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Well, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Phil Kaufman all had to get their start somehow. As I continued into the rotunda -- dominated by blown-up images of famous directors -- it occurred to me that at the festival's 100th-year celebration in 2057, Manzini's face, sans the glitter, might be up there in the pantheon.

In a night filled with so much nostalgia, looking ahead seemed a perfect antidote. Did the black-tie crowd attending the first opening night at the Metro on Dec. 4, 1957, imagine that the festival would be going strong 50 years later? More likely, they were thinking mostly about getting out of the torrential rain and into a dry theater.

By contrast, it was practically balmy out on Thursday, making the trip from the Castro to City Hall a breeze. In a nice bit of synergy, the opening-night film, "Golden Door,'' is set at the turn of the past century, around the same period that San Francisco's civic masterpiece was built. This is the first time the festival has celebrated at City Hall, and a more accommodating venue is hard to envision. An abundance of space meant you never felt claustrophobic and could actually hear what friends were saying -- even in the room where the Toledo Show, a band imported from Los Angeles, played its smoky mix of hip-hop and jazz.

Partygoers plopped down on the grand staircase leading from the rotunda, not so much because they were tired but because it's a great place to people-watch. Everybody seemed to be bathed in a patina of gold. The special lighting was part of a theme marking the golden year -- even the linens were gold.

In the VIP room, located in the Mayor's Balcony (so called because it's outside his office), a smattering of local celebs gathered, including Peter Coyote, Delroy Lindo, Jeannette Etheredge and Willie Brown. Mayor Gavin Newsom had a previous engagement. George Gund, chairman of the San Francisco Film Society's board of directors, recalled that he first starting coming to the festival in 1962 because it was the only chance to see Eastern European cinema. He spent his vacation gorging on films, eventually working as a festival volunteer. "I would pick people up at the airport,'' he said. Any big stars? "Nope, just Eastern European directors,'' Gund replied.

Earlier at the Castro, a similar drink was being imbibed at a private pre-party. Standing off in a corner, festival board member Sid Ganis said he was saddened by the death of his old friend Jack Valenti. As president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Ganis consulted with Valenti, who headed the Motion Picture Association of America for nearly four decades.

Certainly Valenti, the grandson of Sicilian immigrants, would have enjoyed "Golden Door,'' which chronicles the experience of Sicilians from a tiny village making the arduous steamship journey to a new land, where, they have heard, coins grow on trees and milk flows in the streams. In an onstage introduction, Graham Leggat, the San Francisco Film Society's executive director, commented on the appropriateness of a film called "Golden Door'' ushering in a golden anniversary.

"I saw he had a sense of himself and very human eyes and knew he could act,'' said Crialese, who put Amato in his other films, "Respiro'' and "Once We Were Strangers,'' as well.

The preponderance of Italians like Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in the movie business interests Crialese, particularly the fact that they have kept some of the Old World ways. For instance, on a movie set, "When Pacino walks into his trailer, he walks in backwards,'' Crialese said, explaining that this old-country superstition has to do with protecting yourself.

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