Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life Page 8

  It wasn’t until Gabriel García Márquez died that I found out that he had been hiding in the folds of the set for Too Bad She’s Bad. One of the greatest contemporary authors, Gabo, like so many others, had come to Rome in pursuit of the dream of Cinecittà, and he’d entered the Experimental Film Center thanks to the Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri. In a recent interview he described how, in Too Bad She’s Bad, he was the third assistant director—in other words, the bouncer. That’s why, during the shooting, he hadn’t been able to approach me as he would have liked to: his job was to keep out the curious onlookers. What a shame! It might have been the start of a great friendship.

  In Too Bad She’s Bad, a splendid black-and-white movie, Marcello and I met for the first time. We immediately fell in love—silver-screen love, of course.

  I still remember the first time I saw him. I was standing on the steps of the building where we were to make the movie. He, from a few floors up, was watching me.

  “Ciao,” he greeted me, as though he were somewhere up in the air.

  “Ciao,” I answered, shy and excited.

  We got along instantly, and our relationship was intact through all the years of his life, without ever a wrinkle. On that first set we grew familiar with each other against the backdrop of postwar Rome, a carefree, brightly lit city. The people there had started traveling again, going to the beach, swimming, loving each other and having fun. We felt good together, Marcello and I. What a couple we were! Simple, beautiful, real.

  In the movie Marcello plays the part of Paolo, a kind but not particularly intelligent young man who has lost his family in the air raids and is trying to make a new life for himself by driving a car for a taxi company. He can’t resist uninhibited Lina who, while trying to rob him, hums “Bongo bongo bongo” with adorable arrogance. My character was new and unusual for the times: the descendant of a family of thieves. She accompanies her father, a scoundrel, played by a marvelous De Sica, as he commits perfect thefts. Again, Vittorio guided my steps, as well as those of young Mastroianni, who had worked only in the theater until then.

  Ten years older than me and much more self-confident, Marcello came to the set delightfully unprepared. By contrast, I applied myself like a schoolgirl, for fear of making mistakes and looking bad. I also had some very long parts in some very long scenes, as if I were the only one speaking. I remember one of them in particular, which took place on the steps where we’d met for the first time. When I finished my long recitation, Marcello hugged me, laughing: “How do you manage to remember everything, how do you do it?”

  “Because I study. You don’t study. You could remember everything if you wanted to, it’s just that you wait until the last minute to get down to work . . .”

  What fun we had! We were young and irresponsible and the world was our oyster.

  A lot of the credit goes to Blasetti, no doubt, who knew how to relate to us actors: he knew how to get the best out of us, he respected, appreciated, and loved us. He was a perfectionist, famous for doing the same scene over again. Even after the tenth try, he’d take Marcello, Vittorio, and me by the arm and say: “Beautiful, but . . . ,” and we’d start over again from scratch. We might do two dozen takes.

  Sandro expected from others the same dedication to hard work that he had and the same passion that he felt. With me, both were guaranteed. Maybe this explains why we always got along so well.

  Vittorio, working as an actor, was humble and respectful and accepted everything that the director told him, without ever judging or disagreeing. Often, however, Sandro called him over to discuss a particular scene, changing it over and over again.

  “What do you say, Vittò, is this how we should do it? Or do you prefer the close-up?”

  Sandro had immense respect for his collaborators, and he knew that having De Sica as a colleague was invaluable. They were a great pair of gentlemen, of the kind you don’t see around anymore.

  Blasetti’s moviemaking technique was unsurpassable and he had an outstanding eye for the stills. He would come to the set wearing thirties-style boots and knickerbockers, because there was mud everywhere, and his wife had gotten tired of having to constantly clean him up and clean off his shoes and trousers. Sometimes he’d wear what resembled a funny pilot’s uniform.

