Friday, October 15, 2004

TURIN - Cinema Museum

Twice this week I've been to the coolest museum in Turin, the National Museum of Cinema. A truly excellent place for a movie fan.
They've got one of Charlie Chaplin's hats, an alien from Alien, Joan Crawford's dress from Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, some of Federico Fellini's doodles, an original Psycho script, and heaps of other stuff.
They had so many beautiful old movie posters I was nearing collapse. The posters for La Dolce Vita (my favourite film poster I think) , Blue Velvet (an astounding image involving a pair of legs tied together and a bleeding pool ball!), Marriage Italian Style (Sophia Loren), Gilda (Rita Hayworth) and one of Rudolph Valentino were perfection.
The coolness of the place is magnified by it's design. There are little themed rooms that show related movie clips.
In the love room, you lie back on a huge red round bed and watch love & romance-themed movie clips projected on the ceiling.
My favourite was the surreal room, where you walk through a large refrigerator and sit on some toilets to watch clips from Barbarella, Raising Arizona and Monty Python. Now that's different.

No comments: