"30 years ago, at the premiere of Fellini's 8 1/2." "The elite of the Italian film world is present." "We are waiting for a star whose face is not so familiar, but whose works are integrally linked to those of Fellini." "He wrote the music for 8 1/2 and for all the other Fellini films giving them that unmistakable aura." "Where is he?" "He must be here." "But his name is not even mentioned." "Everyone is filing before the camera." "Everyone except for..." "Nino Rota." "BETWEEN CINEMA AND CONCERT" "The Composer Nino Rota" "A Film by Vassili Silovic" "Who was this artist?" "We know that through his film scores Nino Rota became one of the most renowned Italian composers of our time." "He wrote the scores to 145 films." "Many of his melodies are world-famous." "But he himself remains an enigma." "His face remains unknown." "Finally this little portrait:" ""The Composer Nino Rota at the Piano."" "And that's all we have..." "An unexpected game of hide and seek." "Or mere coincidences?" "Reason enough to dig deeper into the film archives." "Another piece on Fellini..." "And again, Nino Rota is present but invisible." "As if he's trying to avoid identification." "An artist hiding behind his music." "Perhaps his music was the only thing he wanted to divulge about himself." "We shall direct our search for Nino Rota back to what we're most familiar with:" "to those notes that are so light and spontaneous, they seem to materialize all on their own." "Yet, there is always something original and intangible to be heard in his music, that says it is unmistakably the music of Nino Rota." "So we'll continue our search where he used to live." "In the early 30's the Milan born musician settled here in Rome." "He lived on the top-floor of this building." "Today there is no trace of him:" "no nameplate, no plaque..." "After his death in 1979 the apartment was destroyed." "Here we literally stand before closed doors and windows." "Nino Rota hides." "Remains invisible to the public." "But how about the people who knew him?" "Film director Lina Wertmüller worked with Rota many times." "She describes him as an angel in an old Hollywood film:" "Absent-minded and endearing." "A back-row angel, so to speak." "Scriptwriter Suso Cecchi d'Amico knew Rota since childhood." "She can never forget the way he played the piano, the intimate, touching rapport he had with his instrument." "Biographer Pier Marco De Santi." "Rota described De Santi once as the most dangerous authority on his cinematographic atrocities." "Nicola Scardicchio, one of Rota's students at the Bari Conservatory." "He learned from Rota that art should not be intellectual but intelligent." "And Ricardo Mutti, Rota's most renowned student." "Rota remains for him a great master who, defying all ideological and cultural extremes, sought to be only one thing:" "Nino Rota." "These people have all contributed to forming a sketch of Nino Rota." "And even Rota himself finally turned up in a recording, in which he talks about his life." "It's the beginning of our portrait." "Ladies and Gentlemen..." "I'm supposed to tell you about myself." "But that's not an easy task." "That is why I'd like to evade it by playing the piano." "I was very fortunate because I was a musician and I was born into a musical family." "My mother was the daughter of a musician, of a pianist." "My grandfather was very modest." "He only composed for the piano." "I did not inherit his modesty." "I was always a megalomaniac." "My first piano pieces were always for four hands." "I'd like to play you these first pieces." "Rota enjoyed his most spectacular success as a child." "ln 1922, at the age of 11, his early musical talent caused a sensation." "He conducted his own oratorio, a much more serious piece compared to his later works." "He was well on his way to following the fate of a "wunderkind"" "but his mother let him pursue his musical studies at his own pace." "At the end of his studies he visited the US, under the supervision of family friend Arturo Toscanini." "When Rota returned to Italy in 1932 the stigma of the "wunderkind" had long faded." "In America, Rota eagerly followed all the new trends:" "Stravinsky, jazz, musicals..." "But these styles only came to influence his work later on." "First he directed his attention to his original course:" "to the classical tradition." "He began his career in Rome." "This very talented but unknown young composer wrote serious music and soon he faced financial troubles." "A perhaps not-too-serious opportunity suddenly presented itself." "What appeared to be an excursion into another branch of music was to have great consequences on his artistic development." "The temptation came from Italy's film capital, and was called