Silkmakers Of Como


View at Zeughauskino - Deutsches Historisches Museum
  • Genre: Documentary film
  • Year: 1952
  • Runtime: 00:10:20
  • Description: Produced by the same team as "A Ship is Born", "Silkmakers of Como" shows just as much technical professionalism. The tone, however, is different, instead of the imposing images of the shipyard and the sheer size of the dominating details, the film seeks to convince through beauty. The region around Como, with its scenic and architectural attractions, forms the framework of the film. The magic of the area does not need to be specially evoked by the commentary, the shots themselves convey it emphatically. Some shots certainly show the effort to make the image as idyllic as possible, but the aesthetics do not suffer. It does not limit itself to the most obvious motifs, has curiosity enough to look around. Thus, "Silkmakers of Como" could easily be used for tourist advertising, if it weren't for the second beauty it comes up trumps with. When the film first abandons reveling in the charms of lake and city, the scene leads into a bizarre situation: while a young woman sips her coffee at a table, an elderly couple works behind her at a loom. Home industry, silk production, this has been the basis of Como's life for hundreds of years. In the new factories, the film finds its second subject. He loses himself in the observation of the mechanical looms, in the fascination with the continuous movement of the individual parts. It almost seems as if the director finds his pleasure in the movement as such - but of course the role that the Marshall Plan played in the modernization and expansion of production is duly mentioned. And yet the film soon loses itself again, this time to the colors and patterns of the silk fabrics. The dyeing: reds, yellows, purples in rich hues. The printing: a variety of shapes and colors. In amazement, one follows the gradual completion of the patterns, which are created in various printing stages, color layer after color layer. © Rainer Rother (machine-translated from German)
  • Keywords: VICTOR-E project / town / manufacturing process / factory / textile industry
  • Provider: Deutsches Historisches Museum
  • Rights: In Copyright / USIA - Embassy of the United States of America / Press Office, Berlin
  • Colour: Colour
  • Director: Ubaldo Magnaghi
  • Sound: With sound
  • Collection: Films of the Marshall Plan
  • Language: en