"Magnum Cinema"
The history of the cinema
in the photographs of the Magnum


by Silvia Messeri

This exhibition was not just a documentary show on the cinema but also gives us anidea as to how a film is made. The actors are not just photographed on the set, duringfilm takes, but also shown helpless in the hands of the makeup artists, in sterilestudios during the phases of dubbing and next to technicians during lighting tests.

A selection of over 200 photos, most of them in black and white,by the Magnum Photo, regarded as the most important photographic agency in the world,are now on show in a photographic exhibition organized by Contrasto and the F.lliAlinari to celebrate the centenary of the birth of the cinema.



One of the poster of the photo exhibition
Although the cinema was not one of the Magnum's main interests,the friendship between Robert Capa, founder of the agency, and John Huston, the filmdirector, and ease in which the photographer was accepted in the exclusive circlesof Hollywood, were to procure the Magnum's first contracts in the world of the cinema.These include the memorable ones taken when the agency was given the exclusive photographiccoverage of the preparation for the &qwot;The misfits", the film John Hustondirected in 1960.

This was to be Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable's last film andthe really beautiful photos taken by Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Elliott Erwitt,Erich Hartmann and others, who worked for months on the set, have captured Gable'ssmile and Marilyn's weariness just before the end.

However the Magnum photographers were also attracted to thecinema when they were away from the set; thus we find shots taken in the bustlingstreets of Tokyo with enormous posters of Ingrid Bergman in the background, othersof the huge screens of the American drive-ins while others leave us in front of thetatty entrance to the Cinema Gloria at Santarém in Brazil. Fascinated by theirjourney and without any regrets for the sophisticated images of film stars and divinities.

See also:

Magnum Photos, history of a foto agency


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