Marcello Mastroianni

“In the morning they pick you up in a limo. They take you to the studio and put a beautiful girl in your arms… And they call that work? Please!”. This is how Marcello Mastroianni (Fontana Lire, 1924-Paris, 1996) joked when describing his profession as an actor. This apparent frivolity, the image of him so widespread as a ‘Latin lover’, should not hide the greatness of an exceptional interpreter, endowed with a very expressive face in his normality.

Accountant in a film company, his brother Ruggiero was an editor. He became fond of the theater during his university years in Rome, and shared the stage with Giulietta Massina. The great discoverer of him was Luchino Visconti , who incorporated him into his theater company, where he stayed for ten years. He didn’t know about ‘methods’, but he performed works by Shakespeare, Williams and Chekhov, something perhaps little known by those who always associate him with his compositions of popular types. Although he had sentimental relationships with some of his screen partners ( Catherine Deneuve , with whom he had a daughter, Chiara, and Faye Dunaway ), he was always married to the same woman, Flora Carabella , whom he married in 1948, and who gave him a daughter, Barbara.

His filmography widely exceeds one hundred films. There are, of course, forgettable titles, but also a good handful of masterpieces. In 1957 he made his first notable film, White Nights . He directs Visconti based on Dostoevsky’s work, and both would repeat it in 1967 with El extranjero . After his role as a thief in Rufufú ( Mario Monicelli , 1958), comes the definitive success with Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960). The director assured that he selected him because of his banal face, and that he preferred Paul Newman . They would work together again in Eight and a Half (1963), Ginger and Fred (1986) and Interview(1987). Fellini saw how suitable Mastroianni was for characters in an ambiguous position, stating that he “comes across as someone who doesn’t react to the facts, but observes them.”

Highlighting some movies and ignoring others is not an easy task. Brillante is as a cheeky wife in Italian Divorce ( Pietro Germi , 1961). Her association with directors such as Vittorio De Sica and Ettore Scola produced a rich array of films. Unforgettable are Matrimonio a la italia (1964), Ayer, hoy y mañana (1963) and Los girasoles (1968) with the first, and A particular day (1977) with the second, all four with Sophia Loren . Both had worked together for the first time in the hilarious The Thief, Her Father and the Taxi Driver ( Alessandro Blasetti, 1954), and they managed to add ten titles together. He didn’t shoot much in English, but he had an emotional ‘tête-à-tête’ with Jack Lemmon in Maccheroni (1985). He worked with Polanski ( What?, 1972), Boorman ( Leo el ultimo , 1970), Angelopoulos ( Il volo , 1984), Tornatore ( Están todos bien , 1990), Altman ( Prêt-à-porter , 1994) and Oliveira ( Journey to the beginning of the end of the world , 1997, his last film). The composition of his gray columnist pushed him to engage with what happens around him in Sostiene Pereira ( Roberto Faenza, 1996) is wonderful. There are dozens of images that he has left engraved on the viewer’s retina, but I prefer the Roman impeccably dressed in white in Black Eyes ( Nikita Mikhalkov , 1987), who without losing his composure enters a pool of mud, to return graciously his hat to the pretty lady with the little dog.