DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY - Alessandro Blasetti

Alessandro Blasetti was one of the best directors that Italian cinema has ever had. He was certainly one of the most consistent and decisive, despite the eclecticism of his interests and the multiformity of his attitudes. It is no coincidence that the film with which, in 1966, he declared his activity as a film author closed, Io, io, io... e gli altri , was entirely entrusted to the drama of selfishness to be fought. On this theme he built the majority of his work, rich in altruistic commitments, supported by continuous research into the new, careful not to betray the best expectations of the spectator, always considered the main interlocutor. He always anticipated or started fashions and genres of our cinema: from neorealism to the film in episodes, from the Italian comedy to the investigative film. He graduated in law and began working as a journalist and critic for film magazines such as "Il mondo dello Schermo" (which later took the title of "Cinematografo") and "Lo spettacolo d'Italia", making his film debut with an avant-garde film, Sole , in 1928. In 1930 he directed Ettore Petrolini in Nerone , a film in which the great Roman comedian offered some of his best sketches, with many references to contemporary politics and the figure of Mussolini. In the same year he made Resurrectio , one of the first Italian sound films, which was released the following year. Subsequently he began to show a predilection for historical films, which often exalted the strength of the Italian people: from Terra Madre (1931), a eulogy to uncontaminated nature, to 1860 (1934), freely adapted from a story by Mazzocchi about the landing of Garibaldi's men in Sicily. His authoritarian attitudes at work made him famous and initially attracted the sympathies, reciprocated, of the fascist party. However, the propaganda film Vecchia guardia (1935) did not please the regime and shortly thereafter Blasetti distanced himself from fascist ideology. At the turn of the 1940s the director turned to costume films, spectacular frescoes of adventure, love and war, to express in the key of novel and fable his message of brotherhood in a Europe where threatening omens of war were gathering. There are four films belonging to this genre, and in each of them Blasetti demonstrates perhaps more than ever his refined technique: Ettore Fieramosca (1938), Un'avventura di Salvator Rosa (1940), La corona di ferro (1941) and La cena delle beffe (1941). A small masterpiece is Quattro passi tra le nuvole(1942), which anticipates themes of the neorealist period for the choice of simple and everyday characters. The ironic description of the desolation of life in the urban suburbs and the elimination of the conventional happy ending. After the war he made A Day in the Life (1946), still supported by the polemics against hatred and violence and stylistically aimed at making the recent neorealist lesson coincide with the needs of a dramaturgy not devoid of spectacular interests, arriving at solid emotional results with complete harmony. Between 1934 and 1947 he also directed several plays. After a return to the historical genre with mediocre results, Fabiola (1948), he returned to the intimate genre in which petty-bourgeois themes were addressed, with Prima comunione (1950), in which Blasetti manages to raise on reality a constant atmosphere of lyricism balanced between joke and fable; without ever breaking down tastes and dances, succeeding in the difficult task of always reconciling emotion with joy, in a very happy balance. The film was awarded at the Venice Film Festival. In the continuous search for an ever new genre, in 1952 he tried to promote episodic films based on literary texts: Altri tempi , ovvero Zibaldone n. 1 , which he repeated in 1954 in Tempi nostri . His subsequent experiences are a happy combination of good-natured satire and realist themes: Too Bad to Be a Scoundrel (1955), La fortuna di essere donna (1956), Amore e chiacchiere (1957) and Io, io, io... e gli altri (1966). The latter is to be considered as a compendium of all his almost forty-year polemics against selfishness. He also devoted himself to sexy documentaries ( Europa di notte , 1958) and investigative films ( Io amo, tu ami... , 1961). Towards the end of the 1960s he made his last two works which, although the director does not consider them works of art, are certainly not films without value: La ragazza del bersagliere (1967) and Simon Bolivar (1969). Having abandoned cinema, in the 1970s and 1980s he devoted himself to television, demonstrating the same boldness and courage revealed in his youth. Among the works made for the small screen (investigations, dramas) we can remember: Storie dell'emigrazione (Stories of Emigration) (1972), L'arte di far ridere (1974 and 1980), Racconti di scienza (Science Fiction Stories) (1978), Venezia: una mostra per il cinema (Venice: an exhibition for cinema ) (1981).