‘Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams’ Review: Luca Guadagnino Lovingly Lionizes Ferragamo
th-century immigration, youthful ambition, the dawn of Hollywood, passionate artistic hunger, tenacity, foot fascination and wild innovation. Thus Guadagnino’s carefully and lovingly detailed history lesson, free of stylistic flourishes, is as satisfying and methodical as that red shoe–making.This early nod to “The Wizard of Oz” is appropriate, too, as Ferragamo’s trajectory encompasses both the groundbreaking, rainbow-patterned, cork-heeled platform sandal he designed in 1938, reportedly for Judy Garland herself, and a teenage uprooting that not so faintly resembles that of the fictional Dorothy Gale, the smalltown girl dropped into an alien Technicolor environment.Born in 1898 to a farm family of 14 children in the village of Bonito, Italy, Ferragamo was fascinated by the neighborhood cobbler and spent hours watching and learning until, as a nine-year-old, he made his first shoes for his sisters’ Communion.