Lancia is celebrating its one hundredth centenary this year. In one century, this carmaker has built up an image of quality that has made Italian style famous throughout the world. To celebrate this historical anniversary, Lancia has chosen to pay homage to the cinema by acting as main sponsor to the 63rd edition of the Venice International Film Festival. Innovation, sophisticated technical design, top quality parts and finish, class, luxury and performance: this is the recipe for the success achieved by Lancia that emphasises its own commitment to the attributes of Italian style by joining forces with the most important cultural event in Italy.

In particular, Lancia has made available to the organisation 32 cars, including the Musa, Phedra and Thesis models (the latter in a two-tone version inspired by the renowned two-tone Flaminia). All the flagship cars are identified by Golden Lion effigies and a tricolour flag on the sides of the vehicles. These prestigious cars, representing the cream of Italian style, are ferry film personalities and stars around the Venice Lido. Other historical Lancia cars are also being exhibited at prominent points on the Lido to recreate the feel of a ‘Dolce Vita’ film set. Not to mention the fact that the brand chose yesterday the magnificent Lagoon city to host the world premiere of the New Ypsilon, which represents Lancia's present and future: it is an unmistakable sign that this venerable brand intends to face the coming years by offering a continuous stream of top-quality automotive innovation.

Thus, Lancia is this week play a starring role in the magnificent city of Venice, which has always been the world capital of glamour, beauty, style and, more recently, of cinema. The very same values that are encoded in Lancia’s genes: genetic material that has been replicating itself for 100 years. Lancia vehicles have also co-starred in some of the iconic scenes that have defined the success of Italian cinema in the world. They are forever evocative of a period renowned for its beauty, light heartedness, freedom and poetry. In other words, they created the Italian lifestyle so dear to the paparazzi during Italy’s unforgettable ‘Dolce Vita’ period.

And our memory immediately goes back to the photographers portrayed by Federico Fellini, who made those mad Roman nights their own as they stole pictures, stories and sensational gossip to sell to the newspapers. The time was the end of the Fifties and Rome was the capital of cinema and the international jet-set: Via Veneto throbbed with life, the chic night spots and luxury hotels attracted actors and writers, while politicians and VIPs rubbed shoulders at the tables of fashionable cafés. A kaleidoscope of different languages and music, scents and colours.

The 1950s also represented a never to be repeated period in the history of the motorcar. Lancia indisputably stood head and shoulders above all other manufacturers for the class, elegance and sportiness of its models. The cars had names such as Ardea, Aurelia and Appia and they sped along the roads of Europe with style, sophistication and sensuality: just like the divas they were. In those years, widespread prosperity also encouraged people to rediscover their joie de vivre and experiment: in art, in design, in television and in fashion. And more. The ‘Dolce Vita’ years were also the years when Italian fashion began to become known throughout the world.

This was the time when Italy became realy glamorous. The ‘Dolce Vita’ is associated with values that forged the identity and appeal of Italy, such as the aesthetics of everyday life, the quality of foods and wines, taste, imagination and lifestyle. But class, charm and elegance above all. That same Italian elegance is a bulwark and core value of Lancia’s philosophy and evident in its most recent products, which are designed to cater for the desires of a sophisticated, cultured breed of customer who knows how to blend conceptually opposing values such as tradition and innovation, rationality and emotion, individualism and social awareness.
 

Lancia’s relationship with the cinema is extremely close and dates back to the beginning of the last century. In the words of Gian Piero Brunetta, Lecturer in Cinematic History and Criticism at the University of Padua: ‘Certain car models, and Lancia cars in particular, were present in the first silent films to emerge from Turin, when they added the magical touch that aided the ascent of the great tradition of male and female Italian film stars. Emilio Ghione used Lancia cars in his films, for example. It was not, however, until the cinema of the 1930s and the ‘white telephone’ films in particular, that this type of car was chosen to embody the Italian dream of earning over one thousand lire a month and virtually represent the key to modernity’.

Lancia cars have also co-starred in hugely successful films more recently. Cars made by Lancia have made frequent appearances on the screen since the 1950s. In some cases they have acted as style icons representative of certain periods. The Italian post-war period was the setting for a series of films taken from the novels of Guareschi and an élite, high performing Lancia Astura produced in the 1930s made an appearance in ‘The little world of Don Camillo’ dating from 1952. A Lancia Aurelia B10 appeared in ‘Big Deal on Madonna Street [I soliti Ignoti]’ (1958). After the war, this car represented living proof of Lancia’s philosophy and is the direct forerunner of the Aurelia B24 convertible, which starred in 1962 in ‘The Easy life [Il Sorpasso]’ by Dino Risi, performed by Catherine Spaak, Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant, which was certainly the most famous car in Italian cinema. Claude Lelouch also made an interesting decision to use a racing version of the sporty Flavia Coupé in ‘A Man and a Woman’ of 1966, while a Lancia Thema was significantly chosen to star in the less well known 1986 sequel ‘A Man and a Woman 20 years later’.

Contemporary cars appeared in historical films and it is significant that Lancia models were always the finest cars of their day. This was true of the Lancia Artena in the film Last days of Mussolini (1974).Lancia cars also appeared in more eclectic films: Dario Argento’s Deep Red [Profondo Rosso] (1975) featured a Fulvia Coupé, a state-of-the-art model for its searing performance, style and beautiful finish.‘The world of cinema paid homage to Lancia cars in ‘Herbie goes to Montecarlo’ (1977), where two Lancia cars, the Scorpion and the Stratos, expressed their different characters in two separate and convincing roles.‘In 1981, Alain Delon shared the screen in ‘Pour la peau d’un flic’ with a Delta that had recently been voted car of the year. The model went on to set a still unbeaten record by winning six consecutive World Rally Championships from 1987 to 1992 in later permanent four-wheel drive versions.

More recently, the Lancia Ypsilon starred in the short film Elective affinities [Affinità elettive] (2003) shot by Gabriele Muccino and performed by Nicoletta Romanoff and Milena Mancini. In the same way, the Lancia Thesis also starred in the original short The Call (2006) by Antoine Fuqua, which marked Pirelli’s cinema debut. The Lancia flagship was the powerful saloon that noiselessly carried the exorcist (John Malkovich) to his appointment with Evil. The sculpted lines of the Thesis and the outlines of the great buildings of the capital city conspired to create a gothic, gloomy atmosphere. Overlooked by a mysterious, all-enveloping night-time Rome as it majestically and solemnly slipped through its streets, the car was the perfect foil for its important passenger, a mysterious man from the Vatican. The partnership between Pirelli and Lancia came into being because the Pirelli PZEROROSSO 18” tyres are part of the original equipment of the Thesis and, also, more importantly, because these two long-standing Italian companies have played a crucial role in the development of the car and Italian style in the world.