By Antonio La Cava
“I’m not trying to solve the problems of the world – Roberto Rossellini used to say – I’m a man of the world, and I want to be present”.
The BFI Southbank has launched in May a retrospective, lasting two months, devoted to the father of the Italian Neorealism, screening his most famous films as well as some of the less known. There have been several smaller seasons of the work by Rossellini before this one, but none complete as it is notoriously difficult to assemble a comprehensive homage because of problems with rights and prints. This time, however, the BFI was able to work in collaboration with a number of other organisations – both in Italy and elsewhere – so that to make the season as complete as possible.
To inaugurate the retrospective on 6th May was Rossellini’s daughter Isabella, who talked about her father and his work and, of course, her own career in cinema, introducing My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a short film written and played by herself, and produced with the collaboration of the director Guy Muddin, to celebrate the centenary of the birth of the director of masterpieces such as Rome Open City.
In the short film, inspired by the book In the Name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Spirits – published in the UK by Haus Publishing – written by Isabella herself, the film-maker’s daughter played some characters met by her father: Federico Fellini, with a hat and a scarf, the producer David O. Selznick – who produced, among the others, Gone With the Wind – her mother Ingrid Bergman in the clothes worn in Casablanca, Alfred Hitchcock with a big belly and Charlie Chaplin with his classic moustache.
The most original aspect of movie is the decision of Isabella to show her father like a big belly, that waves and trembles. “When I was 3 or 4 years old – Isabella said – I believed my dad was pregnant because he had a big belly and he always regretted not being able to nurse us in the real life”. I am fond of that image, because it reminds me his tender hug, and from that funny big belly I started to tell about my father: not a documentary – there are a number of good ones about my family – but an inner film that would tell how my father is in my mind”.
As far as the characters are concerned, Isabella said she had chosen them in order to make her father discuss with some of his friends who had different ideas about cinema: “My father accused Hitchcock of manipulating his audience, he had a great respect of Selznick as a friend but a deep incompatibility about cinema. Of Chaplin, instead, he kept one photograph with dedication on his writing desk”.
This short has caused a quarrel between Isabella and her twin sister Ingrid, professor of Italian literature at the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ of the New York University, who defined the film as “desecrating, offensive and opportunistic”. “My father’s image does not belong only to Isabella, who chooses to do what she wants for commercial purposes or for her histrionic vocation”, the professor has thundered. “My short film is a loving letter to my father that springs from my heart”, Isabella has defended herself. “I have always had the image of myself, as a little baby, on my father’s belly”.
The character of Blue Velvet declared that his father would not have liked she became an actress and she felt guilty when the brothers Taviani proposed to her to play in the film Il Prato (The Meadow). Isabella said: “I asked for advice to my mother who said to me that my father had loved non-actors, hence I would have played as a non-actress”.
This retrospective has been organised in collaboration with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale and Cinecitta’ Holding, and the support of the Italian Cultural Institute of London, in conjunction with the Cinematheque Ontario and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Italian Cultural Institute has hosted, in the same period, the exhibition In the Name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Spirits, with the screening of the short film My Father Is 100 Years Old, accompanied by a series of photographs, images and drawings chosen by Isabella realised during the making of the film.
It is important to note that retrospectives of the greatest Italian film-makers are not just for Italian connoisseurs of cinéma d’antan; though some British audiences are perhaps a little overly resistant to watching films not in the English language – subtitling is a far more common practice here than dubbing – according to Geoff Andrew, Head of Film Programme at the BFI, it is probably fair to say that the Italian cinema is one of the most popular national cinemas for British audiences, and almost as popular as the French cinema. In fact, in recent years, the BFI has mounted very successful seasons of work by Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, Pasolini, et al.
Cinema in the name of Italy.
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