Mara Blasetti
Biography
Rome, 14 August 1924 – Rome, 05 July 2020
Mara Blasetti was among the first women to take on the role of production manager in the Italian film industry. Born to Maria Laura Quagliotti and filmmaker Alessandro Blasetti, she spent her childhood and youth under the sign of the ‘beautiful game’ of cinema.
Although her high school studies at the Sacro Cuore girls’ institute in Trinità dei Monti occupied a large part of her days, Mara Blasetti took every opportunity to accompany her father to the editing room or to the set. Here she formed friendships with prominent personalities such as Goliarda Sapienza, Milena Vukotic, Valentina Cortese, Amedeo Nazzari, Vittorio De Sica, Gino Cervi, Osvaldo Valenti and Sophia Loren.
Life seemed to take her away from cinema when she married engineer Rodolfo Venturoli in 1943, with whom she had a son, Giorgio, in 1948. However, the couple decided to separate after eight years of marriage. Firm in her conviction of wanting to achieve her own economic independence, not giving in to parental pressure for help in any sense, Mara Blasetti ‘slipped into’ her film career ‘as if it were the most natural thing in the world’.
In 1951, she volunteered as an apprentice on the set of her father’s film, Altri Tempi (Olden Times, 1952), working at his side for a decade, as editing secretary, assistant director and finally first assistant director.
During the filming of Amore e chiacchiere (Love and Chatter, 1958), the production manager, Antonio Altoviti, noticed Blasetti’s dedication and organisational talent and hired her as production inspector for the film Europa di notte (European Nights, 1959). This was a fundamental first step in a field that freed her of the label of ‘daughter of art’ and improve her professional prospects. Her last experience on one of her father’s sets was with Io amo, tu ami (I Love, You Love,1961) and this was decisive in this regard. Luigi De Laurentiis, production supervisor and production manager, was convinced of her talents to the point that he invited her to hold the same position for Guy Hamilton’s film, The Best of Enemies (1961).
She began a new phase in her career that saw her involved in international productions for the next twenty years with 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Columbia Pictures and the Champion Film Company, owned by Carlo Ponti. As production manager or production supervisor she collaborated on many films including: Darling by John Schlesinger (1965), Modesty Blaise by Joseph Losey (1966), The Adventurers by Lewis Gilbert (1970), What? by Roman Polanski (1972), Flesh for Frankenstein (1974) and Blood for Dracula (1974) directed by Paul Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol, The Cassandra Crossing by George Pan Cosmatos (1976) and James Bond 007. For your eyes only by John Glen (1981).
Throughout her professional life, she alternated between her role as an organiser on film sets and her equally intense role in the production of advertising shorts for brands such as Coca Cola, Pan Am and TWA Airlines, Suzuki, Toyota, Honda and Blue Jeans, often directed by well-known directors and starring actors such as Giuliano Gemma, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren.
In 1982, after the film Tempest, directed by Paul Mazursky, starring John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Susan Sarandon and Vittorio Gassman, she left her profession to devote herself to caring for her elderly parents.
