C.antante, clown, child, poet, jazz and clarinet player. Ten years after the disappearance of Lucio DallaRai 3 pays tribute to him with the first tv (at 21.20) of the documentary For Lucio (also available for rent on the platform Nexo +) by Pietro Marcello, director of Martin Eden.
The journey is visual and sound between biography and historybetween the songs and the story of Italy from the end of World War II to the Bologna massacre of 1980, al economic boom from the 50s and 60s it has changed our country from farmer to worker.
For Lucio: the plot
The documentary portrays Luciobut it is also much more. Pietro Marcello delivers a story that mixes vintage life and story through archive images public and private, historical and amateurstatements of songwriterthe words of the trusted manager Umberto Righicalled Tobias, of his childhood friend and philosopher Stefano Bonaga and songs, focusing mostly on those written by the poet Roberto Roversi.
There are indeed The worker Gerolamo, Orlando’s song, The stock exchange, Interview with the lawyer, The walls of twenty-one And Ithacaballad related to the Odyssey of Homer but sung from the point of view of the sailors. In fact, her passages tell the story of the last ones, the marginalized, the faces, looks and changes of men and of a country.
But there are also songs that made Dalla popular how Futurea blunder of ideal hope in these days of warthe very modern How deep is the sea and cheerful Dance dance dancer which however speaks of massacre of Bologna.
For Lucio it is a story in the present because “Lucio is a timeless presence», As his two friends say. Lucio is there, along with his voice.
Even the New York Times pays homage to Lucio Dalla
On the occasion of the recent release of the documentary in the United States, the critic AO Scott described the singer «plump and shaggywith limp hair and round glasses that she didn’t really look like a pop star“.
But “the jazz clarinetist he reinvented himself as a songwriter. Dalla became one of the most beloved troubadours in Italy in the last decades of the twentieth century. His songs were rhapsodic and discursive and controversial (often within a single verse) – observes Scott – and his voice could quickly pass from conversational intimacy to passion out loud ».
The journalist’s praise also lingers on the narrative line adopted by Pietro Marcello. “The documentary offers a portrait of Dalla that is both informative and enigmatic. More of a non-fiction film than a standard music biography, it emphasizes personality over chronology and focuses more on opera than life – writes the critic.
Instead of gathering the usual squadron of talking heads, Marcello focuses only on two subjects of the interviewwho knew Dalla well ». People who knew him first as a man than as an artist and who therefore give us an intimate portrait of him.
The desire to tell Lucio Dalla
«The desire to tell Lucio Dalla “It’s ancient – said the director Pietro Marcellowho personally met the Bolognese singer-songwriter – already as a child I listened and re-listened to his songs on my father’s turntable. A great passion for his music was bornhis world and his words that have embraced an era becoming part of the public and private imaginary of Italians, loved by the powerful and the have-nots, by men and women “.
Lucio Dalla. (Rai Teche).
“A love renewed over the years that led me to meet him – continues Marcello. Even before his death I had promised myself to make a film that, through his songs and his human and artistic story, would tell the story of Italy ».
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