From the set with Sordi and Totò to Rai productions. The story of Nando Angelini, the actor and director from San Benedetto who has never betrayed himself [archived newspaper article.]

For over ten years he 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

March 4, 2024

SAN BENEDETTO DEL TRONTO. The voice is almost baritone. Set up, 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. To Nando Angelini, the desire to put you at ease, you can immediately read it in your eyes. Just as you understand that the sum of his years (we go for 91) has not affected 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 real film on the Divine Comedy. "It was the train I was waiting for," he recalls, "but in the end it didn't start." But for Nando, born in Porto d'Ascoli, in the municipality of Monteprandone, in the not so distant 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 is 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 experimental center of Cinematography in Rome. I decided to participate but did not sign up by mail. I went directly there."

[Nando Angelini on set with Sandra Milo]

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 did not have the necessary degree to be a director or screenwriter".

Nando thus enters the Experimental Center and then ends up on the set. And what set one would say. Because it is enough to search for his name and be conveyed on Wikipedia to realize that in a decade he has worked in dozens of films. "Few of me have relevant parts – he says speaking with a certain sufficiency of that portion of his life that has brought us to his home -. For example, in "Signori si Nasce" with Totò my part is that of Liana Orfei's lover".

On the set with Totò he was 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 who was a baritone. With Totò, working was a little 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 end. Maybe because it was the last years and he was getting older but it was not easy to work on those sets ".

Nando spends about eleven years in front of the camera. "I was waiting for the train – he says smiling -. 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

We are in 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, those in costume that were very popular in those years – explains Angelini -. It would have been three films: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. And Dante would have been me. It looked just like my train."

Nando shows an issue of L'Europeo, one of the most important Italian news 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 could not be Nando Angelini - he says -. He had to call back Tuscany, so they introduced me as Jacopo Ristori".

The film would have been produced by Angelo Rizzoli's Cineriz. "So we found ourselves at Rizzoli, which at the time was one of the largest 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, also the Divine Comedy. "Rizzoli was someone who, in his job, understood things on the fly – explains Angelini -. In those weeks on TV there was a drama on 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. Rejected that TV series, rejected the film project. This was not my famous train either".

The new life

[Nando behind Luigi Zampa on the set of "Il medico della Mutua". 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. It was almost there, then nothing came of it". At that point comes the decision to change his life. A theatrical parenthesis with a Roman company alongside Manuela Kustermann and then the passage to the opposite side of the camera. "I was tired of being an actor. The actor was simply taking orders from those on the other side of the camera. More than ten years had passed 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 column called "Open School" where new problems of the school were addressed for that time. I had studied to participate in that broadcast because I considered it a considerable responsibility. Through television we could also help the children to choose their own path".

Compared to his acting career, a different life began: "I could decide what to do – he remembers -. 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. She proudly shows the Moira Orfei award 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 in it.

From Rome to San Benedetto and back

[Nando Angelini today]

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 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 a didactic 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 and even San Benedetto television ends up in that cauldron. "I could have stayed – he recalls – but I should have started to be an employee. But I have always worked on the creative part so I returned to Rome". Other years behind the cameras for broadcasts that have made the recent history of state TV. 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 of film sets (he himself says 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 which has never seen him compromise.

Step by step Nando shaped life as he wanted it. Today, at ninety, 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 worked all his life.