Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown June 8, 2024

The best documentaries come out of nowhere, tackle a topic, subject or story you're completely unfamiliar with (sometimes even uninterested in), do so with little flair or panache and still, still prove to weave a riveting tale you're more than happy to have spent time watching. Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams is just such a documentary. I don't know shoes. I don't care about shoes. I wear shoes, but barely take the time to decide which shoes to wear, much less wonder what went into their design, development or manufacturing. Yet that's precisely what director Luca Guadagnino leaves me wondering, all while offering a glimpse into the life of a man whose name I've only heard in passing but never stopped and took the time to learn a single thing about. And what a story it is. The stuff of struggle and failure and failure again, positioned against a man's rise from the veritable ashes to become a self-made icon that brought foot fashion into vogue and left an indelible mark on the industry forever.

Narrated by Michael Stuhlbarg (taken from excerpts from Ferragamo’s 1955 memoir), the film follows Salvatore Ferragamo, who grew up terribly poor in Bonito, Italy, and began his career as a shoemaker before he was a teenager. Immigrating to America in 1915 at the age of 16, his work soon helped usher in a glamourous age of Hollywood, with his shoes appearing in everything from The Thief of Bagdad to The Ten Commandments. His footwear was also sported by the stars themselves, among them Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, many of whom became his personal friends. Even through a Depression-era setback, Ferragamo would rebound and define mid-century elegance for the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth and Ingrid Bergman, all while weaving a love story and warm family life with his wife, Wanda, and their six children.

The film also features interviews with Martin Scorsese, Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Grace Coddington, Todd McCarthy, Wanda Ferragamo, and many of Salvatore's children and grandchildren.

Shoemaker of Dreams's biggest misstep is in never fully crafting a portrait of who Ferragamo was as a husband, father and friend. Guadagnino and writer Dana Thomas go to great lengths to emphasize the icon, yet tend to gloss over his role as a human. Was he overly obsessive? Compulsive? Distant? Cold? We get such a loving reflection on his life that I assume not, but it also paints a picture of someone a little too perfect to be true. Where are the flaws? The cracks? The seams? Not that every documentary need be an expose.

Otherwise it's a compelling overview of a career that might go misunderstood or overlooked by anyone who isn't in the fashion industry or who takes something as banal as shoes for granted. Such common things aren't typically beloved or unpacked milestone by milestone, but Shoemaker of Dreams aims to do just that, inching through a story of how one man saw something special, something glamorous in what adorns a starlet's foot, and fashion history followed. The intersections between Ferragamo and Hollywood are some of the most riveting portions of the documentary, as are the challenges he faced as the Depression ran its course. But this is really a tale of perseverance and never saying die, and that alone lends it a universal power that can make anything engaging, given the right angle.

Framing the documentary with Ferragamo's own words -- interspliced with interviews aplenty -- is precisely the way to accomplish such things, and Guadagnino and company deliver an exceedingly competent, fairly comprehensive framework, selecting key passages from Farragamo's memoir and inserting them at just the right times. I do wish the film had been a documentary series, if only to slow down and spend more time at each juncture in Salvatore's life and career. But as a brisk walk through the life of a man who made enormous strides in fashion, it excels, leaving little question that Ferragamo was exactly what the film declares him to be: icon, legend, trend-setter, industry influence, artist extraordinaire, and revolutionary.

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shoemaker of Dreams strikes a more cinematic pose than flashier fashion docs and boasts a striking 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that fares better than most as well. Colors are warm and lifelike, with convincing skintones, vivid primaries and deep black levels. Contrast is spot on and detail is quite revealing, or at least as much as the varied video sources allow. Photographs, high definition interviews, and other elements look great, with crisp definition and refined textures. Some standard definition elements sneak in, as is the case with most all biographical documentaries, but it hardly distracts. If you aren't expecting such things, you've been living under a proverbial rock. Banding, blocking and other anomalies are also tied to source materials, meaning the encode itself isn't to blame. All told, I doubt the documentary could look much better than it does here.

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Much the same could be said for Sony's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.0 surround track. The lack of low-end channel support is strange but not unheard of, and honestly wouldn't add much to the film's soundscape, which is comprised almost entirely of narration and interviews. Voices are clean and clear on the whole, with rear speaker support that captures the ambience of each room and location, and prioritization is precise. Moreover, directionality, though subtle, manages to replicate the faint echoes bouncing off of walls, making each interview sound a touch different. There's nothing all that memorable to be heard, sure. But such is the film's sound design.

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only special feature included with the Blu-ray release of Salvatore is the film's theatrical trailer.

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Will you be enthralled by Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams? Probably not. It's a thoroughly solid documentary to be sure, but without an interest in fashion, it will merely stand as a well-made film rather than the revelation it's meant to be. Sony has at least started it off on the right foot (har har) thanks to an excellent video presentation and a solid DTS-HD Master Audio 5.0 surround track. Additional extras -- any extras really -- would have likely added some much-needed value to the release and would have made its pricepoint easier to swallow. Still, anyone with even a passing interest in fashion would do well to take some time to watch Shoemaker of Dreams.