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He had directed the greatest Italian actors, starting with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in A Special Day, presented at Cannes in 1977, chronicled the turmoil of Italian society from its margins, like the Roman slum of Ugly, Dirty and Bad (1976) and drawn among the first bitter balance disillusionment of after 68 to La Terrasse (1980). Ettore Scola, master of Italian cinema from the 1960s to the late twentieth th century, died Jan. 19 in a Roman clinic 84 years. “His heart stopped beating fatigue” reported his wife and daughters, cited by Corriere della Serra.
Ettore Scola was born May 10, 1931 at Trevico, Campania. His family soon settled in Rome, where he began studying law while expressing an interest in the satirical drawing (decades later, he exhibited in a Paris gallery). He collaborated on the humor magazine Marc’Aurelio, as the writers and Age Carpelli or Federico Fellini.
Its legal vocation finally gives way to the cinema in the early 1950s. The young man is first writer. In twelve years, from 1952 to 1964, he worked at the script dozens of films, most of which have not marked the history of cinema, such as Two Nights with Cleopatra (with Sophia Loren in the title role) or Toto in the Moon cosmic variation of the Neapolitan comic tribulations. It still retains its contribution to the scenarios of the first major films Dino Risi, The Fanfaron, Monsters or The March on Rome.
Engulfment of Italian society
In 1964, he started directing with Women Talk, a film sketches, as was the fashion at the time in Italy already plays in which one of his election interpreters, Vittorio Gassman. Follows in 1968, Our heroes will they manage to find their friend mysteriously disappeared in Africa, satirical adventure film shot between Italy and Angola, with Alberto Sordi and Bernard Blier then The Pizza Triangle (1970) points out that the French criticism, sensitive to mixing and grotesque realism of this triangular love story set in a poor neighborhood of Rome. The film is played by Monica Vitti, Giancarlo Giannini and Marcello Mastroianni and the latter is an acting award at Cannes. Following Permette, Rocco Papaleo? (1971) and The Most Beautiful Evening of my life (1972), according to La Panne, piece Friedrich Dürrenmatt, with Michel Simon and Sordi.
At this time, Ettore Scola running documentaries for the Italian Communist Party, on the feasts of the Unita, the daily party or struggles to Fiat. In 1974 he enjoyed international success with We All Loved Each Other So Much, that follows the journey of three friends – a lawyer (Gassman), a teacher (Stefano Satta Flores) and a proletarian (Nino Manfredi) – the end of the war to the 1970s The film depicts the sinking of the Italian company in the Christian Democratic system, while paying tribute to neorealism of the postwar period. “The cinema is always mixed with the facts of the Italian company, we inherited this from neorealism: ” Always follow the man, “ Zavattini indicated. Even by changing the language, style, I think the message remained “ then explains the director in an interview with the World.
” isolation Typology, social difference “
Scola then returns to the grotesque, with Ugly, Dirty and Bad, that backdrop a Roman slum threatened by rapid urbanization and directed greed of its inhabitants, dominated by a tyrant embodied Nino Manfredi. The film won the award for directing at Cannes in 1976. After a television satire (Ladies and gentlemen, good evening) he realizes what remains his most famous film, A Special Day (1977). He recounts the meeting, May 6, 1938, between a Roman housewife (Sophia Loren) and a homosexual intellectual persecuted by the Fascist regime (Marcello Mastroianni). In the background, the radio tells another meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. The director liked to recall that he wore the uniform of the “son of the wolf,” childish fascist organization that day.
A Siclier Jacques, who asked in these columns, Scola explained: “We always roughly the same film. I have always been concerned about a type of isolation, social difference. I’m not leaving a subject, but an idea I transposes into the grotesque and humor, because I think it is a noble and tragic way of representing contemporary issues. ” But for the purposes of this film, Scola disposes entirely of his sardonic humor. Perhaps to compensate, he made the same year with his accomplice Dino Risi The New Monsters, updated, more vulgar, more erotic, nastiest, Monsters 1963 .
Disillusionment of the Italian Left
His next film, The Terrace is him bitter. Through the worldliness of Roman intellectuals (Mastroianni, Tognazzi, Gassman, Trintignant, Reggiani), Scola portrays the disillusionment of the Italian left. Ettore Scola was at the height of his fame, Italian and international. He is regularly selected in competition at Cannes and collect the trophies. But Passion of Love (1981) and That Night in Varennes (1982), historical comedy about the attempted flight of Louis XVI does not meet the same success.
There is one coming triumph, that of Prom (1983), and mute virtuoso adaptation of a show of French director Jean-Claude Penchenat, which stages of couples evolving on the establishment of a popular trail. The film brings together nearly one million spectators in France and is named Oscar. Still follow nine feature films which will not match their predecessors. Even the meeting of Jack Lemmon and Marcello Mastroianni in Macaroni (1985), even a return to historical intimate fresco Family (1987) do not convince quite . The last film in the series, Gente di Roma, released in France in 2004, against the backdrop of protests against Berlusconi. While he had announced his retirement, Ettore Scola gave a new film, a documentary presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2013 entitled How strange it is to be called Federico, in which evoked Scola his elder, his former colleague in Marc’Aurelio, Fellini.
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