Gian Maria Volonté, 90 years of an eternal interpreter

 Cinecitta News

April 9, 2023

"He stole the soul of his characters": this is how Francesco Rosi described Gian Maria Volonté, one of the most extraordinary interpreters in the history of cinema – not only Italian – who would have turned 9 on April 90. Word of one of the great directors who wanted him to star in five of his most famous films: from Uomini contro a Lucky Luciano, Il caso Mattei, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, Cronaca di una morte annunciata.

Volonté was born in 1933 in Milan but grew up in Turin. He was very young when he became passionate about Camus and Sartre and approached the theater, the first great love to which he dedicated himself throughout the 50s, coming into contact with companies that experimented with that line of research known as avant-garde theater (or theater-off), disruptive towards the cultural traditions and conformism of the time. Then, in the 60s, he divided himself equally between cinema, theater and television.

In 1959 his first roles on the small screen arrived, starting with Dostoevsky's The Idiot, written and starring Giorgio Albertazzi. The following year, with the company of the 'Attori Associati' of Giancarlo Sbragia and Enrico Maria Salerno, he recited texts by Shakespeare, Goldoni and, among others, also that Sacco and Vanzetti di Roli and Vincenzoni, which ten years later saw him protagonist in the memorable film transposition by Giuliano Montaldo (see the last video below).

Also in 1960, while playing Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, he began his relationship with Carla Gravina (Juliet), from which their daughter Giovanna was born in '61. In that year Volonté already worked for the cinema in La Ragazza con la valigia by Valerio Zurlini, with Claudia Cardinale. But his first important role on the big screen came in 1962 with Un uomo da bruciare, the first film by brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani and Valentino Orsini, in which he played the trade unionist Salvatore Carnevale, killed by the mafia. In the same year he was on the set of Gianfranco De Bosio in The Terrorist, alongside Philippe Leroy. In 1963 he returned to television starring in Il taglio del bosco based on the story by Carlo Cassola and two years later, he participated in the series Le inchieste del commissario Maigret, with Gino Cervi and Andreina Pagnani. In between, still militant theater: Volonté tries to stage a text that denounces the relations between the Catholic Church of Pius XII and the Nazi regime, provoking the first of his many clashes with the social and political reality of Italy at the time. Since then, as is known, his civil commitment will accompany his entire career also in the cinema, leaving room for much more.

It is the television experience in The Life and Works of Michelangelo by Silverio Blasi and the role of the 'villain' in the two films by Sergio Leone - A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965) - that ensure him the first real popular success. Then it was the turn of the Italian comedy, with L'Armata Brancaleone (1966) by Mario Monicelli and Svegliati e uccidi by Carlo Lizzani, the only film in which the brothers Gian Maria and Claudio are together on the set. However, although the international fame of Gian Maria Volonté is undoubtedly due to spaghetti westerns, the absolute summits of his interpretations are unanimously considered those under the direction of three sacred monsters of Italian cinema: Francesco Rosi, Elio Petri and Giuliano Montaldo.

Rebellious, magnetic, committed, are three of the most used adjectives to describe the Volonté actor. Another of his distinctive features is his unparalleled versatility, staged in the many facets of his memorable interpretations. The disturbing look of the murderous quaestor of Investigation on a citizen above all suspicion (in the photo above and in the video below), is just one of the many images printed in fire in the minds of his admirers: just look at it to hear resonate one by one the throbbing notes chosen for the film by the genius of Morricone. Signed by Elio Petri in 1970, multiple Oscar and Cannes winners, included in the list of 100 Italian films to be saved, the film won Gian Maria Volonté the David di Donatello as a leading actor.

With Petri he also worked in A ogni il suo (1967), which brought him a Silver Ribbon: it was his first encounter with the books of Leonardo Sciascia, which he would also interpret in Todo modo (1976) also by Petri, Porte aperte by Gianni Amelio (1990) and Una storia semplice, by Emidio Greco (1991), for which he won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival. On the Archivio Luce website is available the interview with Gian Maria Volonté on his role in Todo modo and, in general, on the profession of the actor.

Between the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s he became for the big screen the most authentic and definitive interpreter of rebellions and indictments against society. Among the many films in which he worked in that period, in 1968 he was Aldo in I sette fratelli Cervi by Gianni Puccini, and in the same year he was awarded the Grolla d'oro for the interpretation of Cavallero in Lizzani's film Banditi a Milano. Still directed by Elio Petri, in 1971 he was the machine-worker in the dramatic La classe operaia va in Paradiso, best film of the Cannes Film Festival. Then, to follow, is the unforgettable Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the aforementioned masterpiece by Giuliano Montaldo and still protagonist in Il caso Mattei e Lucky Luciano by Francesco Rosi, Il sospetto by Citto Maselli and Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina by Marco Bellocchio. So it is once again Montaldo who wants him in 1973, in the role of the philosopher Giordano Bruno. His are touching monologues as never seen before at the cinema, starting from that of Vanzetti on the eve of the execution: all masterful interpretations, which from then on mean that Volonté is unanimously considered one of the best actors in the film scene, not only Italian. To the point of being able to afford the clamorous no, such as those to Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather (1972) and in '76 to Il Casanova by Federico Fellini and Novecento by Bernardo Bertolucci.

But Giordano Bruno, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Aldo Cervi, Enrico Mattei and Aldo Moro are just some of the hundreds of characters played by Volonté in a career that has seen him almost always protagonist, for dozens and dozens of Italian and international titles and awards, impossible here to mention all.

Between 1978 and 1979 he shot his fourth film with Rosi, Christ stopped at Eboli and promoted the campaign on the theme 'voice-face', according to which an actor is such only if, in addition to giving his face, he also gives the character his own voice. Also in 1979 he was the protagonist of Ogro, by Gillo Pontecorvo.

In 1982 he was Plessis in Mauro Bolognini's television reduction of Stendhal's opera La certosa di Parma and the following year he played the journalist Bernard Fontana in Mort de Mario Ricci by Claude Goretta, a role that won him the Palme d'Or at Cannes as best actor. Suffering from lung cancer, he remained absent from Italian cinema until 1986, when Giuseppe Ferrara wanted him in the role of Aldo Moro in Il Caso Moro (a character already played in Todo modo, albeit on a totally different register), with which the following year he won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for best interpretation. In 1987 he starred in Un ragazzo di Calabria by Luigi Comencini, and for the fifth time with Francesco Rosi in Cronaca di una morte annunciata. The following year he was the protagonist-philosopher of L'oeuvre au noir by André Delvaux, and between 1992 and 1993 he shot two films in Latin America: Funes, un gran amor by Raúl de la Torre and Tyrant Banderas by José Luis García Sánchez.

On December 6, 1994, during the filming in Florina, Greece, of Theo Anghelopoulos' film The Look of Ulysses, Gian Maria Volonté died suddenly of a heart attack: the film, which the director dedicated to his memory, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes (1995) ex aequo with Underground by Emir Kusturica. The former director of the cinema house Felice Laudadio, remembering him, will call him "the greatest Italian actor of his time".

The remains of Gian Maria Volonté rest, as he wanted, under a tree in the small cemetery of La Maddalena: the Sardinian island, much loved by the actor, is also home to the prestigious Franco Solinas award for the screenplay, of which his daughter Giovanna Gravina is one of the historical animators. In the heart of Rome, however, there is the School of Cinematography that bears his name.