Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life Page 7

  “Act with your whole body, down to your toes and the tips of your fingers, they’re just as important as your voice, your eyes, your face,” he would never tire of telling me. Of course, he was exaggerating to some extent, but those words held an important truth. When you act, you do it completely, with your feelings and with your head, your skin and your guts, your memories and your heart. In our business, this is the only secret that really counts.

  That first morning I was feeling so nervous that to overcome the cold and build up some courage I even took two sips of cognac. And then suddenly it was evening! The day had gone by in a flash, so fast I hadn’t even noticed. After twelve hours’ hard work, when we all met for dinner, I was a different person. It had been like playing, Vittorio acting along with me from behind the movie camera, I in front of it. We had acted, but most importantly we’d had fun. With his special touch, he’d released me from all my worries. Both of us had gone back to being two crazy Neapolitans, who improvised with sheer joy. Vittorio was fond of saying that “Neapolitans, like children, always look good on camera.”

  The shooting went on for twenty days, and they were twenty days of celebration. The movie was based on well-known short stories about the people of Naples, written by Giuseppe Marotta. So the film was a big event for the people of the Materdei quarter of the city, where the shop in which my character, the Pizza Girl, worked—Pizzeria Starita. People flocked to the streets just to see us act, wanting to get swept up in the magic of their city lit up by the spotlights of the set. So great was the confusion caused by the crowd of street urchins and people with nothing else to do that even the fire department had to be called in. But ours was a fire of cheerfulness and vigor, the kind of fire that was good for everyone.

  As the filming continued, my confidence grew. I started walking just like the Pizza Girl: head held high, chest out, my whole life ahead of me. I can still see Vittorio behind the camera, showing me how to respond and move, so that I embodied the very soul of my character—and everything he expected of me.

  “You’re good, keep at it!” he’d shout into the megaphone, satisfied. I’d look at him, finding it hard to believe that all this was really happening to me. He pushed me beyond my limits. He helped me climb over the wall that hemmed in my deepest feelings. A few years later he would do even more, and lead me into an even greater performance in the land of tragedy.

  Although comedy was no less difficult for me at the time, I realized that in that lighthearted world, everything revolves around the rhythm, and it would take very little to fall into coarseness or parody.

  The Sofia of “Pizze a credito” (Pizzas on Credit), my episode in the film, runs a small frying shop with her husband, Rosario—played by Giacomo Furia, with whom I became good friends, and who would always be like a brother to me. Everyone stops at the couple’s shop, more because of Sofia’s attractiveness and flirtatiousness than because of the quality of the pizza—night watchmen and lawyers, drivers and priests, clerks and young kids are all charmed by her. Even the brother of famous Neapolitan singer Giacomo Rondinella, Luciano, flirts with Sofia, serenading her from his cart, to the joy of the onlookers both inside and outside the movie.

  “EAT NOW AND PAY IN EIGHT DAYS!” says the sign, as well as the words that the husband and wife shout out to attract customers.

  “Venite, venite a fa’ marenna! Donna Sofia ha preparato ’e briosce!” (Come on in! Come in and have a snack, Donna Sofia’s made brioches for everyone!)

  The turning point in my episode, “Pizze a credito,” happens one Sunday morning, while everyone else is in church and Sofia meets her lover in his apartment and leaves behind the emerald ring her husband had given her, “the most beautiful ring in the Stella quarter of Naples.” Rosario had used up all his savings to buy the ring—for love, but also to put on airs. Their bad luck in losing the ring instantly becomes everybody else’s, and on a wintry, rainy day in Naples, the people in the streets don’t hesitate to say what’s on their minds, as they follow the main characters around in their search for what they’ve lost.

  I will never forget the great actor Paolo Stoppa, who plays Don Peppino, an inconsolable widower who has lost everything and has decided to end it all. But instead of jumping off the balcony, he finds consolation in a plate of spaghetti. A disciplined professional, he watched my first lighthearted footsteps with affectionate detachment. We would work together in other films in the future.

