The actor who made many important films with Lina remembers her fondly: «Thanks to her I had a star in Hollywood. And Lina was my real teacher, but she was aggressive on the set “
Director Lina Wertmüller passed away on December 9, 2021 at the age of 93. In this interview, the memory of Giancarlo Giannini, actor and director that she helped to discover.
“Oh my God, what do you tell me when it happened?” Giancarlo Giannini did not yet know of Lina Wertmuller’s death.
What did it represent for you?
“She was the most important person I’ve met in my life,” he says Giancarlo Giannini
. “Without her I would have done little. At the Silvio D’Amico Academy I had the great Orazio Costa as a teacher. But Lina Wertmüller was my real teacher on the pitch. He came to see my show at the Academy. He knew the world of entertainment at 360 degrees. It opened my mind and made me understand what fantasy is. ”
When did you meet her?
“I must have been twenty-two. Two years later he took me in Rita the mosquito, the musicarello with Rita Pavone. And in 1972 the exploit of Metallurgical Mimì wounded in honor».
What do you remember about that movie?
“The first thing he told me was that no actor, from Mastroianni to Manfredi wanted to do it. I had just turned Drama of jealousy by Ettore Scola and I wanted to continue playing popular characters, after that goatee who falls in love with Monica Vitti. Lina told me: “I wrote something like that.” It had been put aside a bit because later The basilisks made a film that was unsuccessful. I went to see her and in the confusion of so many scripts I found twenty-thirty sheets with those very long titles of hers. I was under contract with a production company for another film but I managed to make an exchange ».
South set com’era?
“Very determined, often aggressive too. He understood the psychology of actors and actresses. He brought out the best. We had a lot of fun. They are comedy films that, although born in the Italian Comedy bed, have a color of their own, a little farcical. A different way than the cinema of that time. We were successful, we accompanied them to America as if they were children, we carried the films under our arms. We were a beautiful professional couple, I was able to put Lina’s ideas into practice ».
And then the Oscar just missed …
«Per Pasqualino seven beauties we had four nominations, including mine, for Best Actor ».
Overwhelmed by an unusual fate in the blue August sea it was always in those formidable 70s.
«I remember the laughter amid so many difficulties on the set in Sardinia. The wind, the sand in the eyes, the sea changing color… Then Mariangela Melato cut her foot with a bottle of mineral water and seven stunt doubles arrived. I broke my meniscus… ».
And all those slaps …
“There were four or five written in the script, eventually becoming fifty. We improvised a lot. Many scenes were made up of mere glances and remain perhaps the most extraordinary. Lina used to say that the face of an actor is the most beautiful landscape ».
La Melato, the high bourgeois Milanese with a wandering sensation who, in the shipwreck, ends up falling in love with the sailor. Was Lina a feminist in her own way?
«No, but he knew how to tell women so well, putting them in a privileged position. He understood well the man-woman relationship in a free way, without all the conditioning of today “.
Were you out of sight?
“We also met recently, I accompanied her to Cannes. I believe that the fact that in Hollywood I am the only Italian male actor to have a star on the Walk of Fame, after Rudolph Valentino (so they told me, the imprint of the hands on the asphalt is another thing), owes a lot to Lina “.
December 9, 2021 (change December 9, 2021 | 15:44)
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