We The Italians | Italian entertainment: Carlo Verdone

Italian entertainment: Carlo Verdone

Italian entertainment: Carlo Verdone

  • WTI Magazine #133 Nov 14, 2020
  • 1549

This November 2020 a very famous and acclaimed Italian actor and director celebrates his 70-year anniversary: Carlo Verdone.

Recognized by many to be the heir of the great Alberto Sordi, Verdone has always tried to present in his movies the archetype of the “average Italian”, facing his daily problems, anxieties and joys. Some of his most appreciated characters are taken from the Roman environment, emphasizing the typical dialect and gestures.

Carlo was born in Rome and he had always been fascinated by the Italian cinematography, probably inspired by his father Mario, University Professor of “History of Movies” and well know cinematographic critic. His career started as a stand-up comedian, in which he firstly proposed a series of characters and sketches that the public loved; among the initial supporters, the famous director Sergio Leone was amazed by Carlo’s performance, enough to represent his springboard as actor and producer.

In 1980 Sergio flanked Carlo during the shooting of the feature film “Un sacco bello”. In this movie, Verdone introduced a pattern that then he used for the majority of his masterpieces: the contemporary development of distinct stories, set in different locations and with different protagonists. The same pattern was showed the following year, in the movie “Bianco, Rosso e Verdone”.

As said, Carlo tightened a strong relationship with his colleague Alberto Sordi, with whom he shot two movies: “In viaggio con papà” and “Troppo forte”. During the ‘90s, the stories performed in his movies started to have a sort of bitter aftertaste, distancing themselves from the pure comic style: they began to emphasize the cynicism and the extreme of the society, highlighting particular negative aspects of the characters. A striking example is “Viaggi di nozze” (1995), a movie divided in episodes, that presented the dynamics of three couples in their honeymoons belonging to different social backgrounds.

A peculiarity that has to be remarked in Carlo Verdone’s movies is the importance of the role attributed to women: the protagonist always shares his time on the screen with a woman, mostly charming, tormented and confused, but at the same time endowed with strength and seen as unreachable. Verdone is always attentive to the feminine world in his masterpieces, involving great and beautiful actresses, such as Claudia Gerini, Margherita Buy, Natasha Hovey, Nancy Brilli, Eleonora Giorgi.

In 2013 Verdone was among the cast of Paolo Sorrentino’s “The great beauty”, which gained the Academy Award as Best Foreign Movie. The same year, Carlo and his brother Luca realized a video-documentary honoring Alberto Sordi, “Alberto il grande”, that told the life and the career of the amazing artist, with many commentaries of famous friends and colleagues, such as Franca Valeri, Gigi Proietti, Claudia Cardinale, Gian Luigi Rondi, Goffredo Fofi, Ettore Scola, Enrico and Carlo Vanzina, Christian De Sica.

February 27th 2020 should have been the release date of his new movie “Si vive una volta sola”, which has been postponed due to Covid reasons to November 27th 2020, ten days after his 70th birthday.