Bombs, blockbusters and vaccines: The dramatic story of Rome's Cinecitta Studios

Italy’s most famous film studio has survived a dictatorship, world war and, now, a global pandemic

A permanent set depicting Ancient Rome at Cinecitta Studios. Photo: Ronan O'Connell

It started as a propaganda factory, was bombed extensively during the Second World War, became a refugee camp, then the heart of Italy's movie industry and, eventually, a popular tourist attraction. Then, to continue its curious journey, Rome's own version of Hollywood, Cinecitta Studios, became one of Italy’s main Covid-19 vaccination centres.

After finding itself at the epicentre of Europe’s Covid outbreak, Italy rebounded strongly, with its tourism industry booming once more. This recovery was, at least initially, driven by its Covid-19 vaccine programme, which was partly carried out at Cinecitta, which for many months hosted the city’s biggest vaccination centre.

This giant movie studio in Rome’s south-eastern suburbs has had a tumultuous journey since opening in 1937. No longer a vaccination site, it is again serving as both a centre for film and TV production and as one of the city’s most interesting tourist attractions.

It has resumed its popular movie studio tours, which are available in Italian four times per day on Saturday and Sunday, and last about 75 minutes, as well as in English in French once a day on Saturdays. They must be booked in advance via the Cinecitta website, at a cost of Dh50 per person.

These guided sessions bring visitors through the backlots of this famed studio, passing locations used to film blockbusters such as Ben-Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1963) and Gangs of New York (2002). In total, more than 3,000 films have been made at Cinecitta, including 51 that went on to win Academy Awards.

The tours can cover only a few sections of this complex — because Cinecitta is gigantic. It boasts four permanent sets, 19 film studios, more than 400 dressing rooms and make-up facilities, and a total of 400,000 square metres of production space, equivalent to about 60 football pitches.

Tours also take visitors through the remarkable backstory of Cinecitta — a tale worthy, itself, of being the basis for a movie.

It all began with Benito Mussolini. By the mid-1930s, the ruthless dictator had become one of the most despised men in history. He had just engineered the brutal invasion of Ethiopia in his quest to establish an Italian Empire, and had developed a relationship with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, whom he admired.

The Italian fascist was particularly fascinated by how Hitler used propaganda. After the Nazis took control of Germany in 1933, they created a sophisticated department of propaganda that brainwashed citizens via film, literature, radio, art, theatre, music and the press.

Mussolini, too, had been seeking to influence his people in these ways. But he wanted to create more polished and persuasive propaganda. So in 1936, he ordered the construction of Cinecitta, a cutting-edge film studio that would become his production line for political spin. When this complex opened the following year, it was decorated with a huge image of Mussolini operating a film camera. Nearby, an enormous sign read: “Cinema is the strongest weapon”.

Mussolini greatly restricted the importation of foreign films. Instead, he filled local cinemas with movies made at Cinecitta, as well as propaganda newsreels that glorified Italian fascism. Thousands of these films and newsreels remain warehoused at the storied studio.

The studio was used to film hundreds of fictional scenes of war and catastrophe. And then, during the Second World War, it became the site of genuine destruction. In 1943, the studio was bombed and badly damaged. These air raids on Rome prompted Italy to surrender to the allies, who turned Cinecitta into a prisoner-of-war facility and then a refugee camp.

After the war ended in 1945, Cinecitta remained out of commission as a film studio. This led to a new genre of Italian cinema, called neorealism, as directors shot their films in actual locations across Italy, rather than on studio lots. By 1950, though, Cinecitta was back, in a big way.

Over the following 20 years, the rebuilt studio became an incubator for some of the greatest filmmakers the world has seen. Among them are Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini and the man widely considered as the greatest Italian director of all time, Federico Fellini.

Cinecitta was like a second home to Fellini. It was here that he created many of his finest films, including La Dolce Vita (1960), the three-hour masterpiece that won the revered Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

About 25 set items from that film and other Fellini classics now form part of a Fellini exhibition at the studio. Also on display are three huge sculptures of the heads of Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. They were among the raft of Hollywood stars who filmed blockbusters at Cinecitta after the Second World War.

And, just as it bounced back from that global conflict, Cinecitta is swiftly finding its feet again in the wake of the pandemic. Neither bombs nor wars nor deadly viruses can defeat Italy’s most famous movie studio.