NZIFF Film Review: "Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams" (2020).

From the director of Call Me By Your Name comes Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams. This documentary film directed by Luca Guadagnino, and written by Giuppy D'Aura and Dana Thomas. Salvatore Ferragamo began his career as a shoemaker before he was barely a teenager. In America, his work would soon help invent the glamour of Hollywood’s silent era as he created shoes for iconic films and for stars like Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks.

On June 5, 1898, Italian shoe designer and the founder of luxury goods high-end retailer Salvatore Ferragamo S.p.A., Salvatore Ferragamo was born. An innovative shoe designer, Salvatore Ferragamo established a reputation in the 1930s. In addition to experimenting with materials including kangaroo, crocodile, and fish skin, Ferragamo drew on historic inspiration for his shoes. His most famous invention is arguably the "Cage heel". Fiamma (Salvatore's eldest daughter who died in 1998) came up with the "Vara pumps" in 1978. Ferragamo was born to a poor family in Bonito, in the Campania region of Italy, near Avellino, the eleventh of fourteen children of Antonio Ferragamo and Mariantonia Ferragamo. After making his first pair of shoes for himself, a pair of high heels, at age nine, young Salvatore decided that he had found his calling. After studying shoemaking in Naples for a year, Ferragamo opened a small store based in his parents' home. In 1915, he emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, where one of his brothers worked in a cowboy boot factory. After a brief stint at the factory, Ferragamo convinced his brothers to move to California, first Santa Barbara then Hollywood. It was there that Ferragamo found success, initially opening a shop for repair and made-to-measure shoes, leading to a long period of designing footwear for the cinema. Reluctant to accept that his shoes could be beautiful but uncomfortable to wear, he studied anatomy at the University of Southern California. After spending thirteen years in the US, Ferragamo returned to Italy in 1927, settling in Florence. He began to fashion shoes for prominent women, including the Maharani of Cooch Behar, Eva Perón and Marilyn Monroe. He opened a workshop in the Via Mannelli, experimenting with design, while applying for patents for his innovations. He filed for bankruptcy in 1933 due to bad management and economic pressure, but was able to expand his operations in the 1950s, including a workforce of seven-hundred artisans who made three-hundred and fifty pairs of shoes per day, by hand. On August 7, 1960, Ferragamo died at the age of sixty-two, but his name lives on as an international company, which has expanded its operations to include luxury shoes, bags, eyewear, silk accessories, watches, perfumes and a ready-to-wear clothing line.

The film is a loving and insightful tribute about the life and career of the celebrated Italian shoe designer who revolutionized the shoe inside and out. The film shines while showing his early immigrant story, and there’s an infectious Forrest Gump-type joy to this tale of a simple man rubbing elbows with fame and success.

Simon says Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams receives:

Also, see my review for Bones and All and Detour.