Hommage to the actor
Alberto Sordi was born on June 15, 1919 in Rome. At the age of twelve he had already acted in volunteer theaters. He studied acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome and he first achieved success at the Fabrizi-Foguez revue theater. In 1938, when he was fifteen, he made his debut as a film actor in the film Tarakanova. Now he has acted in 188 movies cooperating with many distinguished directors. For thirty-one years he has been making and writing the scripts for his own films as well. He is mostly known for playing tragicomic characters.
"I believe I owe my success to my ´specialization´. I have been no virtuoso but I have known how to talk in a natural way as ordinary people do. I built on that. Besides, I think without neorealism I would have never become an actor. I began offering my own stories based on what I saw around me: I noted all the vices close to the audience. My specialization was to use irony to mirror the society. Audiences appreciated that. In a funny way I pointed at the vices both our own and those of institutions. My first stories were about husbands, bachelors, seducers and they were a kind of ironic neorealism. Later they called it comedia all Italiana. It was not easy for me to establish it, producers showed little understanding. Finally they got caught and I only needed to look around and the number of ideas swelled up: the post-war period, economic boom, then terrorism. I never waited to be offered a film, it was always I who offered. I could not direct them because I had not so much time. So I helped to shape the way of comedia all Italiana. I made one hundred films in ten years. Sometimes I was working on five films simultaneously. At one time it was eleven films."
"I only worked with directors who know about the way I express myself... I am not the type of an actor who can be given orders how to move and what to wear. For instance I wanted to wear a barrette and when they asked me why, I said I could feel into the role when I wore a barrette. It was just details of this kind to help me feel relaxed and impersonate the character I saw and made my own. I have never been an actor who is given a script to read and then told what to do. A typical actor puts himself at the disposal of others. Not I, never; not because I am conceited or spoiled but because I would not be able to play a character..."
Excerpts are taken from a autobiographical book Alberto Sordi - Story
of an Italian
Galeano, a more than 75 years old carriage driver in the historical part of Rome gives a ride to his helper, nine year-old Aurelio. The horse called Nestor is also old and, after an accident its owner Otello wants to get rid of it. Gaetano is to take it to a slaughter house and he himself is to go to a house for the elderly. Gaetano is already reconciled with his fate but the horse starts to refuse to go on...
Distribution: Warner Bros Italia
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