June 2010 Giancarlo Giannini

June 2010: Giancarlo Giannini

by John Gallagher

GIANCARLO GIANNINI: He’s probably best known in North America today as Rene Mathis in the last two Bond films (QUANTUM OF SOLACE, CASINO ROYALE) or as Inspector Pazzi in HANNIBAL, but Giancarlo Giannini has been one of Italy’s busiest actors since his debut in FANGO SULLA METROPOLI in 1965. Born in 1942 in La Spezia in northern Italy on the Ligurian Sea, Giannini became a star in his country with two comedies, RITA LA ZANZARA (1966) and NON STUZZICATE LA ZANZARA (1967), both written and directed by Lina Wertmuller (script supervisor on Fellini’s 8 ½). Between 1972 and 1979 Wertmuller and Giannini teamed on four highly original socio-sexual comedies -; THE SEDUCTION OF MIMI (1972), LOVE AND ANARCHY (1973), SWEPT AWAY BY AN UNUSUAL DESTINY IN THE BLUE SEA OF AUGUST (1974), THE END OF THE WORLD IN OUR USUAL BED IN A NIGHT FULL OF RAIN (1978) -; the thriller BLOOD FEUD (1979), and their masterpiece, SEVEN BEAUTIES (1976), set in 1930s Naples and a Nazi concentration camp, with Giannini as the unforgettable survivalist Pasqualino Settebellezze. He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar; the picture was nominated for Best Foreign Film, and Wertmuller became the first woman in history nominated for a Best Director Academy Award (she also got the nod for her original screenplay). On April 16, 1996, while Giancarlo was in New York City working in the Italian telefilm NEW YORK CROSSING, Sylvia Caminer and I had the great pleasure to interview him. We came to the offices of RAI Italia bearing a present:

JOHN GALLAGHER: We brought you a very special gift.

GIANCARLO GIANNINI: Ah!

JG: A recently restored Chaplin Keystone film from 1914, very rare -; A GENTLEMAN OF NERVE with Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. It’s a beautiful print.

GG: Oh, thank you, I collect many, many of these movies. Now we can start -- what do you want to know?

JG: I know you love Chaplin, you love Keaton, when did you get interested in them?

GG: We went to an acting academy when I was very young. My friend was supposed to be at the school, instead he was buying these films, Chaplin films. My friends were watching these movies all the time. The reason why, very simply, was because we were at school to become actors. So we said, “Who are the great actors? Chaplin and Keaton, so let’s watch them and study them over and over.” Watching Chaplin and Buster Keaton we saw two very distinctive and different ways of representing the world. Chaplin is a very realistic, material man, even nasty and very bad man sometimes, and he’s even able to beat other people. His stories are very passionate and realistic. Chaplin’s a Neapolitan that would steal food from others in order to survive. Keaton is the moon. Keaton is a very dramatic person. He’s an extra-terrestrial that is by himself on earth without understanding what is going on around him. He has the same feelings that Chaplin has, but with a different way in approaching problems, because he is much more dramatic and sees the world in a very unrealistic way. Watching this is a great school to become an actor, and it has of course helped me a lot when I have played different parts. Of course we all copied him, we got all our inspiration from him. His brilliance sometimes is really in getting the two roles, the two actors to unite both experiences into one. A very simple example is CITY LIGHTS (1931), when it is extremely realistic. At the same time there is still a very fantastic and imaginary way of approaching the reality, the harsh reality. This is something typical that we have in Italy, I feel. We have the commedia dell’arte and the mask of tragedy. We have one of the greatest authors of Pucinella; his name is Eduardo DeFillipo. Besides being a great actor and a great writer -- he died a few years ago -- he was able to witness, see on stage, a typical example of the tragedy, how we can laugh and cry at the same time.

JG: I read somewhere that you believe your instinct is your method.

GG: In reality, there is no mental incentive. I have studied every teacher from Stanislavsky to Brecht, I even wrote books on them. It’s good for the actor to feel his own way of acting. The actor is intended to interpret different roles and is intended provisionally. The public decides, not the actor. The actor is only the intelligent bridge, in order to make the audience see what they want to see. You must have an instinctive actor, in a way they could be a technician. The actor does not have to find the instinct but needs to dominate the instinct, because we want to communicate with the instinct. So basically for the actor, sometimes, the less you do the more you do. It can be a contradiction with some characters such as SEVEN BEAUTIES. It can be a kind of sign, but depending on what the director asks, what is requested and what the film requires. The actor at the moment is almost a sign, then with the directing it’s a bunch of different signs all put together, it’s a style, that is very different from the intention of how you want to represent the role. It is very easy to get confused because there are so many different styles.

