"ARCHIVES OF MEMORY" "ITALIAN PORTRAITS" " NO. 1 3 DIRECTED BY LI NO MICCICHE" "THE FILMMAKER AND THE LABYRINTH" "A TALK WITH FRANCESCO ROSI" "Photography by ROBERTO CIMATTI" "Edited by MASSIMO QUAGLIA" "Directed by ROBERTO ANDO" "This is my mother." "Here she is with her sisters and one of her brothers." "There were nine children altogether." "This is my father." "He was very tall, thin and elegant." "His father tried to force him to become a tailor." "My father didn't want to and so was thrown out of the house, the way they used to do back then." "I come from a middle-class family descended from two opposing lineages." "My father's father was an artisan, an excellent tailor, and very well-known in Naples, whereas my mother's family came from very wealthy shopkeepers." "My grandfather lived on private income;" "but he was a gambler." "He used to gamble everything." "My grandmother was wonderful, a marvelous woman." "She brought up these nine kids." "I remember her revolver." "She had a regulation revolver from the carabinieri." "Eventually my grandfather gambled everything away, and the family fell into dire poverty." "My father was a passionate amateur photographer;" "so passionate about it that I think he might have even been better than a professional." "Naturally, I was his main subject." "He posed me almost like an actor." "In this one, for example, I look a little dreamy." "In this one I look like a little American actor." "This one, too." "He used to color them himself with watercolors." "This photograph won him a contest held by an American production company for the child who looked most likeJackie Coogan." "The winner would get to go to Hollywood." "Dad would be the still photographer, and I would get to act in a movie." "Naturally my mother said no, like all Neapolitan mothers would do." "So he didn't become a photographer and I didn't become an actor." "My father clipped his own wings and denied himself the possibility of doing what he was good at;" "being an artist." "He was an excellent caricaturist, but he made a mistake in not following his path in life." "I took over for him." "I was happy to continue my father's unfulfilled dream." "This photograph by my father led to a sequence in Many Wars Ago." "MANYWARS AGO - 1 97 0" "Many Wars Ago hasn't been shown again in Italy." "They showed it once on television and that was the end of it;" "because it drew the hatred of certain so-called patriots;" "who naturally weren't interested in seeing the image of that war stripped of its usual false rhetoric the way this film did." "Because the film showed what war in the trenches was really like, where class differences still existed." "I wanted to show the cruelty of war." "The suffering and the futility of it." "I wanted to show it through this incredible; unacceptable human suffering." ""I'll never forget that fort, with its dark loopholes like eye-sockets in a skull, where a deadly sharpshooter spewed out death with his machine gun." "Only great cinema or great paintings can show so powerfully feelings that are so difficult to describe in a single, unforgettable image." "Federico Fellini."" "For four months of the year I lived at the seaside, while school was out for the summer." "NEAPOLITAN DIARY- 1 992" "Franco!" "Franco, wait for us!" "I spent all my time at the seaside." "That's where I met La Capria;" "even before going to Umberto I High School; where we all went later on." "We kids spent most of the day in the water." "We would fish." "We used to steal the little amphoras that fishermen set out for octopus." "They would put rocks inside and the octopus would swim in." "All this meant we were privileged, being able to spend four months at the seaside" "and live a middle-class existence." "I felt a strong and compelling attraction for the working-class city;" "for the historical city and for the working-class city;" "that I tried to convey in my films." "The subject of my first movie;" "The Challenge, is different;" "because it's about the world of the Camorra." "Ayoung man challenges a boss;" "so it's an attempt to get inside a film about the Camorra." "I'll make it brief." "I don't want anyone interfering in my business." "So can we pick up where we left off?" "I'm sending my trucks tonight for you to load." "Wasn't that our deal?" "Has anything changed?" "Young man, will you let us eat our meal?" "Has anything changed?" "You invite me into your home, then you let strangers in?" "I want to be with my friends in peace." " I want to as well." " Let's talk outside." "Why?" "I want to stay here." "I've already sold my goods." "Go