News from Italy
The timeless icon of Italian style
Vita gazette culture – City Lights – Marcello Mastroianni
by Francesca Riccio
He is a beautiful man with a sweet and light smile, a soft voice, a melancholy look, an innate and modern class. A timeless icon of Italian style…
Anita Ekberk calls out in the scene of Federico Fellini’s masterpiece “La dolce vita” set in the Trevi Fountain: “Marcello, come here!” This phrase has always lit a light bulb in the collective imagination. Since that day, that light bulb has never gone out…
Marcello Mastroianni opened his eyes to the world two years after the “BlackShirt march from Naples to Rome”, that is, the National Fascist Party came to power in Italy, which brought Benito Mussolini to power. His birthplace was the historic town of Fontana Liri (Frosinone), built on a hill in the Lazio Region. The dates were October 28, 1924. This beautiful boy, who made the town cry with his screams, seemed to foretell the future. Mastroianni would become one of the shining stars not only in Italy but all over the world with his talent, acting, familiar cuteness and handsomeness in a period described as “dark”…
And this boy was becoming everyone’s Marcello, “a little sexy, a little foreign accent”as Anita Ekberg called him in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita. By chance an actor, the artist was transforming into a gorgeous, charming and elegant example of an alpha male transformed into a timeless icon…
The early years
He is the son of Ottorino Mastroianni, a carpenter, and Ida Irolle, originally from the municipality of Arpino. Shortly after his birth, they moved first to Turin, and then to Rome. From an early age, he had several roles as an extra in some films. Among these “Children look at us” by Vittorio De Sica.
During the war, he worked as a technician for the municipality of Rome and Florence. It is only in 1945 that he begins to cultivate his love for cinema by taking acting lessons. In 1948 he made his debut with “I Miserabili”. The first great director to notice him is Luchino Visconti who will assign him the first professional role in Shakespeare’s “Rosalinda or Come You Like”.
He also continued to make films, revealing with “I Soliti Ignoti” that he was the ideal actor for the nascent Italian comedy. He later became the hero of over 140 films.
The consecration as a star by Marcello Mastroianni
His partnership, with the director Federico Fellini allows him to achieve international fame. “La dolce vita” (1960) and “8½” (1963) are two of the most famous films that have seen him as a protagonist. The Times, in 1962 will dedicate a report to him in which he is indicated as the most loved foreign star in the USA.
The success of “Italian Divorce”
In 1961 “Divorzio all’italiana”, a comedy centred on honour killing, was released in theatres. Next to Marcello, we find a very young Stefania Sandrelli in the role of Angela, the teenage lover of Baron Ferdinando Cefalù. This film represents one of the masterpieces of Italian cinema and has received numerous awards.
The course of the 15th Cannes Film Festival “Italian Divorce” wins the prize for best comedy. It can boast 3 nominations for the 1963 Oscars, obtaining the statuette for the best original screenplay. In addition, Mastroianni gets the nomination for best actor but the statuette goes to Gregory Peck for “The darkness beyond the hedge”. Still, for the same film, Mastroianni wins the Silver Ribbon for the best leading actor; the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor; a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Film.
Mastroianni crossed the golden century of cinematographic art with elegance, detachment, confidentiality and enormous talent. Three times nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor (Italian Divorce, Una Giorno Particular and Oci Ciornie), he has won 2 Golden Globes, two Bafta Awards, eight David di Donatello, eight Nastri d’Argento, a Leone d’oro at the career and twice he was best actor in both Cannes and Venice. Marcello Mastroianni in numbers. But these numbers also speak of the great directors with whom he has worked and with whom he has woven relationships rich in art and friendship: Monicelli, Scola, Fellini, De Oliveira, Michalkov, Visconti, Ferreri … always looking for a character and a story that distracted him from life.
