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22/2/2002

FRANCO BERNINI

DE SICA & THE ART OF LIVING

[by Stefano Stefanutto Rosa]Vivere – To Live by Franco Bernini has finally obtained a TV slot – albeit at the rather unearthly 23.55 on 23 February on Rai 2. The film was first presented at Venice 58 and aired in encrypted form by Tele+ who coproduced the film together with Paso Doble Film.
Surprisingly the very same story has also been written by Christian De Sica and Graziano Diana for a film that Miramax will produce, according to yesterday’s (21 Feb) announcement by the head of Miramax Italia, Fabrizio Lombardo and his press agent, Angelo Perrone, and entitled La porta del cielo.
That is the title of a seemingly endless film that Vittorio De Sica never actually got to finish. He started making the film in occupied Rome in 1944 under the protection of the Vatican as a way of getting out of a “request" made by the then MinCulPop minister, Fernando Mezzasoma on behalf of Nazi propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels. The German asked De Sica to go to Venice and start making pro-fascist films there. De Sica got out of this by having the Vatican commission him to make La porta del cielo in Rome, and incidentally, courageously saved the lives of many Jewish families by employing an ever-growing number of them – under false Aryan names – as extras. Bernini’s film makes no mention of this because he did not manage to confirm the reports from a sufficient number of eyewitnesses.

how did you come to make this short feature?
It is the brainchild of Bruno Restuccia, a producer with Paso Doble Film, who was inspired by Martin Scorsese’s Il mio viaggio in Italia. Bruno wrote a short story about the De Sica episode. This is a true story that those who work in Italian cinema all know, and indeed De Sica and his wife, Maria Mercader, as well as De Sica’s DP, Aldo Tonti all gave interviews about. The story was also included in Ugo Pirro’s book entitled “Celluloid". So we knew it was more than a mere annecdote, and, moreover, that nobody had ever come up with the idea of making a film about it. We decided to mix storytelling with archive material in a variety of different styles so that the end result is a hybrid of a film and a documentary.

Do you think the truth has been somewhat embellished?
I believe there is some truth and some fantasy in this story. It is typical of show business folk to embellish the truth in their recollections. But the story was so touching and unique that we felt duty-bound to believe it. After all there are lots of legends that have become credible only through having been repeated over and over again. The story according to which De Sica made this film in the cellars of the church of San Bellarmino, for example, and actually built a train wagon is wonderful but totally false: San Bellarmino does not have a cellar. But thanks to the power of digital technology, we were able to build that train wagon ourselves and so it becomes true.

So this film is a blend of truth and fiction?
The cross-pollination between these two extremes continues right up to the present day. Yesterday the Blackshirts marched down Via Nazionale, today there is Marco Paolini in their place. In this film we recreated the atmosphere of that era thanks to Alberto Sordi and Federico Fellini.

Your cast consists of just Toni Bertorelli and Marco Paolini. Why?
Paolini was a natural choice because Vivere is on the fence between narrative and reconstruction. It was natural for us to think of him because he is so skilled in covering different roles: he can be both the actor and the narrator who describes an event that took place long ago.

Sandro Veronesi helped you write the screenplay.
We worked together. He wrote the dialogue for the confrontation between De Sica and the nazi general.

Did you have problems accessing archive material?
It was an uphill climb because I was looking for images of everyday life. I did my research in the Audiovisual Archive of the Workers’ Democratic Movement and also at Istituto Luce. I alternated black and white with colour footage and we re-edited the archive material of the Americans’ triumphant entry into Rome in colour. The scenes were actually filmed by the cameramen of the US air force.

Did you use DV?
We used high definition cameras, the latest thing. Digital allows you to work faster on set, to concentrate more on the story. Digital technology makes you free and so it was especially fitting to use these medium to tell the story of a free man.

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