Tirrenia

Tirrenia's pine forest outside Pisa once hid Pisorno, one of Europe's most advanced film studios when it opened in 1934, founded by director Giovacchino Forzano with the Agnelli and Borletti families. The guide follows carpenters and lighting crews who commuted through the trees, the real coastline and marble hills nearby that let productions skip painted backdrops, and the studio's fortunes through World War Two requisitions by German and Allied troops. Along the way it introduces a producer who passed through on his way to inventing James Bond.