Ettore scola

Born in Trevico (Avellino) on May 10, 1931, Ettore Scola studied law at the University of Rome. At a very young age, he began to collaborate with the humor magazine “Marc’Aurelio”, where he had as colleagues such prominent figures as Furio Scarpelli and Steno , although of all of them the one who would mark his destiny the most would be the great Federico Fellini , whom he considered his great mentor.

He began in the cinema as a ‘black’, writing for other scriptwriters and later helped write titles such as Cleopatra Nights , a memorable historical comedy where Sophia Loren played a slave nailed to the queen of Egypt, who confused one of her bodyguards (memorable Alberto Sordi ).

In 1964 he made the leap to directing with Se permettete parliamo di donne , a comedy in which Vittorio Gassman excelled playing nine roles. Since then he began to thrive as a director, in films also co-written by him, such as The Million Dollars, The Demon of Jealousy , An Italian in Chicago , or Gross, Ugly and Bad .

It evolved into a very personal type of comedy-drama with the memorable A Woman and Three Men , where three friends, none other than Vittorio Gassman (again), Nino Manfredi and Stefano Satta Flores , fell in love with the same woman, Luciana ( Stefania Sandrelli ). ), during the postwar period. Shortly after, he directed one of his great titles, A Particular Day , where a journalist spent the day of Hitler’s visit to Rome with an ill-married woman with few vital prospects. Undoubtedly, the film offered one of the best joint works of the great Sophia Loren , and Marcello Mastroianni, which was nominated for an Oscar, while the film was a candidate in the non-English language category (four of its titles competed in it, unsuccessfully).

In the eighties and nineties he kept the bar very high with titles such as The terrace , Between love and death , La noche de Varennes , Macarroni, What time is it? , Mario, María and Mario, Story of a poor man, Dinner , and already in 2001 Unfair competition . To highlight two titles, in La familia he reconstructed everything that happened in his country throughout the 20th century through the journey of an Italian teacher (again great work by Gassman) and his family, while in Splendorpaid tribute to the golden age of popular cinema, later in decline. In the latter he once again had Mastroianni as the protagonist. “I didn’t used to work once with an actor, but I repeated a lot. Because the more you know them, the more you get out of them,” the director confessed. But he kept one. “Gassman was the smartest.”

People of Rome , a tribute to the anonymous inhabitants of the Eternal City, marked his theoretical farewell to cinema in 2003. But he returned to directing, just a decade later, with How Strange to be Called Federico , a nostalgic tribute to his teacher, Fellini, which he mixed documentary images with reconstructions with actors of nostalgic anecdotes lived with the author of La dolce vita , to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of his death.

Two members of his family have followed in his footsteps in the Seventh Art, the screenwriter Silvia Scola and the director and screenwriter Paola Scola, their two daughters, the fruit of their marriage to the director and screenwriter, especially theatrical Gigliola. With both, he presented the documentary Ridendo e scherzando , directed by Vittorio Sindoni , about his professional career at the Rome Festival in November . “Cinema is hard work, but it can be done laughing and joking. Cinema is a lantern that illuminates things in life.” He certainly enlightened us through his films.