“Mastroianni, gentle star”, told by Barbara Rossi 100 years after the actor’s birth

“I don’t want to sound snobbish, but I really appreciate the term the French use: to say ‘act’, they say ‘jouer’, which in Italian would be ‘to play’. This is a wonderful profession: they pay you to play”. This is what Marcello Mastroianni, ‘the gentle star’, said about his relationship with the cinematographic medium, as described by Barbara Rossi in the book, published by Gremese, now in bookstores.

Between dream and reality, between the art of acting as a game, travelling towards new fantastic or illusory worlds (from which the very long collaboration with Federico Fellini derives) and – on the contrary – as the charm of reality perceived in all its grotesque crudeness (the films directed by Marco Ferreri), Mastroianni has embodied in Italian and international cinema a new figure of the star, seductive but insecure, even fragile. The elegance and refinement of his manners, accompanied by an often ferocious self-irony and a keen sense of his own limits, have made Mastroianni an actor without comparison and certainly a competitor to his contemporary models.

Written on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, the biography traces the existence and artistic career of Marcello Mastroianni with the attentive gaze of the critic, but also with the loving attention of someone who lives a wonderful journey through times, cinematographic seasons, affections and loves that are different, but always exhilarating. Among the most famous actors in the world, Mastroianni has played in over 140 films of the most diverse genres: from sentimental comedy to drama, from satire of customs to historical film, from thriller to grotesque. (continued)

How many films and adventures in his private and cinematographic life

Internationally acclaimed by Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) and 81/2 (1963), a sort of cinematic alter ego of his, over the course of five decades Mastroianni has demonstrated a multifaceted talent that ignites his acting with nuances and undertones. This is demonstrated by beloved and celebrated films such as Il bell’Antonio (Bolognini, 1960), Matrimonio all’italiana (De Sica, 1964), Dramma della gelosia (Scola, 1970), La grande abbuffata (Ferreri, 1973), A Special Day (Scola, 1977), City of Women (Fellini, 1980), Ginger and Fred (Fellini, 1985), Il volo (Anghelopulos, 1986), Oci ciornie (Black Eyes) (Michalkov, 1987), Il passo sospeso della cicogna (Anghelopulos, 1991), Sostiene Pereira (Faenza, 1995), up to the last, heart-rending theatrical interpretation of Le ultime lune (The Last Moons) (1996), his definitive artistic farewell.

With the idea that memory – as Mastroianni himself recalled in Manoel de Oliveira’s Journey to the Beginning of the World (1997), his last appearance on the big screen – is ultimately what gives meaning to both living and acting. And that what marks time is always, as Rabagliati sang in the memory of the now elderly Marcello, “the clock of the heart”.

Mastroianni was born in Fontana Liri (Ciociaria) in 1924. Right in his hometown, on Friday 27 September, at 5 pm, at the Study Centre dedicated to him, as part of the days of the Award named after him, the first presentation of the volume will take place, in the presence of the author and the publisher Gianni Gremese.