uno show to re-read the encounter that changed the life of Anna Mazzamauro, and tell twenty years of professional life in installments. Is called How human she is stillAnd Anna describes it like this: «It is a project that I love as if it were a child. I remember Paolo Villaggio talking about Ugo Fantozzi: I wrote, directed and starred in it. Only the audience is missing, which has always followed me and certainly won’t be missing. I have always given to others what makes me feel good, it is the best way to reach them». Where will it be staged? To the Dehon Theater from BolognaSaturday 18 and Sunday 19 March.
How human she is stillAnna Mazzamauro and Fantozzi
In his book Naked and Rawas in the shows he has written, there is only one rule: break taboos and make diversity precious.
I cheer for everything that goes off the rails, for the disregarded, the unusual, the different. We are not puppets, you know how boring it is to have to meet the expectations of the world. I couldn’t dress in rationality, I like it in others, I admire it, but it’s not for me. I would feel broken. I want to live with my imagination, continue to invent my days as I always have, with my voracity.
She seems to feel more comfortable in the theater than in the cinema.
Acting in the theater is a perennial game. I started in kindergarten to never stop. They sent me to the nuns in the hope of straightening out these artistic ambitions of mine, but I’m here to tell about it, so it didn’t help much. The missed degree though, that’s a regret.
In her past she was Nannarella and then Cyrano, the only woman in the world to have played him.
They saved on the nose, they chose me for that! I loved its essence, whether it’s a woman or a man, it doesn’t matter. She had a strong sense of sword fighting, he loved with pain. I feel a bit like him. I seek the challenge, I have to feel the thrill. This happens every time the curtain opens: an overbearing adrenaline rises which is the fuel of my being in the world. Cyrano’s fighting spirit is the same that gives me eternal youth.
Paolo Villaggio and Anna Mazzamauro in “Fantozzi to the rescue”, 1990. (Getty Images)
Energy is the result of doing what one loves.
It’s such a strong passion that sometimes it amazes me too. I spend the hours writing and studying, a crazy energy always comes back: “Give me a curtain and I won’t need clothes anymore”, I sum up like this.
«Fonly frequented rich and famous actors, different from me»
With whom does he divide the scene to tell the accountant?
There are four of us: me, Sasà Calabrese who thinks about music, Fantozzi and Silvani. All directed by Paolo Villaggio. It is not a work on his private life, I cannot say that I have known him in a profound way. There is always a blank wall that divides the actors, as if to show only the desired nature and never the real one. I have worked with Villaggio for twenty years. He was a bit of a snob, just enough to make us actors uncomfortable, in awe of his irony as biting as the spindle of a spinning wheel. This has always created a barrier. He wasn’t a genius in the absolute sense, he was brilliant, which is different, and presupposes an openness to broader perspectives.
How was he distant?
Maybe he lacked the human willingness to deal with the actors. Once I asked why we hadn’t become friends after all the time we spent working together. She replied that he only dated rich and famous actors, different from me.
Was he a provocateur?
Undoubtedly, but I figured it out over time. Years have passed since that fact, I met him again during a television program and in the backstage I took the checkbook out of the bag: “What do you say, now can we become friends?”. Unfortunately, at that time he was already in a wheelchair, pushed by his son Piero. It’s been years, but I don’t forget his gaze. Inside him was all the affection and esteem that he had never given me. He said to me: “You are beautiful, you know?”.
Anna Mazzamauro on stage. (Photo by Luigi Cerati)
But she never wanted to feel like that, even if she is.
I prefer to call myself atypical. With the privative alpha, in the Greek style. I am a strange woman who may or may not like it. Long live the defects that become virtues. By now I have assimilated this concept, it is part of me. I always said to myself that I would make it, also thanks to what was not written as it should, which was detached from the conventional. This is why Silvani manages to look like a sex symbol, she finds strength in something else. For my part, I’ve always let women think they’re more beautiful than me, it didn’t matter to me. I put weight into giving myself exactly as I wanted and I found it beneficial.
He said that “all the raspberries of today’s comedy don’t make a single Fantozzi”.
Not exactly all of them, otherwise it would be the catastrophe of Italian cinema. However, that subtle intelligence is missing, the elegance in knowing how to tell. Let’s call it smart wit. In the show, I take advantage of my characters to be able to say things, to make them deal with important issues.
«Silvani is my shadow, that young lady belongs to me by right»
Guy?
Diversity, which is the time to be treated as normality. It is the fault of the others, who are all the same, with little eye opening and vision. Or I’m talking about loneliness. And I sing. Without having who knows what kind of aspiration. The important thing is that people get the emotion through the performance.
Anna Mazzamauro at the Maurizio Costanzo Show, 1980s. (La Presse)
Was Miss Silvani more damnation or advantage?
That mixture of woman and loneliness, in its trodden and grotesque red sex, is now part of me, unfortunately and fortunately. Playing a character for the rest of your life risks doubting whether you are representing its vices or virtues, even off stage. Silvani is my shadow, that young lady belongs to me by right. The fact is that people always expect to laugh when they talk about me, maybe that’s the case, but let’s also take into account that there may be something else.
However, she went to the audition to play Mrs. Pina.
You know how boring it would have been. I invented Silvani, I gave it a frame, having available a thick fabric like that of Villaggio. When Luciano Salce called me to audition, not knowing the specifics of the role I was supposed to play, I showed up in a tight red dress, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels. I opened the door on a crawl and he said to me: “Anna, I remembered you uglier”. Paolo replied: “She is full of flaws, but she wears them on her heels. And someone like Fantozzi can only dream of someone like this”. Self-irony has always saved me, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced of it.
Can you tell me how it went that time you sent Fellini to hell?
I was working on the dubbing of one of his films, Rome, together with the great Oreste Lionello. One day, she appeared behind the glass, asking me to double a centennial. Difficult task for me as I was a little girl at the time. I tried and tried, but it never worked out. So much so that in the end, annoyed, she yelled: “Miss Mezzamauro, you are not good at all”. If she had never said so, I replied: “Listen Mr. Felloni”, since you have an actress much older than me at home, let her do the dubbing!”. I slammed the part and walked away, proud and pleased.
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