Rediscovered cinema, more noble and beautiful than any ideology

Only a heart rate monitor could detect that every time I pass through Via Principessa Clotilde , in front of that famous door, my heartbeat suddenly accelerates, forcing me to move away as quickly as possible, then catch my breath. It was like this for the first thirty years of my Roman cinematic life. From the early 1950s to today, that door was the entrance to ANAC, the National Association of Film Authors . It was located almost at the end of the short downhill street, adjacent to Piazza del Popolo. A severe dark green door and a plaque. Nothing else. I knew that there, hundreds of them, gathered the most significant directors and screenwriters of Italian cinema . I knew that heated meetings were held in that vast basement, with fiery speeches especially from Maselli, the undisputed leader, who in addition to wearing hideous pendulous ties (all Italian directors at the time wore ties) had himself photographed by four synchronized Polaroids while he slept.

My congenital shyness and a chronic sense of inadequacy made me imagine that context as the most terrifying . I would wake up at night sweating, still affected by the nightmare of finding myself in front of Aristarco who, having discovered my Christian Democrat past, threatened to publish on the front page of Paese Sera a petition with one hundred signatories demanding my expulsion from Rome.

“Come and inaugurate the Anac…”, its president proposed to me a few days ago, arousing some amazement in me. I tell him: “But how come, they founded it in '52…”.

He tells me: “We have a new headquarters… you’ll see.”

“But I’ve never been in one… the one about Princess Clotilde with Loy and Lizzani scared me…”. “Afraid of what?” “Not to be left-wing…”. “Since I have been president it is no longer necessary…”. “But how do they welcome me when they see a Catholic who has always voted for Berlusconi coming to inaugurate the Anac…”. “You’ll see the celebrations they’ll throw for you…”. “Those who always looked at me badly?” “They are dead.” “Everyone?” I demand reassurance.

“Almost… now we like to talk more about cinema than politics…”.

He's Francesco Martinotti , and he's not only a talented director but also the president of this soft version of the authors' association. He has a friend, a documentary filmmaker, who drives a small city car. He calls me maestro, and I like him immediately. Some call me professor, and I like him less. Monicelli hated being called maestro. "Call Fellini that, he deserves it!" he protested sharply. Monicelli would have liked to be Fellini, even Visconti, no matter how much he put on airs, would have liked to be Fellini. All of us who made films in those distant years would have liked to be Fellini, not only for the Oscars but above all for having proposed among the figurines of the nativity scene that mysterious statuette who is the archetype of all the world's directors.

We've now moved away from the center: "But where are we going?" I ask. "A few minutes," the president reassures me, proposing the usual riddle of where that guy lived to distract me. Rossellini on Via Caroncini, Visconti on the Salaria, Bernardo at Babuino, the professor (Rosi) on Via Gregoriana. And this journey of ours from central Rome to the furthest outskirts will prove to me a metaphor for the great Italian cinema, now miles removed from the awareness of its impact on the country's growth.

Those were the years when my mother regularly looked out the window on the Babuino to see who was passing by and then immediately called me at Findus in Bologna. "I saw Pontecorvo... he's got a shiny head and white pants..." she shouted into the phone. "Yesterday Lualdi came by and today Pontecorvo... we're doing well..." “Do you know who was at the grocery store?” Antonio interjected. "Who?". “Sergio Amidei… he’s tall and has a deep voice… he bought some stracchino cheese.” "Come on…". The thought of the inventor of neorealism descending from his apartment on Piazza di Spagna to buy some stracchino cheese convinced me that perhaps the world I'd been dreaming of for years wasn't so impenetrable. Cinema was getting closer and closer. Until my final move to Rome.

The first "smart move" I was advised to make myself available to swell the list of protesters—those many who were summoned as soon as the censors called for cuts or imposed bans.

We usually met in Piazza Esedra.

“For the torch,” I asked my supervisor. “Bring her.” “I have two…”: they were the ones I had left from Cavani’s “The Night Porter” and Brass’ “Howl”.

“Bring two, maybe give one to a friend…”

The hardest thing to bear was being called comrade.

As the procession formed, everyone tried to get close to Volontè, who had a megaphone and was chanting slogans against the fascist government, the brutal censorship, and so on. He had a powerful voice, and people would lean out of their windows. Some women, seeing all those lights in the street, thought it was the nighttime procession to Divine Love and crossed themselves, infuriating Volontè. To avoid any misunderstanding, he chanted "Bandiera rossa."

For the sake of consistency, during those "Red Flag" marches I simply lip-read my lips without making any sound. However, I also lip-read my lips and said "Pink Flag," achieving the same effect without so blatantly betraying my origins.

In reality, having always voted for the Christian Democrats, I knew that to make films, you had to demonstrate your support for them. There was no alternative. In short, I cried, I shouted my indignation for the martyrs Bertolucci and Antonioni, stocking up on fresh torches in Piazza Navona. One night, marching along Via del Tritone, I found myself between Elio Petri and Volontè, two giants of cinema and protest.

