It must have been a strange feeling for Paolo Taviani to return to the Berlinale eleven years after the Golden Bear won for Cesare must die, if only because then – as always – his brother Vittorio, who passed away four years ago, was holding the prize in his hands. Once again, however, a recognition has arrived: the Fipresci Prize, awarded by international critics, to reiterate however that the Taviani cinema (impossible to think of it except in the plural) is still capable of striking the heart. Farewell Leonora – this is the enigmatic title of the film – marked the return to the beloved Pirandello, almost forty years later Shirt. A work divided into two parts: the first tells the grotesque story – very Pirandello, precisely – of the ashes of the great writer and playwright, tossed between Rome and Sicily over the span of thirty years (the 1930s – 40-50), while the second, set in New York in the early twentieth century, and taken from the last story written by Pirandello, sees as the protagonist a boy son of Italian emigrants, who inexplicably killed a girl of his age with a nail . In between are the faces, gazes, landscapes, travels, cities and countryside of a world that Taviani’s camera portrays in all its elusive beauty.
Paolo Taviani, why go back to Pirandello?
“The real reason I don’t know (laughs, ed). In fact, the project dates back many years. Immediately after Shirt, in 1985, Vittorio and I wrote a story on the history of the ashes, which seemed to us a very Pirandello story. But we couldn’t get the film funded. In the same period we started the story Nail. The idea was to shoot it in one of the studios where Sergio Leone had made Once upon a time in America, in Cinecittà. But there was very little left of the set of that film, so we gave it up, very reluctantly. Today I finally managed to do it, also thanks to digital, which for cinema is a gift from heaven, because it allows you to free your imagination and realize what was previously impossible. Now I could make a movie from Black Corsairwhich has always been a dream of mine … ».
Leonora farewell was a difficult film to make, in the middle of the pandemic …
“Two years ago we were on the set, in Syracuse, with filming almost over. We had just finished shooting the comic scene of the little girl who sees the small coffin with the ashes pass by and she thinks she is that of a dwarf. At one point the production manager comes and tells us that one of the forty people in the crew is positive. Thus began the general panic. At one point there was a rumor that Sicily itself should remain isolated from the rest of the country. There was thus a general chaotic stampede, as if one were in an American science fiction film. Unfortunately it was the reality. The film stopped for a few months, but that hiatus period helped me to think and rethink many things, to write and rewrite them. I think the film turned out better than it would have been without that forced stop ».
We come to the film. What the protagonist took on a train immediately after the war to bring back Pirandello’s ashes is a journey made up of encounters, clashes, digressions, misunderstandings, apparitions …
«Yes, setting a story on a train is always a bit complicated because then the question is ‘who and what do I put on it?’. The answer in this case I found in my memories as a boy. At a certain point in the film, when the train stops at a station, an American soldier appears in the carriage and, turning to a girl, he says with a smile: “Miss piggy piggy!”. Here, something similar had happened to me when I was a child, in San Miniato. Back then for us, American soldiers were like heroes of the cinema and they were on the streets of the country. I was ten years old and one day I was walking with my sister, when a jeep touches us and a soldier smiling towards her exclaims: “Miss piggy piggy!”. My sister was naturally very embarrassed … I wanted to include this episode from my childhood in the film, to convey to the viewer the idea of the atmosphere of happiness and euphoria that reigned in the post-war period for the end of the conflict and of the fascism and for the newfound freedom “.
The title of the film, «Leonora addio», seems deliberately mysterious, and we return once again to Pirandello …
«The title is inspired by the short final scene of This evening we recite to subject, when the protagonist Mommina, segregated at home due to her husband’s jealousy, says “now I do the theater!” and she sings with her sister Farewell Leonorawhich in addition to being a short story by Pirandello himself, is an aria de The Troubadour by Giuseppe Verdi. I wanted to include a similar scene in this film, but it didn’t fit anymore. But I kept the title, also because all the others seemed ugly to me. And then that also took me back to my childhood. My father was a music addict and when we were children he often took me, my brother and my sister to Florence, at the Maggio. Then The Troubadour it was the main work. And he thrilled us so much that one day he also wanted to buy us the record. So Vittorio and I spent whole days singing it when we were at home in San Miniato ».
Returning to the episode “Il chiodo”, it is a perfect “closure” of the story of the ashes …
“The thing that most puzzled me about this story is its surreal character. The nail fell off on purpose. But what does “on purpose” mean? Everyone tries to understand why this boy made such a sudden and absurd gesture, but no one can find an answer. It is an inexplicable reality, which takes us to a mysterious and dark area, that of the things we do without even realizing it. The realistic figure thus becomes unrealistic. We will never know why. Pirandello himself neither knew nor wanted to answer. Perhaps it is the enigma of death itself. “
© Time.News
23 February 2022 | 11:41
© Time.News