How many of us, when traveling in the United States, haven't loved feeling a bit like the protagonists of legendary musical Grease, while sipping a milkshake sitting at the counter of a retro-style diner? True icons of the American dream, diners are places suspended in time that have written the social and cinematic history of the United States, experiencing a real boom in the 1950s.

Neon signs, long counters that immediately bring you back to an Edward Hopper's painting, tables surrounded by chrome benches and leather stools, not to mention the eclectic accents of certain Art Déco style furnishings on black and white checkered floors. From Grease to the recent La La Land, nothing more than Hollywood cult films is able to catapult spectators into places that are as "exotic" as they are extremely real.

And what about Frenchy's bedroom in Grease? The setting would be the envy of the most eccentric pajama parties, with its pink wallpaper decorated with geometric patterns, the very soft carpets, the fringes... all topped off with the inevitable high school flags posted on the wall: these are just some of the lively "50s ingredients" immortalized by Hollywood films: elements that return to being a permanent presence in trendy interiors.

Lately, selecting pieces that seem extrapolated from films and famous television productions set in mid-century America — how can we not mention the legendary TV series Happy Days — and catapulting them into Instagram interiors, is a completely natural attitude. So much so that interior designers dealing with the fitting out of bars and restaurants are proving increasingly inclined to turn directly to the vintage market, discovering chrome furnishings, sets of tables and chairs with rounded corners, tapered metal legs and formica surfaces.

Following diners and teenagers' bedrooms, there is another fascinating setting in movies telling all things American, aka the drive-in, the place where you can watch a big screen film from inside your car. Probably every American director will have shot a scene in this unique context once in their career, from Francis Ford Coppola in The outsiders, to H. Ross in Footloose, passing once again through Randal Kleiser, director of Grease, who chose it as a set of one of the musical's most famous scenes.

Open-air cinema is an American symbol par excellence spreading the 50s, when it was estimated that there were as many as 4000 drive-ins in the United States. If in the following decades, with the evolution of technology, the phenomenon has drastically decreased. Nonetheless in the most recent years — and on the pandemic wave — there has been a large increase in the drive-in attendance, confirming not only a renewed love for cinema, but for a vintage flavor cinematic experience!

To season the most loved American cinema scenarios panorama, one the most playful could not be missing, namely the luna park — with the Ferris wheel at its core. In 2017 Wonder Wheel (once again the story is set in the magical 1950s), Woody Allen reinterprets the post-war American recovery period through his unique perspective, immersing the viewer in the personal dramas of the characters who inhabitate the Coney Island luna park, New York. A riot of colour, sounds, warm lights, carefully crafted costumes and extraordinary vintage merry-go-rounds, gives the film an original character by blurring the boundaries between vintage and surrealism. Among our favorite pieces of the retro décor suggested by Woody Allen, the cast iron tub placed in the open space, and the ball lamp in the style of George Nelson, a spearhead of 50s American design.