Argentina, Holland and England have set up their headquarters in the areas immortalized in the famous “maccarone” scene in the film “An American in Rome”. For that performance, the actor received recognition in the city on the border between Missouri and Kansas
Searching on a browser for the reasons why Kansas City is famous, the city chosen by Argentina, England and the Netherlands to establish their world retreat, four elements emerge: 1) the public fountains. There are more than 200 of them, enough to compete tap after tap for Rome’s primacy; 2) the barbecue, with the slow cooking of the meat and the associated sauces: they invented it here; 3) jazz, which has a huge background in these parts; 4) Alberto Sordi and his unforgettable interpretation of An American in Rome.
the myth
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The film by Steno, father of Carlo and Enrico Vanzina, tells the story of a young Roman obsessed with the American dream. In 1954, when the film was released, the image of beauty and authority of the US soldiers who landed in Italy was still alive in the memories of the children who had experienced the war. Furthermore, Hollywood cinema itself brought the myths of the time into our theaters, from Gary Cooper to Clark Gable. In this culture of emulation the character of Nando Moriconi is born, clumsy and grotesque, who cites Kansas City as the ideal reference point for an impossible life. He actually calls it “The Kansas City” because it represents it in the way of a magical region. The misunderstanding arises from the fact that the largest part of the metropolitan area is in Missouri and not in Kansas, which is also the neighboring state (Argentina, for example, sleeps in Missouri and trains in Kansas).
maccarone
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The protagonist played by Sordi, thirty-four years old at the time, speaks an invented English and tries to impose the American culinary tradition on his parents only to then realize, in the most famous sequence, that the “maccarone” is decidedly tastier (“You provoked me and I’ll destroy you now, I’ll make you magno”). Eventually he will threaten to jump from the Colosseum if he is not helped to reach America.
recognition
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Thanks to the popularity of the film, which quickly reached the United States, Sordi was invited by Mayor Harold Roe Bartle to receive honorary citizenship of Kansas City and the honorary title of governor of the American Royal, a livestock fair founded in 1899 that still exists in Missouri today. The actor left in 1955 by ship from the port of Naples together with hundreds of emigrants, those people who in some way many Italians of the 1950s envied, and returned some time later with the keys to the city, appearing dressed as a cowboy in front of cheering admirers.
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