‘Maria’: See How Its Designers Blurred the ‘Line Between Reality and Fantasy’ With Angelina Jolie | Exclusive Photos
Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” is a lush fantasia that stars Angelina Jolie as opera singer Maria Callas. We see the iconic diva in grand theaters like La Scala and in her favored Paris cafes, but the main setting is her gloriously appointed apartment with a view of the Eiffel Tower.
“Pablo said, ‘Angie is the jewel of this production. I need her to feel completely relaxed in this space so that she will give the best performance of her career,’” production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas said. “It was my job to wrap this jewel in an incredible jewelry box.”
Costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini, meanwhile, had to wrap the jewelry. “I made at least 60 dresses — we had to cut and sew until the very last day of the film shoot,” he said. “We were shaping this wonderful creature, Angelina Jolie, a glamorous diva playing another glamorous diva. It was a three-fold pleasure for me, the film’s costumes and the two divas I could help.”
The clothes and the spaces were based on abundant photographs, but the goal wasn’t to be strictly authentic, because Larraín’s take on the character finds her slipping in and out of a drug-induced haze caused by the sedative Mandrax.
“When you transition from the reality of Maria to the Mandrax-infused diva, you need to express that sometimes with visual clues,” Dyas said. “The line between reality and fantasy needed to become blurred at times.”
A Stage in the Home
“Although Maria was very private, she did reserve several spaces in her Paris apartment where she would accept reporters and photographers to interview her,” Dyas said. “They were always very staged. It would be a well-appointed couch with lamps that lit her face beautifully, and behind her would be a wall of paintings and opera certificates and notes or sketches from famous people that had written her.”
Perchance to Dream
“The bedroom is full opera,” Dyas said. “It’s a fantasy. If you go online, there is one Polaroid of her sitting up and smiling in bed, and she has a very glorious headboard. It’s just not quite as over-the-top as the one we created.”
Busting Out
Maria’s dressing room is lined with marble busts, giving the singer the air of always having an audience. “Pablo wanted the house to frame her with something that felt like an opera but was on the edge of believability,” Dyas said.
Where’s the Piano?
A running gag in the film finds Callas frequently asking her butler and housekeeper to move the piano from room to room, so Dyas annotated the moves on his floor plan of her apartment. “What I realized very quickly was that because of these tall, narrow French doorways, the Steinway concert grand didn’t fit,” he said. “So we created a very thin but realistic looking Steinway that they could push through the doors, and we were always diligent to make sure we never shot it end on.”
Blow Up
A page from Dyas’ script shows his designs for an opera set. “We couldn’t afford scenics, so I ended up painting the backings with poster paints at about two-and-a-half feet by one foot,” he said. “I photographed that, blew it up to an eight-foot print, repainted over that and then blew it up to whatever it needed to be—in some cases, 60 feet by 20 feet at La Scala.
The Bible
Dyas is known for annotating his scripts with extensive visual references and inspirations. “I started doing it on ‘Inception’ because I simply couldn’t understand Chris (Nolan)’s script,” he said with a laugh. “So I started putting images and notes into the script, and it’s quite a thing now. It’s quite scientific, though: I have tabs with the scene numbers at the top, and tabs at the side to represent the unscripted visual textures that you always see in a Pablo Larraín film. It becomes a working document. It’s on the set every day and looked at by everyone from Angie and the cast to the DP to Pablo and myself.” It’s very handy, as you can imagine.”
At Home
“The dressing gown was a very, very important outfit, because it represented Maria Callas’ soul in her private life,” costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini said. “It took me a lot of time and devotion to design until I really got what I wanted to achieve.”
The Silk Road
“This is the outfit that Maria Callas was wearing for one of her last concerts. It’s a very special, iconic ivory silk dress with a very special blue cape enveloping her. It’s an outfit that is remembered by all opera fans.”
Audrey Meets Maria
“This is an iconic dress. It was on a record cover, and we re-created the whole set that was prepared for the original photo shoot. It’s a glamorous outfit, and it remains glamorous, even today. And her hairstyle is à la Audrey Hepburn, which adds a lot to the design.”
Bucket List
“There are six or seven shots of her getting off planes in the movie, and this two-piece set is one of the outfits that has been designed very closely to her style for those scenes. She was often seen wearing this beautiful bucket hat. It’s a style of hat that she really adored, and we did our utmost to re-create it as exactly as possible.”
The End Is Near
“This is one of the outfits that Maria is wearing in the last week of her life. She was very fashionable, but she was no longer following fashion so much. We also decided to have her wear black in the ’70s period, to reflect the tragedy of her life. But I gave it a twist and a touch of color with the accessories: the glasses, the jewelry, the scarves that she wore.”
Final Curtain Call
“This is from her last concert that she performed in Paris, and another very iconic outfit. It’s from 1968, and it is made of silk and soft velvet. She was in a wraparound cape that she wore as a sort of armor, as protection.”
This story first appeared in the Below-the-Line Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
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