Treno Popolare," "Raffaello Matarazzo's first film." "This is the simple theme I had so much trouble with:" "TRENO POPOLARE (1933) Raffaello Matarazzo" "But sadly the film was a flop with the critics and the public of a fascist Italy." "Rota's melodies and songs probably went unnoticed." "Nine years went by before Rota had contact with the world of cinema again." "The second attempt was an immediate break and marked the beginning of his career that would span almost 40 years." "The "Prince of Film Music" did his handiwork:" "starting in 1942, he wrote the majority of his film scores in just 15 years." "He composed 12 film scores a year, first for Italian films and later for international productions also," "spanning all genres, periods, subjects and styles." "Rota's musical reservoir seemed endless." "He was not a slave to his career and his life shows that." "His second home was in a small fishing village in Bari, in southern Italy." "Here Rota led a quiet life, away from the noise, teaching music and dedicating himself to the "other" music he had no time for in Rome." "In Torre a Mare, I composed my opera trilogy:" "first, the opera Ariodante, and, in 1943, Torquemada, played in the San Carlos theater, and then The Florentine Straw Hat." "The period from 1940 to 1950 comprised the years of WWII." "I composed most of my works here in Bari." "I often visited him in Bari, where he was director of the Conservatory, located in a former monastery;" "a beautiful and magical place, if I may use this word." "It really was magical." "Scales, vocal exercises, and the notes of flutes and harps poured out of the building, giving the place a special atmosphere." "On the one hand, the magic and isolation of his surroundings, on the other, Rota's practical work at the conservatory:" "He organized concerts, taught and promoted the construction of a concert hall, all to raise academy standards." "0ne single room was the center of all these activities:" "composing, administrating, sleeping, eating, living..." "Rota's life in Bari was spent in this former monk's cell." "Maestro Rota, how many students attend this conservatory?" "About 300." "Are there many applicants?" "Applications are accepted each year, between August and September." "Then there are entrance exams." "I was so terrified of the world of music schools that I wanted to leave right away." "But I took the exam and then Rota told me, before the commission:" "We've given you the highest possible grade." "For the piano courses we require a good deal of previous knowledge." "Eleven is really already too old to begin studying the piano." "In that year, I went to high school in the morning, and in the afternoon, I studied music in Bari." "Rota became my teacher for everything." "Not only as a piano or composing teacher." "He opened all doors to understanding music for me, instrumentation as well as its interpretation." "He was the Maestro, with a capital 'M'." "To be clear and to solve problems were his principles." "A work of art had to be comprehensible above all." "If there is something to say, it should be said clearly, directly." "He used to say this often and it's also written in many books:" "If a listener can't follow a piece then the composer has not solved all problems." "And that is his duty!" "To summarize Rota's teaching:" "Clarity, honesty, precision." "14 years after his death" "Rota has not been forgotten by the Conservatory." "There are still stories of him working through the night, greeting his students in his dressing gown, giving exams, on the phone;" "while writing a piano concerto," "Or another film score, his second life." "Rota could shift easily from one musical world into another." "His sensitivity and modesty enabled him to work well with directors." "Without any prejudice he would get involved in the most difficult musical challenges." "He taught us that a beautiful song is worth more than a bad symphony." "When a student decided to write entertainment music he could do so without feeling inferior." "He'd learned that everything has its own dignity." "Did you see my children's series Gian Burrasca?" "It was very popular." "We all really enjoyed working on it, many good actors from our theater." "The songs were beautiful." "IL GIAN BURRASCA (1 963) Lina Wertmüller" "I remember how Rota was ridiculed for his song" ""La Pappa col Pomodoro."" "Some people even stopped greeting him after that." "Why shouldn't a maestro be able to also compose something like that?" "Nino was adventurous and didn't care about the critics in their ivory towers." "He was shocked at the moral aspect of the criticism, that there was no reference to the artistic content." "As Oscar Wilde once said:" "ln art there is