Skip to main content

Celebrate Nino Manfredi's Centennial


Born Saturnino Manfredi on March 22, 1921, in Frosinone, Nino Manfredi was one of Italy’s most prolific actors from the 1950s to right before his death in 2004.

Manfredi graduated with a law degree but famously declared while delivering his thesis, “Ladies and gentlemen, I swear to you, I will never be a lawyer.” Shortly thereafter, he began his acting career in the theater, working on numerous productions with the likes of Eduardo De Filippo and Vittorio Gassman.


In 1949, he made his big-screen debut in Mario Sequi’s World War II drama, “Monastero di Santa Chiara.” He spent the 1950s honing his skills, often playing a friend and confidant of the protagonist. Among his most popular supporting roles during that decade are Peppino in Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1956 “Lo scapolo” (The Bachelor) and Raffaele in Camillo Mastrocinque’s 1956 “Totò, Peppino e la … malafemmina” (Totò, Peppino and the Hussy).


The following decade brought more substantial roles that revealed his talent for comedy, which made him a key player in the commedia all’italiana genre. In 1960, he teamed up with a pair of comic greats in Mario Camerini’s classic black-and-white mystery, “Crimen” (Suddenly, It’s Murder). The all-star cast features Manfredi, Gassman and Alberto Sordi as three men accused of murder. Silvana Mangano, Franca Valeri and Dorian Gray play their wives. Manfredi is Quirino Filonzi, a happy-go-lucky husband whose wife, Giovanna (Valeri), calls the shots in their marriage. Eugene Levy released a notable remake in 1992 titled “Once Upon a Crime.” Dino De Laurentiis produced both the original and the remake.


Manfredi shined in the lead role of Luis García Berlanga’s 1963 comedy, “El verdugo” (The Executioner). Manfredi plays José Luis Rodríguez, an undertaker who falls in love with Carmen, an executioner’s daughter. After they marry, José is obliged to carry on the family “dynasty” once his father-in-law retires. Terrified at the thought of executing someone, José becomes obsessed with the crime section of the newspaper, going out of his way to break up street fights in the hopes of preventing someone from earning a death sentence that he will have to carry out. 

One afternoon, he receives a telegram stating that he will have to perform his first execution. The news sends him into a frenzy until his wife reads that the deed is to be done on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. They decide to make the trip the honeymoon they never had, all the while hoping the condemned will receive a pardon. Their enthusiasm is dampened when Carmen’s father guilt trips them into taking him along, proclaiming he was only sent to depressing places during his long career. Arriving at the prison, José pleads with the guards to let his father-in-law put his 40 years of experience to good use. To his chagrin, the duty falls to him.


By the 1970s, Manfredi evolved into a strong leading man, carrying a variety of films with ease. This was nowhere more evident than in Ettore Scola’s 1976 “Brutti sporchi e cattivi” (Ugly, Dirty & Bad), in which Manfredi completely transforms himself into the detestable Giacinto Mazzatella. The film follows a poverty-stricken family devoid of morals living in the slums of Rome. Giacinto receives a large sum of insurance money after an accident causes him to go blind in one eye. Everyone wants a piece of his fortune, so he hides his money and sleeps with a rifle. When he falls for Iside, a promiscuous young woman, he wines and dines her, and eventually moves her into his home to live alongside his wife and children. Feeling disgraced, his wife cooks up a plot to kill him.

Over the course of his award-winning career, Manfredi juggled stage, film and television roles. He also stepped behind the camera to direct. He suffered a stroke in 2003 and passed away the following year. His son Luca carries on his filmmaking legacy, having recently directed two acclaimed movies about his father and Alberto Sordi.


Below are Manfredi's films available on Amazon. Click here to watch "The Executioner" on Criterion Channel. Click here to watch "Ugly, Dirty & Bad" for free on Tubi.


