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BIANCIARDI’S LIFE BROUGHT TO THE SCREEN
02/09/2007
Massimo Coppola and Alberto Piccinini’s documentary film Bianciardi!, on the life of writer Luciano Bianciardi, was presented by director Carlo Lizzani – himself the subject of the other documentary of the section, who made the film La vita agra based on the writer’s best-known novel – who said he felt tied to the author for the similar experiences they lived through in the post-WWII period and that seeing the film was like “returning to the scene of a crime.”
Coppola and Piccinini in fact traveled to all of the key places of Bianciard’s life and work – Grosseto, Rome, Rapallo and Milan – interviewing friends and colleagues along with Maria Jatosti, the writer’s companion for whom he left his first wife and children, and Luciana, the daughter with whom he re-established a relationship not long before his illness and resulting death at the age of 49.
The decision to shoot in black and white, with Jatosti driving through the streets of Milan in an old Fiat 124, was intended to emphasize, according to Piccinini, “that what is in the past is never truly in the past and Bianciardi has predicted the Italy of today in the 1960s.” Sadly, the writer was all but forgotten when Piccinini and Coppola, co-founder of the ISBN publishing company, decided to publish a volume of all of his fictional works (a second volume of Bianciardi’s journalistic writings will be out shortly), which ultimately inspired them to make the documentary.
Although the author and translator was a sharp observer of his culture’s past and future, he retired from the public eye early on in his career, surrendering to the idea that his voice made little difference in changing what he felt were his country’s political and social problems. The reason for this may lie in what Venice Days director Fabio Ferzetti described as “Bianciardi’s tragedy, and the tragedy of many Italian intellectuals, which is that he was impossible to classify in categories that we critics often use.”
An observation that should perhaps be heeded as a warning cry at a time when not just critics but even the public now clamors to pigeonhole artists and intellectuals in easily recognizable packaging that often leaves no room for the most original and incisive voices.
When asked on the documentary’s future, Coppola said that he honestly did not know and that just being screened at Venice was a huge, and moving, first step. The producers added that in “a normal country, this kind of documentary would be broadcast on TV but in Italy…who knows!”
Natasha Senjanovic
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Interview Coppola Piccinini |
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