no morality, art is either beautiful or ugly." "Nino and I considered Gian Burrasca a work of high quality." "It was most important for him to fulfill his task as a musician." "A musician must have a goal and he must attempt to achieve it." "To him, it was important to achieve the goal as fully as possible." "If it was to be jazz, it had to be real jazz." "If he was asked for a circus march, then it had to be real, even if it had to be harsh and vulgar." "Anything else would be "aesthetic" and that was alien to Rota." "LOVE AND ANARCHY (1 973) Lina Wertmüller" "A suitable film score did not always mean an entirely new composition." "Reused and revised music runs through his work like a red thread." "The Neapolitan song in Lina Wertmüller's film was recycled from an earlier film." "Not a very respectable method." "He always did that!" "He didn't have any principles about that." "Just like Rossini and many other musicians." "When your head is so full of new and old music, it's only natural." "He didn't even do it on purpose." "Nino was an adorable, absent-minded and free-spirited musician, who recycled everything possible." "I chose a theme I'd composed 15 years ago for another film." "It was an amusing, ironic march." "But I slowed it down, made it more romantic." "And it worked." "It became the theme for The Godfather." "It was originally a song in the film Fortunella, directed by Eduardo de Filippo, written by Fellini and starring Giulietta Masina." "FORTUNELLA (1958) Eduardo de Filippo" "Rota's musical self-service soon ended in a sensational disaster." "The Oscar nomination for his score to The Godfather was withdrawn just before the ceremony." "His carefree self-plagiarism violated the criteria for original music." "He was finally nominated 3 years later and was awarded an Oscar for The Godfather II." "I don't know if it's true, but it's been said that for The Godfather..." "Nino just pulled something old out of his famous music cabinet, and made it into the score that became so successful." "Along came Dino de Laurentiis, the producer of Fortunella, who told Rota" ""You need to make a deal with me." "This is from my movie."" "And Nino said he was wrong." "So it was up to the lawyers." "The good thing is Nino couldn't find his contract." "Thank god De Laurentiis couldn't either." "So the problem just disappeared." "What picture can we paint of Nino Rota's life?" "He did not offer the usual features of an artist's biography." "Nothing can be made of the creative periods, nor his crises or climaxes." "Every time we thought we grasped him, our picture disintegrated." "And we were back where we'd started:" "His music." "His life defies definition." "The world of his music is also hard to penetrate." "It is a world without hierarchy where major and minor pieces exist side by side, created effortlessly and out of joy." "Rota's place in music is hard to determine." "Music critics did not favor him during his lifetime." "They found his compositions old-fashioned and reactionary." "The praise for his accessible film music harmed his serious work which was not gaining any ground in the classical music business." "Even through this, Rota remained silent and went on composing." "Rota employed a musical language that was modern without being too cerebral." "He confronted the public with his vast harmonic and instrumental mastery." "The public had no problem with Rota's simplicity or rather, "easiness"." "But one didn't feel that there was nothing behind it." "This simplicity was more a sign of maturity and the clarity of his ideas." "He had so many ideas." "Rota meant nothing to the critics because he had nothing to do with the avant-garde or with any scandals." "But those were the values back then." "How many times has music history seen the greatest reassessments?" "Unknown works are discovered, and once popular music disappears." "Time will tell if Nino Rota will go down in the history of music as a significant composer." "I don't care much about the opinions of music critics." "For myself and surely for many others his music conveys so many sensations, memories and emotions" "That he will always be cherished." "It hurt him when critics condemned him for his classical compositions and hailed his film music." "He always wanted to show me that for him there's no difference between film scores and classical music." "Rota fulfilled this principle in Luchino Visconti's films." "They had worked together both on stage and in films." "Visconti's musical demands grew with the opulence of his themes and culminated in The Leopard." "When Visconti was working on The Leopard he told Nino Rota that he wanted a truly beautiful symphony." "The love theme from The Leopard for