Dante Ferretti
About
Biography
Filmography
Notes
"'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' is the most important work I have ever had, because this is an awesome movie, all based on scenery; it is a tale, it is utopia, it is reality and there is a lot of action. They go to the moon, inside a volcano, inside the belly of a whale, to Constantinople. This is five movies in one, all difficult to conceive." --Dante Ferretti, from PR for "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen"
On his designs for "Interview With the Vampire": "When I came to New Orleans for the first time, I found all the old buildings not in the city--well, some in the French Quarter--but in the outlying county and plantation homes. I had to rebuild all the waterfront, with the wharfs, and a section of the city. We changed the French Quarter back to wood, because the French Quarter today is iron. I also built a swamp. You can't believe it: we went to New Orleans, which is surrounded by swamp, and I built a new swamp in the studio! For effects, like sunrise, it was better to shoot on the stage because you have more control of the look. Also, we did a lot of matte painting in combination with computers, but it's not a special effects film. Phillippe Rousselot did fantastic lighting to make it look like a painting. Of this I'm proud, because sometimes when you do this kind of film it looks like computer stuff. This looks like a hand-made film." --Ferretti quoted in Imagi-Movies, Winter 1994
Biography
A noted art director who became established in the Italian film industry before branching out into European co-productions and eventually landing in Hollywood, Dante Ferretti designed four films for Pier Paolo Pasolini ("The Decameron" 1971; "The Canterbury Tales" 1972; "The Arabian Nights" 1974; and "Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom" 1975) and five for Federico Fellini ("Orchestra Rehearsal" 1978; "City of Women" 1980; "And the Ship Sails On" 1983; "Ginger and Fred" 1986; and "The Voice of the Moon" 1990). Ferretti moved effortlessly from the down and dirty realism of the former to the dreamy artifice of the latter. He also worked with other major names in Italian filmmaking including Elio Petri, Marco Bellocchio, Liliana Cavani and Luigi Comencini. Ferretti's later international credits include Jean-Jacques Annaud's 13th-century mystery "The Name of the Rose" (1986), Terry Gilliam's fantasy extravaganza "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" (1989), and Franco Zeffirelli's "Hamlet" (1990), the latter two earning him back-to-back Best Art Direction Oscar nominations.
"He comes from a tradition that combines a lavish imagination with attention to period detail," remarked director Martin Scorsese in The New York Times (November 27, 1994), "and those details can comment on the theme of the film." Ferretti did just that in his American debut, Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence" (1993), in which Daniel Day-Lewis' character is as overwhelmed by the oppressively opulent decor as by the propriety of his social circle. To achieve a stylized look of overripe elegance and baroque clutter for Neil Jordan's "Interview With the Vampire" (1994), Ferretti built sixty-five sets, thirty-four of them on the stages of Pinewood Studios, England, recreating six different periods from 1791 to the present as a backdrop for the film's toothsome shenanigans. Again, the two pictures earned him back-to-back Oscar nominations. After creating the harsh and garish look of Las Vegas in the 70s for Scorsese's "Casino" (1995), he reunited with the director to provide the authentic sets and costumes for "Kundun" (1997), the biography of the Dalai Lama. Ferretti's use of gold, saffron and maroon brought the story to vivid life, and he received Oscar nominations for both Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.
From the low-budget constraints of the Moroccan-based "Kundun," Ferretti segued to the overblown production values of Martin Brest's "Meet Joe Black" (1998), for which he was again in top form expressing the elegant, luxurious world of its wealthy characters. Unfortunately, its story of Death assuming human form (in the handsome guise of Brad Pitt) was just too contrived and wispy to support heavy emotional investment. Scorsese's EMT drama "Bringing out the Dead" (1999) kept him in NYC concentrating first on Hell's Kitchen exteriors before moving into a raw space in Bellevue Hospital to create the fictional Mercy Hospital's ER. Brooklyn's Bedford Armory also served as a soundstage for several key scenes, most notably the garish pink interior of "the Oasis," the apartment of a drug dealer. Ferretti collaborated that year with another design visionary, Julie Taymor, on her directorial debut, "Titus." Mixing disparate elements (i.e., ancient and modern locations in Rome, Art Deco settings, technology from the 30s and the future), they freed the film to exist outside of time in a world where motorcycles raced side-by-side with chariots. He then accepted Scorsese's challenge to recreate the mid-1800s Gotham of Boss Tweed for the director's "Gangs of New York" (2002) and he soared when re-creating the lavish, glamorous Golden Age of Hollywood for Scorsese's much-admired follow-up "The Aviator" (2004), for which he and Francesca LoSchiavo collected the Oscar for Best Achievement in Art Direction. The pair continued their collaboration on the psychological thriller "Shutter Island" (2010) and the 3D fable "Hugo" (2011). Ferretti also worked with Brian De Palma on the thriller "The Black Dahlia" (2006) and the Tim Burton vehicle "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (2007). In 2015, he collaborated with Kenneth Branagh on the fairy tale fantasy "Cinderella" (2015).
