Attractive Antonio

PostED ON OCTOBER 10, 2016 AT 6PM

Filmmaker Antonio Pietrangeli did not have time to grow old, he died accidentally at age 49, leaving behind him the work of a scriptwriter and director of thirteen films, from 1953 to 1969. A real filmography, with girls, plenty of girls, and men, just aiming to enjoy a resurgent Italy in the second half of the twentieth century.

We find the lively and entertaining use of pop songs that punctuate the very poignant I Knew Her Well (Io la conoscevo bene, 1965) where Stefania Sandrelli, a girl of her time, dances with young man Jean-Claude Brialy, sleeps with significantly older professors, and changes wigs every three seconds… All the while, hiding a secret dream, to become famous, to become an actress, a quest she believes will bring her happiness. Shot in black and white that seem to be colors, so do they radiates with modernity, the film by Pietrangeli, who was also a scriptwriter with Ettore Scola (another great future filmmaker of Italians and their sunny lifestyle), is a mild whirlpool of a tragedy, not of a silly man, but of a starry-eyed, apparently brainless girl, whom we refuse to see as anything but a body made for desire.

Desire, perhaps even more than love, traverses, gets ahold of, then crucifies the Pietrangeli universe and makes it primordial. He does it with a latent activism, our social conscience strangled in "Empty Eyes" (Il sole negli occhi, 1953), Pietrangeli's first film, the story of a young maid who has come to work in aristocratic circles in Rome. He does it with a lasting, silent melancholy, the particular hallmark of Pietrangeli's cinema: close-ups of his young heroines who no longer speak and gaze into the void (Stefania Sandrelli in I Knew Her Well the voluptuous Sandra Milo in "The Visit" (La Visita, 1963) These scenes are a mixture of cruelty, -are these girls thinking of something?- and total humanity, -everyone has the right to be seen, truly seen, not only desired.

Empty Eyes (Il sole negli occhi, 1953)

The cinema of Pietrangeli observes, like not too intelligent insects, that the protagonist, incidentally, doesn't give a darn about seeming clever. It is infinitely poignant and infinitely endearing. Concerned only with proving that every being, even those who seem shallow, contains a whole world within them, the filmmaker puts all his energy into filming fantasy and the importance of living "as is," before it is too late. This is the promise of the eccentric "Phantom Lovers" (Fantasmi a Roma, 1961), where Marcello Mastroianni (playing three different roles, including a ridiculous redhead, and a truly electrifying sex maniac ghost), and Vittorio Gassman are both dead, and angry at not being able to change the existence of others, of the living beings they would like to be.

A true heritage!

Virginie Apiou

> The Unknown Italian: Antonio Pietrangeli at the Lumière festival: the full program