«Marcello, come here!». Even today, 64 years after the release of The sweet lifeif you ask an American, a Frenchman or a Japanese to indicate the first image that comes to mind from Italian cinema, you can be sure that he will most likely answer the scene in which Anita Ekberg invites Marcello Mastroianni to bathe with her in the icy waters of the Trevi Fountain. But beyond this scene, even a survey on the most famous Italian actor in the world would have an obvious outcome: the winner would be him, Marcello Mastroianni. The reasons for this success which continues unchanged almost thirty years after his death are many. Marcello was the first, and we can say also only, Italian actor to rise to the status of world star. Furthermore, there is his versatility which has led him, in a journey spanning 140 films, to try his hand at every genre, from comedy to science fiction, from authorial works to civil commitment films. Marcello was born in Fontana Liri, in Ciociaria, on 28 September 1924. Since his adolescence he has felt the strong call of acting and appeared in various films, including The children look at us (1943) by Vittorio De Sica. After the war, he dedicated himself above all to theatrical activity. On stage he met Flora Carabella, whom he married in 1950. The following year their daughter Barbara was born. Meanwhile, thanks to his friend Giulietta Masina, he meets Luchino Visconti who signs him for his company. In the same period he intensified his activity in the cinema, up to the two films that marked his career. The first is The usual unknowns by Mario Monicelli, the founder of Italian comedy, a genre of which he became one of the “five colonels” together with Alberto Sordi, Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi. We don’t remember his brilliant lines like Sordi’s “Maccarone, you provoked me and I destroy you”; nor great make-up transformations or physical performances like the showman Gassman did. Marcello only needs small tricks to create unforgettable characters. No The usual unknowns, for example, his aspiring burglar Tiberius almost always appears with a conspicuously plastered arm. And, thus dressed, he even allows himself to mock his cronies: «Stealing is a demanding profession, it takes serious people, not like you. At most you can go to work! In Italian divorceinstead, visually conveys the internal conflict between respect for conventions and the desire for transgression that torments his baron Fefé Cefalù with a simple yet irresistible tic. The second turning point took place in 1960, Federico Fellini entrusted him with the leading role in The sweet vitto. From that moment, Mastroianni becomes the director’s alter ego and will follow him in many other films, from the masterpiece 8 and 12 to Ginger and Fred.
The Rimini maestro defined their relationship like this: «Ours is a true, beautiful friendship based on total, mutual distrust». The worldwide success of The sweet life makes him a star, so much so the magazine in 1962 Time calls him the most famous foreign actor in the United States. The following year he was beaten at the Oscars by Gregory Peck who, after accepting the award, declared: «I’m happy, but Mastroianni is better than me». The magazines are filled with his real or alleged love stories with beautiful colleagues like Faye Dunaway and Catherine Deneuve, with whom he went to live in the early 1970s in Paris (which from that moment would become his second home) and with whom he had a daughter, Chiara.
Separate discussion with Sophia Loren. Together they made 14 films in 40 years. The first director to understand the potential of the couple was Alessandro Blasetti in 1954 Too bad he’s a scoundrel. Instead, it was Vittorio De Sica who gave them international recognition with Yesterday, today, tomorrow. But the greatest proof offered by the two actors remains that of A special day by Ettore Scola. Very far from their image of sex symbol, she in the role of a housewife in slippers and he in that of a homosexual oppressed by fascism, they instill in their characters such realistic desperation and tenderness that only two souls endowed with a very deep affinity could achieve . And in fact between Marcello and Sophia, despite all the paparazzi who would have made golden bridges just to steal a kiss from them off the set, there was always and only a beautiful friendship, as he confirmed to Maurizio Porro del Corriere della Sera shortly before leaving: «With Sophia there has never been anything sentimental, private, but she is truly the person I love most, the one with whom I get along best. Just one look and we understand each other.” For decades Hollywood has courted him intensely but he refuses. The rituals and rhythms of the studios seemed allergic to a man who had elevated indolence to a philosophy of life, so much so that Catherine Deneuve declared: «For him I was like a German. He is very lazy, I am very active. He got tired just seeing me walk in a room.” Nevertheless, among the over 140 films shot in his career, many were made outside the Italian borders. And not all of them were works of authorship, on the contrary. He himself explained why: «I made films in the Congo, in Brazil, in Algeria, in Morocco… an unsuccessful film in Hungary, but who cares? Nobody sees bad films, but Budapest was very beautiful: when would I have spent two months there? The truth is that he couldn’t imagine his life away from a set that he saw as a bewitching playground: «You never grow up as an actor: you are looked after, made up, guided, you can eternally be a child, interpret your dreams.”