TRIBUTI E PREMIO ALLA CARRIERA

TRIBUTO
VITTORIO GASSMAN'S MEMORIES
by Tonia Caterina Riviello



Vittorio Gassman represent Italy very well in Hollywood, Latin America and other parts of the World. This titan of drama and cinema has played the most difficult roles of classical world theater, including Adelchi, Hamlet, Anthony, Cato, Oedipus, Macbeth, Orestes, Peer Gynt, Richard III, Romeo, Terah (father of Abraham), and many more. But, as if these theater roles were not challenqing enough for an actor, Gassman's talent could not keep him away from cinema in Italy and Hollywood. The young actor made his debut in 1946 with the film "Prelude of Love," directed by Giovanni Paolucci. In a short time Gassman became an acclaimed screen actor and worked with the most famous actresses of those years. Among the directors who knew how to develop his talent were Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, Ettore Scola, Mario Camerini, Giuseppe De Santis, Roberto Rossellini, Marco Ferreri, Robert Z. Leonard, Charles Vidor, Robert Altman, and others.

Vittorio Gassman engaged in directing both theatrical pieces as well as films, at times with his son Alessandro, at times with other film directors. "Kean: Genius and Rebel" (1956) is the first example in which Gassman assumed the roles of director and protagonist. It was very well received by critics, for they found the film enriched by Gassman's preceding theatrical piece of the same name. In the film "The Alibi" (1968) Gassman, Adolfo Celi, and Luciano Luciqnani were simultaneously actors and directors. In 1992 Gassman acted with his son Alessandro in the film "When We Were Repressed" by Pino Quartullo. But this is not all: in his mature years, Gassman engaged in writing, the profession that he thought he was headed toward when his mother registered him in the Academy of Dramatic Art (in Rome). Besides a rich dramatic repertoire, Gassman also gave us a very interesting autobiography, "A Great Future in Your Past," already in its seventh edition since 1981. He wrote novels, including "Memories Beneath the Staircase" (1990) with two drawings by Alessandro Gassman, and even a collection of poetry, entitled "Vocalizations" (1988). Finally, one should praise his need to teach, to help young people discover their talent for dramatic art and the craft of acting. Praiseworthy is his generosity in making himself available to others--this self-sufficient man--not only through teaching, but also through readings of Dante's poetry. He gave recitals of his own poetry, entitled "The Farewell of the Matador," in many Italian cities in 1998 and 1999, even within months of his death.

TRIBUTO
FELLINI: CLIPS FROM HIS LIFE
By Tullio Kezich



The RAI Archives has put together a unique collection of Fellini's television interviews spanning his entire carreer from the program Federico Fellini's Autobiography: Clips from His Life. The project is a precious contribution to our understanding of the director and his genius, providing insights into the life and mind of an outstanding public figure as he reacts to the interviewers' questions with a mixture of boundless curiosity, delightful candor, and his own irresistible sense of humor. These close encounters with Federico Fellini are a real gift to those who knew him and find him here just as they remembered him. They may well be an even great gift to those who ? throught these surprising lessons on life assembled by the RAI ? are meeting Fellini here for the first time, and realize that the man was just as extraordinary as his films.

PREMIO ALLA CARRIERA
CARLO PONTI
By Gabriella Belloni

The Milan International Film Festival is proud to honor Italy most acclaimed and prolific producer, a man whose creative geniality has contributed to produce some of the best films ever made in the history of cinema: Carlo Ponti. Born in Magenta, near Milan 88 years ago, Carlo Ponti was a young lawyer when he began his career at age 24, producing the critically acclaimed "Small Old World" ("Piccolo Mondo Antico") directed by Mario Soldati. A film made for three million liras (fifteen-hundred dollars) and which became an enormous success.

Carlo began producing by chance. It was 1938 just before World War II, and Carlo was working with his father also a lawyer, who happened to manage the assets of a wealthy young man who didn't know what to do with his money. "See what you can do with him. He's always in my office and he's not even well educated," said Ponti's father. Carlo had an idea and introduced the rich young man to a friend of his whom had just completed film school in Rome. While the two of them never agreed on anything, Carlo went to Rome and found the book "Piccolo Mondo Antico" ("Small Old World"). It was an anti-fascist story set in Milan, and Carlo decided to get involved.

During World War II, the Mussolini's regime supported the film business by exempting the people in it from the draft. Not a military man, Ponti was able to avoid the army. In fact he even saved young men's lives by convincing a Colonel in Milan to build projection rooms in the army's barracks and keep the soldiers home so they could run three screenings a day.

After the war, Ponti became a producer for Lux Film in Rome and under his banner he made some of the best of the neo-realist films which brought Italian cinema to a worldwide audiences. Among these were the early films of Alberto Lattuada, Pietro Germi, Luigi Comencini. He also produced a series of popular comedies with Neapolitan comic Toto'.

It was in 1951 that Ponti met sixteen years old raw beauty queen Sophia Sciccolone. It was late spring and the meeting occurred in an open-air night spot overlooking the Colosseum. To her he was Mr. Big, to him she was an overdeveloped teenager. But Ponti has always had a good eye for talent; he saw in Sophia a vitality, a sensitivity, a sense of rhythm that no actor's studio can teach. "She was not an actress," says Ponti, "she was an artist." The 1950's marked also Ponti partnership with Dino De Laurentiis. Their productions included Federico Fellini's "La Strada" and "Nights of Cabiria", Pietro Germi's "The Railwayman", De Sica "Gold of Naples" and King Vidor's "War and Peace". The 1960's were an amazing decade for Carlo Ponti. He produced De Sica's most memorable work of art, "Two Women", which won Loren an Oscar for Best Actress; then again the De Sica-Loren-Mastroianni "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" and "Marriage Italian Style". During this time Ponti also got involved in two of the most abstract of his films: Michelangelo Antonioni "Blow Up", and "Zabriskie Point". And then came the Oscar-winning epic "Dr. Zhivago" directed by David Lean. "I started producing by chance," says Carlo today while contemplating his rose garden at his ranch in Southern California. A chance which not only cast the destiny of directors like Federico Fellini, Vittorio de Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni and actors like Marcello Mastroianni but also made history in the ever developing art of filmmaking.