                       

- Written by Jeannine Guilyard for the April issue of Fra Noi Magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Conversation with Actor Mirko Frezza of David di Donatello Winner "Il più grande sogno"

The 2017 David di Donatello award show, which took place on Monday, was an exciting event that celebrated many great contemporary talents of Italian cinema.  I was fortunate to have seen most of the nominees.  Among my personal favorites  is Michele Vannucci's  Il più grande sogno  simply because it is based on one of the most inspiring, beautiful stories I've ever  heard, and the person behind that story is as authentic and down-to-earth as they come. The film won the 3 Future Award, which is determined by the public. With Director Michele Vannucci and Actor Mirko Frezza I first saw  Il più grande sogno last September when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival. I didn't make it to Venice, but thanks to a great online platform called Festival Scope , which offers a handful of premieres to be screened on the web, I felt like I was there. The film itself blew me away, and then when I realized it was based on a true story, I knew t...

The Timeless Talent of Stefania Sandrelli

On screen since the tender age of 14, she has captivated audiences for more than 50 years with a compelling combination of strength and vulnerability. She achieved stardom at just 14 years old playing the angelic cousin of a love-struck Marcello Mastroianni in Pietro Germi’s “Divorce Italian Style.” More than half a century later, she is still going strong and remains one of Italy’s most esteemed actors. Stefania Sandrelli was born on June 5, 1946, in Viareggio in the province of Lucca in northern Italy. As a child, she studied music and dance. Then in 1960, she won a beauty pageant and was featured on the cover of Le Ore magazine. Her purity captivated the country and shortly thereafter, movie offers began pouring in. Just one year later, she made her cinema debut in three feature films: Mario Sequi’s Gioventù di notte , Luciano Salce’s The Fascist, and Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style . She instantly became a star and before long was a key figure in Italy’s legend...

The Sweetness and Genius of Giulietta Masina

Fellini and Masina on the set of "La Strada" As open-hearted and sunny as Federico Fellini was dark and complex, they were perfect counterpoints during a half-century of marriage and professional collaboration.  Nicknamed a  “female Chaplin” and described by Chaplin himself as  the actress who moved him most,  Giulietta Masina confronted the tragedy of her characters with an eternal innocence and enthusiasm that gave Italians hope in the most challenging of times.  Born in 1921 in San Giorgio di Piano, a commune north of Bologna, Masina was the oldest of four children born to a father who was a music professor and violinist and a mother who was a grade-school teacher. Her parents sent her as a child to live in Rome with her widowed aunt while she attended school there. As Masina took an early interest in gymnastics, her aunt saw in her a passion for performing and encouraged her to pursue acting. So after high school, Masina attended Rome’s La...

Film at Lincoln Center honors Monica Vitti with retrospective featuring restored classics

Photo Courtesy of Archivio Luce-Cinecitt à A retrospective dedicated to the films of Italian cinema icon Monica Vitti will be held from June 6 to June 19 at Lincoln Center in New York City.  The 14-film series, titled "Monica Vitti: La Modernista," is presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà and marks the first North American retrospective celebrating Vitti's 35-year career. "We are pleased to partner with Cinecittà to celebrate one of Italy's most revered actresses," said Film at Lincoln Center Vice President of Programming Florence Almozini. "It is a privilege to present decades' worth of films from Monica Vitti's illustrious and prolific career, especially with many restored versions of her legendary works." Monica Vitti, a key figure in film history, began her career in the mid-1950s and quickly became a captivating presence on screen. Her collaboration with director Michelangelo Antonioni produced memorable films in the 196...

The Anthology Film Archives Presents: The Italian Connection: Poliziotteschi and Other Italo-Crime Films of the 1960s and '70's

June 19 – June 29 Influenced both by 1960s political cinema and Italian crime novels, as well as by French noir and American cop movies like "Dirty Harry" and "The French Connection," many Italian filmmakers in the late-60s and early-70s gradually moved away from the spaghetti western genre, trading lone cowboys for ‘bad’ cops and the rough frontier of the American west for the mean streets of modern Italy. Just as they had with their westerns, they reinvented the borrowed genre with their inimitable eye for style and filled their stories with the kidnappings, heists, vigilante justice, and brutal violence that suffused this turbulent moment in post-boom 1970s Italy. The undercurrent of fatalism and cynicism in these uncompromising movies is eerily reminiscent of the state of discontent in Italy today. ‘The Italian Connection’ showcases the diversity and innovation found in the genre, from the gangster noir of Fernando Di Leo’s "Caliber 9" ...