Countess Marina Cicogna, A Woman of the World The Italian countess Marina Cicogna has lived her life on her own terms - photographing her jet-set companions, winning highest honors at the Venice Film Festival and throwing parties that are still talked about decades later. When Countess Marina Cicogna opens the door of her new apartment near Via Veneto in Rome, she does not smile. Her maid is with her in the vestibule, and they have been discussing the need for more hangers. At the moment, Cicogna, a photographer, the first major female Italian film producer and granddaughter of Count Giuseppe Volpi, who was one of the richest men in Italy, has had her winter clothes domiciled at her home in Modena, a small city in the north, but a friend is driving some of her wardrobe to Rome later today. A number of years ago, I decided I didn't want to live in Rome anymore, and I wanted to live in a small town where I could more or less get around by bicycle or walking. It's an hour and a half from Venice and Milan, so you can go and have lunch in the city, and ski two hours away in Cortina," Cicogna says. The small towns in Italy give you a fantastic life. But there is something about Rome. I always come back. At 79, Cicogna, who produced many movies in the late "60s and early "70s - "Once Upon a Time in the West," "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" and "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" - keeps her back straighter than a runway model and moves with grace in a white Brunello Cucinelli shirt, black Max Mara pants and Tod's lace-up sneakers. She stands 5 feet 5 inches tall, with piercing green eyes, Princess Di-like waves in her blond hair and a face so narrow that she wears children's Ray-Bans as her sunglasses. In 1967, she had three films at the Venice Film Festival, including "Belle de Jour," which won the Leone d'Oro, the highest prize, and she threw what she claims Diane von Furstenberg says is still the best party she's ever been to in her life. "I didn't give a big ball, but rather said that everyone could dress as they wanted, as long as they were in white and yellow or white and gold," Cicogna says. I sent two small Learjets, one to Corsica to pick up Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the other to Rome to pick up Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim. The next night, we had a much bigger party. I got 10 male friends of mine who were great dancers to come by themselves, because sometimes women like to dance and then men don't, or don't know how. She pauses. Then, of course, in 1968 with the revolution, there were certain things in Europe that you couldn't do anymore. You couldn't have a big party without hurting people's feelings, you couldn't go around with a Rolls-Royce without being thrown eggs at. As one of the most powerful women in European cinema, Cicogna was a unique figure in the film industry, attracting even more attention than usual because she dated both men and women. Count Volpi, her maternal grandfather, was one of the most important figures in the creation of modern Italy: the governor of the Italian colony of Libya in the 1920s, he also was the minister of finance, created the port of Marghera, developed utilities and founded the Venice Film Festival. Her father, a banker from a quiet, well-known family in Milan, had a tough temper, but they remained close, as she did with her mother, whom she calls one of the most elegant women in the world. Cicogna has recently published two photography books, one from her youth and the other of her family's home in Tripoli, an 18th-century palace. "I'm thinking of another book," she says. But I can't do a book about the past anymore. As Cicogna talks, her brusque front starts to dissipate, revealing a warm, even giggly personality, and she offers a cup of coffee. "Cook, me?" she says, bringing over a demitasse cup on a silver tray. If it wasn't for the Nespresso machine, I wouldn't make coffee at all. She begins to pace around her apartment, decorated in muted grays and with a mix of modern art and heavy, gilded mirrors from the 1600s on the walls. It's not as capacious as one would expect. "I thought life was going to be one way, but I have come from a very privileged and very easy, very opulent, childhood, to having to fend for myself," she says. In the late "60s, her brother Bino, her partner in a film company, "went bananas," Cicogna says, and lost the family a ton of money, eventually committing suicide. "And my mother was very impractical - it was really a generation where women had no idea of how to run things," Cicogna says. I don't think she ever looked at a bill in her life. Things went straight into the office, and they were paid. A few years before she died, I asked her to look into her account. She said, "Definitely not." And then when I did, there was hardly anything left. Still, Cicogna's flat, though it may be small, is mighty, with a view of the Borghese gardens" Roman pines, and as perfectly designed as a jewelry box. And, of course, there is a maid, there to hang the clothes, even if Cicogna doesn't have a servant available to retrieve the hangers, and must get them herself. "The way I live, I have to be able to carry my own luggage, and all else," she says, slipping on a blazer with a small pin of gold and pearl near the lapel, a gift from the president of Italy. "It's the highest one we can have, for service to the republic - for me, for film," she says, stepping into the elevator. Let's go to Armani and get some hangers. Outside, under the midafternoon Roman sun, Cicogna walks at a fast clip down Via di Porta Pinciana, recounting her childhood. She was born in 1934 in a room in Palazzo Volpi on Via del Quirinale in Rome but moved around a lot as a child, living mostly in Milan, and Venice, for the summer months, and Cortina, for the winter. She always loved movies, and used to force her governess to take her to them in the morning and not return home until evening. At the Venice Film Festival, she played host to Hollywood's kids, like David O. Selznick's sons. "David really wanted a daughter, I think, and after four or five days he asked if he could adopt