THE film by Francesco Rosi? «A Bignami of 60 years of Italian history. A cinema like today can no longer be seen but it is not dated at all: the themes, unfortunately, are very topical. And the “language” was an inspiration for those who came after “explains his daughter Carolina, announcing the initiatives that will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the director’s birth, on November 15. In Turin, the cinema’s Museum will organize an exhibition and a conference focused on the films of the “social trend” (Salvatore Giuliano, Hands on the city, Men against, The Mattei case, Christ stopped at Eboli), plus a retrospective. Rai is planning a marathon, The ship of Theseus will publish his notebooks and his native Naples will remember him toAcademy of Fine Arts with photos from the set of Once upon a timetaken from Basile’s short stories, with Sophia Loren and Omar Sharif.
Carolina Rosi photo Fabio Lovino
A multifaceted father
“Dad was multifaceted, not just a whistleblower. He knew how to tell a love story or transpose an opera: his Carmen it was such a success at the box office that it revived the fortunes of the production company, Gaumont “remembers Carolina – on tour until February with Always tell him yes – who dedicated an essential documentary to his father in 2019: Citizen Rosi. “For him, work had to perform a social function, improve our country, and he never gave up: his latest release – at 90, with a cane – was in solidarity with the young people who had occupied Cinema America, in Trastevere , to prevent it from being transformed into a supermarket.
“I always see the positive”
Her most valuable teaching as a daughter?
“To move on”. There is no hard blow that has buried me. I always see the positive and understand that there can be no good without evil. How would we be happy if we have not known a chasm? In 2010 I lost my mother (Giancarla Mandelli, ed) after very difficult years (she was suffering from dementia), in 2015 my father; a few months later my husband passed away (Luca De Filippo, ed) and, a week later, my aunt (the stylist Krizia, ed). All giants, I felt crushed not by their figure, but by the responsibility of carrying on their memory. There were decisions to be made about Luca’s theater company and also about the house and the olive groves in Maremma, they should have been ours. buen retiro… What to do?
What did he do?
I raised the farm (today our oil is hyper-awarded) and, aware of how risky it was (we were lost, fragile, bewildered), I immediately gave an input of continuity to the company: I set up These ghosts, directed by Marco Tullio Giordana. Nobody believed it, but we didn’t lose a spectator!
And today she is the only Italian manager. How did it find its way?
More than a road, they have been “segments” that coexist and, indeed, feed on each other. At the beginning there was no acting, although I had been raised in film: with my father we went to the cinema at three and we left at ten … After high school in Oxford, I went to my aunt in Milan as a trainee stylist, escaping two years later: she worked from eight to midnight every day, weekends included, and – if she did it – didn’t you do it when you are 18? No, you do.
The fugone is understandable.
Back in Rome, I enrolled in theDramatic Art Academy. They offered me some roles, but I was not happy: as a young idealist, I wanted to devote myself to commitment films. That did not arrive. Rigid in my positions, I turned down a blockbuster with Stallone.
Carolina Rosi and the “cutting of the cord”
Carolina and Francesco Rosi (photo Annet Held).
Others not sensational?
Lots of them. My beat-up life, for example, with Pee-wee Herman, who turned out to be lucky for Valeria Golino. At the time there were three of us who spoke English: myself, Valeria and Francesca Neri. So I started my experiences as assistant director, first with Franco (he often calls his father like this, ed), then with others.
And the “cut of the umbilical cord” ever?
Yes, I know, parents have to be “killed”, and a very intellectual boyfriend took it upon himself to show me that Dad was not God who came down to earth. However, this did not create a distancing. I must tell the truth: my parents were so intelligent, the dialogue was so open that a phase of serious conflicts was not necessary. I was not a simple teenager (there was the period of overwhelming, absences from school) but they did not react with punishments. Rather: “Carolina, we do not prevent you from anything because we trust your ability to understand how far you can go”, instilling in me that sense of responsibility that has stolen me in life (laughs).
Why “screwed”?
