The personal and professional life of Mara is a clear example of how much we know about the wonderland of cinema – but always from a single, codified point of view. The legacy that film history preserves of her is tied solely to the weighty surname she carried: Blasetti. Circumventing the monumental figure of her father – whom she loved unconditionally – in order to forge her own professional identity was no small feat. Mara Blasetti learned the craft of script supervision and assistant directing by working at his side on no fewer than eight films, from Times Gone By (1952) to I Love, You Love (1961). She even acted as his sparring partner on special occasions when producers asked Blasetti to direct large crowd scenes (The Great War, Mario Monicelli, 1959) or spectacular sequences (The Best of Enemies, Guy Hamilton, 1961). Mara’s organizational talent did not go unnoticed by production manager Antonio Altoviti (Europa di notte, Alessandro Blasetti, 1959), nor by the De Laurentiis brothers, who recognised her dedication and skill – especially while Alessandro was directing for Monicelli and Hamilton. Mara was soon catapulted into the world of international production, at the very heart of where forces gathered to launch films with the potential for worldwide distribution: Carlo Ponti, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Columbia Pictures. Italian productions, however, snubbed her, as the power in that realm remained firmly in the hands of men who did not believe a woman could lead them. The story of Mara Blasetti’s emancipation begins here.

Michela Zegna

Through the research project Women in Italian Film Production: Industrial Histories and Gendered Labour – developed by researchers from the University of Warwick and Oxford Brookes University, in collaboration with the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council – the careers of Mara Blasetti and many other women, some entirely unknown, have come back into the spotlight, revealing their crucial role in shaping cinema history.