Mario Soldati. Filmmaker in spite of himself
by Jean A. Gili
Release date : October 3, 2022
Publisher : deep red
Language : French
Number of pages : 216 pages
Destined to become a teacher and a lover of literature, Mario Soldati turns to the cinema on his return from the United States where he hoped to emigrate. During the 1930s, he first collaborated in the writing of screenplays and assisted renowned filmmakers such as Mario Camerini or Alesandro Blasetti. He made his first film in 1939 and will not move away from the camera for twenty years. In the early 1940s, he signed two masterpieces, The Midnight Wedding And Malombra . After the war, The Troubles of Monsieur Travet , Eugenie Grandet Or Flight to France confirm his talent and inventiveness. He then shot a series of works belonging to popular genres, burlesque films ( Je suis de la revue , Okay Nero! ), swashbuckling films ( Fra Diavolo , The Heir of Zorro ), privateer films ( The Three Corsairs , The Daughter of the Black Corsair ), melodramas ( The Daughter of the River with Sophia Loren). He finds a very sure hand to direct Gina Lollobrigida in The Merchant of Love or Alida Valli in Rapt in Venice , without forgetting Renato Rascel in Polycarpe, master calligrapher , awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. Mario Soldati will also play a major role in the birth of Italian television by directing documentary surveys on food and reading.
The book is completed by a long interview carried out during two meetings in 1976 and 1979, a way of entering into the intimacy of a man with a constantly alert mind and an unlimited imagination.