JG: We watched SESSOMATTO (1973), with you playing many different characters, ranging from the butler in the first segment to the redhead with the glasses, two completely different styles.

GG: This one is basically what we call the farce, where I enjoy showing the audience the make-up, the wig, the fictional part, to show the play. It was a very, very light comedy. Much more size, much more tougher, with hours of makeup. I wanted to show the audience, there was an actor, there was make-up, in order to play with that very romantic role. After five or six minutes, the audience will lose that thought and get involved with the fantasy of the film. The audience probably doesn’t know that I’m acting. Sometimes it’s a game with myself, you have to play with the audience and let them play with me. In other words sometimes I’m so free that we play within the fiction. To get inside the role, physically I’m taking them in with me to this fantasy, not from the front but from the back door. You hear actors say if I get into a role, involved with a role, for months and months, then I carry it around with me for six months afterwards, drives me crazy for six months. I accept everything cause in the end there is a result. Everyone has their own way, their own instinct. With young actors, anything that comes to mind to become more expressive in the role, do it. Go with your instinct. I enjoy a lot playing different roles. Every time I can find a little speck or a little part of the role which is going to be part of the scene, that’s where I start my journey. For example, you have a movie and a play directed by Mario Monicelli from Italy, the name of the film was IL MALE OSCURO (DARK ILLNESS, 1990), about a psychological sickness. I could play a very normal person who has problems with life; in general, no one would know what illness, the unknown illness. The screenplay unfortunately was not up to the same level, and I did not know how to play this, so I did 104 scenes where I was playing in the film, I had to do something that was not in sync, in order to let the audience know that you can see a human being, a person, but maybe they were something else, an animal. And I wrote on the script a different animal for each different scene, and during rehearsal I would be the different animals behind closed door. That is the most interesting part of being an actor is when you prepare. I was really brought to life, and really studied the scenes, so one time I was a mosquito. It’s part of your psyche, even your hands are acting, it’s rhythm, it changes. Then you sort it out and it plays, and you can see that it is something different coming to life. And the result fortunately was there in the film. Sometimes the things that you don’t show is what hits you the most, it is what goes deeper, that the audience can see.

JG: How did you prepare for SEVEN BEAUTIES?

GG: SEVEN BEAUTIES there was no need for this kind of thing. It is like the role of, of SEVEN BEAUTIES, is like orange with different sizes but they are so different one from the other. So going scene by scene, you don’t think of the link between. Just scene by scene. Since it plays over a long period of time, if you put all the scenes together you get a very strong design of the film. Each scene is like a little movie, some dramatic climaxes in each scene. We had all these little movies, united together to make a bigger picture.

SYLVIA CAMINER: You and Lina Wertmuller had an extraordinary collaboration.

GG: Yes, I think some of the films I made with Lina are definitely some of the best films I’ve ever made.

SC: You worked with many of the same actors on these films, like a stock company.

JG: Mariangela Melato, Elena Fiore, Eros Pagni.

GG: First of all it was easier for us, and second, Lina is a very different director from everyone else and sometimes it’s not as easy to work with her. So you get used to working with her, it’s much easier the second or third time.

JG: Did you work together to develop the script on SEVEN BEAUTIES?

GG: Yes we worked together, cause the story of SEVEN BEAUTIES is a realistic story. The two of us made tapes; from these tapes we developed the film. I have to say that Lina did not want to do SEVEN BEAUTIES, after we had worked in comedies; she wanted to do another comedy. She worried you don’t make people laugh over dead people. But I wanted it to be the real Pucinella. It is not a comedy but it will become grotesque, because a laugh sometimes is a nervous tension release. When you have a role that is extreme, it’s really stretching out because, and here we are talking about Buster Keaton, and you have to sing a song to your killer, so dramatic a situation. Either laugh and applaud or cry because physically it is the way of ending a very strong, tense moment.

