On the day of the French national holiday, July 14 , the Milanese (but Varese born) Renato Pozzetto celebrates his 80 years . Born in Laveno on the shores of Lake Maggiore in 1940, raised in Gemonio where Milanese parents find refuge during the Allied bombings, landed in Milan after the end of the war, graduated surveyor at the Carlo Cattaneo institute found on the Aurelio "Cochi" school desks Ponzoni (also grown up in Gemonio) and drags him in the first experiences from cabaret: Cochi designs and invents, he puts the verve, a surreal vein and the physique.
It is a couple that remembers Stanlio and Ollio in the distant past and was immediately successful; in '64 they are already "Cochi and Renato". They perform for the first time at the Osteria dell'Oca and later, together with Enzo Jannacci, Felice Andreasi, Bruno Lauzi and Lino Toffolo they meet in the "Motor Group" with which they land at the Derby in Milan. It is the temple of the new show, between underground and pop taste and here television is looking for new entertainment talents. In less than four years Cochi and Renato are already protagonists on Rai with varieties such as "Quelli della Domenica" and, above all "Il poeta e il contadino" (1973).
The following year they are even on the stage of "Canzonissima" which counts as an honorary degree for them. The merit is also of Jannacci who with them writes very popular motifs such as "The intelligent song" or "And life, life", but the two put their faces, the mimicry, an alienated model of comedy and smile that conquers everyone, young people and adults. Compared to his adventure companion, Renato Pozzetto relies on a dimension of his own, a mixture of naivety and absolutely irresistible clumsiness. He appears to be Ionesco in real life, but he gives more direct and immediate emotions that open the doors of the cinema to him when Flavio Mogherini offers him the role of the protagonist in "To love Ophelia" alongside Giovanna Ralli and Françoise Fabian. The part is cut to size for him with that big and never grown Orlando, a mammon unaware of the sex struggling with a good-hearted prostitute who will be able to take him by the hand towards adulthood. Orlando quickly becomes a mask that Pozzetto will wear several times and with a thousand variations, because man is intelligent and knows how to change the character every time to intercept the taste of the public.
He works with established directors (Steno, Clément, Risi, Corbucci, Bolognini, Festa Campanile), on several occasions with his pigmalione Mogherini and at the end of the decade he also ventured into directing with "Saxophone" (1978). Both public life is littered with television appearances, returns to cabaret, even sporting exploits such as the first driving together with Riccardo Patrese to the car tour of Italy and then a "Paris Dakar" behind the wheel of a truck, so much so that the private one is without jolts : in 1967 he married Brunella Gubler who gave him two children and will leave him widowed in 2009.
The various artistic paths keep him long away from his friend of the past, Cochi Ponzoni, who chose the theater and gives himself little to the cinema. The "great cold" between the two will last a long time even if the friendship does not fail.
For over twenty years Renato will be one of the few "sure names" of popular entertainment in the cinema: his name on the billboard (as for Villaggio, Celentano, Abatantuono, Boldi & De Sica) is enough to be successful and the producers know it: until 1994 he works at the rate of two or three films a year and four times he directs himself, for the sheer pleasure of diverting from his usual roles.
