Time.news – Twenty years ago, on February 24, 2003, Alberto Sordi passed away. A temporal blink that feels like a century. Upon his death, Rome poured into the square for a last farewell to what everyone (really everyone) considered one of the family. Today, in the time of social networks, Netflix, streaming platforms and TV series, what remains of Sordi? For the new generations he is almost a stranger if not a total stranger.
“As regards Sordi’s legacy today, we are faced with a paradox: his films are easily viewable, on the net and through DVDs, but you have to go and look for them. The new generations are moving on to other means of communication and other models of comedy, so the risk that Sordi and all the great cinema of his generation is out of fashion is very high”. To tell Time.news it is Alberto Crespijournalist, writer and film critic who edited the book ‘Caro Alberto’ published by Laterza and commissioned by the Alberto Sordi Foundation.
“Naturally it is also up to us communication operators to fight so that this heritage is not lost – he continues – it is a difficult fight and perhaps it is destined to defeat, but nevertheless we must fight it with all our strength until the end”.
© Mirco Toniolo/Errebi / AGF
Alberto Sordi
‘Dear Alberto’ is a collection of letters that the great Roman actor has received from his fans but also by politicians and colleagues who were famous during their lifetime and those sent or left after their death at the Roman villa in Via Druso 45, now the seat of the Museum Foundation. Edited by Crespi with a preface by Walter Veltroni, it is a sort of journey through time to recover our historical memory.
“These letters come from a world that no longer exists. It’s been 20 years but it’s 20 years in which the social media phenomenon exploded – Crespi explains to Time.news again – they are letters from people who took a sheet of paper to contact a famous man, they wrote, took an envelope and sent it. They hoped to have an answer. Today with social networks everyone can delude themselves that they have direct contact. Which, as we know, sometimes also happens in the name of insult. Even when Deaf died he did not exist. In fact they are sweet, affectionate letters”.
“I worked on a pre-selection of thousands and thousands of letters that the Foundation keeps – he explains – the letters from the fans are the most interesting part: they are the most affectionate letters. People wrote to Sordi not as one writes to a movie star as one writes to a relative, often telling him about one’s life, one’s problems, one’s pains too, and always thanking him for the moments of serenity and joy that he had given to these people through his films. image of an actor loved in a perhaps unique and unrepeatable way by his audience – he adds – and a very beautiful concept emerges: great comedians like Alberto Sordi are benefactors because they help people live better”, he concludes.