Deaf, we like him, in a movie laughter and sadness

"This house made me awe, it reflected the exact opposite of how he looked in public, smiling, magnetic, in here he revealed his true rigorous, introverted, almost austere nature" says Carlo Verdone inside Alberto Sordi's villa in Rome. Entering here in effect creates awe, is crossing a sacred place in the cinema, full of memories from the policeman's boots to the London smoking bowler hat, dozens of photos, awards, scattered among the tables and the library of the huge hall at she with the mustard velvet sofas, just like those of many bourgeois houses of the past decades. The magical place where Alberto Sordi lived from 1958 to his death at the age of 82 on February 25, 2003 is about to finally open to the public. Meanwhile it is here, in this property that dominates the crossroads between via Appia Antica, Cristoforo Colombo, via delle terme di Caracalla, via Druso which is set 'Are we all Alberto Sordi?' the documentary film by Fabrizio Corallo that as a visual encyclopedia tells the great artist 100 years after his birth. The shutters always down to three quarters while outside there is the spectacle of ancient Rome, of Caracalla.
"I took courage - says Verdone who with Sordi had a relationship of affection, filial friendship - and once I asked him why. He replied" I don't pull them up because the light ruins my paintings ". This melancholic Deaf 1972 at the death of his beloved sister Savina took the place of the histrionic deaf, brilliant after the war and the 1960s is told on a level playing field as if it were his life parable coinciding with that of Italy from the boom and rebirth to the progressive social darkness .
Among the many interviews conducted in those rooms and among the many always fantastic repertoire materials to be reviewed even if - from the teasing 'workers' of Fellini's Vitelloni to the' I know 'me and you nun thirst a dick' of the Marquis del Grillo, passing for 'macaroni you provoked me I will destroy you me me te magno' by An American in Rome - all Italy in chorus would know how to replicate them, some are unpublished goodies. Like the materials that De Laurentiis gave to Corallo for the film and which belong to the years of the agreement that Dino signed with Sordi for some memorable films, many of which with Silvana Mangano with which Alberto was in love. "He was always here in our house - says his daughter Veronica De Laurentiis in the film - I was glad he made her laugh, it was vital, I liked it". There was a special harmony between them, he revered her. Or like the image that holds the heart of old and already sick Sordi that to the guests of Ambra Jovinelli who were waiting for him for an evening on December 17, 2002 in his honor, commissioned by Adriano Pintaldi, the artist in dressing gown and armchair sent a poignant video message "sorry if i can't come, my conditions don't allow me, it doesn't make sense to come there and not be able to jump that everyone expects. I wanted to apologize it's not my fault.
Goodbye "and it really was two months later. All of Rome and not only paid him homage," the funeral home never closed, not even at night ", recalls Walter Veltroni, honorary president of the Alberto Sordi Foundation, who in those years was the mayor of the city. "Are we all Alberto Sordi?", produced by Dean Film and Surf Film with Light and Sky Arte and La7 will air on Sunday 12 April at 9.15 pm on Sky Arte and Wednesday 10 June at 9.30 pm on La7. The reserved preview in the private cinema of his villa he had a special flavor: in that space, a real stage with the curtain, Sordi spent many happy evenings with friends to watch movies and make a show, after all the beginnings with the company of magazine of Aldo Fabrizi before and of Guido Riccioli and Nanda Primavera; during the war years and immediately afterwards they were in his DNA.
In the Corallo film there is really everything Deaf, the public and the private, the fraternal friendships with Fellini with whom he shared the initial hunger years ("we always went to the usual restaurant and ordered spaghetti but under the waitress he put steaks") , with Scola, and then with Risi, Monicelli, De Sica "perfect accomplice" as Christian recounts, the partnership with the alter ego screenwriter Rodolfo Sonego and with the musician Piero Piccioni, the esteem for Monica Vitti. Among others the critics Goffredo Fofi, Valerio Caprara and Masolino D'Amico, Giovanna Ralli, Anna Foglietta, Claudio Amendola, Renzo Arbore, Marco Risi, Enrico Vanzina, the journalist Gloria Satta.
187 films in 60 years: inside is our world, laughter and sadness. From March finally the certainty: the villa opens to the public, becomes a museum, a gift for 100 years since the birth of Albertone.