Marco Bellocchio who thinks of making a film from the Baron Rampante, Ermanno Olmi who as a boy participates in a competition to illustrate The path of spider's nests and as an adult imagines bringing it to the big screen. And Richard Gere who reads the incipit of the story of Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò and tells of the (vain) attempts to convince Chichita, Calvino's wife, to grant him the rights for a film. Bringing Calvino's novels to the big screen has always proved very difficult. Yet his writing was greatly influenced by cinema, especially during his adolescence, when he even watched three films a day. He tells it himself in the Autobiography of a spectator, talking about the halls of his city, Sanremo, which have become a refuge against an uninteresting world. And of American cinema, "Hollywood", able to dazzle it with its coming and going of reality and fiction, with its world so modern compared to Italy, with its women "strong, independent and rivals of men". In those years, from 1936 to the war, cinema became for Calvino "a space of the mind", an elsewhere where he could hide and broaden his horizons.
100 of these Calvino, the special Ansa that, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, tells how the great writer is still a source of inspiration in many fields, this time is dedicated to the relationship between Calvino and cinema.
To learn more about Agenzia ANSA From Boeri to Soldini, the many legacies of Italo Calvino - News - Ansa.it The special Ansa 100 of these Calvino tells how the works of the great writer have been a source of inspiration for great architectural projects as in the case of Boeri, but also for pop songs as happened to Colapesce and Dimartino or for the solo crossings of the sailor Giovanni Soldini
Calvino's love for cinema and Davide Ferrario's documentary
"Calvino - explains the director Davide Ferrario who shot the documentary Italo Calvino in the cities - is a great spectator, he openly confesses: cinema has changed his life, Hollywood cinema, not the realist one. And I think it is an important link to understand his writing because, apart from The Path of Spider's Nests, it is all based on a pact very similar to what a viewer does watching a Hollywood film, that is, I believe it but I don't believe it, there is no realism, I'm not telling you a true story but a fantastic story. And the key to the fantastic for Calvino was essential". Perhaps for this reason, with a few exceptions, Calvino's writings find refuge more easily in a more dilated dimension (as in Marcovaldo, the historical Rai drama with Nanni Loy), or in the documentary. Ferrario was inspired by Le Città invisibili for his docufilm, starring among others Valerio Mastandrea and Filippo Scotti and produced by Anele with Luce Cinecittà, Rai Cinema and RS Productions. "There is an ambiguous relationship between Calvino's works and cinema - he explains - because I believe that Calvino's writing has become cinematic and only apparently this is an advantage. Palomar becomes difficult to transpose because it is already a film in words and The Invisible Cities is the same thing. My experience of having tried with this film to stage an idea of Invisible Cities has put me in front of the complexity of Calvino's writing that you cannot try to represent with what is written there but you have to further abstract, almost dig the words, chisel them as he had done to bring out a sense of abstract that throws you back into reality".
Video Davide Ferrario and Calvino's film writing
Bellocchio, Richard Gere and the film about Baron Rampante
MarcoBellocchio also thought of turning Calvino's novel into a film: "There was a moment - he tells ANSA - when I was very impressed by the three stories, the Baron rampant, The Viscount halved and The non-existent Knight. I remember that for a short time I had imagined making a film from the Baron rampant, the one who is always in the trees and does not want to go down anymore. It seemed to me a cinematically extraordinary idea. Then I learned that a great American actor Richard Gere had taken the rights and then nothing came of it." The reality is that Gere will try in every way to get a yes from Calvino's wife ("Chichita pleeeease", he will also say in public) but without success. His passion for Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò will remain intact. And witness the various public occasions in which he read passages from the novel, strictly in English, making the audience smile at the time of rattling off in Italian the names of the members of the family, all articulate and very long as Calvino had invented them. In the end the rights of the Baron rampante were won by Lorenzo Mieli, producer among other things, (with The Apartment, Fremantle group) of E' stata la mano di Dio by Paolo Sorrentino. "I've always been obsessed with Calvino's work," he said, "and getting these rights is already an incredible achievement for me." Cosimo's story will become a series.
To learn more about Agenzia ANSA Tonelli, AstroSamantha and Calvino's revolution The rector of Luiss dedicated a book on innovation to him, while the artists of NuvolaProject an installation that combines technology, artificial intelligence and poetry
In Bellocchio's memories, however, when he talks about Calvino, there is also gratitude for the defense he made of his first film, I pugni in tasca which came out in 1965. "At that time ideology was still very important" recalls the director, explaining that according to critics the film "did not correspond to the communist line" to the point that "Soviet filmmakers used the term 'patologisky' to define it: it was a pathological case and therefore it was not interesting, it did not fit into the logic of class struggle, while Calvino called it a very important film and signaled it by saying 'You have to look at it with a freer look'".
Video Marco Bellocchio and the idea of a film based on the 'Baron rampante'
Ermanno Olmi and the drawings to illustrate The path of spider's nests
Even ErmannoOlmi, the great director who died in 2018, has a personal memory linked to Calvino that he told when he found in a drawer the drawings that as a boy he threw down to participate in a competition that selected the best illustrations for Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno. Olmi is struck by that novel whose protagonist, when the book came out, is his age: 16 years. And he immediately identifies with that little boy. He goes to the presentation of the book, where they launch a drawing competition to illustrate it. He takes pen and paper and starts drawing, but then abandons the enterprise.
After many years, now an established director, he will meet Calvino, but he will not tell him about those drawings made for his novel. The path of spider nests, however, will continue to fascinate him, even as an adult. "I have always thought - he said - of a film adaptation, but it had to go this way, it had to remain a sort of promise, even without result but the promise was already beautiful".
To deepen Agenzia ANSA Calvino and the 'urgent' music that reaches Capossela The great writer also created lyrics for several songs, including 'Oltre il Ponte' rearranged by Modena City Ramblers and an opera libretto with maestro Berio. The pianist prosseda has seen Bach and Beethoven in the American Lessons
Documentaries, theatre and Lella Costa's passion for Calvino
Films never made then, in the face of several documentaries that instead revolve around Calvino. At the last edition of the Venice Film Festival was presented Italo Calvino, the writer on the trees of Duccio Chiarini. "Calvino's ability to be able to look at human events both from near and far - explains Chiarini - is largely due to the ability he had to preserve a lucid, crystalline gaze throughout his life, always managing to find different focal points with which to look at humanity and complexity". Calvino, underlines the director, "had the ability to put himself vis à vis with the universal themes of human experience and this obviously allowed him to remain current always, regardless of historical periods".
If the cinema has struggled to tell the multiplicity contained in all the novels of the Ligurian writer, the theater has succeeded very well, where recreating the images that Calvino draws with words is possible without interference. The actress Lella Costa has repeatedly brought on stage The invisible cities and has always spoken of her great love for all the work of Calvino. "For me - he assured - he is an author of life, a passion. I think he is one of the greatest authors we have had and that perhaps the world outside Italy knows better than us. It seems important to me, whenever I can, to make Calvino's words sound that are wonderful". And incredibly current: "When you put together all these qualities and all these talents you can have a vision of the world that will come that few others have had and above all have been able to tell so well".
Video Lella Costa: 'My great passion for Calvino'
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