  And we took many footsteps, running from one house to another, from one story to another, surrounded by a world in motion, a world made up of wit and commonplaces, superstitions and gossip, humanity and backbiting. It was a real, everyday world, that sought a way, a wholly Neapolitan one, to overcome obstacles and free itself of the yoke of power, to exorcise death—which was always lying in wait right around the corner or on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius—while enjoying a jurnata ’e sole (a sunny day).

  In each episode of the movie, the characters—all of them excellent actors, Totò, Mangano, De Sica, De Filippo—have something that’s bothering them: Totò’s problem is a thug who’s been living in his house for the past ten years; Silvana Mangano used to be a prostitute, a past she hopes to free herself of through marriage; De Sica, who in this film became an actor among actors again, has a gambling addiction, something that, alas, plagued him in real life, too; the great Eduardo De Filippo is an arrogant old duke who, when driving past, expects everyone to clear the way ahead for him. The people use their most disrespectful, insolent form of expression to get back at the duke, what’s known in Naples as ’o pernacchio. But although’o pernacchio broadly equates with “giving a Bronx cheer” or blowing raspberries, in this case it really has nothing to do with that. That’s more banal, anyone could do it, and it lacks resonance. ’O pernacchio, as the Neapolitans use it, lets you say to a person of power that he or she is “’na schifezza, ’na schifezza, ’na schifezza”—in other words, simply foul, disgusting, the pits. The person who is the receiving end of ’o pernacchio suffers tragic humiliation. The person who learns how to execute it fully savors catharsis.

  Everyone knows that Naples is a city where the high and the low are jumbled up together, where poverty and nobility live side by side. Intellectuals like Eduardo and Peppino, Vittorio and Totò, who was known as the Prince of Laughter, and was one of the most popular actors in the history of Italian films, spent much of their time with the common people, surrounded by them, so they could describe them just as they really were. And the people knew this and loved them for it.

  At the end of my episode, I make a triumphant stroll along the streets, wearing my ring once more. My generous neckline and impudent smile actually revealed me to myself, before revealing me to others. More importantly, that walk delivered me into Vittorio’s hands. From that moment onward he became one of the strongest influences of my life. He and I would work together for the next twenty years, and another thirteen movies, and he would teach me everything I know, supporting me, helping me to get my bearings. Often with the help of the great screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, he found me the characters that were most suited to my personality, pushing me toward the gale winds of drama or the light breeze of comedy, where the risk of overdoing things is high, and where sometimes the chance of getting through it all safely is slim. We really loved each other, like father and daughter. I admired him unrestrainedly, and he always helped me to do my best. And the two of us were soon to be joined by Marcello Mastroianni, thus completing our perfect triangle.

  The Catholic Cinema Center, also known as the CCC, didn’t like the “Pizze a credito” segment. Too much adultery, too happy, too sensuous. But everyone else did, except for my mother, who peppered everything with her usual dose of pessimism. She’d come with me to see the premiere of the movie—she was always right there beside me at every important event—and as soon as they turned the lights back on, she exclaimed resentfully: “That Ponti guy has ruined you . . . the episode with Silvana Mangano was much more beautiful than yours!�
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  “Mammina, what are you saying,” I replied, trying to calm her down. “They’re very different, extremely different. One’s a comedy, the other’s a tragedy . . .”

  She always wanted the best for me, and she could never stop believing that the world wasn’t out to get us, to take away what was ours, all the things we’d earned with so much hard work. She had been so deeply affected by the disappointments in her own life, early on. I, instead, was completely forward-looking. And nothing could stop me now.

  My triumphant walk in the wet dress in the movie became famous, giving me a tad of glory and a passport to my future, but the rain that showered me from artificial rain-making machines, also made me sick from pneumonia, which I had a hard time recovering from. During the last few days of shooting, I’d gone to work with a fever, and on one of the last evenings in Naples, while we were all out celebrating the end of the movie, I collapsed and had to be taken back to the hotel. Maybe I’d overdone it, but of course, what I got back from the experience was priceless: “A love of life, endless patience, constant hope,” as Marotta wrote. In other words, the gold of Naples, which was soon to carry me all the way to America.

