Luigi Comencini

Luigi Comencini was born in Saló, in the province of Brescia, inthe lombardyItalian, June 8, 1916. He spent part of his childhood in France, but returned to Italy to study architecture at the Liceo Politecnico in Milan. Cinema lover from a very young age, he promoted together with Alberto Lattuada and Mario Ferrari the Italian Cinematheque, with the first Italian film archive. Afterthe second warWorld Cup, signed as a film critic, first for the newspaper “L’Avanti!”, and later for the weekly “Tempo”. It did not take long for him to try his luck with the camera, first as a documentarian in 1946 with Bambini in città , and two years later in the field of fiction with Prohibido robar , where he had the collaboration of two Italian film classics, screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico and composer Nino Rota . In his next film, The Emperor of Capri , he directed one of the most outstanding actors in Italian comedy: the ineffable Totò. But it was of course the aforementioned costumbrista comedy diptych, Pan, love and fantasy (1953) and Pan, love and jealousy(1954), the one that catapulted him to fame. A curious and intelligent mixture of neorealism and romantic comedy, De Sica and Lollobrigida were simply memorable, and the transition from humor to melodrama never squeaked. With Alberto Sordi he will shoot La bella de Roma (1955), a nice comedy as well as Dangerous Women (1958) and Las sorpresas del amor (1959).

From the 1960s, his most valued title was Everyone Home (1960), an amusing but not complacent look at the attitude of his compatriots after the surrender in 1943. The prison title A caballo del tigre (1961, and the police The Commissioner (1962).The three films were starred by the great Sordi, and the second with Nino Manfredi.With Claudia Cardinale he would shoot La chica de Bube (1963).In addition, he would point in his filmography one of the titles of the saga based on the town priest-communist mayor duo created by Giovanni Guareschi , El comarada don Camilo (1965).

Later, Comencini opted for a look at the world of childhood. Not only for The Misunderstood (1966), but above all for his prestigious television series The Adventures of Pinocchio (1972), based on the story of the wooden doll that comes to life imagined by Carlo Collodi , and which was scripted by Cecchi d’Amico , and Cuore (1985), based on the novel by Edmundo De Amicis, and in whose script the filmmaker’s daughter, Cristina Comencini , intervened ; Also the film that closes the filmography of the filmmaker, Marcelino, pan y vino (1991) , told the story of an orphan boy based on the famous novel by José María Sánchez Silva. Although the titles of his last stage do not show him at his best moment, the funny choral comedy El gran atasco (1978) and the curious apologetic story Cercasi Jesù (1982), where Fernando Rey can be seen, are noteworthy .