Celebrity Biographies
Tonino Guerra
Federico Fellini , Vittorio De Sica , Michelangelo Antonioni , Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos are the five great directors that Tonino Guerra worked with , who died in 2012 five days after his 92nd birthday. Other filmmakers to whom he lent his narrative art include Alberto Lattuada , Marco Bellocchio , Francesco Rosi , the Taviani brothers, and Mario Monicelli . An essential scriptwriter in the history of cinema, he also wrote poetry, short stories and novels.
A true Romagnolo, born in 1920 in Santarcangelo di Romagna, he was a teacher, and in the years of World War II he was in a German prisoner camp, where the muse of poetry visited him. After the war he graduated in pedagogy, but he continued with his verses. His first script for the cinema dates from 1956, Men and Wolves , directed by Giuseppe De Santis .
Satisfied with the experience, he settled in Rome, where he developed an intense activity as a screenwriter. “For me there is no profound difference between writing poetry and writing screenplays, both lead to the same thing: the creation of images. A screenwriter must have a thousand images in his head to conquer men like Federico Fellini or Michelangelo Antonioni”.
He became the author of a hundred scripts. His first great work is undoubtedly The Adventure , directed by Antonioni, with which he would repeat in The Night , The Red Desert , Beyond the Clouds -which Antonioni co-directed with Wim Wenders -, one of the three segments of Eros and Blow Up.For the latter, Guerra received an Oscar nomination, a feat he achieved on two other occasions, for Mario Monicelli’s Casanova ’70 and Fellini’s Amarcord , for whom he also wrote And the ship goes and Ginger and Fred .
He always remembered that Antonioni and Fellini had been his favourites, among the many filmmakers with whom he collaborated. And even though the greats disputed his services, he was the author of Good Morning, Babylon , by the Taviani brothers, Nostalgia , by Andrei Tarkovsky, They’re all fine , by Giuseppe Tornatore , or Trip to Cythera (winner for best screenplay at Cannes ) and Eternity and a Day (Palme d’Or at Cannes) by Theo Angelopoulos . He was the lead scriptwriter for Francesco Rosi , for whom he worked on Men Against War , The Mattei Case , Excellent Corpses ,Christ stood at Éboli and Chronicle of a death foretold .
Passionate about Russia, he not only worked with Tarkovsky but also with Vladimir Naumov , studied Russian language and culture, and traveled frequently. No one was surprised that he finally married a Russian, Eleonora Yablochkina. He counted Antonioni and Tarkovski as witnesses to the wedding.
In his last years he had left the capital, and retired to his native town, near Rimini. He announced the death of his son, Andrea Guerra , a great screen composer, in titles like Hotel Rwanda .