I have always put the needs of others ahead of mine. I am a little tired of not giving myself more time, of not imposing myself: “I unplug the phone for two hours”. But with the examples I’ve had, I can’t. The only time I thought I had “caught” an inconsistency from dad, I had to change my mind.
What happened?
One evening he gave me a sermon on sincerity, and I: “Ah, nice speech … So what about Francesca?”. Francesca was the child she had had with her first partner, Nora Ricci, and who – in the car with him – had died in an accident: she hadn’t told me about it, I discovered it alone at 18. For Franco, my provocation was, in reality, a liberation! He had been silent to “protect me” and, from that moment, there was not a day that he did not make a reference to her. I think her pain has never left him.
“Mom and the cards”
Carolina Rosi with her father Francesco and her mother, Giancarla Mandelli (photo Angelo Frontoni).
The most important meetings of your youth?
To mention only the very close friends of the family: Antonello Trombadori, Ugo Stille, Furio Colombo, Tullio Kezich, Ettore Scola, Federico Fellini, Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Caprioli … Once, in the 80s, Miguel Bosé came and sat on the sofa with ‘ I’m pillow next to my head: I slept on that pillow for a week! I had never seen such a beautiful boy. Franco was a reference for foreigners passing through Rome: Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson. It often happened Richard Gere, he should have been the protagonist of Forget Palermo: filming slipped for two years and in the end he had to give up. On Mom’s side, there was the merry-go-round, which changed from hour to hour.
The carousel?
He played poker until late at night (my father, with his cigar, dozed off in an armchair) and laughing, colorful characters of a completely different kind arrived.
Didn’t they send her to sleep?
I used to go there (I was severely educated by a nanny from Trento, she wouldn’t let me pass one), but I eavesdropped on the spiral staircase. I have spent a lot of time with adults, including vacations.
The most memorable?
A tour of Corsica on a tugboat was by Marco Ferreri. There were Trombadori, Antonello Falqui, Lina Wertmüller and her husband Enrico Job, Sergio Corbucci and his wife Nori: we laughed from morning to evening. My mother stayed on board, my father took me to see the cemetery, the church: he never gave up on that side. Lina was inspired by mine for Overwhelmed by an unusual fate: Mariangela Melato is a snobbish woman from the North, Giancarlo Giannini a passionate, carnal man from the South.
A youth so crackling, which seems enviable, will have had negative sides …
Hand! I saw my friends and I thought: “Madonna how boring you are!”. I was privileged: the summer in which dad was shooting there Carmen I spent three months in Andalusia with my best friend, pampered by the crew.
Was it also having had a “bulky” father to bring you closer to De Filippo?
They are not comparable situations. Luca carried on his shoulders the comparison with Eduardo, who had played the same roles. Love at first sight? No: it was disliked at first sight! We met in 1990: I was assistant director and he starred in Saturday, Sunday and Monday of Wertmüller. We were together 27 years despite the difficulties of the beginning: older than me, she already had a life behind her, two wives, three small children … But we were in everything, including a passion for tattoos (smiles).
Carolina Rosi and tattoos
Carolina Rosi and Luca De Filippo (photo Sergio Albesano).
It really has quite a few. Draw the map for us?
They are largely the work of Gianmaurizio Fercioni, a legend, a very good set designer. There are a snake, various butterflies, a rose and a gardenia. A tiger, a swallow and a dragonfly. On the wrist an olive branch with the name of Luca and the shou, the Chinese symbol for “tranquility”. Two dachshunds like mine. I started at 18 in Los Angeles with a little black rose. My mother commented: “It looks like an AIDS scab!”
For level playing fieldnow he has to dedicate a documentary to her.
Not a bad idea (smiles), there is something to tell: she left for Milan as secretary at the Sugar record company and, in short, she became general manager. She had been Lelio Luttazzi’s partner for ten years. When she arrived in Rome, she had opened a series of boutiques (Luchino Visconti also made the windows for her). Ah, there would be the episode when she was arrested with Mina in a clandestine gambling den … She was anaffective and hypercritical (“Too easy to be loved – she theorized – if I tell you: love how beautiful you are, how intelligent you are”), but she worked 12 hours a day to give me financial security. I made my peace only five years after her death.
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