Italian screen icons Monica Bellucci and Sophia Loren kicked off the Rome Cinema Festival on Thursday.
Bellucci was first on the Red Carpet for her festival-opening film, Le Deuxieme Souffle.
She has promised to "make film-goers dream" alongside Daniel Auteuil in French veteran Alain Corneau's remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's gritty noir classic from 1966.
Bellucci, many people's ideal of timeless Mediterranean beauty, continues her preference for playing against type in her portrait of a sultry but deadly gangster's moll - in a blonde wig.
"I was inspired by great screen blondes like Catherine Deneuve, Simone Signoret, Brigitte Bardot and Kim Basinger," she told reporters.
"They played roles in which women dominate the story, not men. Stories of men who are swept away by women".
Loren, meanwhile, led a gala opening concert with tenor Andrea Bocelli in her role as festival 'godmother'.
She also received a career achievement award as she opened a retrospective of her work.
The two Italians will be followed over the next two weeks by an array of stars including Cate Blanchett, Keira Knightley, Halle Berry, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise and Sean Penn.
The buzz was mounting Thursday for Friday night's world premiere of visionary Indian director Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
In it, Blanchett reprises her portrayal of the Virgin Queen in Kapur's 1998 Elizabeth I, this time showing the ageing monarch confronting court intrigue revolving around her doomed sister Mary Queen of Scots, as well as leading the fight against Spain.
Festival chief Goffredo Bettini has said the October 18-27 fest's array of 167 would-be blockbusters and artier fare from 40 countries will have "something for everyone".
Corneau's film is one of 14 competing for the top Marcus Aurelius prize.
They include Hector Babenco's El Pasado with Gael Garcia Bernal; Jason Reitman's Juno with Ellen Page; Reservation Road by Hotel Rwanda director Terry George and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly; and Mongol, a tale of the youth of Genghis Khan by Russian director Sergei Bodrov of Prisoner of the Caucasus fame.
Also in contention are two Spanish films, Barcelona, Una Mapa and Caotica Ana; Fugitive Pieces from Canada; France's Ce Que Mes Yeux Ont Vu; China's Li Chun; and an Iranian-Japanese production, Hafez.
The two Italian contenders are Carlo Mazzacurati's La Giusta Distanza (The Right Distance) and Emidio Greco's L'Uomo Privato (The Private Man).
Knightley, fresh from her acclaimed performance in the Ian McEwan adaptation Atonement, appears in another literary adaptation, Silk, from the international bestseller by Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco.
Among the fest's special events is a focus on India with new films such as Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking, Bollywood extravaganza The Last Year and Feroz Khan's Gandhi My Father.
In another sidebar the ANSA news agency is putting on a show of celebrity pictures from the golden age of Hollywood on the Tiber in the 1950s and '60s.