  THE PICCERELLA GROWS UP

  Totò, Prince Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porfirogenito Gagliardio De Curtis di Bisanzio, was the undisputed king of this golden side of Naples. I had followed him around on the set so many times since my arrival in Cinecittà in 1950, watching him, timidly and adoringly, as I performed my bit parts, as one of the extras in Bluebeard’s Six Wives and as a young girl in Tototarzan. Even before I’d moved to Rome, I’d gone to Scalera, one of the production companies where the prince was working. I was still not much more than a girl, out of work and without a penny to my name, and I’d entered the room on tiptoe. One of the members of the production staff, maybe touched by my youth, had let me sit down to watch. Totò, eyeing me, had asked one of his assistants: “Who’s that piccerella (that little girl)?

  Hesitantly, I’d approached him to introduce myself: “Scicolone Sofia, I’m very honored . . .”

  He was very sweet, he smiled at me, and offered me some of his precious time. “What’s a young kid like you doing here? Where are you from?”

  “I’m from Pozzuoli, I’m here to work in the movies . . .”

  “Ah, the movies,” he’d sighed, making one of his famous faces just for me.

  For an instant his ironic and irresistible wistfulness was all for me. I drank it down like a glass of fresh water, and it made me feel stronger. If the great Totò was offering me a minute of his attention, then anything was possible. It was a sure sign of all the good things that were going to happen.

  But the prince didn’t just take time out to chat with me that day. Before I left, he put a 100,000-lire banknote in my hand, perfectly aware of the poverty I’d been trying to hide. I think he’d seen the hunger in my eyes: for food, work, or maybe simply for the movies. Mammina and I were able to eat for a long time with that money, it was as if we’d hit the jackpot.

  His daughter, Liliana, describes how one afternoon, seeing me show up in his dressing room on the set for Bluebeard, Totò nearly fainted.

  “It’s dangerous to contemplate certain panoramas at two in the afternoon; all these promontories and valleys are giving me double vision,” he said.

  Having had the honor of meeting him, I can safely say that the king of comedians was always acting, even when he wasn’t on the set, and that he would give anything for a good line.

  I ran into Totò again in 1953 on the set of a movie, Poverty and Nobility, based on a comedy written by Eduardo Scarpetta. Totò played Felice Sciosciamocca, a penniless scribe whose name means “with mouth agape.” His character was hired, along with his family, by a young marquis to act the part of the love-stricken man’s aristocratic relatives for his bride-to-be, Gemma (yours truly).

  “Talk about Carthage and all the Carthaginians,” exclaimed Totò when he saw me wearing the future bride’s costume. “We’ll welcome you into the bosom of our family, if you welcome us into yours . . .”

  The prince was absolutely irresistible. Spending time with him dispelled every fear, dissipated any embarrassment. Also because he’d invent half the script on the spur of the moment, and no one could stop him. In Poverty and Nobility, Toto has a famous scene that has gone down in the history of cinema, where he stuffs his pockets with spaghetti. It speaks volumes about the hunger of our people, of the ravenousness of Pulcinella, the character in our commedia dell’arte who represents the Neapolitan essence, and of the starvation I saw with my very own eyes in Pozzuoli during the war. Hunger that you can only fend off with a smile, with the lightness of spirit that we Neapolitans are filled to overflowing with.

  Naples will always be Italy’s most beautiful city, inhabited by its most beautiful people. It’s a city that has witnessed so much indecency, so many ugly things there that today it needs to be able to imagine a better tomorrow. That might explain why, in 2013, when my son Edoardo approached me about doing a short film, Human Voice, based on a play by Jean Cocteau, right there in Naples, I accepted with immense joy. It’s my small contribution of hope to the land I adore.

  Life has taken me far away from my roots, but my heart will always be right there, in the light, the language, the Parthenopean cuisine. The more time goes by, the more speaking Neapolitan dialect comes naturally to me. Maybe it’s because I express myself better in Neapolitan, I can say things that I can’t say in Italian, let alone in English or in French. I put so much love into this language that even my children understand me when I speak it, and now even my grandchildren do.

