in height. The scene is witnessed by a gathering of spectators, including Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), lying on the grass of what is now a beautiful public park.
Director
Paolo Sorrentino
Year
2013
