L’ADIGE
By Claudio Beccalossi
September 18, 2026
(Claudio Beccalossi) The 9th anniversary of the death of
Gastone Moschin (San Giovanni Lupatoto, Verona, 8 June 1929 - Santa Maria di
Terni Hospital, 4 September 2017) has not moved any particular official
re-enactments, not even where he came into the world, apart from those of
online communities and specific social platforms relating to titles at the top
of his copious filmography.
The versatile film actor has gone through various genres
and interpretations, from spaghetti-westerns to detectives, from drama to
comedy, with vast lunges in Italian comedy and in theater, television and Rai
radio prose, alternating excellently light, tragedy, classics and contemporary,
occasionally dubbing. With encroachment even on the photo-novel, "Il re si
divertie (Rigoletto)", ("I romanzi di Sogno", no. 225, 1 April
1966).
He died in intensive care due to the worsening of chronic
heart disease, his funeral was celebrated on 6 September 2017 in the sanctuary
of the Madonna del Ponte in Narni Scalo (Terni), with subsequent cremation in
Viterbo.
THE TRILOGY OF “MY FRIENDS”
Moschin was the unforgettable member of the ramshackle
team of goliardic gypsies in the trilogy of "Amici miei" (the first
film in 1975, directed by Mario Monicelli, the second in 1982, "Amici miei
– Atto II°" again directed by Monicelli and the third in 1985 "Amici
miei – Atto III°" signed by Nanni Loi). With him in the role of the
bachelor, romantic and dreamer, architect Rambaldo Melandri, a key character
together with Count Raffaello Mascetti, the journalist Giorgio Perozzi,
Professor Alfeo Sassaroli and the bartender Guido Necchi (played respectively
by Ugo Tognazzi, Philippe Noiret, Adolfo Celi and, in the first film, by Duilio
Del Prete and, in the other two, by Renzo Montagnani).
Incisive (among many others) were the parts of the
fascist leader Carmine Passante in "The Roaring Twenties", directed
by Luigi Zampa (1962); of Adolf, the German in "Seven Golden Men",
directed by Mario Vicario (1965); of the accountant Osvaldo Bisigato in
"Signore & signori", directed by Pietro Germi (1966); of
Mariotti, police delegate in "Ninì Tirabusciò, the woman who invented the
move", directed by Marcello Fondato (1970); by Ugo Piazza in "Milano
calibro 9", directed by Fernando Di Leo (1972);
of Don Camillo in "Don Camillo e i giovani
d'oggi", directed by Mario Camerini (1972); of the Hon. Filippo Turati in
"Il delitto Matteotti", directed by Florestano Vancini (1973); by
Edmondo Castorini in "Paolo il caldo", directed by Marco Vicario
(1973); of Don Fanucci in "The Godfather Part II", directed by
Francis Ford Coppola (1974); of Dr. Trigona in "A Thorn in the
Heart", directed by Alberto Lattuada (1986); by Carlo Tofani Geko as an
old man in the uncomfortable "Porzûs", directed by Renzo Martinelli
(1997).
Gastone's parents were Giuseppe and Amalia Baschera who,
with their 7-year-old son, moved to Milan for their father's work. The family
returned to San Giovanni Lupatoto during the Second World War and then returned
to the Milanese capital where the young man graduated as a surveyor and worked
in a bank.
THE BEGINNINGS
His ambition to act diverted him to Rome, to attend the
Academy of Dramatic Art from which he graduated in 1955. In the same year,
according to the accredited filmography, he was part of the cast of "La
rivale", directed by Anton Giulio Majano (Chieti, 5 July 1912 - Marino,
Rome, 12 August 1994), a sacred monster of screenplays, director of cinema and
television, radio and television prose Rai, one of the great makers of Italian
television dramas in their period of maximum splendor (in the twenty years
Sixties and Seventies of the last century, circumscribed above all, according
to experts in the field, from 1967 to 1979).
Moschin made his television debut in 1956 in
"L'istante sotto l'orologio" by Gastone Tanzi, directed by Edmo
Fenoglio (Turin, 4 June 1928 – Turin, 7 September 1996), while in the theatre
he made his debut in 1955 in "I mariti" by playwright Achille
Torelli, directed by Mario Ferrero (Florence, 25 May 1922 – Vicchio, Florence,
9 September 2012), with the Teatro Stabile di Genova which saw on stage, in
addition to him, Valeria Valeri, Enrico Maria Salerno, Warner Bentivegna,
Mercedes Brignone, Enrica Corti.
Gastone married, in 1960, fellow actress and voice
actress Marzia Ubaldi (Milan, 2 June 1938 - Narni, Terni, 21 October 2023). The
funeral of the latter was also officiated in the sanctuary of the Madonna del
Ponte, in Narni Scalo. The couple had their daughter Emanuela in 1963 who
followed, for a certain period of time, the interpretative footsteps of her
parents who separated when she was 7 years old.
Later, the Melandri of "Amici miei" married the
French Christiane Lhuillier and moved to live, since 1990, in Capitone, a
hamlet of Narni, where his second wife, a homeopathic doctor, opened a horse
riding school, the first hippotherapy center in Umbria. Although he had slowed
down his artistic activity due to health problems and after getting closer to
his first wife, he set up with her and his daughter Emanuela, in Terni, the
acting school "MUMOS" (name derived from the initials of Marzia
Ubaldi Moschin), in which the three were teachers, until the spring of 2013.
Today Emanuela, having put her past as an actress and
acting teacher in the drawer of memories, manages a professional dog kennel in
Narni (Albornoz di Monte Arnata Kennel) recognized by ENCI / FCI, specialized
in the selection of breeds such as the chihuahua, the Pomeranian fox and the
zwergschnauzer (dwarf schnauzer).
THE ARRIVAL OF HIS DAUGHTER EMMANUELA
He came to San Giovanni Lupatoto, in November 2017, on
the occasion of a revival wanted by the municipal administration and cineforum
in memory of the famous lupatotino by birth, who died a few months earlier.
Emanuela Moschin, in fact, attended the screening, in the "Astra" cinema
theater, of the evergreen film "Amici miei" and recalled the summers
as a child, when, during the school holidays, she spent months away from Rome,
at the home of grandfather Bepo and grandmother Amalia. And, after the latter's
death, he spoke of returning with his father to the town, to visit the
Grandparents' graves in the cemetery.