Silvia Mangano Flora Carabella Faye Dunaway
His loves
A beautiful man with a sweet and light smile, a soft voice, a melancholy look, and natural and modern class, has become a timeless symbol of Italian style in the world. At the same time, he had a private life that he didn’t talk about but that ended up in magazines all over the world. Mastroianni has worked with many actresses and some of them could not resist his charm. Despite being married to Flora Carabella since 1950, Marcello has had many extramarital affairs. He had a teenage love affair with model Silvia Mangano. Marcello was 22, Silvia 17…
Voyeur beating Marcello
In Masolino d’Amico’s book “Special people”, the notes on this dimension of love are as follows:
“These two young people who live in the same neighbourhood have been together for a while. They took acting lessons together. Once, while flirting with him in Villa Borghese, Marcello noticed a voyeur spying on them; Enraged, he punched him, missed and instead crashed into a tree trunk. He often recounted what had happened and when he was excited to talk about Silvana he massaged his thumb, which, according to him, still hurt when the weather changed. “Silvana had to stay with me, we were made for each other. But then I was nothing, she was ambitious, she married for profit, she was never happy, not even me”.
In 1968, during the filming of Vittorio De Sica’s “Amanti”, he met Faye Dunaway. A story that will thrill the public of that period. The relationship with Catherine Deneuve with whom he had a little girl, Chiara, is more intense. Anna Maria Tatò, on the other hand, remained with him until her death. We owe the actor’s film testament to her: “Marcello Mastroianni – I remember, yes, I remember”.
Catherine Deneuve Anna Maria Tatò
Silvana Mangano, his wife Flora Carabella from whom he had his daughter Barbara and from whom he never divorced, and then, Faye Dunaway, Catherine Deneuve who gave him the second daughter Chiara, and then Anna Maria Tatò, became the important women of his life.
Sophia Loren and Mastroianni
He formed a deep friendship with Sophia Loren, with whom he shared the set for more than 10 films, during extraordinary films such as “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” or “A Special Day”. It didn’t take long for Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren to be considered the ideal couple for everyone. The stories they played in the movies became reality with their harmonious chemistry. From the sixties, they were among the leading actors of Federico Fellini. She has also worked with Sofia Loren in various De Sica films such as “Sin is a thug” and “The fortune of being a woman”. Together, they acted in more than 10 movies. The biggest achievement of this partnership was the deep friendship between the two great players.
He lived a busy life full of curiosity. He did his drifting from one movie to the next with insane love. “I only exist when I’m working on a movie,” he said. These phrases show the cinematic love of a great artist who stopped the time he was playing and kept wanting to stop it again.
Mastroianni’s last years
In the 90s Mastroianni worked mainly abroad before returning to Italy where he faced the disease that struck him. He died in Paris on December 19, 1996, at the age of 72, defeated by pancreatic cancer. Today he rests in the Verano cemetery in Rome but his films have made him immortal.
As a result, he was the most loved Italian actor ever, the face of an entire era, and an icon of cinema that combines charm and talent. He has never stopped living through his charisma, his talent, his artistic skills and, above all, his films. Films that tell of an extraordinary career, which has made him perhaps the most famous Italian artist in the world and the most awarded actor in the history of our country’s cinema. Results were achieved thanks to his histrionic talent, his ability to make every role his own, and also close artistic partnership with personalities of the calibre of Federico Fellini and Sophia Loren. In his career he has starred in over 140 films, making us fully experience the stories of his characters. It is probably impossible to summarize in a few lines who Marcello Mastroianni was for Italian cinema. But we can retrace his career with 10 films that made history.
La dolce vita – 1960
It is one of the best-known Italian films in the world, directed by Federico Fellini, one of the directors of world cinema. And in this movie, Marcello Mastroianni plays the role of Marcello Rubini, who made him immortal. Thanks to La dolce vita, he enters the circle of stars of international cinema: after the release of the film, she becomes the undisputed star of the 1960s and begins to work with the biggest names of Italian cinema.
La dolce vita follows the life of Rubini, a tabloid journalist, and then the inevitable Paparazzo, a photographer who today gives his name to an entire profession. The Trevi Fountain scene with Anita Ekberg is iconic: “Marcello, come here!” Definitely one of the best-known phrases in the history of Italian cinema.
