Marina Ceccongna, Italy’s first major film producer, has died at the age of 89

Marina Cicconia, the Italian countess who became her country’s first major film producer, helming famous films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Zeffirelli and Elio Petri, died on November 4 at her home in Rome. She was 89 years old.

And it was her death Announce Directed by the Venice Biennale, the organizer of the Venice Film Festival. No reason was given.

Ms. Cicogna rose to prominence in an era when the only female names on film posters were often those of actresses, and became one of the most powerful women in European cinema, both as a producer and distributor.

I started from a high place. Her maternal grandfather, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, was an industrialist and statesman who served in various government positions, including as Italian Finance Minister under Mussolini. He also founded the Venice Film Festival. In the mid-1960s, when Ms. Sicongna was in her early 30s, she and her brother Benno took control of her family’s production and distribution company, Euro International Films.

However, she faced challenges: working with domineering male authors; Earning the respect of the country’s left-leaning cultural leaders despite her entitled upbringing; And women and men openly date at a time when such topics are rarely discussed publicly by figures of authority.

Her path as a woman was not always easy. “At the time I didn’t think about it,” she said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Roma this year. “But ultimately, yes, the intention to bring you down was definitely there.”

Among the notable films it produced or distributed were Medea (1969), Pasolini’s hypnotic reimagining of Euripides’ tragedy, starring opera singer Maria Callas; “Teorima” (1968), also directed by Pasolini, in which Terence Stamp plays a mysterious stranger who seduces, one by one, the members of a wealthy Milan family; Brother Sun and Sister Moon (1972), Zeffirelli’s brilliant novel about the life of St. Francis of Assisi; and “Investigation of a Suspect Citizen,” Petrie’s Kafkaesque thriller, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1971.

Ms. Ceccongna also had three films at the 1967 Venice Film Festival, including Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour,” starring Catherine Deneuve as a Parisian housewife secretly working in a brothel, which won the festival’s highest award, the Golden Lion . In addition, she put her stamp on the event by throwing a lavish party that has become a festival tradition.

“I didn’t talk about a big ball, I said everyone could wear whatever clothes they wanted, as long as they were white and yellow or white and gold,” Ms. Cicogna said in a 2013 interview with T magazine, The New York. Style Times Magazine. “I sent two small Learjets, one to Corsica to pick up Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the other to Rome to pick up Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim.”

Such conspicuous displays of wealth went out of fashion in the wake of left-wing student uprisings in Europe in 1968. “You can’t have a big party without hurting people’s feelings,” she continued. “You can’t drive around in a Rolls Royce without getting eggs thrown at it.”

Countess Marina Cicogna Mozzoni Volpi di Misurata was born on 29 May 1934 in Rome, the daughter of Count Cesare Cicogna Mozzoni, a banker, and Countess Annamaria Cicogna Volpi di Misurata, who bought Euro International Films, eventually handing control over to her children.

Growing up, Ms. Sekongna was a film lover and mingled with David O.’s children. Selznick, producer of “Gone with the Wind” and other major films at the Venice Film Festival.

After her education in Italy, she attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, where she lived with Barbara Warner, whose father was Hollywood movie mogul Jack Warner. During the school holiday, Mrs. Warner invited her to California.

“I never came back. I stayed for three months in California at the Warners Hotel,” Ms Sicongna told T.

She later studied photography in the United States, brokering her platinum connections to photograph luminaries such as Ezra Pound and Marilyn Monroe in candid moments.

Her first foray into filmmaking included distributing “Helga” in West Germany in 1967. “That was the first time you’d seen a birth, a woman giving birth to a baby, on film,” she told T. “I decided we had to publicize this. We put ambulances at the exit and said people would faint when they saw this.”

She was sometimes romantically linked to the likes of Warren Beatty and Alain Delon, but she also spent decades in a relationship with Florinda Bulcan, a Brazilian model and actress.

After their separation, she began a long relationship with Benedetta Gardona, a woman more than two decades her junior, whom Ms. Secongna legally adopted for financial reasons. Mrs. Gardona remained her companion until the death of Mrs. Secongna. (Complete information about survivors was not immediately available.)

Ms. Cicogna recalled the highlights of her career in the 1960s and 1970s in the 2021 documentary “Marina Cicogna: La Vita e Tutto il Resto” (“Life and Everything Else”), directed by Andrea Pettinetti, as well as her autobiography, “Ancora Spero: Una Storia di Vita e di Cinema” (“I Still Hope: The Story of Life and Cinema”), published this year.

However, in a 2017 video interview, she expressed her regret that she did not continue in the film industry. “If I had to look back, I would never have stopped producing, even though Italian cinema hasn’t been the same since then. It’s not very great,” she said, adding: “I’m also someone very torn between the European way of life and aesthetic and a more creative and active American way of life.”

“I was more European than active,” she said. “I didn’t do as much as I should have done. But I can’t say I’m sorry. That’s the way it is, and that’s all.”