On the occasion of the exhibition «Hands on Truth. 100 years of Francesco Rosi», which opens at the National Cinema Museum in Turin on November 15, the day on which the director would have turned 100, the famous actor wanted to pay him homage
On Tuesday 15 November 2022 – the day Francesco Rosi would have turned 100 – the exhibition «Hands on the Truth. 100 years of Francesco Rosi», curated by Domenico De Gaetano and Carolina Rosi, with Mauro Genovese and Maria Procino. Housed on the reception floor of the Mole Antonelliana, the exhibition traces the long career of Rosi – who died in Rome on 10 January 2015 – and will remain open until 17 April 2023, with free admission. Born in Naples and considered the master of true cinema, the director has collected prizes and awards all over the world, leaving an indelible memory in anyone who has had the good fortune to know him. Proof of this is the moving memory of Rosi made by John Turturro for the catalog published alongside the exhibition of the same name and also edited by the director of the National Cinema Museum and by the daughter of the unforgettable director, with Genovese and Fabio Pezzetti Tonion.
Knowing Francesco Rosi and working with him was one of the most relevant events of my life. Francesco and I met over a period of five years, after being invited to participate in the film based on Primo Levi’s The Truce, which he was adapting.
And we remained close friends.
He wrote to Martin Scorsese after seeing me in Barton Fink. Scorsese wrote me a letter while in Chicago I was working on the staging of the drama The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in which I played a version of Hitler set in Chicago: a strange coincidence!
I remember talking on the phone for the first time with Francesco and going to the bookstore to look for La tregua (The Truce). It was called The Reawakening and I didn’t get it. Instead, I bought The Monkey’s Wrench, a book in which Levi celebrates the joy of work, our infinite problem-solving ability, the art of storytelling, and what makes life fulfilling. Feisty and wildly funny, it’s the book that made me fall in love with Levi. And yes, I then found The Truce! I got to know Francesco, meeting him in Rome, and watching all of his films. Scorsese had a copy of Salvatore Giuliano which he generously showed me and then there was an entire retrospective at Lincoln Center, where I went to see many of his films: Moment of Truth, Hands Over the City, Christ Stopped at Eboli, Three brothers, Carmen, The Mattei case and Lucky Luciano in which he worked for the fourth time with the great Gian Maria Volontè. Rosi’s films deal with the human condition, politics, corruption and man’s place in the world. He has never stopped exploring that theme.
Many things come to mind when I think of him: first of all, that I would never have read the entire work of Primo Levi if it hadn’t been for Francesco. Working with him was like having an open door to me, his belief that I could play a version of Primo Levi really caught me off guard and he saw something in me that no one else had noticed before. I tried to reciprocate that trust by doing a tremendous amount of research and preparation, reading everything Levi wrote, going to Turin, meeting Levi’s family, interviewing many Holocaust survivors, watching documentaries, studying Italian, reading everything I could on the subject and losing a lot of weight in the run-up to filming. All of this happened over a five-year period during which we got to know each other better and better.
The delicacy with which he directed me and his eye for composition – combined with those of Pasqualino De Santis and Marco Pontecorvo – is something I had never experienced at that level. I remember his sensual mouth in great detail. And the mischievous side of her.
In The Truce he wanted the Polish actress Agnieszka Wagner, who plays a nurse, to appetizingly eat a strawberry in front of me; not satisfied, she showed her how to do it and I remember how sensual and effective her way of chewing on that strawberry was, generating a shameful smile on my face.
I remember another episode where an actor had a problem during a scene and Franco was quite hard on him. I suggested to Francesco that the more the actor tried, the more nervous he became and that he needed to relax, also because it was difficult for him to act in another language. Francesco told me: “Okay, you direct him and then I’ll tell you my theory”. I tried to get the actor to relax and I think he did a little better. So Francesco took me aside and said: “John, are everyone in life good actors?” I replied: “No, of course not”. He replied: “Every movie needs a bad actor and he is!”. We burst out laughing. “You’re terrible!”, I told him, and he laughed even more.
To make the film he had to fight against many and big obstacles.
For insurance reasons it was necessary for him to have a director to replace him in case of illness and obviously he didn’t approve of any name that was suggested to him; he decided to entrust me with that task, which until then I had directed only one film, Mac. “You know the material better than anyone else, you’ll do it!”. I reluctantly agreed, shaking my head. We kept getting closer to production and then the film got delayed. And in the end we got there: the first day my legs were shaking, I didn’t want to disappoint him or Primo Levi.
I remember like it was yesterday being in a truck with all the extras, as we were being transported to a new transit camp. It was cold and snowing. During the night the weather turned springlike and the snow melted; therefore we had to do “the Ėjzenštejn” way, make artificial snow and shoot it into the sky from the trenches we had dug. It was a difficult motorcycle film to make. Although not always, we got along. And I liked it. During the making of the film, he lost two of his most trusted collaborators: Pasqualino De Santis and Ruggero Mastroianni.
It was one of the greatest experiences of my life and I think it changed me as a person. That has changed the way I work and how I look at the world. I still think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.
It made me discover many things, including Eduardo De Filippo. If it hadn’t been for Franco, I would never have brought These Ghosts onto the stages of New York and Naples and I would never have made the documentary Passione.
When Francesco came to me to view Passione in the editing room, he gave me several great ideas and so I went back and shot additional scenes and, at his suggestion, brought in myself as the narrator/guide. I remember him coming to see me while we were mixing, how enthusiastic he was and how much it meant, for me and for my editor Simona Paggi, to have his approval. It meant so much to me to see him beaming with joy and pride in what we had accomplished. It’s something I will never forget. When he read a fantastic review of the film written in a newspaper by his friend and extraordinary writer Raffaele La Capria he proudly sent it to me to read.
There were so many things that I love about his films. I recently saw Christ Stopped at Eboli and I was impressed by the depth of him, by the simplicity and contemporary complexity, by the sense of the places and of the people who exist in those places: it is truly extraordinary in his deeply affecting you. His films are visually evocative and challenging but you can watch and rewatch them and be enriched by the viewing experience.
Before meeting him I had lost my dad and he was almost a second father or an uncle, so to speak. There was an understanding between us and I would have loved to be able to do something else with him but unfortunately this possibility never materialised.
I knew he wanted to make Julius Caesar, we had talked about it and it was something he was thinking about. It was difficult for him to think small and I kept encouraging him: “Think small, even smaller. Maybe we can do a little movie together, like Knut Hamsun’s Fame or something like that.” But we never did.
She was a person who deeply enriched my life and helped my education, introducing me – after Levi – to many Italian writers, starting from Cesare Pavese, Natalia Ginzburg, De Filippo and Eco up to Elena Ferrante and many others.
I have great admiration for Francesco. I have a signed photograph of him hanging on my wall, in which he is holding a Carmen fan and wearing a headband. It’s a great photograph of his glorious working days. I have dined numerous times with him, his wife Giancarla and daughter Carolina and I have always felt part of the family: now it is difficult to go to Rome and not see it.
It was one of a kind.
I loved him and loved working with him.
I miss you so much Francesco…*
November 14, 2022 (change November 14, 2022 | 1:14 pm)
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