“Who are you, comrade?” Gianmaria asked me. “Go ahead…”. “Well done, comrade Avati…” Volontè told me.

The first thing I had to do to define myself as part of the world of true cinema, the Roman kind, was to apply practically every possible apocope. The first filmmaker I spoke to in the new idiom was a certain Siracusa, Piero Vivarelli's script supervisor: "Have you already gone to eat?" I asked him to test my Roman dialect. "But you're from Bologna..." he immediately spotted me.

The elite world of authors was entirely different; most of them were not Roman and spoke in refined Italian. Almost all of them came from humanities faculties and enriched their eloquence with quotations in Latin or French intended to arouse general appreciation.

While I never had the courage to join the ANAC, the generosity and welcoming nature of my fellow citizen Laura Betti allowed me to join the select guests on her terrace on Via Montoro. Another cultural hub whose patrons included Moravia and Pasolini. My wife and I waited for Sergio Citti, the only one who didn't intimidate me, to find the courage to climb those dark stairs. He had short arms, and the jackets he wore completely obscured his hands. He spoke in Roman dialect with an internal tone of voice, without moving his lips much; his words often remained in his mouth, and you could only perceive a faint echo.

Up there, on the top floor, was Laura, whom she called Alberto Moravia "La Moravia," and who had generously approved of Pasolini when he involved me in the screenplay for "Salò." The seating arrangement at those events followed a shared hierarchical order. Moravia was always in the center of the sofa, Pasolini at his side, Bertolucci, Bellocchio, Siciliano, Trombadori, and so on, arranged in a circle on armchairs or chairs. Then we, the audience, those standing in a semicircle, silent but enjoying that gossipy conversation that made those absent the regular target. When the limping Moravia arrived, everyone stood. I've never written anything about the psychological subjugation I felt during those evenings and the enormous seductiveness unleashed by that conglomeration of superior minds, the same ones Laura had made her own thanks to her extraordinary lasagna.

Laura described herself as Pasolini's bride in a marriage of honor. She was the only one who had sought his sex (she told me so herself), laying him on an afternoon bed in her own home, convinced she would make him change his mind. Trevi, ungratefully, wrote the worst of her, but it is up to intellectuals to seek and find it in those they respect, and Trevi is a teacher and friend in this.

Many, myself included, wouldn't be here if it weren't for Laura's generosity, how much space she took up wherever she stood, holding the lasagna pan high. "This is the ragù from Via Galliera... Moravia likes the crust... leave it to her," she would shout. I couldn't even imagine then that this place, the concentration of the town's cultural power, would no longer light its wax bowls, and Laura would no longer offer us the delicacies of Via Galliera. But all that was in the early 1970s, while now, with the mission of going to the inauguration of the new Anac, we find ourselves imprisoned by an endless succession of cars. The president is sitting in the back and reassures me with a lie: "In a few minutes, we'll be there."

And the Rome of the discreet Art Nouveau villas of the Nomentano neighborhood, of the gushing flowerbeds, of the Romanian doormen and maids, gradually fades, replaced by a Rome dominated by enormous, increasingly impersonal buildings. And from there, the endless Roman suburbs branch off, an inextricable maze of streets. I realize that this journey toward nothingness that shows no sign of ending contains the history of Italian cinema. How, in all these kilometers we travel, so many seasons have unfolded, from its postwar rebirth, immediately considered the greatest cinema in the world. And our endless journey is a metaphor for that Italian cinema that, from that lofty self-awareness, has gradually given up the ambition of truly counting for something, of having an enormous legacy to honor.

The filmmakers of that time, despite their arrogance, despite their inability to renounce excessive demagogic ostentation, found themselves, thanks to their works, at the pinnacle of our social and cultural history, some reaching the pinnacles of the highest poetry. But they did so corporately, leaving no room for manoeuvre. And while I shared little of their ramblings, as long as they were able to resist, without fear of appearing anachronistic, our cinema relied on solid support. Perhaps it was the weariness of the demographic factor that opened the first cracks, deludingly leaving to those who would come after the defense of a cinema that aspired to be synonymous with culture. This legacy gradually proved to be no longer viable, and the filmmakers gambled away their purity, their independence, in exchange for a non-marginal role in production circles. Then everything came crashing down when, rather than the authoritative reviews of Kezich or Cosulich, people preferred to read that cinetel, the relentless box office report. Quantity was assumed, as in any commercial context, to be the measure of the quality of the offering. From that moment on, the cultural aspect was no longer, if not marginally, a necessary element in the evaluation. Even less so for the state, which should have defended that very courageous, quality cinema with the evidence of solid financial support, found itself rewarding waste, stratospheric budgets, and even the major American studios that certainly didn't need our help.

After consulting the phone's navigation system dozens of times, our driver finally smiles: "Here we are in Via Cimone!"

