Inspired by Giacomo Leopardi’s poem A Silvia, Giacomelli created this series in 1964. Giacomelli followed the screenplay written by Luigi Crocenzi, the theorist of the photo-story, and it aired on RAI that same year. Giacomelli returned to the series in 1988 and radically changed it to make it more visionary and less literal. It centres on mystery.
‘Giacomelli said in an interview: “It isn’t about […] what I see, but what I want to anticipate. This being here and at the same time not being here, becomes a subtle game of life and death.” This is exactly the same threshold occupied by the protagonist of A Silvia and the lovers in Caroline Branson. […] Giacomelli does not perceive or photograph things as they are, but in the moment they are about to disappear, just as they enter the ambiguous and tragic coexistence of opposing forces. […] Similarly, Leopardi’s vivid recollection of carefree moments and Silvia’s “laughing and fleeting” eyes while she is still alive, contrasts with other verses in which he is painfully aware of her death: it is like looking at an old photograph of someone you once held dear, now gone forever. The pathos of Leopardi’s poem comes from this “seeming absence”.
(M Andreani in Mario Giacomelli. Giacomo Leopardi, L’infinito, A Silvia, Silvana Editoriale 2019).
