The documentary Ennio Flaiano, foreigner in his homeland, will be broadcast on Rai 1 on Sunday 15 January in the TG1 Special, at 11.30 pm, on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the great screenwriter and humorist.
It airs tonight at 11.30 pm in the Special TG1 a beautiful documentary dedicated to one of the most extraordinary intellectual figures of our post-war period, who died prematurely fifty years ago. It’s called Ennio Flaiano, foreigner in his homelandco-written and directed by Fabrizio Corallo e Valeria Parisiwith the pleasant narration of Cecilia Dazzi (whose grandfather Giuseppe owned the Rossetti bookshop in via Veneto, frequented by Flaiano) and some of the dazzling aphorisms for which he was known, read by Neri Marcoris. A story told in great detail by the voice of the same Ennio Flaiano and his wife Rosetta Rotaa physicist close to the environment of via Panisperna, who disappeared in 2003, in video and radio interviews, and by his collaborators who have disappeared today such as Ugo Gregoretti, Vittorio Gassmann, Federico Fellini e Suso Cecchi d’Amico. There are then current interventions that never fall into the usual didacticism and banality of contributions made for documentaries, but express interesting thoughts and readings of the author, whether they have known him or not. So we are the critic Masolino d’Amicowho instead frequented him as a child because Flaiano was a frequent guest at his mother’s house, the screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Anna Longonicurator of the complete work, the psychoanalyst Rossana Dedola and the reporter Annalena Benini. And again the screenwriter and writer Francis Smallthe historian Francesco Filippi, who opens a reflection on our colonial past (on whose tragic experience in Ethiopia Flaiano wrote his only novel, “Time to Kill”), also involving the Italian-Ethiopian writer Gabriella Ghermandi, Gianfranco Angeluccihistorical collaborator of Federico Fellini, and the almost centenary photographer Paul of Paul. Until you get to Maurice Mastinowho remembers him fondly when he was a child and Flaiano frequented his father’s restaurant in Fregene, near the coast of Maccarese (where he, his wife and his unfortunate daughter Luisa are buried) and for whose family only his friend Ennio was.
Ennio Flaiano and cinema
Born in Pescara in 1910, into a family that included 9 children (two of whom, as they used to say, from the “servant”), Flaiano grew up in boarding schools and foster families, before arriving in Rome, which he will be able to tell the perfection in its best and worst aspects thanks to his disenchanted and sharp provincial gaze. In Corallo and Parisi’s documentary an era comes back to life: fascism, the post-war rebirth, the intellectual ferment of cafes, magazines, great artists, writers and directors that our country is terribly missing today. Collaborator de The world of Pannunzio and of OmnibusFlaiano met Federico Felliniten years his junior, who worked in the nearby editorial office of Marc’Aurelio. For them it was the beginning of a long collaboration that produced the best films of the master from Rimini: Variety lights (co-signed by Fellini with Lattuada), The White Sheik, The Calves, The street, The nights of Cabiria, The sweet life, The Temptations of Doctor Antonio (wonderful episode of Boccaccio ‘70), Juliet of the spirits and the fatal 8 e ½. Fatal because it marked the end of the work with Fellini, following an event due to the production of the film and which he considered a slight on the part of the director who had not spent enough time to remedy the situation. After receiving two Silver Ribbons with the other authors, in fact, he was part of the group that went to Hollywood to collect the Oscar for best foreign film, but, unlike Fellini, Sandra Milo e Juliet Masina , who traveled first class, found himself relegated to economy. The friendship and esteem between the two, through ups and downs, continued, but they no longer worked together.
But Flaiano, apart from Fellini, wrote, alone or in collaboration with other authors, several masterpieces of Italian cinema. We cite just a few of the 68 that are attributed to him: Cops and robbers, Too bad it’s a rogue, Toto and Carolina, The sign of Venus, Summer tales, A love in Rome, The night, The tenth victim. His novel “Time to kill” in 1989 was brought to the cinema by Julian Montaldowhile his latest screenplay, which he would have liked to direct and which told a very personal story. Mempocame for him twisted in The bitch Of Marco Ferreri. But in addition to the cinema, very much, which ensured him a certain well-being, there was television (for which, shortly before dying of a heart attack at the age of only 62, he made the reportage Canada Ocean) together with the director Andrea Andermann, the withering aphorisms for which he was known, such as the much-quoted one with which he responded to the fiasco of his satirical and futuristic theater piece A Martian in Rome (con Vittorio Gassmann e Ilaria Occhini): “Failure went to my head”.
Ennio Flaiano and humor to exorcise the fear of death
Not taking himself too seriously and knowing how to read the society of the time and its future developments (his intuitions on the influence of television are impressive) are among the most extraordinary characteristics of a sad intellectual who, with his artistic expression, as he himself recounts, he exorcised the fear of the unknown and of death. Ennio Flaiano, foreigner in his homeland, also very delicately recounts the tragedy of the illness of his beloved daughter Luisa known as “Lelé” (disappeared in 1992 at the age of 50), struck by encephalitis shortly after birth and due to the state of medicine of the past, left untreated and disabled. Another shadow on the life of a man who had known pain and hid his fragility in the cynicism of unforgettable jokes, and who was fundamental in the Italian cultural renaissance. This is also why it is right to remember and celebrate it, at a time when culturally our country is at an all-time low. If you can’t stay up late, then look it up Ennio Flaiano, foreigner in his homeland are Raiplay. Surely you’ll want to read everything she’s written, if you’re too young to even skim over it.
