[It was reported in the Italian news that Nando Angelini had died on August 7, 2020 in in Pescara, Italy. I received a comment on the obit that I posted at the time of his so called passing and a link to the interview below. The interview is dated MARCH 4, 2024.]
For over ten years he has worked in dozens of films together with the greats of the roaring period of Cinecittà. Then the choice to go behind the camera for documentaries: "I was tired of being told what I had to do"
La Nuova Riviera
By Emidio
March 4, 2024
SAN BENEDETTO DEL TRONTO. The voice is almost baritone. Set, but not too much with some occasional slips towards the Roman. And then, every now and then, even some San Benedetto terms. Intentional. To make you understand that despite the years that have passed, first in front of and then behind the camera in the capital, the Riviera is and has always been his home. At Nando Angelini, you can immediately see the desire to put yourself at ease. Just as you understand that the sum of his years (we go for 91) has not scratched his curiosity in the slightest. And when you go to his home in Porto d'Ascoli to interview him, he is the first to ask the questions.
To be clear, he is someone who shared the set with Totò, Alberto Sordi, Sandra Milo and who came close to the "coup" when he was chosen to impersonate Dante Alighieri in what would go down in history as the only true film on the Divine Comedy. "It was the train I was waiting for," he recalls, "but in the end it didn't leave." But for Nando, born in Porto d'Ascoli, in the municipality of Monteprandone, in the not very close 1933, that was perhaps the opportunity to start his second life. Because he has lived at least a couple of lives. To say the least.
The trip to Rome
“I ended up in Rome,” he recalls, “almost by chance. I lived here, in Porto d’Ascoli, and I had enrolled at the Agricultural Technical Institute in Ascoli. But I didn’t like it. It wasn’t for me. It’s not that I knew what I wanted to do, but one day in the Domenica del Corriere I read about a competition to enter the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. I decided to participate but didn’t sign up by mail. I went straight there.”
Homo faber fortunae suae one would say listening to it now, this story. But we are at the beginning of the fifties and all this was not at all simple. “When I arrived there,” says Angelini, “I found myself in front of a secretary who came from the Marche region. He was the one who pushed me to participate as an actor because, at the time, I didn’t have the necessary qualifications to be a director or screenwriter.”
Nando thus enters the Experimental Center and then ends up on the set. And what a set, one might say. Because you only have to search for his name and be conveyed on Wikipedia to realize that in a decade he has worked in dozens of films. “I don’t have a lot of important parts,” he says, speaking with a certain sufficiency of that portion of his life that brought us to his home. For example, in “Signori si Nasce” with Totò, my part is that of Liana Orfei’s lover”.
He was on set with Totò more than once, but also with Alberto Sordi: “He was nice and it was nice to work with him. He called me “vociò” because of my timbre of voice. He was a baritone. Working with Totò was a bit more complicated. When you addressed him, you had to call him “Prince.” Then we had to wait, with the whole crew, for his nap to finish. Maybe it was because it was the last few years and he was getting older, but it wasn’t easy to work on those sets.”
Nando spends about eleven years in front of the camera. “I
was waiting for the train,” he says with a smile. Everyone told me that sooner
or later it would pass. And I continued to work and participate in the various
productions. Then the train seemed to have really arrived.”
Dante’s Train
The year is 1965. It was the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth. A director, Pietro Francisci, wants to celebrate that anniversary by doing what no one had ever done before: a film about the Divine Comedy. “He specialized in historical films, the period films that were all the rage in those years,” explains Angelini. There would have been three films: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. And Dante would have been me. It just felt like my train.”
Nando shows an issue of L’Europeo, one of the most important Italian current affairs weeklies from the post-war period until the mid-nineties. The central report is precisely on the project of this film. A full-page photo shows his face. In profile, with the headdress of the Supreme Poet. “But the actor’s name couldn’t have been Nando Angelini,” he says. He had to recall Tuscany, so they introduced me as Jacopo Ristori.”