  Blasetti was also very interested in the technical side of filmmaking, and even asked a factory that made mining carts to adapt one of them for the movie camera, in order to create tracking shots. Known as the Mancini cart, named after the owner of the factory, it was used for years in Italian cinema. Blasetti would also spend hours talking to the stagehands. He adored cinema and everyone that was involved in it. Although he did know how to smile, he was very authoritative, and for all of us working with him it was a lot like being in school.

  We were friends for the rest of our lives. He was always discovering something; if he’d been born a few centuries earlier, he might have been an explorer. Meanwhile, he’d discovered me, and I will always be deeply grateful to him.

  Interlude

  Images, notes, letters, poems. My treasure trove of memories, which I’ve set down on my bed, has the fragrance of life, and it makes me travel in time. It takes me back to the days of my youth, now so far away. Its luminous streak of memories and hopes also points the way to tomorrow’s path of dreams that can still come true.

  I sip the tea Ninni quietly left on the bedside table for me before she went to bed. Everything is ready for tomorrow, Christmas Eve, but I feel distant, lost in this sea of memories where my life ebbs and flows. Happiness and melancholy intermingle in mysterious forms—there cannot be the one without the other. Many people dear to me are no longer here, but they continue to speak inside me, through the achievements of my sons, through the imaginations of my grandchildren, who will bring great cheer to our table.

  The thought of them brings me back to the here and now. I can already savor the preparations, all of us together in the kitchen making the meatballs that Livia the cook used to make, a family tradition at Christmas. I can already imagine the children’s tiny hands covered in flour, the balls of meat of all different sizes dredged in breadcrumbs, the smell of fried food that compensates for the cold and lights up the winter with happiness. But the river of memories is calling me. And I trustingly abandon myself again to its flow.

  V

  MAMBO

  THE GHOSTLY ORCHESTRA

  As I thumb through the photographs, I stop to smile tenderly at one image I’d forgotten, a photograph of Carlo lightly stroking my head. It is worth a thousand words. That small gesture sums up all the depth of our feelings. I turn the picture over and read: Summer 1954. It was there, while making Woman of the River, that we finally understood we’d fallen in love. The girl who’d had to grow up too fast had become a woman, the extra had become an actress, and our intimacy had turned into love.

  In the photo, we’re on the set, during a break from the filming. Behind us is the Po Delta, with its gentle light, green fading into blue, water turning into sky. In that humid air swarming with mosquitoes, the actors and stagehands rode back and forth by bike or boat, just like the characters in the movie. The landscape melted into the canals, the small bridges, the grayness of the swamps encircled by reeds. And behind the dunes was the sea, which can sweep you off your feet and take you far away.

  Carlo created Woman of the River especially for me. The production was completely his, without the contribution of his longtime partner, De Laurentiis. If I’d realized at the time how much he’d invested in it I would have been paralyzed. But even without knowing, I felt the great weight of responsibility upon my shoulders. After The Gold of Naples and the Roman summer spent with Vittorio and Marcello acting like scoundrels in Too Bad She’s Bad, I was far from home, the lead female character starring in a dramatic role. Casting me was an act of faith on Carlo’s part, faith in my talent that was beginning to blossom.

  The idea of a dramatic role excited me because it gave me a chance to express my deepest
feelings, something that I found hard to do in real life. Yet it also felt like a huge challenge, and I worried that it might be too much for me. Will I manage? I wondered, frightened. No one answered.

  To make sure all went well, Carlo had, as always, thought big, bringing together all the most important names of filmmaking at the time. Rereading them now, one after another, I’m awed: for the scripts, he signed Alberto Moravia and Ennio Flaiano (who would also write the stories for 81/2 and La dolce vita); Giorgio Bassani, Antonio Altoviti, and a young Pier Paolo Pasolini, who’d just arrived in Rome to teach in a high school somewhere in the outskirts, together with the director, Mario Soldati. Scriptwriter Florestano Vancini, who’d made a documentary on the delta in 1951, was there, too.

