2023-09-06 12:21:30
by Paolo Mereghetti
He died at his home in Rome. He directed over 20 films including Sacco and Vanzetti and Giordano Bruno, many of them with the fetish actor Gian Maria Volont
With Giuliano Montaldo, who died today at the age of 93, one of the most appreciated ambassadors of our cinema in the world passes away (and not only for his commitment as president of RaiCinema from 1999 to 2004), but because of that cinema has always defended a non-elitist idea, ready to recognize the needs of entertainment and dialogue with the public, attentive to the lessons of history and guided by an intolerance of intolerance that has enlivened his most successful and well-known films, from Sacco and Vanzetti to Giordano Bruno in L’Agnese goes to die, but which was also already present in his earliest works, from Tiro al pigeon to Gott Mit Uns.
Genoese and Genoese, Montaldo was born in the Ligurian capital on February 22, 1930, immediately after the war he was tempted by the theater: he supports Alberto Lupo and Ferruccio De Ceresa, and Carlo Lizzani notices him on the stage, who came to Genoa to shoot his first movie Achtung! Bandits! (1951). He offers him the role of Lorenzo, the political commissar of the partisan brigade, thus starting him on a discreet acting career, which has won the most convinced applause with his very latest interpretation, the forgetful poet of Tutto questo chi voi (2017, by Francesco Bruni) . But that also opens the doors of cinema tout court to him, given that he will follow Lizzani and the producer Giuliani De Negri to Rome for the duo’s next film, Chronicles of poor lovers: still a few small actor roles (La cieca di Sorrento, Third high school , The girls of San Frediano, The bandits) but above all a profitable career as assistant director, especially alongside Gillo Pontecorvo.
The inspiration for his directing debut came from the autobiographical novel by Giosa Rimanelli in which he recounted his accession to the Republic of Sal: Tiro al pigeon (1961) recounts the difficult awareness of a young fascist who collides with the fanaticism of the hierarchs and the personal disillusions, a courageous and nonconformist film which, however, at the Venice Film Festival where it was presented attracted the arrows of a critic who was still too ideologically aligned (you don’t mess with anti-fascism, reproached Mario Alicata harshly, custodian of the orthodoxy of the PCI). Una bella grita (1965), a portrait of a cynical social climber in the boom years (his factory runs alongside one of the symbols of Italy at the time, the Autostrada del Sole), also aims to reflect on the country’s confused social development: the film , like the previous one, does not meet with the public’s favor, but allows Montaldo to meet Vera Pescarolo, since then an indefatigable and omnipresent collaborator but above all a much loved wife.
The failure prompted him to direct two commissioned films, two decently made detective films, At any cost (1967, with Edward G. Robinson and Janeth Leigh) and The Untouchables (1969, with John Cassavetes) but he then returned to the themes that are dearer with Gott Mit Uns (1969), where he delves into the madness of militarism. The international consecration arrives in ’71, with Sacco and Vanzetti, reconstruction of a famous episode of maljustice which cost the lives of two Italian anarchists who emigrated to the USA: the intense interpretation of Gian Maria Volont and Riccardo Cucciolla (the latter awarded at the Festival of Cannes), in addition to Morricone’s song made popular by Joan Baez, made the film a great success, which allowed him in 1973 to make a long-cherished subject on another victim of intolerance, Giordano Bruno, still entrusted to Volont and illuminated by the photography of Vittorio Storaro.
In 1976 he brought back to the cinema against all fashion the resistance themes of Agnese goes to die, from the novel by Renata Vigan, to then face new, disturbing realities: the suffocating invasion of images in Closed circuit (1978, produced by Rai and seen only on TV) and gun craze in The Toy (1979) with a convincing Nino Manfredi. The following commitment was that of the first international blockbuster from state television, produced together with China, Marco Polo, which aired in eight episodes with a high-sounding cast that sees, alongside the protagonist Ken Marshall, roles for Burt Lancaster, Anne Bancroft , Denholm Elliott, Leonard Nimoy, F. Murray Abraham, Mario Adorf and John Guilgud.
Upon returning from this adventure, Montaldo was called to conduct Turandot at the Verona Arena, before a long series of opera directions (Il Trovatore with Pavarotti, 1990; Bohme with Cecilia Gasdia, 1994; Otello with Placido Domingo, 1994; Tosca with Maria Guleghina and Ruggero Raimondi, 1998) which will alternate with the cinematographic ones, where Gli Occhiali d’oro (1987, by Bassani) and Time to kill (1989, by Flaiano) stand out, alongside the documentaries Ci sar una volta (1992) and Seasons of the Eagle (1997). The institutional commitment to RaiCinema will distance him from directing, to which he will return in 2008 with The demons of St. Petersburg, where the character of Dostoevsky confronts the revolutionary ideas he had professed in his youth and then, in 2011, with the more successful The industrialist where Pierfrancesco Favino brings to life an emblematic character of an Italy where money has become the only god.
September 6, 2023 (change September 6, 2023 | 12:23 am)
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