A street like many others in a now multi-ethnic neighborhood.

“It says 161 here.” “That's it…”, claims the president. “But no… that’s it, you can’t read.” In fact, on the entrance to the shop located between a greengrocer's and a kebab shop, the words Pilates Gym are painted in large letters. “But it’s a gym…”, I try to object. “We need to put up a sign,” the president of the film authors reassures me. Three steps and we're in the former Pilates gym. About ten people, roughly my age. Then, little by little, the former gym comes alive with people whose birth records have made them unrecognizable. Overall, shorter, smaller, more fragile, yet happier and more liberated by those who felt the burden of the great years of Italian cinema, when they claimed to carry the fate of an unjust society on their young shoulders. But now, the vulnerability of the elderly makes them confuse laughter with tears. "I'm Perpignani!" someone says, hugging me. One of the editors of the greatest Italian directors, the only one to have worked in editing room with Orson Welles. And it's in Roberto Perpignani's warm embrace, a man who might have avoided me in his golden years, that one can see the radical transformation that Italian culture has undergone in the decades since then. The crowds are growing, and with them the chatter. An old man who was undoubtedly with Volontè shouted against the censorship: "No, I'm not there anymore... I'm staying with my daughter in Marino... we saw each other at Umberto Lenzi's funeral..." “Weren’t you at Deodato’s?” “But he’s not dead…”. “How come he didn’t die… three years ago, at Bellarmine Church…”. “I have to write it down…” and he takes out a notebook. “Is Cavani alive?” "Viva". “And Wertmüller doesn’t…”. "No". The president takes a rolled-up ribbon from his pocket. It's pink. He unrolls it, looking around the former gymnasium, which has now filled up: "We have to cut the ribbon..." It is decided where the event should be celebrated.

“To the center, to the center…”, everyone shouts.

In the middle of the crowd. The president holds that two-meter ribbon on one end, while Mimmo Calopresti holds it on the other. "It's a bit short..." says Nino Russo, a director but, more importantly, a professional member of ANAC since its inception.

“What can I do? My wife had this at home…” the president justifies himself.

"Placido and Pupi... it's their turn to cut it." So I recognize Michele, wearing a hat that should make him look younger. Michele has loved me for a few years, and I love him too: a brief exchange of glances, intense, filled with all the complicity that old people know how to share, like a secret. So we cut that hand-held ribbon, and with collective applause we inaugurate the new headquarters of the National Association of Film Authors.

In tiny plastic flutes, warm white wine is served, and tubs of Cister are passed around. And sometimes I think I'd like to die with all these proud members of that Anac I so feared: they are the most ideal, purest, and most naive part of me, who knows how to see cinema as it did back then. One tends to shrivel, to hunch, to shrink, to expose the entire internal mechanism of circulation, the bones that press almost to pierce the skin, the jaws that barely contain the Eastern dentures. I imagine that among them lurks Bolognini's electrician or Guarnieri's camera operator, or the one who planted the scaffolding in the sand of the Lido that would support the brutes for the final scene of "Death in Venice." These are people like these I'd like to die with, the people of cinema that Fellini photographed in a superlative image. At Cinecittà's five, two stage painters hung from ropes to paint an immense panorama, for a scene he had yet to invent.

Film is the profession of the mad, and when that indispensable percentage of madmen is missing, cinema becomes something else. Everything becomes different when you silence your vulnerability, your capacity for suffering or joy for nothing, your shyness, your sense of inadequacy, even your antisocial nature. When old age has restored you to the kind of fragility that was yours in childhood, only then can you truly find the harmony with the world you've always sought.

Those hundred old men toasting in the former Pilates gym are the rediscovered cinema I was searching for, in a Proustian way. And in that strong, unexpected, welcoming embrace of Perpignani, and in that fantastic reunion of veterans of the most extraordinary cinematic vicissitudes, I discover how true cinema is grander, more noble, more beautiful, and more necessary than various ideologies. I discover that there is a genuine recognition in those who have made it the meaning and purpose of their lives. And I feel immense pity for that plethora of men and women in power who deal with it, without the slightest awareness of the sacredness of the subject they deal with. Who judge the quality of films by their box office, in a West where the market has destroyed every ambition, every poetic venture, in the immeasurable distance that exists between a few frames of "Accattone" or "The Child Thief" and the blathering of reassuring slogans in a world that knows how to survive, indifferent to any form of oppression.

I believe that one day—and I speak to those who have sacrificed everything in their lives to tell their stories, to give us back another world (theirs)—we will disappear, replaced by the most prodigious applications, capable of going beyond all imagination. It will be when we are all gone, even that chief engineer who came to Porretta to "lay" fifty-four meters of track for a Dolly that concluded my "Story of Boys and Girls." Only then, when the complicity of a motivated crew, intent on accomplishing the feat, is no longer even a memory, that the world will have lost something. The ability and gift of imagination.

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