  And, last but not least, we were also joined by writer-producer Basilio Franchina, who would prove to be one of the luckiest associations of my entire life. Sicilian-born, a reporter, author, and scriptwriter, a movie and art enthusiast, Basilio had been the neorealist filmmaker Giuseppe De Santis’s assistant director in Bitter Rice, in 1949, one of Ponti–De Laurentiis’s biggest hits, and worked often with De Santis. Set in the rice paddies of Vercelli, the film had crowned Silvana Mangano in the part of the mondina, a peasant rice worker, and turned her into an international star. Mangano worked alongside Vittorio Gassman, then a budding star, and a very handsome Raf Vallone, resolute, wise, and good-hearted. It’s a richly layered story, filled with emotion and social critique, and the title, Riso Amaro, is a pun in Italian. Riso in Italian means both rice and laughter, amaro means bitter, so the title reflects the bittersweet story. Silvana dances an unforgettable boogie-woogie before surrendering to her tragic end.

  To create a character that would fit me perfectly, a character with more than one mood, Carlo and Soldati had found inspiration in that damp clime, populated by beautiful women wearing bandannas and shorts, and by small-time crooks whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to make the women suffer. The movie was to contain a spectrum of moods, maybe a few too many, ranging from the sentimental to the dramatic until the final catastrophe takes place.

  My character, Nives, is a worker in an eel-pickling factory in the delta, in a town called Comacchio. An independent young woman, she had won the town’s beauty pageant and lives surrounded by friends and coworkers. For these working-class women, life is often harsh, but in their world, people stick together. They toil away with little time for distractions. Young and fresh-looking, Nives resists the attentions of handsome Gino, a smuggler who doesn’t want to settle down, played by Rik Battaglia, who looked a lot like Burt Lancaster.

  “Que bel ritmo tiene el mambo, que sonriso tiene el mambo,” Nives sings, sensuously. But as often happens to strong, passionate women, as soon as she falls in love she’s done for. In a long race across the swamp on his motorbike, Gino overcomes her resistance and Nives gives in to this tall, dark, and handsome man, fooling herself into thinking that they can have a family together, a house with a cooking range. Nives embodies the big and small hopes of ordinary people. Gino, however, feels trapped. He lives his life on the run, escaping—from himself, from the police, and, when he finds out that Nives is pregnant, from her. Who better than I could understand all this? It was a story I’d heard before.

  On the set we worked hard, nonstop. As the drama gradually built to its tragic ending, my anxiety grew and the pressure became unbearable. I didn’t feel anxious during the day, when I was busy in front of the camera, but it would creep up on me in the evening, when everything was calm. I’d lie down to go to sleep and all the things that had happened during the day, the scenes, the details, Soldati’s words—always a bit cold—Rik’s pranks, a line that I hadn’t said quite right, came back to me. I kept going over every detail, the lines I’d done wrong, the gestures I could have done better. As these thoughts went through my mind I’d start to feel very short of breath. Inside me I could hear the shrill sound of violins, playing for me all night long, keeping me awake.

  “Doctor, what’s wrong with me? I’m scared, a few months ago I caught pneumonia . . .” I asked. I was afraid that I was still feeling out of sorts and winded from getting sick when filming The Gold of Naples in that artificial rain. That pneumonia had crippled me at the end of the shooting.

  But the doctor had no doubts:

  “Don’t worry, Sophia,” he said. “It’s just a question of anxiety. Your lungs are perfectly fine. Your asthma is clearly psychological in nature. You must try to stay calm, control your emotions.”

  Hearing his reassurances, I didn’t know whether to be happy or even more concerned. Everyone knows how hard it is to tell your mind what to do. As soon as I would lay my head on the pillow, I’d start to wheeze, and during the worst nights I’d even run a slight fever. I was living a double life, during the day active and strong, during the night in a state of shock, assailed by that ghostly orchestra.