me, which my mother thought was quite sweet and rather funny," Cicogna says. She went to college at Sarah Lawrence, where she was friends with Jack Warner's daughter Barbara Warner, and was invited to go home with her to California during a school break. "I never went back," she says. "I stayed for three months in California at the Warners,"" meeting actors. Cicogna then hosted some of her Hollywood friends in Tripoli, where she also became friends with one of Qaddafi's sons and later helped him put together a party in Venice, which she calls "awful," adding, "I've never seen people squander money in such a horrible way, hiring boats with tarts and things." Another friend of her youth was Jeanne Moreau, who dated Pierre Cardin. "I mean, no boy was more gay than Pierre," she says, "and yet she managed not only to become his girlfriend, but to have an important affair with him." Cicogna went to photography school in the United States and began to take pictures of her jet-set companions in relaxed, intimate moments, including Marilyn Monroe, who, she says, "was interested in meeting Italians at that moment, because she was marrying Joe DiMaggio." She shot Gianni and Suni Agnelli, enjoying a picnic; a young Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci, in dusty shoes; Ezra Pound in front of the Spoleto Cathedral; Valentino, whom she met at the opening of his first showroom on Via Condotti in Rome. "I was friends with many fashion designers at the beginning of their careers," Cicogna says, shrugging. The more glamorous people come out of show business or designing. I guess they become friends with one because they want to learn and understand the world of people with taste, the world that they're growing into. So that's why there's an exchange there. In 1966, at 32, Cicogna decided to embrace her first passion and bought a few films for distribution, including the German movie "Helga." "It was the first time you saw a birth, a woman producing a child, on film; I decided we should publicize it," she says. We put ambulances at the exit of the film, saying that people would faint when they saw that. The picture made a lot of money, especially for the producers. "I realized that the producers kept the rights to the negatives, and I said, "This doesn't make sense - we need to start producing ourselves," " she says. My reputation became quite high then. I remember the time when Warren Beatty was coming to Rome to publicize "Bonnie and Clyde." I didn't know him, and he called me and said, "I hear you're a genius, and you're young and good looking - we have to meet." " Cicogna soon began a relationship with Florinda Bolkan, a Brazilian model who had moved to Italy. The director Luchino Visconti was trying to convince her to act, and she would eventually become an award-winning actress. "But Florinda was very unsure of herself at the time," she says. They were together for two decades. And then Florinda turned 50, and what happens with women, with actresses particularly, or women who are particularly good looking or beautiful, is that it becomes very complicated. They want to be reassured that they are still desirable. I tried to be patient. Florinda's theory was that she could have her life and do what she wanted, and I would wait. But it doesn't really happen like that. Cicogna entered into a relationship with a gorgeous brunette, Benedetta, many years her junior, whom she says she "treated very badly" at the beginning but is now her life partner. She is also her legally adopted daughter, for financial reasons. "Benny is in her 50s, but she looks 40," Cicogna says with pride. Crossing near the Spanish Steps, she strides through mobs of tourists clogging the street. A man approaches her with a petition; he'd like her to support an antidrug campaign. Cicogna waves him off. "Why sign against drugs?" she says. If people want to take drugs, they are going to take drugs. Before her errand at Armani, Cicogna stops at Nino's on Via Borgognona for a light lunch. She does not drink alcohol, except a little wine, nor has she ever smoked - "and believe me, if you didn't smoke at Sarah Lawrence, you were a bit out of it." She doesn't like soda, or anything with bubbles. She also doesn't eat fried food, béchamel sauce, cooked butter or meat. "I went to a spa and changed my eating habits completely, when I was about 50," she says, ordering a plate of steamed green vegetables. I realized you are what you eat, and if I wanted to keep doing what I wanted, like skiing and playing tennis, I had to take care of myself. (Also on the list of things that might surprise you about septuagenarian jet-set countesses: she hates to fly. "I go to smithereens," she says.) Cicogna taps on her iPhone at the table; she e-mails often with her friends in America, including Calvin Klein and Carolina Herrera. There's not room in her flat, she thinks, for all the clothes that are coming from Modena. Perhaps she will rent an apartment downstairs, and keep them there. "I may spend more time now in Rome," she says, mulling the idea. She's in talks to begin running a film foundation. "People like Berlusconi kill the soul of a country," she says. The soul of a country is its culture, and this government doesn't give money to culture. Our future, if we're going to have any, depends on art, culture, beauty and tourism. That's where we should be putting our minds, our hearts and our money. At the Armani store, the clerk practically runs to the back of the store to grab Cicogna her hangers. "I like Armani a lot, but I have a bit of a rebellious attitude toward brands - the most vulgar people in the world are wearing them now," she says. Cicogna takes a look at some perfume and a black wool suit. Later, she considers plans for her 80th birthday in May. All of my friends who are my age seem to me to be really old, and I don't feel really old at all. It's not a matter of looks - it's how you think and how you act physically, how you move, how you walk. For her birthday, she says, pursing her lips, her friends "want to give me three days of parties, which I don't really want. I'm a bit adamant. She smiles broadly. But in the end, I'll probably give in.