Marcello Mastroianni

He probably is the most famous Italian actor in the world, especially thanks to the movies shot by Federico Fellini and to those played with Sophia Loren. He’s also the most versatile, perhaps because he could almost always be natural, except in those films where directors requested a more theatrical acting. For some he was the symbol of the Italian Latin lover, with an elusive charm and elegant gestures, precisely related to the film La Dolce Vita (“The sweet life”), as an Italian Cary Grant. But Mastroianni was much more, he was an actor who has always chosen challenges in many films he shot like in movies with Marco Ferreri. His full name is Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni and he was born in Fontana Liri, in the province of Frosinone (at that time its name was Terra di Lavoro, the Italian for “Land of the working”) on September 28th, 1924. His father was Otto Mastroianni, brother of the sculptor Umberto and his mother's name was Ida Irolle. They were both born in Arpino, a town near to Marcello’s birthplace. The little family moved to Turin almost immediately. Five years later, in 1929, his brother Ruggero was born. In 1933 they arrived to Rome, in San Giovanni, where he went to school. The power of the cinema, however, arrived early and Marcello began his first steps when he was a child as an extra, even in major films such as La Corona di Ferro (“The Iron Crown”) directed by Alessandro Blasetti and The Children Are Watching Us by Vittorio De Sica. Two years after the end of the war, in 1943, he graduated as a Building Engineer at Galileo Galilei High School in Rome. At the end of World War II he began studying acting. In that period, he met Silvana Mangano and they have a short relationship. In 1948, a Riccardo Freda film, Les Misérables, is the first chance to show what he had learned about acting. He also worked in theatre amateurish companies, until he had been noticed by the director Luchino Visconti. His first important comedy is As You Like It from the great William Shakespeare, in 1948 at the Rome Eliseo Theatre as always. Paired with Vittorio Gassman (which has the main role of Kowalsky) he starred in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, where he played Mitch. His first cinematic partnership with a director was with Luciano Emmer: they worked together in five movies between 1950 and 1955, including Sunday in August and Paris is always Paris (voiced by his colleagues Alberto Sordi and Nino Manfredi). He went from comedies to dramas with Chronicle of Poor Lovers in 1954, by Carlo Lizzani, and White Nights in 1957 by Luchino Visconti. In 1954 he met Sophia Loren for the first time on set, for Too Bad She's Bad directed by Blasetti. In 1958, success came with Mario Monicelli’s movie Big Deal on Madonna Street also with Vittorio Gassman, Toto and Renato Salvatori. In 1960 he starred in two important films, Adua and Friends by Antonio Pietrangeli and La Dolce Vita by Fellini. The last one made him famous all over the world, but Marcello didn’t like to be called Latin lover, so as a challenge in the same year he accepted the role of an impotent man in Mauro Bolognini's film, Il bell'Antonio.Even the next year confirmed Mastroianni’s golden era, in fact in addition to Michelangelo Antonioni's masterpiece La Notte (“The Night”) with Jeanne Moreau, he played in Pietro Germi's film Divorce Italian Style which had a huge international success of the public and participated at the Cannes Film Festival where it won the Best Comedy Award. Marcello didn’t only win a Silver Ribbon, but also the Golden Globe, the BAFTA Award and was nominated for the Oscars. The Time also dedicated him an article in 1962 as the most famous foreign actor. Even 1973 is a great year, besides Fellini's 8 ½ there are also The Organizer by Mario Monicelli and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow with Sophia Loren, directed by Vittorio De Sica. During the second half of the Sixties he got back to theatre with Garinei and Giovannini’s musical comedy Ciao Rudy, about the figure of Rudolph Valentino. The critics aren’t enthusiastic, but he sang and danced and made the sold out. Because of his friend Federico, who wanted him in a new film, he had to pay an expensive penalty for the early interruption of the play. In the end reality the film is not shot and “The Journey of G. Mastorna” will only remain a project. Marcello forgave him for the loss of money, however they won’t work together again until City of Women in 1980 (unless you count the small cameo in Rome in 1970). In 1967 he also played in Luchino Visconti’s unlucky The Stranger (which after all these years still hasn’t been distributed either in video or DVDs) based on Albert Camus’ novel. He also had a short but intense relationship with Faye Dunaway after they met on the set of a De Sica film. In the Seventies there is the friendship with Marco Ferreri, who he had met in the mid-Sixties, which had led him shooting four movies with the director: Liza with Catherine Deneuve (with whom he had another great love story, moving to Paris where Chiara was born), La Grande Bouffe, Don’t touch the white woman! and Bye Bye Monkey with Gerard Depardieu. He worked with Elio Petri in Todo Modo, and on TV in Dirty Hands by Sartre. He’s again with Sophia Loren in the masterpiece by Ettore Scola A Special Day (one of his greatest performances). In 1985 he worked with Fellini and Giulietta Masina in Ginger and Fred and he also appeared in Federico’s Intervista (“Interview”) in 1987. The same year he had a great international success with Dark Eyes by Nikita Mikhalkov. Instead, with Ettore Scola and Massimo Troisi he made Splendor and What Time Is It?. In the Nineties he worked with Theo Angelopoulos, Manoel De Oliveira (with whom he made his last film), Raul Ruiz, Robert Altman and especially with Roberto Faenza in Sostiene Pereira, where he did his last great performance. Due to space problems we couldn’t mention all his important films, but there are many others who have worked with him, among them at random: Marco Bellocchio, Liliana Cavani, The Taviani brothers, Renato Castellani, Roman Polanski, Jacques Demy, Giuseppe De Santis, Raffaele Matarazzo, Luigi Comencini, Dino Risi, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Louis Malle and Bertrand Blier. He died in Paris in December 1996.