  The same goes for Naples’ traditional dishes, which take me back home, to the kitchen on Via Solfatara, where I’d spend my days, amid the scents and aromas of poverty. It was in that kitchen that Mamma Luisa’s singing and the warmth of the stove kept me company, and that, when there was enough money, the meat sauce bubbled in the pot.

  Nowadays I don’t cook that much, and I eat very little. My mind is filled with a million thoughts. But when my children come to visit me from the United States and they ask me to make something special for them, I isolate myself in my kingdom and I’m in Pozzuoli again. The recipe that gives me the greatest satisfaction is “la Genovese,” those ten pounds of onions sautéed until they’re soft, to which I add the rolls of stuffed meat, and let everything simmer for four hours. In today’s world, where everything is so fast, four hours seem endless, but in that amount of time I can savor my childhood from so long ago.

  But to go back to Totò, I was to run into him again in The Anatomy of Love, directed by none other than Alessandro Blasetti. Another great master of Italian cinema, Sandro believed in me even when I was still a nobody. The Anatomy of Love was another movie in episodes, a medley that gathered together all the leading names of the times, from De Sica to Mastroianni, from Yves Montand to Alberto Sordi, from Eduardo De Filippo to the magical Quartetto Cetra. Assigned to the typewriter were Alberto Moravia and Vasco Pratolini, Giuseppe Marotta and Giorgio Bassani, Achille Campanile, Sandro Continenza, and Suso Cecchi D’Amico. I was working with Totò, in an episode where he, a professional photographer, has his camera stolen while trying to pick up a beautiful girl, played by me.

  They say that Blasetti was quite taken by my ability to accompany the great ham. I who always loved to learn the script by heart, sometimes even before I had to, had understood that it would be pointless here to do so with the prince. Totò loved to improvise, he filled the screenplay with little gestures, inventions, dreams. Better to go along with him, try to keep up.

  On that occasion, the fact that I’d grown up in Pozzuoli helped. Our Neapolitan spirits—which consisted of intuition, scent, wit—came together and made sparks.

  Although I would never work with Totò again, I would soon afterward meet Blasetti in another movie that since then I’ve always kept close to my heart.

  A SCOUNDREL IN A TAXI CAB

  The first person who beli
eved I’d be perfect for Too Bad She’s Bad was Suso Cecchi D’Amico, the only woman in the field of the great scriptwriters back then. “The oak tree whose branches produced so much Italian cinema,” as Lina Wertmüller describes her. While reading Alberto Moravia’s Roman Tales, Suso had run into a lovely episode that takes place right at the beginning of the short story “Il fanatico” (“The Fanatic”).

  One day Suso and I met on a train. After catching sight of me at the station, she came to the car I was traveling in and sat down next to me. Her familiar manner put me at ease.

  Looking me straight in the eyes she simply said: “I have the perfect story for you.”

  “Why not!” I replied, enthusiastically. Suso had worked on the story with the screenwriter Ennio Flaiano, Moravia himself, and Sandro Continenza; they’d taken it to Blasetti, who was looking for a story for a movie. The producers’ first choice had been Gina Lollobrigida, who was considered to be number one at the time. But Suso had seen me at Cinecittà while I was working with Bolognini on We’ll Meet in the Gallery, and she’d been impressed by my cheerfulness. In the movie, I had danced the mambo, which I would dance again in Woman of the River and in the Bread, Love, and . . . series, wearing a gorgeous red dress.

  After our brief encounter on the train, Suso, backed by Flaiano and Blasetti himself, insisted that the producers give me the part.

  Sandro was happy to have me on the set again, and he was offering me my first opportunity to play the leading role. Until that time I’d always played bit parts, and in The Gold of Naples, although I’d had an important part, it had only been for one of the episodes. Now I was going to have to hold the stage for the whole movie, aided by two of the very finest partners, Vittorio De Sica and Marcello Mastroianni. It was the start of a long, successful, blissful journey.

  On that occasion I also met Mara, Blasetti’s daughter, who worked in production. Her eyes had seen the stuff of the actress in me, even though I was still a novice, but for a long time she continued to talk to me as though I were a child. We still keep in touch, laugh together, and we like to remember the good old days, as if they were yesterday.