Broken Shoestring

Italy's moviemakers, who have turned out some of the world's best postwar pictures on a shoestring (Open City, To Live in Peace, Paisan, Shoeshine), had reason to feel bitter last week about their American competitors. Hollywood was pressing its advantage in the one department in which it invariably excels: money.

The Italians knew very well that more money would not necessarily make better pictures. What they feared was that American money could keep them from making any pictures at all. For Italy had become a popular Hollywood "location," and the visiting moguls were tossing money around freely enough to drive local costs right out of the Italians' reach. Items:

P: A cameraman's weekly salary had jumped from 40,000 lire ($69) to 175,000 lire ($304).

P: The wardrobe cost alone for 20th Century-Fox's Prince of Foxes hit $275,000 --or about nine times what it took to pro duce both Open City and Shoeshine.

Hollywood people explained that they were putting blocked lire to work. Prince of Foxes, which was being filmed in Florence, Venice, Siena and Rome -- and using thousands of extras -- would cost $3,000,000 (half of it in U.S. dollars). Anywhere else, according to Producer Darryl Zanuck, it would cost $10,000,000. Zanuck said that he would not "stoop to sweatshop practices . . . We are not in Italy . . . to cash in on another country's depressed condition."

Would Italy's best directors surrender to the invaders? Vittorio de Sica (Shoeshine) was negotiating with David O.Selznick. Roberto Rossellini (Open City, Paisan) was reported flirting with representatives of Sam Goldwyn.

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