Interview with Giancolombo            

The Big Hit of Bellentani

 

The big hit of Bellentani instead went this way: "The morning of September 16 1948, while I was home still sleeping, a phone call arrived, waking me up with a start". "Gian, hurry, come! They are smashing the agency!" was shouted out the receiver.

“What was going on? The editors of the newspapers of Milan were literally gone mad”.

The matter was that Giancolombo had had the big hit, the one that happens once in a lifetime: the Bellentani case. And it happened without meaning to. By chance, because the destiny would have it.

A furious fight to the last frame was taking place in the laboratory. "Object of the dispute was some negatives.

One in particular was jolting from hand to hand ". It was the one that was worth a fortune. The auction was open with bids of one hundred thousand lire. "Calm, what the hell!". We need to keep cool. "When I had silenced those gentlemen, finally I held the negative. Too bad that it was almost destroyed: fingerprints, scratches and creases ", tells Giancolombo. To ease the situation, came up the laboratory's assistant who had made a printout.

That was the picture of Pia Bellentani, shortly before shooting and killing the industrialist and her lover Carlo Sacchi, at a gala evening in Como.

 

 

"From that photography derived my future"; as a photographer, of course. "The weekly magazine Tempo

made the cover. The Corriere Lombardo published it big on the front page; newspapers around the world asked me for it. I grossed the highest fee that was never paid until then in Italy for a single frame. It let my name be known; I could make investments and enlarge my activity ".

Nobody would have said that the photo of an unknown lady would have made his fortune. And his name.

"I didn’t even want to go to the Biki fashion show at Villa d’Este” tells Giancolombo. Biki was the stylist of the Milanese aristocracy. How could you say no to Biki? "The fashion show was made concurrently with Dior, who was presenting new models too. It was an outstanding evening, I couldn't tell her to contact someone else ".

In the middle there was the catwalk, on the side the tables for guests and all around a wonderful seventeen century’s room. And of course lots of beautiful people everywhere: the Baron Rothschild, the Princess of Alemberg, an uncle of Faruk, which by then was still a King. And the cream of Lombard nobility and industry. Biki knew how to do her job.

"I took the speedgraphic, held together with patches, and I began photographing models. All went well, when a lady came up and asked me to portrait a table ".”No Madam, I won’t take the photo - he answered her — I’m not one of those ranging from table to table leaving cards". He was quite a bit offended. "But she didn’t stop insisting".

The evening was ended, and they all felt good when an evening like that ended. It was one o’clock in the night and Giancolombo just thought to leave. Then that lady returned to him and asked again: ’Would you make that blessed photograph?’

"What would I have to say? I did it: There was still a last plate to make one shot, and a light bulb for flash. I got upon the catwalk and took the photo of three unknown people".

He said goodbye and went. An hour later, one of those ladies, sitting right, did something that nobody could imagine. Pia Bellentani stood up, went to the wardrobe and withdrew her husband’s calibre 9 gun. He had brought it because precautions are never too many, and the post-war period was happy for few people. Ladies’ jewels on the black market were worth a fortune. "Just below the ermine stole she wore, Pia Bellentani hid the gun". What more elegant hideout to approach the bar and kill her lover, that Carlo Sacchi who had insulted her. She fired a single shot and the man became pale, then twirled, his glasses fell down. Someone attending let him lay on a couch. Other stressed out around him, but it was late. Just a shot and he was dead. She then turned the gun on her and fired. But there was a single bullet in calibre 9, and it had already gone to target.

The lady was Pia Caroselli, the wife of count Lamberto Bellentani, a man from Modena, well-known for producing meat bagged. Carlo Sacchi, the victim, was a self made man grown rich by selling silk. "No photographer was present. Nobody knew anything. And no one other than me had photographed “recalls Giancolombo.”Huge was the clamour, amazing the number of issues that every magazine sold all over the world".

 

           

 

In 1971 the photograph of the case Bellentani is mentioned again by the periodic Grazia as one of eight images that made the time, one of the most famous of the crime news archives.

Until then, Giancolombo had photographed for pleasure and for snobbery more than by vocation. High, very thin, blond, was a little enfant gaté of the Milanese aristocracy. "I was taking portraits to beautiful high society ladies and I was requested for social life events. I enjoyed it a lot, wandering about in nightlife. People then wanted to have fun, enjoy life after the war ". The photos were always ironic. Always with magnates, king, actors, singers, television stars, princes and princesses, were they decayed or not. "It was a fatuous world, but I liked it because I had been at war, and had not had much fun in my youth, just like the rest of my generation". It was the Italian post-war period, and he had been involved just like any other.

Elegant and full of spirit, Giancolombo became the photographer of this world.

 

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