Celluloid Saint for Sofia Loren by Stefano Donno

 1. Celluloid Saint 

The lens arrives hungry.

First the shoulder, then the sway—

a coastline refusing the page.

Pozzuoli’s ash still clings

to the arches of her feet

even in satin. She walks

as if the war owed her

every red carpet since.

In black and white she mothers

through teeth of history,

claws hidden in the cradle.

In color she strips

the performance bare,

laughing smoke over ruins.

The camera eats.

She eats back.

Leaves tooth marks on the reel.

Now the nitrate fades

but she does not.

Silver in the hair,

volcano in the eyes—

still erupting,

still warm.

2. Negative Space She is the negative from which the century developed its desire.A body drawn in curves that refuse the straight line of progress: hips like the Amalfi road after rain, dangerous and inevitable. From the rubble she salvaged this silhouette, dressed it in Dior, taught it to speak English with a throat full of Naples.In Two Women the Madonna learns how to bite. In Marriage Italian Style the wife becomes the director. Always she returns the gaze—those eyes, dark wells where every spectator drowns willingly.Time has pixelated the old stock, turned silver to code, yet she remains analog, warm, flesh that remembers hunger. At the edge of the frame she lingers, a single frame that outlives the entire film.Beauty, she once said, is how you feel inside and it shows in the eyes.

So the eyes remain.

Still burning.

Still watching us watch her.