somewhere else if you want to buy." "Now you tell me." "I tried to have all the different aspects of Neapolitan society show through in The Challenge, my first film." "I wanted to go back to this theme in Hands Over the City, but it turned out to be a completely different story." "Hands Over the City is about the relationship between people and power, corrupt political power, economic power, and the power of the Mafia." "Say what's on your mind." "HANDS OVERTHE CITY- 1 963" "The builders get a slap on the wrist, a few city officials are sent into retirement." "Everything goes back to the way it was before." "You know how these things are resolved." "Let's put all our cards on the table." "You're saying you don't want me to run for election." "That's what you want, but you're all crazy." "My votes cost me millions." "I got them one by one, street by street, house by house." "And when you needed them, you took them." "Now you want me to give them to the first idiot you choose to put in my place?" "It's obvious." "As long as I'm useful to you, everything's fine." "But when I'm not, you just get rid of me." "But as a private citizen, Nottola is still a good investment, because your pockets are full of money." "And you don't even know how it got there." "What about this?" "Do you think we would be so foolish as to throw it all away for your political ambitions?" "When you've divided the money up among you," "I won't come knocking on your door." "You gonna let me build this building?" "You gonna give me this contract?" "I've got to become councilor because I'm the only one I can trust." "NEAPOLITAN DIARY- 1 992" "The writings of Anna Maria Ortese are crucial in order to understand Naples." "She also voices criticism against the intellectuals of the time." "Immediately following the war;" "Naples began its reconstruction both in a material and a moral sense." "All the feelings and good intentions of the Neapolitan intellectuals were reawakened; and Ortese paints them in a good light and sometimes a not-so-good light." "My group of friends and I all met and got to know each other when we were studying at Umberto I High School and all spent a lot of time together, from freshman to senior years." "As a group we went through the process of acculturation together." "Our cultural and intellectual conquests were gained in each other's company." "La Capria lived in one of the most famous buildings in Neapolitan architecture;" "the Queen Donn'Anna Palace in Posillipo;" "where we used to get together and read." "Each of us had our own book;" "and we'd go to the reading room." "Sometimes; if a book interested all of us;" "someone would read from it aloud." "If not, one of us would be reading Hemingway, another Caldwell, another Dostoyevsky, and someone else Tolstoy." "I have to say it was a wonderful time." "I returned to Naples after a period in the underground." "I had become a soldier and then a cadet officer, and I spent my period underground in Florence." "I came back to Naples after a year, in September of '44." "In '44;" "I started working for the EIARradio;" "because my group of friends was already working there with the Psychological Warfare Branch;" "the American Allies radio." "Then I quit." "I left Naples and began working in the theater." "I toured Italy." "Later I had the opportunity to work with Visconti." "I had tried to get into the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia." "I prepared an audition based on Verga's I malavoglia." "The coincidence with Visconti's project La terra trema;" "which was based on Verga's I malavoglia;" "provided the opportunity to become his assistant." "We were a very small crew." "There were only a few of us because Visconti started out to make a documentary;" "but instead he turned it into a feature film." "I was the continuity supervisor." "I had to write down the continuity shots;" "everything that happened." "This was one of the record books." "The other one was for drawings of the different shots;" "writing down everything about the scene so Luchino could make the final script edit." "Lino Micciche put together a wonderful book which documented the film using my drawings." "The record books are now kept at the Cinematheque Francaise." "Towards the end of filming, he set up a scene" "where the boat returns after the storm." "He said to me, "Give me your book of drawings."" "I had made the drawing of the boat." "He said; "The boat's mast is broken." "How far up did it break?"" "I said, "More or less halfway up."" ""Ah, more or less."" "I replied, "But how could I have - I would have had