Cinecitta News
By Stefano Stefanutto Rosa
12/10/2019
"There is no single and
precise technique. You can interpret a character in total immersion, but
the opposite can also happen. Diderot maintains that the actor, while
communicating to the spectator a great emotion by exploring the disturbing
territories of the tragedy, perhaps thinks of the restaurant where he will go
to eat after the show". Thus an ironic Gian Maria Volonté (1933-1994) who was remembered 25 years after his death,
as well as an exhibition at the Porretta Terme Festival, with two days
dedicated to him, the first at the Casa del Cinema in Rome with a round table moderated by
Fabio Ferzetti and scheduled after the screening of the restored version of
“Sacco and Vanzatti” (1971).
The idea of this film is the
story of two Italian anarchists, who emigrated to the United States and were
unjustly sentenced to death for a robbery armed with two victims, comes to
Giuliano Montaldo after seeing a piece about those events in a Genoese theater. Three
years will pass, the director recalls, before finding someone willing to
finance the venture, in the person of Arrigo Colombo, the producer of
Sergio Leone 's “For a Fistful of Dollars”. And long is the search for
locations - Dublin and Boston
- capable of restoring the atmosphere of early twentieth-century America.
Volonté plays Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, more politicized and militant than Nicola Sacco (Riccardo Cucciolla),
a character that Volonté played in the play "Sacco e Vanzetti",
directed by Giancarlo Sbragia. "Gian Maria was the fundamental thrust
of the film, his character lived day and night - says Montaldo - his
relationship with acto Cucciolla was protective as it was in fiction. And
then he wrote and rewrote, at least three times, his lines, in black school
notebooks".
An actor's method that Felice
Laudadio well remembers, having known and frequented Volonté: "For
every role he took two, three months of time, of absolute concentration, then
transcribed minutely on a first grade school notebook the script, then on a
second his lines, changing the words and finding the most suitable for the
character and even his physiognomy. Finally the third notebook reported
the lines in the final version. Obviously this perfectionism, was an added
value, which often created problems and clashes with the directors, Elio Petri
and Gianni Amelio know something about who directed it. "The actor Volonté
is therefore not only an interpreter but also an author. "He changed
the social conception of the actor, engaging himself personally in the voice /
facial battle, very participated at the time – underlines Franco Montini openly
opposing and promoting the strike of the actors against the custom of doubling
many performers, as indeed happens to him in the two westerns of Leone ”.
The intellectual Volunteer
emerges here with arrogance, the man of the left for a period close to the
Communist Party, the generous and committed "street companion" in the
political battles of the 60s and 70s. "The Unit was presented to the
newspaper, where I held the position of head of the editorial team for culture
and shows - Laudadio recalls - asking me decisively to publish a statement on
the voice / face issue, despite my warning that it would probably cause a hard
reaction from the producers. And in fact Gian Maria is blacklisted and
that's when his international career begins". And always Laudadio
returns the image of a Volonté engaged, during the political elections, in a
tour that takes him to meet the Italian immigrants of Switzerland and Germany to support the vote to the
PCI.
But the artistic greatness of
Volonté remains in his mimetic ability, in being everything and the opposite of
everything, without ever identifying himself with a mask, with a human
prototype, as Montini points out. From the cruel Mexican bandit of “A Few Dollars More” (1965)
to the enterprising head of Eni in “The Case Mattei” (1972); from
the exalted and assassin inspector of the political office of the police
station in “Investigation
on a Citizen Above Suspicion” (1970) to the melancholy Aldo
Moro of “Il caso Moro” (1986); from the rebel
officer of “Uomini
contro”(1975) to the ambiguous head of the Italian-American mafia
in “Lucky
Luciano”(1973).
"His way of acting
coincides with the construction of an identity that has an independent life -
explains the psychotherapist Giovanni Savastano, author of the book" Gian
Maria Volontè. I therefore act"- He does not descend into the
character, he becomes it, I do not go out nor do I enter the character 'as he
himself suggests." The result of this 'Volonté Studio' is each time a
journey inside the character to metabolize it, to do it even
obsessively. Too bad not having seen it applied in that filmic project for
some time cherished by a Don Quixote next to a Sancho Panza
interpreted by his friend Paolo Villaggio.