JG: How did you develop the walk? I love the walk.

GG: You’re talking about SEVEN BEAUTIES?

JG: Yes.

GG: In reality I just imitated my Neapolitan friend. Of course the way of walking really depends on the kind of dress you are wearing and the period of the costume. Since the pants were ripping, for an actor it’s the way the vertebrae column is positioned. Everyone forgets the walk from the heavy in the Westerns. Another way of walking that was very different was in LOVE AND ANARCHY, but they had two kilos, four pounds in each shoe. And two pair of pants, one over the other and then a sweater made of wool, the same thing, almost two inches think, and we were shooting during the summer, but anyways. The hair and the moustache gave a kind of sweetness and smarts; he had to be kind of happy. I had to be happy, that kind of happy. And I put metal behind my ears, to adjust my ears, once in a while I moved them. You don’t need to talk to think about the role, because the role comes to you because you are an actor. That is why you have to calm your instincts sometimes. It will come from the inside of us, don’t look for the soul of the role, everyone will see how you walk and behave and then the role will come.

JG: Can you describe Visconti’s technique? He was very ill when you worked with him on THE INNOCENT (1976). He died shortly after, just a few months before its release.

GG: It’s good he has his own technique, it was his technique. In every position, he would stop the actors from what they want to do with their scene, “Let me see, rehearse first. Then we will put the camera.” I had a real problem with Visconti, cause he was very sick with his head, because he was very smart, he wasn’t able to understand his movements anymore. And he didn’t really relate to the movements of the actors anymore, so he would only be able to do a scene with three actors sitting around a table. And sometimes I would tell Visconti that I wanted to move the actors cause he was afraid of that. He was filming with four and five cameras at the same time, it was extremely hard to understand which was the close up, while you were building your own editing. It is almost impossible to have a close up, the way you act in a close up is completely different than in another frame. The way of filming in a close up was very exasperating working with him. You have to know exactly what to do with your eyes at that moment. When it means to have a close up, for example, and slowly, slowly turn your head and put half of your face into shadow, planning that moment as a role as an actor. Cinema is light, light and darkness. This is what cinema is about, and you work with your role, but you work with you cameraman and your director. Anyways other than that chapter, the experience I had with Visconti was one of the most, fantastic, wonderful experiences of my life, I mean to bring a character to life on set with him was an extremely wonderful experience.

JG: Before you worked with R. W. Fassbinder on LILLI MARLEEN (1981), did you know about his drug problems and did you find him difficult?

GG: Oh yes, yes, very difficult. He was very shy, would never talk to the actors. He knew exactly what he was going to edit. One time he told me, “Look, I used to do six, seven takes, then I realized they are more or less all the same.” It was very hard, because he would be physically cutting in the camera. One time, the first time she (Hanna Schygulla) was ever in bed with us, and the camera is right in front, and we sit up and say it’s ten o’clock. So the first time I don’t touch the watch, and we do it again and I touch it. And he stops it and says “No, no, no you can’t touch the watch.” So you had to do it the exact same each time. He didn’t want to do it the extra way. I knew he was coming from the view that it was raining too much or that he had taken too many drugs. Another time I am sitting across from her eating, and all our lines are very short, “How's your father?”, “Is he doing good?”, so the camera was in front of me and he goes, “Stop eating in that moment,” and now he moves the camera again, “OK, put the fork down.” It was incredible.

JG: It’s edited so quick, before the scenes are finished sometimes. When Fassbinder was acting in the film, did he give himself one take?

GG: Yes, only a second!

JG: What was it that attracted you to NEW YORK CROSSING?

GG: The story, very simple story. And the director, Vinicius Mainardi. He directed little movie, in black and white, very funny. It’s interesting to see that movie, I don’t remember the title, cause it is a telephone number, three two one (SIXTEEN-OH-SIXTY). It’s Brazilian movie, with a lot of irony, even drama. The camera and the light, it is a wonderful movie.

JG: What’s Nanni Loy like to work with?

