Italian Cinema Today

The lightheartedness with which Walter Chiari graced the screen was a defining trait in his life. It led to dramatic professional successes as well as personal travails that seemed better suited for one of his movies. Born Walter Annicchiarico in Verona to Pugliese parents on March 8, 1924, Chiari spent his teenage years excelling in sports, earning championships in boxing, bocce and swimming. During the early 1940s, he worked as a radio technician and bank clerk. While at the bank, he became known for his imitations of Adolf Hitler, which ultimately got him fired. That proved to be a blessing in disguise, motivating him to give acting a try. He started out in theater while maintaining side jobs as a cartoonist and writer. At the start of World War II, Chiari enlisted in the Italian navy and contributed to the newspaper L’Orizzonte as a satirical cartoonist. In January 1944, he participated in an amateur stage competition in which he revived his imitation of Hitler. The performance was...

"When my father died, (Dino Riso) told me, 'If you need another father, I'm here for you.'" Enrico Vanzina and his brother Carlo grew up during the Golden Age of Italian cinema with an iconic father who directed some of the most memorable films ever made. Stefano Vanzina aka Steno worked often with Mario Monicelli, Totò  and Alberto Sordi , and brought us eternal classics like "Un Americano a Roma,"   "Piccola Posta" and  Totò nella luna (Totò in the Moon) . Following in their father's footsteps, Enrico and Carlo made their feature film debut in 1976 with the comedy, "Luna di miele in tre." It would be the first film in a lifelong collaboration between the siblings until Carlo's untimely death in 2018. At the heart of those collaborations was Enrico as writer and Carlo as director. The two were known for their Christmastime comedies otherwise known as Cinepanettone. Enrico has recently taken on the role of director with the 2...

Antonio Cifariello in a scene from Fellini's "Agenzia Matrimoniale" “This reaction — this viewing of the film as monstrous — underlines the fear we feel when called to look at the truth.” Screenwriter and director Cesare Zavattini was truly ahead of his time. I am so fascinated with this 1953 film compilation put together by Zavattini. “L’amore in città” (Love in the City) is a collection of six short film essays directed by Zavattini, Dino Risi, Michelangelo Antonioni , Carlo Lizzani, Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada. The New York Times did a beautiful article on the collection in 2014 referring to Zavattini as “a pioneer of documentary fiction (sometimes called “hybrid cinema”), in which nonactors essentially play themselves, dramatizing their particular situations.” With the exception of Fellini’s short, in which he narrates something that happened to him but uses actors to demonstrate it, this collection is exactly this type of “hybrid cinema”… the situat...

Journalist-turned-filmmaker Fabrizio Corallo was hand chosen by the family of Vittorio Gassman to make his latest documentary Sono Gassman! Vittorio King of Comedy. The film, which   Corallo just presented at Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, is a followup to his acclaimed documentary on one of Gassman's frequent collaborators, Dino Risi. The pair made 15 films together. With Fabrizio Corallo at the MAXXI Museo, Rome I spoke with Corallo while he was in New York. He talked so enthusiastically about both of his works, explaining that he was a journalist in Rome long before he became a filmmaker. So, he had personal knowledge and insight into the psyche of each of these giants of Italian cinema. When speaking about Gassman, I could hear the pride in his voice when he talked about the family's desire to have him direct the documentary. He didn't hesitate to take on the project. All he had to do was look inside himself for the essence of the film. "I was lucky to ...

She’s been called “a kind of Audrey Hepburn with sex appeal.” Having worked in Hollywood and Europe, actress Elsa Martinelli’s pure beauty and innocent demeanor made her the perfect silver screen match for stars like Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, and Gabriele Ferzetti. Born in the Tuscan city of Grosetto in 1935, Martinelli moved to Rome with her family and worked as a model in the early 1950s. Shortly thereafter, she began making her transformation to acting by taking small roles in films like Claude Autant-Lara's Le Rouge et le Noir . In 1955, she was noticed by Kirk Douglas’s wife who had seen Martinelli in Vogue magazine and immediately had her in mind for the role of an American Indian for her husband’s forthcoming project. An offer was made and Martinelli was cast as Onahti, the daughter of a Sioux chief in Douglas’s Technicolor Western The Indian Fighter . A year later, she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 6th edition of the Berlin International Film Festiv...

On this #FlashbackFriday, I'm taking a look back at one of my favorite films in this year's edition of the Festa del Cinema di Roma- Fabrizio Corallo's documentary,  Dino Risi Forever. With director Fabrizio Corallo To mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the master of Italian-style comedy, the festival paid tribute to Risi by premiering  Corallo's beautiful film, which featured intimate interviews showing the director's sense of humor and insight, which inadvertently made him an icon. In the telling interview, Risi spoke of his memories working with the likes of Sophia Loren, Ettore Scola and Dino De Laurentiis. He spoke of his passion for writing screenplays, "Writing was something that I really enjoyed." And Scola spoke of his collaboration with Risi. "I started working with  Dino and I did about ten films with him in all." Risi also spoke in depth about his friendship and collaboration with Vittorio Gassman. The two w...