Marcello Mastroianni, La Dolce Vita and much more at Cinema Italia SF
When he entered the legendary gates of Cinecittà for the first time, Marcello Mastroianni was only 11. Nevertheless, his entire life as an actor was intense. He spent many years as a theater protagonist playing legendary and memorable dramas. Then, he spent the rest of his life building a vast filmography, being part of more than 170 films, many of which are well known masterpieces, true milestones in the history of worldwide cinema.
Marcello Mastroianni and five of his most iconic movies are coming to San Francisco in September, thanks to Cinema Italia SF. Following Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Vittorio De Sica, Anna Magnani, Dino Risi, Lina Wertmüller, and Michelangelo Antonioni, the program is now at its eighth series and wants to pay an overdue homage to a great star, 60 years after the making of La Dolce Vita.
We talked to Amelia Antonucci, the Program Director, whose passion for Italian cinema has turned into something more than a simple showcase for Italian movies.
Amelia, it’s not the first time you bring Mastroianni to San Francisco. What’s different, 18 years later?
I had the honor and the pleasure to present a more extensive retrospective of Marcello Mastroianni’s in 2000, while serving as Director of the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco. The retrospective was organized by Marcello’s wife, Anna Maria Tatò, and named The Stuff that Dreams Are Made of. That recalled a sentence to which Marcello himself referred to during a long interview regarding the movie I Remember, Yes I Remember. Eighteen years ago, after the event in New York, twenty-two movies were presented in San Francisco, thanks to a wide collaboration between Cinecittà International, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the Pacific Film Archive, and the San Francisco Film Society. By working together, the impact was great, so were the press coverage and the involvement of important local sponsors like Armani and Bulgari.
Why is Mastroianni so important for Italian cinema?
Mastroianni represents the man that everybody wanted to be, the latin lover with a baby’s smile who seduces the best actresses with a special ingenious flair. Mastroianni thought that being an actor is like creating Chinese shadows. Richard Peña, the curator of the retrospective and also director — at the time — of the Lincoln Center Film Society, wanted to honor this idea taking the wording from The Tempest, Act IV: “Actors…? We are such stuff as dreams are made of.” He was an actor in the real sense of the word, going deep in each character and transforming himself when directed by different people.
What made you decide to choose Mastroianni’s movies for this second yearly edition of Cinema Italia?
Last Spring, the wide success of Antonioni’s series made us proud and excited, indeed almost 2000 people attended the screening in one single day. We decided to work on the fall program on our own, as we did last year when we brought the Lina Wertmüller program to the Castro Theatre. This time, we have found most of the movies in the US (both in 35mm and restored digital copies). The only one we imported from Luce Cinecittà is A Special Day, in 35mm.
What’s the goal of this program?
We want to show all the ways Mastroianni was directed by different directors. This allows to show his incredible acting skills: a playboy, yet not a macho, he was in fact a man who made a case for the very deconstruction of machismo. When wearing elegant suits and his inseparable Persol sunglasses, he fascinates the audience, even when he finds himself in embarrassing and unusual situations.
Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in an iconic scene of La Dolce Vita
Mastroianni is an icon well known abroad and should be easy to bring people to the Castro theatre…
I really hope so. We are trying to keep the standard of the previous programs and I don’t want to disappoint our audience. Not only did I chose five movies that won the Academy Awards, the Palm d’Or, and other international prizes, but I also wanted to show the audience the hands that forged him: De Sica, Fellini, Scola, and Germi. Those four movie directors gave Marcello four different faces and four unforgettable characters.
Amelia, what’s your expectation for this year’s program?
I always panic before each program and my partner Sophoan Sorn tries to reassure me. “Everything will be fine,” he tells me. So, I don’t have any particular expectation this time, neither. As a Neapolitan, I am a bit superstitious but, at the same time, I would like to see this program succeed and gain a wider audience compared to the last one. On the other hand, I am sure our viewers will be happy to know that we found the black TR3 car that Marcello was driving in La Dolce Vita in Palo Alto, and it will be in front of the theater for the entire day of the program.
Why are you so attached to Mastroianni and his movies?
Marcello Mastroianni’s movies were and are just part of my life. As child and a teenager, I was nurtured by cinematography, as much as he was. I would go to the theatre almost every night. Marcello’s movies and his characters were my friends, as well as a way to learn about society and about a world, which used to be, especially for those living in small towns around Italy, way too far. Mastroianni was not as unreachable as Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, or Gregory Peck, he was the man next door, a Latin lover with a beautiful, dangerous smile.
Any final thoughts on why everybody should watch Mastroianni’s movies at least once in a lifetime?
The movies we chose are five wonderful mirrors of Italian society of that time. The characters played by Marcello Mastroianni have become eternal. Many American movie directors, just think of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, have studied these movies and tried to get some inspiration for their own. La Dolce Vita is a masterpiece, so is 8½: watching the two movies on a big screen is a dream coming true. Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, a three-episode comedy by De Sica, is a gem and A special Day and Divorce Italian Style are two films at the highest level of cinematography, the best made by Ettore Scola and Pietro Germi. There is only one Marcello in the world of cinema. And it’s Marcello Mastroianni.
“The Latin lover, the quintessential continental man, the world-weary Don Giovanni: for over five decades Marcello Mastroianni epitomized and complicated onscreen masculinity, and remains a key symbol of postwar Italian cinema,” the Film Society of Lincoln Center wrote about Mastroianni.
If you want to experience Italian cinema at its best, join Cinema Italia at the Castro Theatre on September 22nd. In this second event in 2018, Cinema Italia SF is working independently and thanks to the support of the Italian Cultural Institute, the Italian Consulate General, and The Leonardo da Vinci Society. Few and dedicated sponsors are making the “dream” happen again, Maria Manetti Shrem & John Shrem; Della Toffola; John and Karen Diefenbach; and the Italian Homemade Co. alongside the long-standing sponsors C’era Una Volta, Italfood, and Il Gattopardo.
Originally published at italoamericano.org on September 10, 2018.