  Carlo, whenever he was around, tried to reassure me, minimizing the problem: “It’s nothing, change your sleeping position and I’m sure the Stradivariuses will vanish . . .” But I was suffering, and I was afraid I’d never make it to the end of the movie.

  As the days went by, the situation got worse, but, as if to make up for it, I received a wonderful gift: Basilio Franchina. At first, Carlo had asked him to direct Woman of the River, but then he changed his mind and instead gave him the job of scriptwriter and executive producer, expressly asking him to deal with my dialogues. Basilio didn’t take it badly; instead, he got down to work with his usual passion. While we were getting to know each other, he became aware of the problems I was having, and he made himself available so that I was never left on my own again. Our professional relationship turned into one of brother and sister, and this cheered me up, gave me strength, and helped me to find myself. I would never again be able to manage without him.

  When each day came to an end, I’d go to sleep accompanied by his gentle warning:

  “Sophia, don’t start with those violins again!”

  “I won’t,” I’d say to him, “as long as I know you’re by my side.”

  Basilio knew just what to do and say to help me with my crisis, quietly becoming a part of my life. Like all real friends he offered me the greatest gift: he encouraged me to be myself.

  SET ANOTHER PLACE AT THE TABLE

  I’ve always had a sort of sixth sense about choosing the people with whom to share my most intimate, private side. And I’m hardly ever wrong. When I am mistaken about someone, I move away calmly, on tiptoe. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t like to suffer, nor do I want to make anyone else suffer.

  Generally, I’m somewhat of an introvert; I love peace and quiet and to be alone. Social life wears me out. I don’t get too familiar with strangers, nor do I give much importance to acquaintances. I trust my instinct, I can quickly size up the person I have before me, how sincere they are, what their intentions are.

  When I saw Basilio for the first time I knew instantly that we were always going to be friends.

  He was an intelligent, cultured, extremely polite Palermitan, and very kind. Like many Sicilians he was reserved, discreet, and he never talked about himself, his loves, his ambitions. Basilio was a friend of the painter Renato Guttuso, and the directors Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini.

  Because Soldati had a sarcastic, detached manner, I didn’t at all feel comfortable with him, and we didn’t always agree on the set. He was all brains, too intellectual, he explained things the way he wanted to, and that was that. He showed no compassion for a young girl who’d just started working in cinema and was accustomed to trusting her instinct.

  Working for Mario I felt suspended between my shyness and the growing awareness of how I wanted to act. Sometimes we’d be at loggerheads. I was still new to the business and art. I didn’t have the right to speak my mind, nor would I have been capable of doing so. I was sure he wasn’t the right director for that movie. He definitely wasn’t able to help me.

  Basilio, however, understood
instantly what I needed to be able to do my very best. He was with me at all times, at makeup, before, during and after the shooting, besides trying to quell the ghosts that visited me during the night. He’d show me where the camera was, the marks on the ground, where to look in a scene. With endless patience, he taught me, offering me images that could inspire me for the more dramatic scenes. In the evening, in my trailer, we’d go over the script for the next day, analyzing the nuances, the two of us looking for the heartstrings to pull, the feelings to stir up inside me. He helped me to transform my insecurity into emotion, my weakness into passion.

  Even though Basilio and I were working on the present, taking apart every word, every line of the script that I would be performing imminently, we were also anticipating the end of the movie, where the most difficult scene awaited me, one that would demand everything I had to give.

  A clever psychologist, besides being someone who knew how to make a movie, Basilio first talked to me about the climactic scene only vaguely, only alluding to it. Then, as we gradually approached the fateful moment, when Nives loses her son in the delta, he started to get to the point. He waited for the right time to say something, when his suggestions would be the most effective: “Imagine a small, young, defenseless child. Your son. And you, Nives, are his mother. Outside there’s water, water everywhere. And suddenly, you can’t find him anywhere . . .”

  Then he’d pile it on: “You look for him, you start to feel faint, you feel like you’re losing your mind, everyone wants to help you, but you just don’t know what to do . . .”