Drawing Dreams. The Cinema of Silvano Campeggi (1946-1969)

A lecture by Prof. Giorgio Bacci, Scuola Nomale di Pisa.

In an age in which internet and television didn’t exist, or were taking their first steps, the cinema poster and playbill were “media go-betweens” that filtered, selected and offered spectators goods, namely the actors that were systematically produced by the efficient conveyor belt of the American star system. Silvano Campeggi had a leading role within this complex advertising and marketing machine that had to deal with cultural variations depending on the target market. We find his signature, Nano, on his works for the Italian market made for Metro Goldwyn Mayer and other big studios, between 1946 and 19694. Ben Hur and Gone with the Wind, Roman Holiday and Singin’ in the rain, Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, Clarke Gable and James Dean: these are just some of the films and screen idols that this “top ignitor of sentiments”, as he was described by Gian Piero Brunetta, immortalised in over 3,000 posters, changing how people saw the cinema and its advertising. This conference, starting from the interesting results of a rapidly growing bibliography (both on the art of posters in general and Campeggi’s own production) doesn’t aim to review Nano’s entire production, something impossible to do here, but via semiological-iconographic analysis of some posters show the development in their figurative and communicative efficacy.