Dir: Michele Placido | Cast: Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Federica Luna Vincenti, Giancarlo Commare, Aurora Giovinazzo, Michelangelo Placido, Ute Lemper | Italy, Drama
Ute Lemper, Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi star in this lyrical classically styled biopic about Avantgarde Sicilian maestro Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936).
Antonietta Portulano, his wife, suffered poor mental health despite outliving him for several decades in an asylum. His turbulent family relationships and controversial stance on fascism were also a constant cause of conflict and sadness throughout his career, and his desperate love for a young actress and muse Marta Abba tantalised him until his dying day.
Reflecting back over his life the film opens in 1934 on a train to Stockholm to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature. In Fabrizio Bentivoglio’s soulful turn Pirandello comes across as philosophical and wistful in reminiscing over the many colourful and inspirational personalities he had occasion to work with. And these sequences are evocative of the past in Michele D’Attansio’s assured camerawork lifting the film into another dimension as it moves seamlessly from Sicily to Berlin, Rome, America and beyond.
The drama really gets into the spirit of Pirandello’s wild imagination with ‘staged’ excerpts from his theatre pieces in Italy, and Germany during the Weimar years. The ghosts of an entire existence pass before his eyes: the stormy bond with his children who clearly felt diminished by his genius and the public scandal caused by the subversive nature of his stage productions.
Pirandello never rages but simply looks back with sorrow as he reflects on his emotional world. He was clearly an artist of great humanity with his passions, his obsessions and his most intimate existence trapped between his explosive and impossible love for Marta and his tormented relationship with his wife Antonietta’s painful illness. Once again we witness how unhappiness can be transformed into creativity and a source of comfort for the Artist @MeredithTaylor
SCREENING AT ROME FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | 16-27 OCTOBER 2024