to measure -"" ""I don't like that answer." "'More or less' means nothing."" "He proceeded to make a terrible scene, saying I should leave and go to work for other directors." "He summoned the production manager, suspended production, and dictated a telegram saying the work was to be suspended because the first assistant, Francesco Rosi, wasn't able to provide precise detail for the scene." "I left and went for a walk along the rocks to cry, because, naturally, this hurt me very much." "My whole life's work is here in this study;" "together with the things that are most important to me." "This is my daughter Francesca;" "born from a previous relationship;" "who unfortunately is no longer with us." "My daughter Carolina;" "who works in movies and theater and is very talented." "Here's my wife Giancarla." "I owe so much to her;" "to her very sharp intellect." "Franco called me up once and said:" "FI LM CRITIC" ""Garcia Marquez is in Rome." "Why don't you and your wife come over?"" "Naturally we were happy to spend an evening with Marquez." "So there we were at dinner, Franco, Giancarla," "Marquez, his wife, my wife and I." "During the course of the evening, the usual intense arguments started up." "Giancarla is very combative, and Franco likes to argue, too." "For a while he puts up with it, then he starts answering sharply and raises his voice and shouts." "After things had calmed down a bit, Marquez commented," ""I've witnessed these scenes for 30 years, and I'm beginning to believe this is real happiness."" "Everything's here." "My awards." "I've been lucky to win many awards at the most important film festivals." "I keep them all here among my books and my most cherished things." "This is the Oscar nomination for Three Brothers." "Frankly, I don't think talking about myself is very interesting." "My life consists of my family, the people I care about and my films." "They're all here in this room." "I definitely consider my films to be autobiographical, because a part of me is in each one of them." "I am my films." "We followed in the footsteps of Rossellini, Visconti and De Sica." "They were the first to make films as a way of participating in this important effort in Italy:" "the rebuilding of a country destroyed both materially and morally by war." "The spirit of the Resistance was alive." "It should be said that the Resistance wasn't just the Communists, as many would have you believe." "The Resistance was Communists, theJustice and Freedom movement, the Liberals, the Christian Democrats, the Republicans." "The Resistance in Italy was a united effort." "So we have to recognize this great movement which led our country to be reborn from the ashes." "It's something that has to be said, because a rampant revisionism is spreading confusion about this." "These directors - Rossellini, De Sica and Visconti - taught us young filmmakers." "They passed on to us this necessity of participating through cinema, of making it a political and social tool." "Most of all social, I think." "Because by watching those films, you could truly see Italy, appreciate her pain; her hopes;" "her victories and her defeats." "Christ stopped at Eboli;" "where the road and the railway" "CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI - 1 97 9 leave the coast and the sea and turn into the desolate reaches of Lucania." "Christ never came this far;" "and neither did time;" "nor the individual soul; nor hope;" "nor the relation of cause and effect;" "nor reason nor history." "No one has come to this land except as a conqueror, an enemy, or a visitor devoid of understanding." "In Christ Stopped at Eboli," "Carlo Levi dedicates an entire chapter to regional autonomy." "Not just regional autonomy, but also autonomy in factories and in schools." "If that's not federalism, what is?" "But it's a unitary federalism, as described by Cattaneo." "Cattaneo talked about federalism, but in a sense of unity." "That's what our country is now." "I'm filled with indignation that so many don't understand... what a fundamental and extremely serious threat the existence of organized crime in Italy poses to the concept of our country and its unity, whether that organized crime is called Mafia in Sicily," "Camorra in Naples," "'Ndrangheta in Calabria, or the newly formed Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia." "I grew up in America from the time I was a boy." "I've lived there for 30 years as a free man." "Then they unjustly convicted me using false evidence, corrupt witnesses and immoral women." "They didn't go by the rules." "But here in Italy all they do is