‘Conclave:’ Production Designer Susie Davies Recreated the Sistine Chapel and More At Cinecittà Studios

Edward Berger’s Conclave features an extensive array of artisans working at the top of their craft. From the brilliant screenplay to the stunning performances to the gorgeous cinematography, Berger and team create a cinematic world of riches as they explore the secretive papal election process. I stand by my original assessment after seeing the film at the Telluride Film Festival in August: Conclave is a master class in filmmaking.

One of the most astounding aspects of Berger’s film, in my opinion, is the exquisite production design. Obviously, the production crew could not film within the sacred hall of the Sistine Chapel. They could not visit the the interior of the Casa Santa Marta that houses cardinals during a conclave. They also needed to be selective about the exterior locations around Rome that accurately represented Berger and team’s vision for the project and the environment in which they set their actors.

Production designer Susie Davies (Saltburn) brought all of those locations to fully realized life at the legendary Cinecittà Studios in Rome for the film. She took on the seemingly Herculean task of recreating the Sistine Chapel on a soundstage while, at the same time, designing corridors and rooms that helped underscore the themes of the film. She also filled each location with specific colors, primarily red, that popped against the austere marble construction.

Here, in an interview with The Contending, Davies guides us through her process, beginning with extensive on-site research and partnering with Berger to either find or create spaces that would fully realize his vision for the film. She talks about recreating the Sistine Chapel and the Casa Santa Marta on the same soundstage. She also talks about creating the space in which we see the dead pope and what that space reflects about the character. Finally, she describes the process of creating the chamber — the Room of Tears — in which the film’s impactful closing moments take place.

The Contending: I want to start with where the film starts — the Pope’s quarters after he dies. What kind of research did you do to design that space? 

Susie Davies: Any sort of drama like this is based on some facts. You do your research. You do your due diligence, so we went for a tour around the Vatican to find out what that was all about. There are certain places you can’t go to, and that piqued my interest. Obviously, having read the script by then, you wonder what are these places? How are we going to sort of manifest them? How are they going to take place? Especially the Casa Santa Marta, this residence where the cardinals live, because the tour guide that showed me around pointed it out across the corridor and courtyard. It’s a really unassuming, quite dull building, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to serve as well to try and recreate it like for like.

That’s the beauty of storytelling, especially something so cinematic like this. I was able just to start to turn the dials up in a slightly different direction, and that came about the whole film as a juxtaposition, really, of the tradition that we know about the conclave and what we know about Rome and the beauty in its architecture. But also there’s a different side. There’s the unknown to that whole process. There’s the opposite of beauty in Rome: this brutalist, almost fascist side of Rome in Roman architecture in the last hundred of years. Actually, I love all of that sort of style.

It became a really interesting concept to play with. Our cardinals are in those beautiful costumes by Lisy Christl in the amazing palaces and areas of the Vatican that we recreated alongside seeing them in a more brutal, almost prison-like set, basically. So, I just started to dial up that more contemporary architecture for the Casa Santa Marta, and as we were going to make it and build it ourselves, I had much more free rein to decide what that was going to look like.

Edward and I decided this is where we can balance the decision making during this process of what the cardinals have to go through. We thought it would be really interesting to have them in this bunker-like, heavy, more pressured environment than perhaps the ornate environments in which we think everything happens. In your imagination, you imagine these red robed men in beautiful surroundings, but of course, they’re real people. They behave like you and me. They need to eat, drink, smoke their vapes, be on their phones. So it’s lovely to see that juxtaposition again of what we know as traditional, ancient processes happening nowadays in this contemporary world. That was fun to play with for sure.

The Contending: I know you built the Sistine Chapel at Cinecittà Studios. Did you build the Casa Santa Marta there as well?

Susie Davies: Basically, the Sistine Chapel is obviously quite a big set to build. It’s 10 metres high and has a set extension because obviously we couldn’t do the ceiling. You’d need an even bigger stage for that. We decided just to shift the set to one side of the big stage we had. I mean, we used every inch of that stage. If you walk through some of the rooms on the right hand side of one of the corridors, then you end up in the Sistine Chapel in our world. It’s literally touching each other.

The Contending: We don’t know anything about the dead Pope except for what characters tell us. What kind of conversation did you have with Edward to realize a set that would give us maybe some clues as to who this person was?

Susie Davies: I think it might be in the book as well that this particular Pope decided not to live in his private palace but wanted to live amongst the rest of his staff. So, in our film, he lives in the Casa Santa Marta, the Cardinal’s residence when they come to conclave. This building is, as I said, quite unassuming, and it’s not really well populated any other time other than a conclave. Maybe visiting priests will stay there. When we decided to put the Pope there, and as much as we decided this Pope wants to live amongst the people, we decided that all his assistants were a bit annoyed about that.

So they brought in some of the furniture, perhaps, that had come from the more palatial apartment. He’s on the top floor. He gets a carpet. He gets the better bedhead. He gets the better furniture, the better lighting than you notice the rest of the Cardinals get when they move in. So, yes, the backstory was that the assistants had tried to dress his apartment in a bit more Pope-like manner.

The Contending: When he has died, they seal the room, which becomes an important plot point later on in the film. I assume that the whole ceremony is based on what they actually do, based on your research, the ribbons that bind the door and then the wax seal?

