Rai Teche remembers the great Eduardo De Filippo on the fortieth anniversary of his deathpublishing one of the last television interviews given by the artist on RaiPlay. “Eduardo – The art of growing old” is the revival of the meeting between Leandro Castellani and Claudio Donat-Cattin with the elderly stage master, broadcast as part of the “First floor” column on 19 October 1984, a few days before his death. It’s sort of conversation-testament nin which Eduardo talks about himself and his work, but in relation to the themes of old age and the passing of the baton between generations.
What emerges is a moving and unexpected portrait of a giant who lived his old age “rejuvenating”without ever stopping working with passion, creativity and energy. Between a memory of the past and a project for the future, the Edwardian heart and wisdom emerge above all in the words dedicated to young people, to whom the Neapolitan artist pays constant attention: this is demonstrated, in his last years, by the activity of teaching at the Centro Teatro Ateneo of the “La Sapienza” University of Rome and, in particular after his appointment as senator for life in 1981, his concrete commitment to minors detained in penal institutions.
Eduardo’s human and artistic path is that of a central figure in Italian culture of the 20th century, but always immersed in the living reality of her era and her land, capable of starting from Neapolitan theatrical roots to reach the heights of a universal and at the same time popular art. De Filippo’s masterpieces are not only among the texts of contemporary Italian theatrical production most represented in the worldbut also those that the vast television audience learned to love in the various cycles of adaptations for the small screen made by the same author between the ’50s and ’70s. The emotion that Eduardo’s theater still arouses today is indisputable.
A further testimony to his extraordinary personality and his presence in society is the short film recently restored as part of the digital recovery action of Rai news film services promoted by the Teche Management. Proposed here as a precious “extra” that accompanies the long interview from 1984, the contribution dates back to June 1958 and shows Eduardo on the occasion of the staging of a show in the after-work room of the Cornigliano steelworks in Genoa, with the maestro who in presenting it underlines the importance of bringing theater to an audience of male and female workers.
Rai Teche’s homage to Eduardo De Filippo does not end here, however, because the offer also includes, alongside the new “Eduardo – The art of aging”, two other archive products that have already been available for some time in the catalog on the platform RaiPlay: “Pulcinella yesterday and today”, Christmas 1973 broadcast in which Franco Zeffirelli interviewed De Filippo on the traditional Neapolitan mask, and the drama “Cuore”, the latest interpretation of the actor and playwright in the role, probably not by chance, of an old school teacher.