instance." "It is precisely in the style of 19th century symphonies." "Nino listened to Visconti and said:" ""But I already have a finished symphony."" "It was full of verve, in the style of the 19th century, reminiscent of Brahms, Dvorak, perhaps a young Mahler." "Luchino wanted to hear it." "Rota played it and Visconti said:" ""That's it, that's the music."" "Visconti liked it very much." "Rota told him again that the symphony was not new." "That didn't bother Visconti." "He said: "That's the music for The Leopard!"" "The music was not written for the film but was composed much earlier." "THE LEOPARD (1963) Luchino Visconti" "Nino accepted all invitations, but he always came when the party was over." "When he played the piano for a long period of time he'd fall into a sort of trance." "No, that's a romantic interpretation." "He was in a permanent trance." "He'd enchant himself when he came up with a new melody." "We'd say: "Nino, hey, wake up!"" "That was just an unusual, spiritual state of distraction." "Nino could fall asleep at the piano and keep on playing." "He's the only one I know who can do that." "He was such a darling." "We write the scores for Fellini's films so quickly, we better not talk about it." "Why?" "People would think we didn't take our work seriously." "What happens after you've created the theme?" "Federico doesn't like it when I write it down immediately." "But then there is the danger that I might forget it when the next idea comes along." "No thanks, I don't smoke." " And the cigarette?" "0h I'll just keep it here as a souvenir." "Were his classical compositions for the cinema due to a generous artistic attitude or just absent-mindedness?" "For Fellini's 8 1/2 he adopted the last phrase of one of his piano concertos." "8 1/2 (1 963) Federico Fellini" "We've finally come to Federico Fellini." "Rota and Fellini: the myth." "A legend one does not dare to touch." "A collaboration of over 30 years." "The fusion of two characters into an unmistakable unity." "Rota was unfairly branded as "Fellini's musician."" "But it was in these films that he was to forge his unmistakable style." "Perhaps they served each other mutually so one could even say that Fellini was "Nino Rota's director."" "Fellini's fantasies offered Rota the ideal space for his musical games." "Kurt Weill's theme goes like this:" "La Dolce Vita has the same theme, but it sounds very different." "Federico Fellini about his friend Nino:" "During shooting I use any old music to give the scene its rhythm." "When the film is over I've gotten so used to the melody that I want to keep it." "And then what happens?" "Nino agrees and says the pieces I've used are wonderful even when they are really kitschy." "He says: "I couldn't have done it better."" "And while he says that he runs his fingers over the keys of his piano." ""What was that?" I ask him." ""What?" Nino asks absently." ""You just played something."" ""Really?" "I don't remember." And he goes on plunking away." "That's the way the scores are created for my films." "They make me forget all the music I had before." "They always have an enchanting grace, elegant and spontaneous, typical of my angelic friend Nino." "The music had to evoke a circus atmosphere like the arrival of the gladiators or something entirely different." "Maybe a musical memory left by the arrival of the gladiators." "That sounds confusing, but I want people to listen to the "smell" of the circus." "We usually come up with the themes together." "He often gives me very precise and sometimes very contradictory advise." "It could be a simple tune, that becomes pompous, and then very light again, because the dialogue starts." "He tells me, find an amusing theme that's sad, an old-fashioned theme that sounds new, something trivial that is moving." "And we sit for the whole day and nothing comes out in the end." "When Federico's about to leave I plunk a bit more on the piano." "And he turns around and says:" ""That's it!" "We'll do the whole film with that."" "What can we do with this..." "How does the little waltz go again?" " The waltz goes like this..." "It has the atmosphere of a music hall." "We're coming to the end of my story." "I think I've said too much." "But it wasn't enough to express... all that concerns me and my music." "I've left out so many things that..." "Well, maybe that's better..." "Rota's confessions end here." "The rest of the recordings have vanished." "We'd like to leave things here as well." "Further probing could create a greater distance between us and the artist, whom we should try to comprehend through our emotions." "BETWEEN CINEMA AND CONCERT THE COMPOSER NINO ROTA" "A film by Vassili Silovic" "based on an idea by Pit Riethmuller"