Susie Davies: It sort of is. They absolutely seal the door, but it’s not as cinematic as perhaps we wanted it. So we altered and adapted some of those traditions throughout the whole of the conclave process. You know, in our research, the conclave has been happening for hundreds of years, and it has adapted from 500, 600 years ago. We’re selling a cinematic story rather than a documentary. That enables us just to tweak things a little bit so it looks more visually aesthetic. The way we seal off the door is slightly more elevated than it would have been in real life.

We needed it to sit at a perfect height. Those two hooks on the side of the door they’re not there in real life. The lovely hook in the middle of the door helps suggest that it’s slightly grander apartment as well, along with the three little windows. It just all seemed to make more sense at this aspect because we knew we were going to break it. That worked at a better height because we didn’t want them bending down to do it. 

The Contending: One of the things I love about the design and the color scheme is the juxtaposition of the Cardinals in that severe world dominated by whites and blacks with pops of red and the world of Isabella Rossellini and her sisters, nearly completely devoid of color except for their blue habits. Her office, for example, is quite bleak.

Susie Davies: She’s trying very hard with houseplants though, she’s trying to get some life in there.

The Contending: And the bird in the cage…

Susie Davies: Exactly. We just tried to bring a bit more life or living things to underscore the nurturing aspect of those nuns. The choreography of the nuns I thought was great. As they come in and out of the Casa Santa Marta, you can almost feel the air coming with them and filling the halls up, and then they disappear again.

The Contending: Talking about the exterior shots, there’s an amazing shot of cardinals walking down a corridor with beautiful columns  on either side. How closely did you work with cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine to find those exterior locations? 

Susie Davies: Edward is so visual, he sees those images. Early on, it was just me and Edward, and I think we both saw that very early on. That’s in the more modern business district. The whole process is just foot stomping and once you get into sync with a director, you get to understand the visual language. He’s very graphic, and it stems from him. Then absolutely, Stéphane then just brings the joy of his camera work to these compositions. It was really great to make the most of the architecture that we chose or we created.

It’s such a collaborative effort because that’s all going on, as you say, in those lovely white, pristine, neat columns, and the costumes just pop. Those costumes just work so well in those environments. They’re the color. They’re the life, and that’s exactly what we wanted.

The Contending: Getting to the Sistine Chapel, it’s 10 meters tall, built at Cinecittà. Tell me about recreating that. 

Susie Davies: The brilliant thing is that the craftsmen at Cinecittà are extraordinary. I had a team of painters put that set together in 10 weeks, I think. It’s all to do with the painting because, actually, the walls are pretty flat. If ever you go to the Sistine Chapel, it’s just this amazing painted wall of all these wonderful Leonardo paintings. Our painters painted them. They’re up on cherry pickers with an amazing soundtrack booming out every day while painting. I was so jealous of them. I think so many projects are filmed there because the experience is outstanding. To be able to do that in 10 weeks was extraordinary.

The Contending: When you look at your set for the Sistine Chapel, there are actions that happen in the film where you need to realize an explosion. Did you have to make adjustments in your design to be able to make that window explode?

Susie Davies: Yes, completely. Again, it’s a balance of so many different departments: special effects, visual effects, the stunt guys. We actually practiced the explosion on another set during prep to make sure we had the right amount of dirt and debris. Because of the shot that Edward wanted to achieve, we had to use the background artists and the real actors, so it was a case of we couldn’t mess that one up. So, I think we had four goes, and my prop team were a well oiled machine. After every take, they come in with the Hoovers. We’d sweep everything down, and we’d go again within about 15-20 minutes, which is pretty good going because you can’t stop a film from shooting. We storyboarded that very carefully to get make sure we had the right angles of how the explosion worked. We absolutely had to build the chapel in such a way that we could get the special effects rig up behind that window.

The Contending: In the end of the film, there’s a crucial conversation that happens between Cardinals Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) and Benitez (Carlos Diehz) in that red chamber. Tell me about designing that space. 

Susie Davies: That’s the Room of Tears. A lot of people will know the Room of Tears. It’s been in other movies, and it’s well known that it’s a room underneath the Sistine Chapel that the Cardinal will go into before they become Pope. That’s where they robe up. It’s known for being whitewashed. It’s an underground room, but it’s whitewashed. That never really sat well with me and with Edward because we’ve never really gone that clean apart from when we’re outside or that sort of like bright and harsh.

It just didn’t didn’t feel right because I’d played with the color red. Even in the Sistine Chapel, there’s more red than usual. We put a red carpet on the floor rather than a beige one just again to enhance the red on red color of the Cardinals robes. In that final scene, we could have chosen purple, I guess, but it makes sense for it to be red for so many reasons. Red is the color of life, the color of blood, the color of death. It’s dangerous.

But also it’s the color of a heart and of a womb. It’s like the beginning of something new. The tone we chose was quite warm as if you feel like you’re being held. I felt, when I saw it, I’m being held within the conversation. It’s a warmer, more confident but also gentle color. I like the idea that it’s the color of life, basically, and for a new beginning. Red was a very important colorr to finish on, I think. Throughout the film, we’ve dotted the color and to finish there just felt like a really good pause for the next part of this story.

Conclave is now playing in theaters and is available to stream online.