 |
L'IMPERATORE DI ROMA
Tribute to Nico D'Alessandria
Year 1987 length 90' b/w 35 mm Country Italy
directed by Nico D'alessandria
Cast Gerardo Sperandini, Nadia Haggi, Giuseppe Amodio, Agnese De Donato, Fulvio Meloni
Direction Nico D’Alessandria
Screenplay Nico D’Alessandria
Cinematography Roberto Romei
Editing Nico D’Alessandria
Music Al Lunati, Carlo Giugno, Tan – Zero
World Sales Giuliana Mancini
Tel. +39 06 4746 590, email dalman@libero.it
synopsis
The film stars and was inspired by the same person: Gerardo Sperandini, a young man who was declared mentally ill and a menace to society. After over two years in the hospital for the criminally insane in Aversa, he was released on an experimental leave and was able to do the film. Thanks to his interpretation he was later released definitively and returned home where he resumed a normal home life no longer a slave to psychoactive drugs. He died in December, 2000.
A solitary vagrant through the streets of Rome, Gerry walks around at night with a pigeon in his hand.
He faces the city in his own way and on his own time, with memories and evocations. Under the spell of Rome he relives the period of great enterprise and is able to escape the insults of everyday life.
Sleeping some nights under a bridge and others in squalid hotels, Gerry wastes his youth away with drugs as comfort and solitude as company.
He imagines how to end it all, either on the steps of the Colosseum with a syringe, or like Accatone falling off his motorbike. Instead, he gets up, curses and continues his journey; a journey towards another, different destiny marked by madness.
On a magic night in the Roman Fora, suffering from insomnia, he reenacts the rite of the foundation of Rome. Time stands still; time has gone crazy. The world has ended but He has returned to bring life. Then the dream ends and repression breaks out.
director's statement
THE BIRTH OF A CULT-MOVIE - Do you remember Pasolini’s ACCATTONE? He dies in a simple motorcycle accident at the bridge near the Slaughterhouse. The l’imperatore di Roma falls in the same place but he gets up again cursing, ready to continue his way on foot. His name is Gerry but it would perhaps be more correct to call him Nero or Commodus. He too longs for death in the arena (if possible by overdose). He too loves Rome, (a love-hate relationship) and wants to destroy the Colosseum with a pickaxe.
While Nico D’Alessandria waited for financing from the State to begin his project, after having met Gerry and written the screenplay, Gerry was declared a menace to society and locked up in the hospital in Aversa.
Here is where the cult movie was born. Three years passed. Nico wrote Gerry 48 letters and received 171. He tried to mend the young man’s broken family relations and refused to make the film with any actor other than his emperor. He felt that the effort of making films would be more satisfying if in the process he could help every Gerry in the world to find the way out of his living hell. Is this the narration of a film or of real life? The important thing is that the story gets told….
And Rome? Right….Rome!
A Rome filmed in black and white in order to play with chiaroscuro instead of colours.
A degraded but ever splendid Rome.
The Rome of the Tiber and of the dust; the perfect setting for any madness, as well as for a film.
Rome, at the same time, the main character and an object of ridicule.
Nico D’Alessandria
|
 |
|
|
|
|
