(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 01 - Making a film about Diabolik, which the Giussani sisters (Angela and Luciana, cartoonists and editors who created the iconic character in 1962) might have liked.
It was the starting point for Antonio and MarcoManetti, in filming their Diabolik, a cinematographic adaptation starring Luca Marinelli, Miriam Leone for Eva Kant, brilliant and courageous companion and accomplice of the anti-hero criminal, and Valerio Mastandrea for Inspector Ginko.
The two filmmakers talk about the project (the release is still scheduled, at the moment from 01 on December 31, covid permitting) in the online meeting organized by Lucca Changes, entitled Behind the mask of Diabolik, together with Roberto Recchioni and Mario Gomboli, at a long-time collaborator of the Giussani sisters, and current editorial director of Astorina (the comic book publishing house), whose support and assistance was fundamental for the film.
"We decided to send Mario, five pages, on our vision - explains Marco Manetti -. And still I get excited thinking about it, he replied on what's app that someone was waiting for 30 years to imagine a film about Diabolik".
The exposure is a story of the 'foundation' of the relationship between Diabolik and Eva Kant ("it is the narrative passage that gives Diabolik its identity"), the setting is 60s, in the city of comics, the 'geometric' Clerville, for which "We are inspired by Milan between the 20s and 70s".
One of the most difficult knots was the choice of the cast: "Eva came a little more automatic, because we had long been fans of Miriam, and she is a fantastic Eva".
The work for Diabolik and Ginko is longer: "We also did an audition at Marinelli, he is an exceptional actor but it was not immediate to see him Diabolik - they say -. Luca gave him a profound humanity. You feel that this cold man, very intelligent and cynical, glacial, he has something inside him roaring and even Luca says he thought of him as if he were a panther inside. "
Equally convincing for iManetti and Gomboli, Mastandrea's Ginko, which gives the character, "a sort of disenchanted and melancholy irony".
(HANDLE).