Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams follows Ferragamo's unlikely rise to luxury footwear king, at VIFF Centre to November 28
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino traces life from a village in Southern Italy to glamorous Hollywood
Salvatore, Shoemaker of Dreams screens at VIFF Centre to November 28
AN ARCHIVAL image of Salvatore Ferragamo shows him standing in front of a work table scattered with “lasts”—the wooden foot molds that fine cobblers use to customize shoes. Written in block-letter ink are the names of the owners: “GRETA GARBO”, “INGRID BERGMAN”, “RITA HAYWORTH”, “GENE TIERNEY”.
The photo appears in the new, Salvatore, Shoemaker of Dreams, capturing not only the way the Hollywood elite embraced the man who came from a poor Italian village, but the old-school craftmanship that drove his success.
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino hands in a conventionally structured and adoring tribute to the designer, in a documentary that will appeal to fashion obsessives and fans of old Hollywood alike. (The latter get treated to the fun stories behind the golden curled-toe shoes of The Thief Of Bagdad, or Swanson’s giant-white-bowed black pumps that commanded so much attention when she played the smoking, drinking sex worker in the silent film Sadie Thompson.)
The story itself is pure rags-to-riches: as the 11th of 14 children, Ferragamo was obsessed with being a cobbler before he was a teen—his family, poor farmers who considered even that job beneath their status, finally relenting and allowing him to apprentice at 12. By 17, he was on his way to California.
The key to his success was the mix of comfort and style—a combo he achieved through rigorous design work and engineering-like draftmanship, not to mention a passion for the human foot. (He even took anatomy courses.) His story doesn’t end in Hollywood, of course: by 1927, he returned to Italy and founded in Florence his namesake luxury brand. World War II had not yet hit, so there were plenty more ups and downs to his story.
Guadagnino clearly has Ferragamo family approval for this project, and the film often feels like a rosy tribute. But for anyone who is rich enough to have worn Ferragamo's shoes, or who has stood adoring his creations from the windows on Robson Street, this is a documentary "of dreams".
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