Cinema as Art at the Walter Reade Theatre

November 27, 2010, is a day some newyorkers will remember. On this date a masterpiece of Italian cinema was shown at the Walter Reade Theater to pay homage to the brilliant screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico who recently died at age 96. “Rocco and his brothers”, by Luchino Visconti, an epic involving modern Italian history; a perfect fusion between operatic melodrama and social realism.

Suso Cecchi d'Amico

Alain Delon in Rocco and His Brothers

Antonio Monda,  professor of Italian Cinema at New York University, and journalist for La Repubblica, is the man behind the retrospective “Scrivere il Cinema: The films of Suso Cecchi D’Amico”, the event that made the screening possible.

During his speech at Lincoln Center he spoke of the successful scripts D’Amico collaborated on, among which “Bicycle thieves” and “Risate di Gioia”. Guest of honor was the daughter of the roman screenwrite, Caterina D’Amico, who got up on stage very moved, her voice trembling as she started to talk about some of the “secrets” of her mother’s movies and her relationship with Luchino Visconti.

“Luchino Visconti was very fond of literature, so was my mother”, she said, and went on to explained how in the 1950s D'Amico started to write complex novels for the screen with Visconti. “Rocco and his brothers” is one of the movies written with the great director and with Vasco Pratolini, a very famous Italian writer. The film is about a family of southern paesants who moves to the wealthy North and the challenges they face to fit into a new society. Carolina D’Amico frankly told the audience about the language of the movie, “it was not shot in Italian”, she admits. The actors and the actresses came from different parts of Europe, so “they were all dubbed” and “not one of these actors was known when the film was made”, even though we now totally recognize familiar faces like Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale and Renato Salvatori.

Ms. Carolina D’Amico thanked everyone and let the film start. I believe that many of the viewers present witnessed a kind of magic. Visconti and D’Amico’s film is a river of emotions, flowing on the screen; it’s like opera, where everything happens in a very short time and we feel overwhelmed. Its cinematography is pure art.  Nowadays it is getting more and more difficult to experience the same feelings when we go to the movies. Maybe the cultural climate that made it possibile is lost forever or perhaps we only need to wait for a better time to come. In the meanwhile we are thankful to Suso Cecchi D’Amico for having given us so many wonderful masterpieces.

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MORE EVENTS @

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò
24 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10011

December 01, 2010  

SUSO. CONVERSAZIONI CON MARGHERITA D'AMICO, Luca Zingaretti, Italy, 2007 (58', in Italian, English subtitles)

followed by
Screenwriting Italy: A conversation on Suso Cecchi D'Amico
with Caterina D'Amico, Masolino D'Amico, Antonio Monda and Kent Jones.

and

BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET [I soliti ignoti], Mario Monicelli, Italy, 1958 (106', in Italian, English subtitles)

December 03, 2010  (06:00 PM )

IN PURGATORY (IN PURGATORIO)
directed by Giovanni Cioni
produced by Teatri Uniti
Italy/France/Belgium, 2009 (72 min)
 

RESET
directed by Nicolangelo Gelormini
produced by Vertigo Film
Italy, 2010 (17 min)
 

CORDE
directed by Marcello Sannino
produced by Parallelo 41
Italy, 2009 (55 min)

In ITALIAN with ENGLISH subtitles