Cinema Italia, Ugo Tognazzi honored at the 2019 Spring Edition
By: Sere Perfetto
Tags: Bay Area, San Francisco, Italiano, Movies, Cinema

The Spring edition of Cinema Italia San Francisco is just few weeks away. The program of April 2019 will celebrate and honor Ugo Tognazzi, the Italian movie, TV, and theatre actor, as well as director and screenwriter.

Born in Cremona, he worked as a bookkeeper for a salami factory as a teenager, and later started to perform in local amateur theatricals. However, it wasn’t until 1950, when Tognazzi was 28-year-old, that he found his way as an actor and became a star in the 60s thanks to his appearances in director Marco Ferreri’s comedies.

San Francisco will welcome a series of movies although “this time has been hard,” Cinema Italia Director Amelia Antonucci confessed to L’Italo-Americano. “We had less initial funding than in the past, but the Italian Consul General, Lorenzo Ortona, and the new Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Annamaria Di Giorgio, as well as other few generous local sponsors, helped us realize this dream,” she added.

Once again, the movies will be in 35 mm, and San Francisco cinema lovers will surely appreciate. The program will start early in the day (10am) with Elio Petri’s most challenging movie of his career, followed by Dino Risi and a splendid portray of the post economic boom in Italian society, with Gassman in a co-lead role.

The afternoon will feature Bertolucci’s Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, for which Tognazzi won the Cannes Film Festival award in 1981. La Cage aux Folles, the hardest yet most successful role of Tognazzi’s career in French, directed by Eduoard Molinari, will play at 6.30pm. Although it was a controversial, intensely discussed movie, that raised moral issues in Italy, the audience loved it, making it the best success of Tognazzi’s career also abroad.

The last movie of the series (right after the party that we named “The Big Feast”) is La Grande Bouffe, directed by Marco Ferreri. This film shocked the Cannes Film festival’s public and divided the critics into two wings. It was considered either the worst and most disgusting movie of the year, or the best critique of the bourgeoisie of those years. We will find out on Saturday night what the San Francisco audience thinks about it!

We had a conversation with Director Amelia Antonucci, who is leading the 9th edition of Cinema Italia with the same passion and commitment of the beginnings.

Director Antonucci, why did Cinema Italia pick Ugo Tognazzi for this 9th edition?

Ugo Tognazzi is the main interpreter of the genre of movies known as Commedia all’Italiana. After last fall’s homage to the charming and handsome Marcello Mastroianni, there was a need to show that other Italian man, just as famous although possibly not as handsome, yet virile, macho, and versatile. We want him to be rediscovered by San Francisco and here we are! He worked for many directors in different roles, in almost 150 movies, even in different languages. Nevertheless, he kept his mask of tragicomic jester, a role that he kept stressing more and more in each movie, even when he was introspective and sharp. In those years people like politicians, bankers… men in general… tried to talk their way into everything: other people’s lives, business, even bed! An example is represented by Dino Risi’s movie, I Mostri.

Istituto Luce Cinecittà already brought Tognazzi’s movies to New York. How did you come up with a list for the San Francisco audience?

As it happened for almost all our previous programs, right after the launch of the restored series of the year in New York, in December, Luce Cinecittà offered a package for the US and the Canada tours. San Francisco has always the privilege and the special gift to be the first one to pick its movies. For me, it was challenging to select the best ones, because the ultimate goal is to cover a lifetime span of the actor in one day. I chose what I believe are his best and most significant roles directed by five of the best movie directors of the time.

Tognazzi always alternated comic and dramatic roles. Was this his biggest strength as actor?

Tognazzi started his career as a TV comedian with Raimondo Vianello. His humor, even in his first sketches, always navigated between satire and a harsh critique of society. He did not have the melancholic charm of Marcello Mastroianni, nor the childish face of Sordi or the tragic mask of Totò. His “anonymous” look had him struggle for attention for years. Once he said during an interview: “I am not a charismatic actor who worked all his life to be like Sordi , who today is The ‘National Albertone’ I am… I may be an international Ughetto… I saw Sordi on TV and he looked like the Pope, while I look always like me.” (A critic, Federico Cacchiari reported in an essay of 2010). The movies from the 60s have a serious edge and deal with politics, terrorism and contemporary social problems. Tognazzi was always frowning, never smiling or being funny. In the70s, as a mature and older actor, he portrayed more of himself. In one of Monicelli’s movie Venga a prendere il caffè (1970) Tognazzi said “The skeleton of all societies, past, present and future is reduced to this formula: to get pleasure and to give pleasure.”

His kids said many times that he was the same person at home and in movies. What’s your idea of Tognazzi?

I think they are right, and they surely knew him better. Whenever we went to watch his movies and when looking at his life on magazines or TV, Tognazzi always seemed pretty sociable, always entertaining and cooking for his family and friends. The documentary that we will show at the Italian Cultural Institute on April 25th, directed by his daughter Maria Sole Tognazzi, shows us exactly this part of him. I grew up watching Tognazzi’s movies and he was one of my favorite actors. I saw almost all his movies and he has become part of my world. I loved his political criticism and his way of approaching life. He was the father that all of us wanted to have — both funny and serious.

What’s your favorite movie and why?

The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man is my favorite movie. Two geniuses, Bertolucci and Tognazzi, made that miracle happen. It is a true masterpiece. I also love La cage aux folles and I decided we will play it in the spotlight time because it is a well-done, wonderful portrayal of the clash between bigotry and freedom of choice. San Francisco is the right place to welcome this movie in the original version, like we did with Scent of a Womann. There was a remake, as all of you know, with Robin Williams but even the great American actor could not reach the grandeur of Tognazzi in this role.

Discover movie schedule and buy tickets for Cinema Italia (happening on April 27th at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco) at http://www.cinemaitaliasf.com