harass." "There are no rules." "They don't even know what bail is." "But you've had prior convictions." "Fines for not stopping at traffic lights when I was transporting whiskey." " Prohibition was on." " But that's another story." "People wanted to drink, and someone had to bring it to them." "If we didn't do it, what was the government to do?" "You fulfilled a social need." "We fulfilled a social need." "That's why we all backed Roosevelt." "He understood he needed us." ""Lucky Luciano is the best film ever made about the Mafia, So we gave him the vote at the convention in Chicago." "the most thorough, the most truthful So you like politics." "Don't you like Italy?" "the most sensitive to the paradoxes of a criminal society." This is a poor country." "What kind of politics can you have without business?" "The Mafia is still treated as if it were about crime." "The Mafia, as we all should know, is a political power." "It's not a state within a state." "The Mafia is one state." "Then there's the other state." "Why haven't you ever explained in your newspapers what oil really means?" "THE MATTEI AFFAI R- 1 972" "We've said it often enough." "Between the lines, and sugar-coated." "You never said that oil topples governments and incites revolutions and coups." "It dictates the balance in the world." "You've never said this clearly." "And do you know why?" "Because if you were to say that Italy missed the oil bus, it's because our great Italian industrialists never did anything about it." "And do you know why?" "They'd have had to concern themselves with affairs they didn't want to touch." "They didn't want to rock the boat of those who held the power." "SCREENWRITER Franco is a guy who plays in a labyrinth and can't find the way out;" "can't find his freedom or a moment to catch his breath;" "like someone who shouts into the air and whose cry comes back to him." "But that labyrinth is powerful." "It already holds the truth." "I made a mistake telling him to go there." "THE PALERMO CONNECTION - 1 990" "It's like at the casino:" "When your number's up, it's up." "Palermo, Venice, Atlantic City." "It can happen anywhere." "And his number was up." "His number was up." "In his own Palermo." "First I want to put a misconception to rest." "DI RECTOR" "When you talk about Francesco Rosi's films, the adjective automatically attached to them is "political."" "It's not that I don't like the word." "It comes from "polis."" "That is; the relationship between the people and the state;" "the relationship between people." "The word seems to have taken on a more reductive meaning and is nothing but a message or an accusation." "To talk about political cinema in this sense;" "because it has a history and a tradition- to put Rosi into that category is a mistake because it's too confining." "To tell the truth, from the time I was a youngster and started watching his films," "the thing that struck me most was the attention to film itself." "Film came before everything else." "Ma'am, do you recognize your son?" "Yes, Salvatore Giuliano." "I gave birth to my son 28 years ago." "My son!" "My Turiddu!" "My Turiddu!" "SCREENWRITER One of my favorite moments" "I've ever witnessed in film was the wailing of this woman, Giuliano's mother, over his dead body." "This tremendous wailing." "Everyone thinks it's so magnificent because of its Grecian intensity." "But I also heard, beneath that lacerating voice, the sound of a person who once used to sing lullabies." "There's a shape, a dramaturgy, a way of editing the scenes and the characters." "You'll be paid." "Tell her to have the carpets checked because I've already counted them." "I don't trust her." "She said she'd have them checked." "You're such a brute!" "Take it easy." "Use light strokes, like this." "Gently." "That's right, gently." "Stay here." "Don't go away." "You do that so well." "You're so beautiful, so soft." "In my opinion, Rosi is a very sensual director." "He films bodies; women." "His is a cinema of substance;" "ONCE UPON A TI ME - 1 967 of dialogue with substance." "So it should be seen first of all;" "not simplistic;" "like refraining from using the word "political; "" "but almost more like a painting or sculpture." "Naturally; what he has to say is also interesting because I saw his films a few years after the events took place, and they told me about chapters in my country's history that I would never have found in newspapers or books." "It was completely different here, for example." "I had him stand here, and over there " "The authorities were watching from back over there." ""In the year 1 