GG: Well, he is a somewhat wonderful director, he made MI MANDA PICONE (WHERE’S PICONE 1984), wonderful movie. He is very simple to work with. He tells, we believe in the story. And to do that movie it took us three years, cause it is low budget but we did it. It was very simple but the story was like Kafka. And the technique that I use in that movie, because the story is about a man who says always “Mi manda Picone, mi manda Picone,” and so in the beginning working with the writer, we say maybe this character needs to do something different, so we spend four months to write another script, very similar but with the character, because I ask, “Maybe it’s boring?” So we add many things, and, then one night when I read the script I say I want to do the first one because it is better to do this kind. It was shot in Naples, and I know that in Naples the story was to meet many different characters every different day. And I know Neapolitan actors. When they work just for one day, they try to put everything and energy into that one day. And I know with these kind of actors many different things will go on around me, so we go back to the first script. It was good.

JG: Did you see differences in working in the United States opposed to Italy?

GG: For actors it is the same thing. The film, the script, the lights. It is different the way you can film movies or the way of cinema. The main concept. Here it is in the script, in Italy it is with you, and the crowd. In Italy there are auteurs, here there are technicians that aren’t even auteurs. Here you know exactly what you are going to do, it is an industry, and you make a movie because you get reviews, to make profit. In Italy we still have auteurs and they go on the set in the morning and they look at the light, at the sun, the sky and the setting of the camera. This is probably good, this is probably bad, but we’ll see with the weather. And we have great auteurs. I think that they have less to worry about than the young auteurs that we have today. They are less afraid of making mistakes. Cause with this work you have to make mistakes, you have to have the guts. Because you will make an error, you will make mistakes. The day that you will not make an error, you will make something different, but it will always be through yourself, you always do what you want to do. So it could be your great error or it could be your film, but it will be yours. And same for an actor of course.

JG: When you worked with Francis Coppola on NEW YORK STORIES (1989), was he always in his trailer or was he on the set?

GG: Sometimes he was on the set but a lot of time he was closed in his trailer. He was only here for a few months to do that movie. It took me very little time to do it.

JG: What do you remember about Edward Dmytryk on ANZIO (1968)?

GG: It was my first film in English. I was the only Italian, with seven marines, Robert Mitchum, Peter Falk, I was very worried. I made a perfect British accent and Dmytryk said “No! You have to speak with slang, not British, you are a marine.” A lot of people enjoyed teaching me bad words!

JG: How about Stanley Kramer and THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA (1969)?

GG: That’s where I met Anthony Quinn, and I already worked with Anna Magnani in theatre, but I never worked with her on film. She would have a very dramatic face and she would turn away from us on stage. But in front of us the theatre would think she is really crying. Well for movie making her biggest worry was the light -; “How do I put my face? The light is there, okay.” Anthony Quinn was the worst in the morning! He is a great friend of mine. That is where you learn, really, your craft. I met Anthony again during A WALK IN THE CLOUDS (1995). Every time I used to go to him, I’d say, “Tell me what I have to do.” And he loved to teach me and tell me what to do. I would always play a little less than what he would tell me cause he’s a little grandissimo. He’s a very great actor, very generous actor. There are only a very few.

SC: How about working with Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren on BLOOD FEUD?

GG: Mastroianni is very similar to Anthony Quinn, he shocked me with his professional level. Sophia Loren was extremely professional. And it was interesting how they approached the problems, how they got where they got, or what took them there. I think I was very lucky to start playing with a lot of great actors. I realized that the greatest actors in the world are the most enjoyable, most fun but they are extremely serious when they are in the play. But they never lose their joy or their desire of enjoying themselves and life. But sometimes especially when we are playing, we play between us. We play who fakes the most.

JG: How about the first time that you first saw SWEPT AWAY with an audience? What was their response, their reaction, it must have been very provocative at the time. The response on the island when you’re beating Melato?

GG: What is my impression of the reaction of the audience?

JG: Yeah.

GG: Actually we increased the slapping and the intensity of the fights. We accepted the reaction that we expected, and this even with SEVEN BEAUTIES. In Italy the reaction was completely different. The first screening of SWEPT AWAY, the audience fell asleep and in the next screening they said this is a dramatic, not a comedy!

JG: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.

GG: If you are in the street and you see a little man with a stick, that is Chaplin, that is cinema. And if you want to study cinema you have to study Chaplin!

