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Woman of Straw (1964)

Woman of Straw
Maria, you will stay, won't you?
—Anthony "Tony" Richmond
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Title Designer PABLO FERRO and ALLEN FERRO speak about the opening to Woman of Straw in this excerpt from our feature article Pablo Ferro: A Career Retrospective.

Pablo: When I was doing Strangelove I also did a title for another movie. A production designer asked me to work on Woman of Straw, with Gina Lollobrigida.

With that, I did a whole storyboard, showing high-contrast photographs of her, the wheelchair, Sean Connery, and a few other things. I shot that just like I shot [the commercial for] Burlington Mills but this moving was slower. We changed colour according to the music – Beethoven’s Ninth.

Pablo: They didn't like the colours so their version is all brown. My version is the only way that you could see it with the colour changing and the high contrast. I realized that it looked like Andy Warhol’s portraits. I said, “Maybe he saw this?” – but he couldn’t have seen it because it’s not even a movie.

Allen: No, but it had been at your apartment!

Pablo: I had a loft, and everyone came in there and that was an amazing thing. It was happening because of the work.

IMAGE: Storyboard – Original colour storyboard

Woman of Straw storyboard in its original colour version, created by Pablo Ferro in 1963

Who were some of the people that visited?

Allen: The list is too long! Honestly. It was very strange back then. All manner of celebrity, all manner of business people.

Pablo: Everyone from Sal Mineo, Norman Jewison, Jon Voight...

Allen: A lot of artists. Peter Max.

Pablo: Warhol came over. Yoko Ono would come over and show her films, and they'd crack me up, they were very funny. It was very exciting.

View the credits for this sequence

Main Titles by: Pablo Ferro

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Title sequence

  • Category

    Film
  • Styles

    1960s, animation, animation stand, copyright line, graphic, main title, optical, rostrum camera
Woman of Straw
  • Film Director

    Basil Dearden
  • Release Date

    April 28, 1964
  • Aspect Ratio

    1.66:1
  • Studio

    United Artists
  • Country

    UK
  • Language

    English
  • Reviews

    Reviews on Letterboxd
  • IMDb has full details

Article

  • Writer

    Lola Landekic
  • Published

    April 4, 2014

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