The film would have been produced by Angelo Rizzoli's Cineriz. "So we ended up at Rizzoli, which at the time was one of the biggest film producers around. It was me, the director and, sitting at the same table, none other than Federico Fellini who was there that day for the famous film “The Journey of G. Mastorna, known as Fernet”. Famous because it has been talked about so much but has never seen the light of day.
As well as, unfortunately, the Divine Comedy. “Rizzoli was someone who understood things, in his profession, on the fly,” explains Angelini. In those weeks on TV there was a drama about the life of Dante Alighieri. The protagonist was Giorgio Albertazzi. So he wanted to wait for the response of the public, which was not good. That TV series was rejected, the film project was rejected. This wasn’t my famous train either.”
The new life
[Nando behind Luigi Zampa on the set of "Il medico della Mutua". From behind is Alberto Sordi]
It is at that point that Nando's new life begins. "Should I keep waiting for the train? With the story of the film about Dante, there was a moment when there were journalists in front of my house in Rome. He was almost there, then nothing came of it." At that point comes the decision to change his life. A theatrical interlude with a Roman company alongside Manuela Kustermann and then the transition to the opposite side of the camera. "I was tired of being an actor. The actor was always taking orders from those on the other side of the camera. It had been over ten years and I didn't want to go on like that anymore."
Thus the turning point: "I had decided to work in television and, although I came from the cinema (in the meantime he had also been Luigi Zampa's assistant in Medico della Mutua with Alberto Sordi) I chose the path of documentaries. In the early stages of approaching this new role, he also had the support of Libero Bizzarri. There was a section called "Open School" where new problems of the school were addressed at that time. I had studied to participate in that show because I considered it a considerable responsibility. Through television, we could also help young people choose their own path."
Compared to his career as an actor, he began a different life: "I could decide what to do," he recalls. " In Rai they also listened to our proposals and if they considered them good they made us put them into practice". And here too, Nando Angelini has taken away a lot of satisfaction. He proudly displays the Moira Orfei award he received for a report on the "traveling school" following circuses. "It also took a bit of imagination to tell certain things and that service came out well because I felt like I was in it.
Rome to San Benedetto and back
The rest is more or less recent history. At Rai the contracts were always fixed-term so, when the news of the opening of a private television station reached him from the Riviera, Nando decided to return home. "A journalist asked me if I was interested in collaborating with TVP and I chose to leave the capital. There I could work freely, with the experience in Rai they left me free to express myself". In the meantime, Nando, in San Benedetto, had also started a family. With his wife Maria Ripani, a kindergarten teacher, he had three daughters: Simonetta, Emanuela and Paola. Today the first is a teacher, the second is an educational coach while the third is an artist. An established painter who exhibits in various countries around the world.
Then came Berlusconi's TV. Fininvest buys private TV stations and San Benedetto television also ends up in that cauldron. "I could have stayed," he recalls, "but I would have had to work as a clerk. But I've always worked on the creative side, so I went back to Rome." Other years behind the cameras for broadcasts that have made the recent history of state television. For example, "Healthier, more beautiful." Then the retirement and the return, definitive this time to his places of origin.
We had sought him out to make an amarcord about his acting career. Thanks to the collaboration of his daughter Paola, we were able to get to know him and discover a person from whom we could learn a lot. If man is the sum of his experiences and the summary of the choices made, Nando Angelini's life undoubtedly represents an example of rare intellectual freedom. He went from the sin of youth on film sets (he himself states that that parenthesis was also the "result of a bit of understandable youthful exhibitionism") to an awareness of his role that has gradually grown but that has never seen him compromise.
Step by step, Nando shaped life the way he wanted it.
Today, at ninety years old, he can look back and see a man who has always
managed to keep the perspective of his beliefs. To choose without ever
betraying himself. And that's no small thing, especially in an environment like
the one in which he has worked all his life.
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