Venice Film Festival Fellini passes it to Maradona and ... Sorrentino's goal
Criticism 'The Event' turns abortion into a harsh, feverish and extremely rigorous emotional and political testimony
Criticism 'La caja': a crude portrait of orphanhood in Latin America
Toni Servillo (Afragola, 1959) looks like a normal guy with a cigar in his hand and, in reality,
as Pirandello would say, he is one, none and one hundred thousand.
This man with a forceful gesture and flexible face has ended up being the perfect image of any of us, Italian or not. In
the
current show he appears in up to three films. And the three with place of honor in the official section.
He was first seen in the moving portrait of himself that Sorrentino imagines in
Was the Hand of God
. He was the father of the character who plays the director himself as a child. Immediately afterwards, he dressed as a policeman to fight a duel with another giant: Silvio Orlando.
Ariaferma
, by Leonardo di Costanzo, is a prison film, a social drama, a Greek tragedy and a prodigy. All in one. And tomorrow he will finally give life to the mythical Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta, father of Eduardo De Filippo, in
Qui rido io
(Here I River), by Mario Martone.
One, none, and a hundred thousand.
Being in three films at the same time in the official section of Venice of what is a symptom: of its greatness or of how bad the Italian interpretive scene is that everything has to do Servillo? It is just a coincidence that all three have been selected , my participation in them is not. With each of the directors I am joined by a story of almost a lifetime. We are friends and we have been for too long. With Sorrentino I have already made six films; I have been joined by a militancy in the theater with Martone since we were two 18 years old and I have known Di Costanzo since we were children. For the rest,
believe me when I tell you that Italian cinema is experiencing a second golden age and I am very proud to be part of it.
Is friendship essential for you to accept a job? No, I will tell you that friendship is what causes me to be asked to do things that a stranger would not dare. Friendship gives me as much happiness as it causes me problems [laughs]. Why would someone who doesn't know me ever ask me to play Andreotti or Berlusconi? Does fame ruin an actor's career? I don't know. I suspect it is bad. And I protect myself. I live in a small town next to Naples, Caserta, and it is clear to me that my life is the theater. The theater forces you to be awake and forces you to be a guest in other people's houses.
If you succeed or fail, you see it live.
Nobody tells you like it happens in the movies. In any case, no actor is immune to the fact that at a certain moment the public forgets you. In Spain, when you want to despise an actor, you call him a puppeteer ... It's the same here. If you want to belittle an actor, just remember that he is only a comedian. Unlike the rest of the people who are supposed to have a respectable job. But I think that this has been accentuated today because
politicians above all are stealing our jobs
and they perform in front of the camera more than any of us. Everything has been devalued. But what is more respectable than a guy who invites you to reflect on the world. That's what we comedians do. Who is a better actor: Andreotti or Berlusconi? Andreotti was an extraordinary man both for all the time he was in power and for his ability to compose phrases and sayings. I will tell you that for a long time there was an award for the most notorious public figure on TV and he got 27. He was very proud.
He loved being Andreotti.
And Berlusconi? Well, he has inaugurated an idea of mercantile politics that all the populisms of the world have ended up imitating. The Trump patent is held by Italy. Andreotti was more of a theater and Berlusconi more of a television show. The first cultivated mystery, the second was pure extroversion.
Berlusconi imitators are plentiful and Andreotti followers are lacking.
He acts as a father in
Was the hand of God
and as a father in
Qui rido io
. The parallelism is not enough for
Ariaferma
... Do you think you have reached the status of father of the Italian cinema and scene? It is a matter of age. I don't care, but the important thing is never to lose your taste for risk. My engine for work is constantly fleeing from the idea that others have of me. But it is true that if I ever had the impression that a new period was inaugurated in my life and in Italian cinema, it was when
Gomorra
, by Matteo Garrone, and
Il divo
, by Sorrentino were released. Being in both films as the lead authorizes me a bit to be a father, but not the Pope
.
makes a couple with Silvio Orlando, another of the parents of this new time ... We both have similar stories. We are both men of the theater in the strict sense. We weren't there waiting for the movies to come. We imagined that our first collaboration would be a comedy and it has been with a drama. The funny thing is that he, the kindest of men, plays the bad guy and I, who always plays the mobster, I play the police officer. The heart of this film is the moment in which the prisoner and the guardian forgive each other, for so to speak, and they sit down together to eat. Isn't this gesture revolutionary in these times? Without a doubt and that's why the film interested me so much. On the one hand, it speaks of a specific problem: Italian prisons are the most overcrowded in Europe. And on the other, it raises a question that now more than ever in these times of so much rage,With so much violence and with people so divided it is essential: to listen to the other. It seems that the world has been eaten up by evil. The message of the movie is simple:
we have to give good a chance.
What would Lennon say ... He says it and everyone else. Even the pope. And I think that the left costs more, it costs more to recognize the adversary. Or it doesn't say it as effectively.
Compassion is necessary.
Can cinema or art change reality? I do not believe in art that pontificates about the world; I believe in the art that can humbly suggest. It is enough to invite to think. Antigone wants to bury her brother with a gesture of pity that is the opposite of politics. Creon, however, wants to enforce the law ...
Cinema has to have a civil passion without dogmatism.
Was it civil passion that led you to act?
No, it was curiosity, curiosity about others.
Nothing more. I only intend to testify to the public how much of the others there is within me. And that is also a social and political passion. The actor, don't doubt it, is a political animal. In Russia, actors defined themselves as artists of the people. I'm talking about before the revolution. The people delegate their own representation to them. Bello. Do you feel like heir to the Scarpetta whom you play in
Qui rido io
? Today Scarpetta is known as the father of Eduardo De Filippo, the great playwright. But at the time he revolutionized the scene and was a true king of the city of Naples. He was the center of her entire social life. But what fascinates me was his animality, he
was a predator who did not distinguish between the scene and reality: everything for him was theater.
His human adventure was defined by an irresistible desire for life that led him to be the father of eight or nine children. Would you say that he is a new Jep Gambardella in your career? I don't know.
In France they talk about the
Jep attitude
.
Now that character to whom I owe so much has become a way of being in the world.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
Europe
Italy
France
theater
cinema
culture
HBPR
Venice Film Festival 'The Event' turns abortion into a harsh, feverish and extremely rigorous emotional and political testimony
CulturaMadrid is preparing to remove the capacity restriction of theaters and cinemas and open 100%
CinemaThe Last Getaway of Jean-Paul Belmondo
See links of interest
Last News
Holidays 2021
Home THE WORLD TODAY
Huesca - Real Oviedo