70 years between “Piccolo Diavolo” and Lectura Dantis
He turns 70 Roberto Benignison of peasants, the last of four children from the love of his parents Luigi and Isolina, born in Manciano La Misericordia in the Arezzo area, grew up in Prato and became world star on stage and in the cinema. The first wishes from the president Sergio Mattarella, with a phone call.
He turns 70 but does not look them, does not hear them and willingly leaves them in oblivion. Why Roberto (as he called it triumphant Sophia Loren the evening of the acclamation at the Oscars in 1999) is the icon of himself, a mask of the commedia dell’arte behind which hides a shy and smiling man, a Evergreen Pinocchio which preserves the peasant wisdom of the artist who sculpted it, Geppetto.
It is no coincidence that the character of Collodi has twice linked his career. In these hours Benigni has avoided every public occasion and also at the exhibition of photos of Mimmo Cattarinich dedicated to him by House of Cinema it appeared in a very private form, almost more to remember a friend who passed away than to see each other again in the shots captured during over 15 years of association.
But for all of Italian cinema, the appointment remains an opportunity to say thank you for this interpreter of culture and the extraordinary spectaclea storyteller able to “rhyme” the footprint as it once was in the yard (a memorable certame with Umberto Eco and Francesco Guccini at Grada in 1996) and to recite Dante or the articles of the Constitution with the same elegant ease.
He has always kept the artist’s modesty and flexibilitythe actor’s passion for challenging himself, the showman’s gifts improvisation.
He made his debut in ’71 at Metastasio in Prato as a singer and musician in “The naked king“directed by Paolo Matelli; Carlo Monni and especially Marco Messeri” baptized him “in various avant-garde shows halfway between street theater and comic invention. Having landed in Rome with Messeri’s company, Roberto Benigni met in ’75 Giuseppe Bertolucci who writes for him the monologue of “Mario Cioni“quickly became the flagship show of the Alberico theater, a reference point for the off Roman scene. Fragments of that experience end up in the TV program “Free Wave” alias “Televacca”, opposed by censorship as well as his first exploit in the cinema (always at the hands of Giuseppe Bertolucci), “Berlinguer I love you” of ’77.
Despite the uncovered sympathies for the left, critics and intellectual circles have never done it completely: the public reaction is different, each time warmer. Thus a “Tuttobenigni” sketch was in the theater with the show; on tv with raids at the Sanremo festival and at Fantastico (auspices Pippo Baudo), between small and large screen in the partnership with Renzo Arbore between “The other Sunday “and” Il Pap’occhio “ (a long censored).
He waits for 1983 to compete with the other part of the set and direct himself.
With the complicity of his friend Bertolucci he writes for himself and Massimo Troisi “We just have to cry“(1984) that shatters all box office records. Then he escapes from his success and lands in America to be directed by his friend Jim Jarmush with whom he signed” Daunbailò “in 1986, followed by two other works in five years.
Since 1988 he has adopted it Vincenzo Cerami, Pasolini’s school and taste for elegant excess. The two will collaborate for six times life in a formidable human partnership and artistic giving enriched by Nicoletta Braschi, actress-icon of the man who becomes her husband in 1991. Together they will pass from success to success from “The little devil “and” Johnny Stecchino“, from” The Monster “to the triumph – albeit controversial of”Life is Beautiful“who wins theOscar for the best foreign film but he also gives Roberto the statuette come best actor. “Pinocchio” and “the tiger and the snow” will follow, but in the interval there is room for the collaboration with Federico Fellini (and Paolo Villaggio) in “The voice of the moon” (1990). In recent years, the union with Dante and the Comedy has led Roberto Benigni to other shores, far from the cinema.
In 1996 he took the show on tour throughout Italy Tuttobenegni. We present an excerpt from the Rimini stage to celebrate the artist’s birthday.