"Dear Alberto, I'm 19 and I'm a huge admirer of his, I never get tired of watching one of his films, a passion that was passed on to me by my parents who named me Alberto in his honor" (1998).
"My dearest, I hereby come to propose the making of a wonderful and demanding film on an international level, a true masterpiece. I am waiting for a call from him" (1988).
"Dear Alberto Sordi, I am an 83-year-old grandmother with 19 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. At the mass in my country, at the end of the Gospel, the celebrant read the message you addressed to young people about grandparents. I was truly struck by your words and thank you".
Three examples among thousands of letters preserved, catalogued, archived by Alberto Sordi over the course of his long career, put away with respect, in suitable spaces
in the large villa in via Druso 45 in Rome
.
A rediscovered treasure that the
Alberto Sordi Museum Foundation
wanted to reveal with a book different from all the others in circulation on the great actor,
'Dear Alberto'.
The volume, published by Laterza, was edited by the critic Alberto Crespi with a preface by Walter Veltroni and Carlo Verdone.
Reading the letters and looking at the attached vintage photos strikes and excites a vanished world, a season in which to communicate with a well-known person there were only letters, an archaeological world compared to today's one in which social networks give the illusion of direct contact for better or for worse.
And one wonders today what relationship they would have with Sordi.
"In the many letters I have read for the selection of the book - Alberto Crespi tells ANSA - very few are the negative ones, there is a doctor who reproaches having ruined the image with Dr. Guido Tersili, the health insurance doctor,
Crespi calls it "exciting full immersion, there are even some scabrous women who propose themselves or crazy like those who asked him to support the project to cut Mount Testaccio to make the Ponente reach better".
An immersion in the world of the Deaf who is just as we imagine him meticulous, precise in cataloging letters, in answering, in sending autographs from the large villa full of silence.
He received dozens of them a day, obviously including those of well-known people.
Starting with three presidents of the Republic and then also with Giulio Andreotti with whom he was historically on friendly terms.
"The most moving are perhaps those of Monica Vitti - he continues - and touching are the post-mortem ones that arrived at the villa after her disappearance on February 24, 2003".
Eh already 20 years have passed since his death, from that interminable queue at the Campidoglio to give a last farewell to the actor who represented the Italians in many of his films, a testimony of affection which is what can be read in the letters found.
For the 20th anniversary, the Alberto Sordi Museum Foundation is organizing with the Roberto Rossellini Cine-TV Institute in Rome, a cycle of screenings entitled "The Deaf and the History of Italy" curated by Luca Verdone, which starting from 20 February will be held in the theater housed in the Villa Museum and reserved for film students.
"After his death, in a sort of secular pilgrimage, many farewell notes were left in front of the villa and also those collected by the Foundation", he adds.
"
It turns out that most people considered him one of the family, a relative and in addition to expressing compliments and admiration they told him about births and weddings but above all they confided in difficult moments, illnesses, depressions, attributing saving or at least comforting properties to Deaf's films ". As Carlo Verdone says "I'm not surprised that the letters are full of affection, of a warm and positive identification.
In my small way it also applies to me, people thank us for the moments of joy we have given".
"It doesn't surprise me - says Veltroni - that from the letters emerges a love more similar to that for a relative than for a film star. Deaf was Italy and above all it was Rome".
Twenty years later, Deaf one of us is still worth it.