STAGECOACH: Kudos to Criterion for one of the top DVD releases of the year, a gorgeously restored high definition digital transfer of John Fords classic STAGECOACH (1939), available on DVD and Blu-ray. It is of course the seminal Western that redefined this most American of genres and made an “A” movie star out of Marion Michael Morrison aka John Wayne. Although STAGECOACH has often been credited as reviving the big budget Hollywood Western, there had already been a number during the 30 (DeMille’s UNION PACIFIC, released a few months before STAGECOACH, Lloyd’s 1937 WELLS FARGO, Vidor’s 1936 THE TEXAS RANGERS, DeMille’s 1936 THE PLAINSMAN, Walsh’s completely forgotten 1932 WILD GIRL). What Ford did achieve with his movie was a more adult and more artistic take on the horse opera. STAGECOACH contains most of the elements associated with Ford -- great performances (Claire Trevor, John Carradine, Andy Devine, George Bancroft, Donald Meek and Thomas Mitchell in an Oscar-winning role), stunning black and white cinematography (by Bert Glennon) on Monument Valley locations, a perfect screenplay by Dudley Nichols based on Ernest Haycox’s short story “Stage to Lordsburg,” brilliant editing by Otho Lovering, and a music score by Richard Hageman based on traditional folk songs. Before he directed CITIZEN KANE, his first feature, Orson Welles studied one film, STAGECOACH, and often cited the movie as the quintessential motion picture experience. Even today, 70 years after its original release STAGE COACH offers the viewer art and entertainment in a tight and compelling 96 minutes.

STAGECOACH’s visual glory has been diminished over the years, with the negative considered long lost, but Criterion has managed to beautifully restore it, using a 1942 nitrate dupe negative as its primary source. The supplements for this release are up to Criterion’s high standards and include the recently rediscovered BUCKING BROADWAY (1917), starring Harry Carey. Ford was only twenty three when he directed this 54-minute movie and already demonstrates a genius for storytelling and pictorial composition. It’s a thoroughly entertaining silent about a cowboy who heads to New York City to rescue the gal who has gone away with a city slicker.

On STAGECOACH Jim Kitses provides exceptional audio commentary, there is a new video appreciation of STAGECOACH and Ford by Peter Bogdanovich, a new video interview with Ford’s grandson, Dan Ford, on the family home movies. There’s another new piece with Buzz Bissinger about Monument Valley’s Harry Goulding, pitching Ford on shooting there (a location Ford would later revisit for MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, FORT APACHE, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, THE SEARCHERS, SERGEANT RUTLEDGE, and CHEYENNE AUTUMN). Top stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong pays homage to stunt man Yakima Canutt, creator of STAGECOACH’S memorable stunts (Armstrong recreated Canutt’s coach-to-team of horses gag in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), a video essay by Ford expert Tag Gallagher, a booklet with an essay by critic David Cairns and the original Haycox short story, and a 1949 episode of the Screen Directors Playhouse radio show with Wayne, Trevor, Ward Bond, introduced my Ford. But that’s not all -- Philip Jenkinson’s lengthy 1968 video interview with Ford is also included, a legendary session in which professional Irishman Ford at age 73 alternately mocks the British interviewer while demonstrating an irascible charm that has rarely been mentioned in the many books on his life and films.

And here’s some AMAZING news for Ford fans and silent film lovers everywhere -; 75 silent films have been discovered in New Zealand and are in the process of restoration. The cache includes the lost Ford UPSTREAM (1927), a backstage drama, and the trailer for Ford’s STRONG BOY (1929), another lost Ford, this one starring Victor McLaglen, representing the only extant moving images from the film. Dave Kehr writes about the finds at www.davekehr.com.

DISNEY: Tim Burton’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010) has grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide; it’s a drastic re-telling of the Lewis Carroll story, an almost medieval sci-fi adventure fairy tale that incorporates healthy doses of Peter Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS techniques and hints of THE WIZARD OF OZ and even JOAN OF ARC. In theatres, the film demonstrated Burton’s tasteful use of 3D effects; on DVD and Blu-ray it’s a colorful, sumptuous work with a wonderful performance by Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter. Disney has released the title in a three-disc combo pack with standard DVD, Blu-ray, and digital copy, with a dozen featurettes on the classic characters and the making of the film.

John Gallagher

jgmovie@gmail.com