The film “Long-Awaited Dawn” (original title: Finalmente l’alba) by Saverio Costanzo has been released, the premiere of which took place at the Venice Film Festival in 2023. In a costume production with American actors, the Italian director attempted to pay tribute to the glorious past of the film studio “Cinecittà” and at the same time tell the story of how a timid naive girl becomes a strong woman, but his good intentions were lost in the retro decorations, according to Julia Shagelman.
The Cinecittà studio in the nearest Roman suburb was opened in 1937 by Benito Mussolini with the aim of reviving national cinema. During World War II, salon comedies, melodramas, and patriotic films about the glorious past and bright future of Great Italy were filmed here. In 1945, the studio turned into a refugee camp, but in the 1950s, centurions, gladiators, and other kings and pharaohs returned here. American filmmakers were attracted by the low cost of labor and abundance of sunny days, so films such as “Quo Vadis” (1951) with Deborah Kerr and Robert Taylor, “Ben-Hur” (1958) with Charlton Heston, “Cleopatra” (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (1964) with Sofia Loren and Alec Guinness, and many modern-life films were filmed here – for example, “Roman Holiday” (1953). Cinecittà was called “Hollywood on the Tiber,” and crowds of local residents besieged it to join the extras.
Exactly this delightful opportunity to star in a movie is offered to the beauty Iris (Sophie Panitchi) by a young man of slippery appearance who noticed her in the cinema where she was watching a film with Alida Valli (Alba Rorvacher). The strict mother (Carmen Pommella) does not immediately approve of this idea, but still agrees and even accompanies her daughter to the studio, and the younger sister – shy Mimosa (Rebecca Antonacci) – also goes with them. After a noisy commotion at the entrance, during which it is revealed that their new acquaintance somewhat exaggerated his influence, both girls are invited to audition. There, Iris agrees to expose her breasts in front of the producers and ends up in the extras of a historical epic about a treacherous pharaoh. The modest Mimosa, who refused to unbutton her shirt, is sent home, but she gets lost in the studio corridors, where she is noticed by the lead actress Josephine Esperanto (Lily James).
Fulfilling the star’s whim, the bewildered girl is made up, dressed up, and put on screen, and after the shooting, she, along with Josephine, her on-screen and real-life partner Sean Lockwood (Joe Keery), and the accompanying Italian art dealer Priori (Willem Dafoe) end up first at a dinner and then at a party in a wealthy house on the coast. Here, Mimosa, whom Josephine decided to introduce to everyone as a Swedish poetess, will meet her idol – Alida Valli, as well as many suspicious and dangerous personalities, some of whom – such as Sicilian mobster Hugo Montanya (Giovanni Moschella) or jazzman Piero Piccioni (Gabriele Falsetta) – have real prototypes.
One of the sources of inspiration for Saverio Costanzo was the criminal chronicle of 1953: the body of aspiring actress Vilma Montezzi was found on the beach near Rome. The investigation featured the names of Montanya and Piccioni (the father of the latter, the deputy prime minister, had to resign due to scandal), but the reasons for the girl’s death were never established, and the guilty parties were never found. This incident is mentioned in the film, but the detective-thriller storyline is cut off before it even begins, and why it was there in the first place, other than to show the author’s good knowledge of the era, is not very clear.
Neither this knowledge nor the endless listing of names, familiar only to historians of Italian cinema and high society, in no way helps Costanzo create his own version of Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” on screen. It is clear that the journey through a chaotic sinful night is borrowed from there, but it is shown through the eyes not of a cynical reporter, but of a pure naive girl who has to get rid of all her illusions and lose her virginity both literally and metaphorically. The actors, for the most part, who play this out, are of quite average talent and desperately modern appearance (except for DeFoe who stands out), which is not helped by the bland script. This unnecessarily drawn-out party makes you want to leave much earlier than the main heroine finally does.