950, on this fifth day ofJuly, in Castelvetrano, on the Via Fra' Serafino Mannone, in the De Maria courtyard, lies a male corpse, apparent age 30 years."" "I think that Rosi is the only director" "DI RECTOR to portray the character of a criminal and yet avoid mythicizing him." "I don't know of any others." "It's very emotional for me to be here today after 40 years." "I wish everyone who helped me make the film could be here, too:" "Gianni Di Venanzo, Pasqualino De Santis." "Assistant director Franco Indovina." "Assistants Roberto Pariante and Nando Cicero." "Producer Franco Cristaldi." "Pietro Notarianni, Cristaldi's right arm." "Enzo Provenzale, the production manager, who also collaborated on the screenplay." "Suso Cecchi d'Amico;" "Franco Solinas;" "who wrote the screenplay with me." "And Nino Sorgi; a lawyer and important figure in the fight against the Mafia;" "who helped me understand so much about Palermo and Sicily." "And all the people who lived in the nearby towns:" "San Cipirello, San GiuseppeJato, Piana degli Albanesi, who came to help us reconstruct the events of that May 1 , 1 947." "The first political massacre in Italy." "Giuliano's gang and the Mafia murdered 1 1 peasants and wounded 33 peaceful souls who had come to celebrate a carefree May Day." "We still don't yet know the whole truth after 40 years." "We still don't know who the instigators were." "I reconstructed the scene to try to get as close to the truth as possible, and I asked the people from the nearby towns to come and do the same thing they had done that day." "Shots rang out from the mountains;" "yet no one knew who was shooting." "At their sound; the people reacted exactly as they had that day." "They ran away; trampled over others;" "threw themselves on the ground." "They fell to the ground; got up again." "They cried out." "They left the scene;" "ran around the camera;" "and then ran back into the scene again." "They tugged at my pants; saying;" ""It's just like it was that day. "" "I get emotional today thinking about it." "In the silence of this valley, this mountain." "Even though they've built a memorial;" "so it's not the same landscape as it was then." "I met Franco during the filming of Salvatore Giuliano." "I had written a book about Fellini making La dolce vita." "Franco Cristaldi decided to send me to Palermo to write a similar book on the making of Salvatore Giuliano and to work as a journalist as well, giving Rosi a hand with all the problems that came up with the locale, the legal difficulties," "and everything else that was happening on the set of this film that had been the target of so many threats." "It was a time ofbreaking off with the past for me." "A time of great change." "Meeting Franco changed my life." "I think this is true as well for everyone who's seen his films or will go to see them in the future." "They're the key to entering a dimension that's not always easy to accept, that is occasionally unpleasant, that causes you to react with:" ""What's he trying to prove?" "Why does he make me feel so uncomfortable?" "Why is he putting doubts into my head?" He's actually the director of skepticism." "Francesco Rosi's films taught you things you could only learn by watching them." "For a young person looking at life, sensitive to the many political problems, the problems of ordinary citizens," "Rosi's films were indispensable for a young Sicilian living in Sicily." "I also learned of them because I was urged - or rather, ordered - to see them by my father." ""Go and see this film."" "Salvatore Giuliano was the first film of his I saw." "There are some films in our lives that we've seen and remember every thing about." "The movie theater where we saw it, the day we saw it, who we saw it with, because these films made such an impression on us." "They touched us emotionally." "We all have a short list of those films." "For me and for many others it's Citizen Kane;" "Satyajit Ray's The Music Room;" "another two or three, and Salvatore Giuliano." "Salvatore Giuliano is a mystery" "FI LM CRITIC all the way through." "You never really know the truth, like in many of Rosi's other films." "It's very difficult to get to it." "WRITER The method he used in Hands Over the City;" "on the other hand, is completely different." "Some scenes were actually written by the townspeople." "For example, the scene when the women leave to liberate the men wasn't in the script." "But they told me about it, and I wanted to put it in." "But I didn't have enough women to shoot the scene because in 1 960, the women of Montelepre didn't want to be in a film, because, you