Marcello Mastroianni avoided the stereotype of the star. It bothered him a lot. He wasn’t a vain guy at all, he found himself to be, despite himself, a majestic artist in that world of the Fifties/Sixties populated by majestic artists. He joined the slowly forming group with his naturalness unmistakable taste: when he acted he stopped acting. He never gave up a role, he spent fifty years of his life in other people’s shoes and wore many of them, at least one hundred and thirty, mastering them without attracting attention.
A century ago it was born the most iconic actor of the twentieth centurywith all due respect to others equally great. On 28 September 1924, mother Ida and father Ottorino became the parents of Marcello a Liri Fountaina small town of few souls in province of Lazio Frosinone. Together with his parents, at nine years old, he found himself amazed by the magnificence of Rome, the family destination which in the 1930s offered far more opportunities than Fontana Liri. Where he never returned, perhaps to forget his childhood stolen by fascism.
Curious how the name of his town coincided with that of another fountain, from which, due to one of Fellini’s many brilliant intuitions, a new man emerged, ready to face a glittering future. The very famous “Marcello… come here” by Anita/Sylvia bounced off the facades of the houses in Piazza di Trevi at night, never imagining that those three words would reach all latitudes of the globe, even though it was 1960.
Jean Gili wrote of him: «A style in the shadows, without excesses, without abuse, preferring interior reflections».
The profession of architect was in the minds of the young Mastroianni, but he became a building expert and worked for the municipality of the capital. He arrived at the cinema without haste, just enough time to learn how to get by on stage. He reached Cinecittà in 1953 with the blue “tramvetto”: the set of “Il Viale della Speranza”, a post-neorealistic film by Dino Risi, was waiting for him.
Shortly before the trip to the Mecca of cinema, it was launched into orbit by a Luchino Visconti theater director. «He taught me a good part of what I know», said Marcello about that dazzling beginning with a Shakespare as the first script to study. A decade of prose followed. Masina, anticipating her husband Federico, called him for a role in “Angelica”, an anti-fascist satire, and – in ’49 – played the naive Mitch of “A Streetcar Named Desire” that Tennessee Williams wrote two years earlier. He is remembered for two other historical characters: Astrov from Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and the Knight of Ripafratta from Goldoni’s “Locandiera”. Facts unknown to most.
What instead belongs to popular narration are its cultured cinema, the bourgeois charm that managed to coexist with the proletarian one, that female world in love only with a glance into the camera, its very resistant characters, so much so that we still remember them and The his anti-heroismalways appearing to be the young man next door.
About the “Sweet life” de Laurentiis pressed Fellini to cast Paul Newman, but Federico didn’t give up, he wanted an actor with an unknown face and won the battle. The sumptuous and melancholic film that transfigured the reality of its time, received a barrage of boos upon its debut in Rome, but won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which silenced the critics.
In 1958 it was Monicelli to test it in the comedy de “The usual unknowns” together with a Gassman also in comedy rehearsal.
In “8½” of 1963 Mastroianni became Fellini’s alter ego as Guido Anselmi, a director in crisis. The big screen was now his thing.
Alessandro Blasetti, taking a small step back in 1954, thought of combining Paolo from “Peccato sia la canaglia” with Sophia Loren of notable emotional impact. They made twelve films together. Among which “Yesterday today and tomorrow”their film of films.
Was he a Latin lover? The facts say yes, while he has always denied the role. In 1950 he married Flora Carabella, an actress he met at the theatre, mother of Barbara, who died in 2018. There was no shortage of the most well-known flirtations: Marina Vlady, Faye Dunaway and Catherine Deneuve, with whom he moved to Paris and had another daughter, Clear.
The list of “his” directors is endless. He will film with Petri, Zurlini, Antonioni, Pietrangeli, Visconti, Monicelli, De Sica, Faenza, he will reject America (“It’s not for me”) and he will end up with schoolwho will direct him in “We loved each other so much”, “A particular day”, “La Terrazza”, “Splendor” and “Che ora è” alongside Troisi.
Already ill, Mastroianni returned to the theater with “The Last Moons” by the Trieste playwright Furio Bordon, the story of an elderly professor who deals with the tenderness of memories and the massacre of old age. He left quietly on December 19, 1996. Curtain.
