‘Maria’ by the numbers: How many wigs and costumes did Angelina Jolie use?
Pablo Larraín‘s latest feature film “Maria” is written by Steven Knight and tells the story of world-renowned opera singer Maria Callas, as portrayed by Oscar winner Angelina Jolie (“Girl, Interrupted”). The Netflix biopic has been receiving awards buzz since it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival earlier this summer, and now we have a much better idea about the extreme lengths Larraín’s team took in order to recreate Callas’ fascinating world.
Some of the film’s behind-the-scenes artisans who made the magic happen include cinematographer Edward Lachman, film editor Sofía Subercaseaux, costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini, and production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas. Every moment of “Maria” was meticulously chosen to give audiences the feeling of being transported back in time to Paris in the 1970s and earlier.
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So, what are some of the specific details that went into this expansive project? This is “Maria” by the numbers:
41 shooting days in 4 cities — Budapest, Hungary; Paris, France; Katakolo, Greece; and Milan, Italy
4,850 items in Maria Callas’ dressing room — clothing, jewelry, shoes, accessories, etc.
20 scenes of flashbacks
10 operas
12 wigs for Angelina Jolie alone
60 costumes for Angelina Jolie alone
4 decades — from 1948 to 1977
4 film stocks — Super 8mm, 16mm, 35mm (color), and 35mm (black & white)
640 40-watt light bulbs for the chandeliers in the party scene where Maria Callas meets Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer)
10,000 peach roses for that same scene — Onassis arranged “1,000 pink roses just for you” at this party, but many more were actually needed to “read” as 1,000 on the screen. Also, peach was the best color to read pink in black and white.
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Larraín gave Gold Derby even more numbers. “Angelina sang 6 times on camera, all of them in Italian,” he divulged. “There are 27 different tracks on the ‘Maria’ soundtrack, and more than 90 minutes of music in the movie. We filmed 4 hours at La Scala opera house’s main stage in Milan, the biggest Hera house in the world.”
“There’s such a purity to [Larraín’s] filmmaking,” Dyas previously told us. “We’re talking about a filmmaker who will literally give up everything to make sure his vision is on the screen. There’s no sort of creature comforts or things that he needs in any way, shape, or form if it’s gonna take away from something that he can put on the screen in order to help tell his story.”
As Parrini previously explained to us, “Inside her home, she was inside her own world, and she felt much freer. She felt much more at ease than she did in the outside world, and that’s why we chose those lighter colors. It was her paradise. It was her comfort zone. On the other hand, when she was out, she was actually a woman that was not well at all, and she was actually hiding from the past. And so the black is used to transpose this.”
“Maria” is in select theaters now and will begin streaming on Netflix on Dec. 11.
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