know how it is, a woman in front of a camera in Sicily" "So I said to myself, "I'll ask the prostitutes from Palermo to come film this scene."" "I sent a bus to pick these women up, and when the women of Montelepre saw the prostitutes from Palermo coming to act in the scene that we were already rehearsing, they literally shot out of their houses, saying:" ""They're the women of Montelepre?" "No, we're the women of Montelepre."" "So I mixed together the women of Montelepre with the prostitutes and" "Franco Rosi on the set is extraordinary." "He has a way of communicating with both actors and non-actors." "He treats them all the same way." "He's extraordinarily expressive and communicative." "He plays all the parts." "Do you want to see the photographs from America?" "We're all together!" "Long live Italy!" "You're trying to find many lovers and caresses;" "Poor me" "If you come back you might find a veil of sadness over me" "I traveled all over Europe until October, for reasons impossible to understand, most likely just because of the disarray and confusion." "After Italy was liberated, we were sent off to places as far away as White Russia, then to Romania, Hungary, Germany, and finally back to Italy in October." "My film is above all about the return to life." "THE TRUCE - 1 996" "And about not forgetting this threat." "We know about it." "We can see it." "Because there weren'tjust German extermination camps;" "but also gulags;" "and camps in Vietnam and Cambodia;" "then Africa;" "and later in Yugoslavia." "This threat of the return of violence;" "of oppression;" "of the obliteration of man's dignity;" "is always lying in wait." "One of the most exciting experiences in this mixing of professional actors with nonprofessional actors was one I had with Volonte, who was the epitome of professionalism." "He was a great actor, so talented and so creative." "Every time I think about or imagine a film," "I think of Volonte, and I dearly miss him." "CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD - 1 987" "I've come back after 2 7 years to this forgotten town to try and put the broken mirror of memory back together from so many shattered shards." "Do you know how long I've known Leonardo Sciascia?" "Forty years." "A great friendship began then that didn't end until his death." "It was born of a very deep mutual respect and affection that grew over the years." "WE'LL BE REMEMBERI NG THIS PLANET" "I LLUSTRIOUS CORPSES - 1 987" "At a certain point I chose" "Sciascia's book The Context, a wonderful book about power;" "to bring to the screen." "He had written it as a warning to the Communist Party which was heading towards the "historic compromise"of the '70s." "A warning of the risk they might run if they weren't able to retain the moral authority and power to intervene that was needed if they were to share power." "PALERMO" " HALL OFJ USTICE - 2001" "We forever owe a debt of gratitude to thosejudges who have fought and who are fighting still." "We should never forget these men who have given their lives and who continue to do so for all of us." ""People usually die because they are alone or because they got involved in something too big for them." "People often die because they lack the necessary alliances, because there is no support." "In Sicily, the Mafia strikes at the servants of the State, and the State hasn't been able to protect them."" "This reflection was left to us by Giovanni Falcone." "We Southern Italians constantly feel the presence of death." "In Sicily it's felt in a different way than in Naples." "In Sicily, death can sometimes become even mythical." "My personal impression is that it seems very difficult" "to separate oneself from someone who's died." " Assuntina!" " Vito Polara!" "THE MOMENT OF TRUTH - 1 965" "I don't think I'm afraid of death." "It's just that I don't like it." "I don't like the look of it." "It bothers me." "It bothers me because it's a rendering of accounts with something unknown to me." "Something I can't question because there are no ready answers." "THREE BROTHERS - 1 981" "Why didn't we go, too?" "I don't know." "They said it was better this way." "That moment when you leave this world;" "the people you love;" "the things you love in life;" "the things you've dedicated your whole life to." "Maybe it's because I'm a nonbeliever;" "so I don't have the strength that faith gives you;" "that makes death a moment of rebirth." "That moment for me is unacceptable." "Right now it doesn't frighten me, except for those rare times when one has a moment of anxiety." "But it's" "I just don't like it."