The Criterion Collection

Legendary production designer Dante Ferretti is known to moviegoers everywhere for the elaborate and period-precise but fanciful worlds he has created for such films as Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire, and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (for which he won an Oscar this year). Among his first projects as art director were the films in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life, which also tread the line between the gritty and the fantastic. In this clip from a new Criterion interview with him—who had already served as an assistant production designer on Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, The Hawks and the Sparrows, and Oedipus Rex—Ferretti describes envisioning The Decameron with Pasolini, divulges the director’s penchant for sliding down banisters, and explains the importance of making mistakes.