Filmography
Cast (Feature Film)
Art Director (Feature Film)
Costume-Wardrobe (Feature Film)
Art Department (Feature Film)
Production Designer (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Life Events
1967
Worked on Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Oedipus Rex"
1970
First film as art director, "Medea"
1971
Served as art director for Pasolini's "The Decameron"
1974
First film as art director with director Luigi Comencini, "Delitto d'Amore"
1975
Last collaboration with Pasolini, "Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom"
1978
First collaboration with director Federico Fellini, "Prova d' Orchestra/Orchestra Rehearsal"
1982
Fourth and last collbaration with Comencini, "Till Marriage Do Us Part"
1986
Served as production designer on Jean-Jacques Annaud's "The Name of the Rose"
1989
Earned first Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction for Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen"
1990
Last of five feature collaborations with Fellini, "The Voice of the Moon"; Fellini's last film
1990
Received second Best Art Direction Oscar nomination for "Hamlet", directed by Franco Zeffirelli
1993
American feature debut, "The Age of Innocence"; directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Jay Cocks; garnered third Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction
1994
Received fourth Best Art Direction Oscar nomination for his work on Neil Jordan's "Interview With the Vampire"
1995
Reteamed with Scorsese for "Casino"
1997
Third feature collaboration with Scorsese, "Kundun"; a biopic of the Dalai Lama; earned Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design; first screen credit as costume designer
1998
Provided production design for Martin Brest's "Meet Joe Black"; designs were unprecedented in terms of sets built on a NYC soundstage
1999
Reunited with Scorsese for "Bringing out the Dead"
1999
Provided production design for theater director Julie Taymor's feature directorial debut, "Titus"
2002
Fifth film with Scorsese, "The Gangs of New York"; the film depicted the dark days of Boss Tweed in mid-1800s NYC; Ferretti constructed a period Gotham at Cinecitta Studios in Rome; received BAFTA and Oscar nomination for Production Design
2004
Reunited with Scorsese as the Production Designer for "The Aviator"
2007
Art director for Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"; earned seventh Oscar nomination for Art Direction
2010
Provided production design on Martin Scorsese thriller "Shutter Island"
Videos
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Bibliography
Notes
"'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' is the most important work I have ever had, because this is an awesome movie, all based on scenery; it is a tale, it is utopia, it is reality and there is a lot of action. They go to the moon, inside a volcano, inside the belly of a whale, to Constantinople. This is five movies in one, all difficult to conceive." --Dante Ferretti, from PR for "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen"
On his designs for "Interview With the Vampire": "When I came to New Orleans for the first time, I found all the old buildings not in the city--well, some in the French Quarter--but in the outlying county and plantation homes. I had to rebuild all the waterfront, with the wharfs, and a section of the city. We changed the French Quarter back to wood, because the French Quarter today is iron. I also built a swamp. You can't believe it: we went to New Orleans, which is surrounded by swamp, and I built a new swamp in the studio! For effects, like sunrise, it was better to shoot on the stage because you have more control of the look. Also, we did a lot of matte painting in combination with computers, but it's not a special effects film. Phillippe Rousselot did fantastic lighting to make it look like a painting. Of this I'm proud, because sometimes when you do this kind of film it looks like computer stuff. This looks like a hand-made film." --Ferretti quoted in Imagi-Movies, Winter 1994
About Scorsese's "Kundun": "I did have a very low budget, but Morocco is not a very expensive place. This is the kind of movie where the audience has to believe they are actually in Tibet, so we built everything as real as possible. We used real flagstones for the floors of the sets, and I went to a factory in India to get the type of brocade, silk and fabric normally bought by Tibetan people. To do the construction, we hired a lot of Moroccan carpenters, plasterers and sculptors who did everything the old-fashioned way. Sometimes we had as many as 300 people working at once, but . . . their fees were very low. There would have been no way to do it otherwise, because we had to build the big sets in about 14 weeks."I had very good technical advisors. Namgyal Takla, the widow of the Dalai Lama's brother, helped with the costume research, and I even had meetings with the Dalai Lama himself . . ." --Ferretti to American Cinematographer, February 1998