La notte – 1961
The second chapter of the so-called trilogy of incommunicability (together with The Adventure and The Eclipse), the film directed by master Michelangelo Antonioni covers the typical day of a couple in crisis, from morning until the following dawn. He, Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) is a successful writer who, together with his wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau), lives a life that seems empty, meaningless to him. The two are bored, alienated, they go on only by inertia in a world, that of the early 1960s, overwhelmed by the economic boom. In this film, Mastroianni plays the role of a character in a certain sense similar to that of Marcello Rubini from La dolce vita: that of the charming man, wealthy, but never happy with life, who inevitably ends up in the arms of other women, unable to maintain a stable relationship.
Divorzio all’italiana – 1961
A Silver Ribbon, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, an Oscar nomination. These are the awards that Marcello Mastroianni received thanks to Divorzio all’italiana, a 1961 masterpiece directed by Pietro Germi. It seems that the term “Italian comedy” was born from the title of this film, which has now become iconic in the history of Italian cinema: a comedy that combines laughter with the delicate and complex theme of honor killing (which remained legal in Italy until to 1981). Mastroianni is Baron Ferdinando Cefalù, married for 12 years to Rosalia and trapped in a marriage with which he is dissatisfied. But the divorce law still doesn’t exist. The solution? Getting rid of his wife by inducing her into adultery, thus being able to count on honour killing. Especially after being fascinated by the young Angela (a Stefania Sandrelli just fifteen).
Cagna – 1972
Directed by Marco Ferreri, the film stars Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve. Someone is someone who escapes the stereotypes imposed by society on a desert island. the second lands on the island after a ship has abandoned its voyage. The couple is as successful in life as they are on set. From that moment, in fact, they begin a tormented love story, in which a daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, will also be born. But he will never dare leave his wife Flora to fully experience his love for the French actress. The classic attitude of the Italian man…
Todo Modo – 1976
The seventies are a very specific period in Italian history. Elio Petri decides to entrust Mastroianni with the role of Don Gaetano in Todo Modo: a film based on the novel by Leonardo Sciascia in which Gian Maria Volontè reproduces – with impressive fidelity – an Aldo Moro intent on achieving the historical compromise between DC and PCI.
Una giornata particolare – 1977
An intense story, directed by Ettore Scola, of a day in 1938, in the Roman suburbs. The city seems empty, because everyone gathered for a special event: the arrival of Adolf Hitler, on a visit to Italy. Everyone is there, except Antonietta and Gabriele. She is a housewife, mother of six and married to a staunch fascist. Marcello is her neighbour, a mysterious and fascinating man, who is not interested in welcoming the Fuhrer to Rome. A real love story is not born between the two, but a bond based on their profound loneliness. A film that sees Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren together again, in an interpretation that earned the former the Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
Oci ciornie – 1987
Marcello Mastroianni is the protagonist of this film directed by the Russian director Nikita Sergeevich Michalkov and based on two short stories by Anton Chekhov, The lady with the little dog and Anna around the neck. The actor plays Romano Patroni, an Italian man who falls in love with a young Russian girl despite being married. Love takes him to Russia to look for her and promises to leave his wife to live their story: but he does not have the courage to divorce. An interpretation, that of Mastroianni, which earned him the Golden Lion for best male interpretation at the Venice Film Festival and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
8 e ½ – 1963
Mastroianni is directed by Federico Fellini in one of the films considered to be among the best ever, 8 and ½. A film in in a sort of autobiographical tale. Dreams are spoken of in this film, in which Guido Anselmi is a director in crisis because he is developing his next work, but without being able to put it into practice. The same happened to Fellini: he had outlined, in his head, a perfect story for a film, only to forget it: the result is 8 and ½, awarded with the Oscar for best foreign film.
Ieri, oggi, domani – 1963
Yet another Oscar-winning film in which Mastroianni starred, “Yesterday, today, tomorrow” is directed by Vittorio De Sica and stars Sophia Loren alongside the actor. The story of three couples, always interpreted by the two actors, staging the change in Italian society over time and, in particular, in the condition of women.
