The legend of Massimo Troisi, promoter of “The Postman (and Pablo Neruda)” arrives at the Berlinale | culture

On Friday 3 June 1994, with an ambulance at the door of the set, Massimo Troisi finished filming The Postman (and Pablo Neruda). That week, he only shot one day, Tuesday, and the rest of the days were devoted to recording dialogues for the film that could not be understood because of the noise on the set. The following Sunday, the fifth, he was to be admitted to the hospital. He needed a new heart for several months. However, he postponed the transplant, prioritizing a project he had dreamed of for a long time. Didn’t arrive on time. …

On Friday 3 June 1994, with an ambulance at the door of the set, Massimo Troisi finished filming The Postman (and Pablo Neruda). That week, he only shot one day, Tuesday, and the rest of the days were devoted to recording dialogues for the film that could not be understood because of the noise on the set. The following Sunday, the fifth, he was to be admitted to the hospital. He needed a new heart for several months. However, he postponed the transplant, prioritizing a project he had dreamed of for a long time. Didn’t arrive on time. On Saturday, June 4, Troisi, a legend of Italian cinema, died at the age of 41, at his home in Rome.

Last Sunday, February 19th, Troisi was 70 years old. In Italy that weekend, rooms were turned over with courses and honors. In his hometown, Naples, the celebration was even bigger. “There we consider him the great champion,” explains director Mario Martone, also a Neapolitan professional. This year Martone was Italy’s representative at the Oscars with nostalgia, But during the promotional campaign in the US he was more attentive to editing his documentary Laggiù colcono my love (Somebody Loves Me Out There), a hymn to Troisi and his work as a director. In addition to being a comedian, Napoli has directed six films. Marton, who presented the documentary at a private gala at the Berlinale, points out in conversation with EL PAÍS: The Postman (and Pablo Neruda) It would have been his seventh film as a director. But he had a feeling, he felt his death. That is why he contacted Michael Radford, whom he had met when the Englishman offered to drive the man Again, another place. Troisi could not accept this project because it overlapped with another of his films, though he felt it was close to his and Radford’s sensibilities. Marton knows very well what happened in that shot: at that time his partner was the actress Anna Bonayoto, who played Neruda’s wife. Troisi set out to shoot the film without a net, in love with the book Very patient By Antonio Scarmita”, he notes. He didn’t care that the Chilean writer himself directed another adaptation in 1983, moving the action from Isla Negra to a small and nameless Italian island (it was filmed in the Gulf of Naples). It talked about ordinary people, poetry, love and politics. Just What he was excited about.”

In Spain, Troisi became famous for this film and his participation in it which hour? (1989), by Ettore Scola, in which he played the son of Marcello Mastroianni. “In my country he was one of the best-known and best-paid comedians,” Martone recalled of an actor who made only 13 films (three under Scola’s direction) and one series. But he left a legacy as a director. “It’s funny how the character he’s built throughout his career goes through films like the one embodied by Jean-Pierre Laude in the films of François Truffaut, another director who died early in his career. Troisi drinks from Ambiguous Novell Because cinema, as in the French movement, is about life, love and political issues that affect a person.” Did it sound new to Italians? “Yes, it was the first voice of a young generation. When it premiered in 1981 start from three, Many of us felt like we were finally getting out to the movies. Obviously, the old critics attacked her. Moreover, during Massimo’s life only one book was written about him, and two young journalists confront him. Troisi’s cinema speaks of our vulnerability, our inability to talk about issues and grow up. That was us.”

Troisi has always suffered from health problems. “His aura gives her away. The fragility she showed was also born of her body,” Marton says. On screen, singer Pino Daniele, who died in 2015, explains in an archive interview: “The spirits of Chaplin and Massimo share the same sensitivity.” One of the most famous residents of Naples, Paolo Sorrentino, speaks of his “tremendous charisma” while the documentary shows Troisi and Diego Armando Maradona, two local gods, embracing with laughter in a duel of humility: “You are better than me”; “No, you are better”; “Not you”…

The first time Marton and Troisi crossed paths was not in Italy: “We met together at a festival in Montpellier. We were together in a restaurant, usual friendliness and a little cold, and on the way back to the hotel we suddenly had a very intimate conversation. This was Troisi, a reserved man.” He hid a great human warmth, elegant and careful despite his popularity. This popularity, Sorrentino V. tells Laggiù colcono my love, It was born out of the fact that he “advocated that comedy is in the service of an exploration of emotion.”

In 1984, Roberto Benigni, one of the great Italian comedy stars, meets Troisi Do not keep the beanger. The two directed and co-wrote it between themselves and Giuseppe Bertolucci, who admits in another archival interview (died in 2012): “They were two completely opposite worlds. Roberto is rooted in Giovanni Boccaccio, while Troisi belongs to a darker, more metaphysical school.” “And the amazing thing is that they fit the story of two friends from the 1980s who wake up one day in the 1500s, and the movie was a box office success,” says Marton in Berlin. As much as Troisi denied himself as a filmmaker (in multiple interviews, he would hide behind “I am not a director”), and was not appreciated by critics either, for Martone “Italy has lost a different creator, essential to giving us the voice and understanding of a generation.

behind The Postman (and Pablo Neruda). He achieved his dream at the cost of his life. He knew what he was doing,” says the director. “The strange thing is that once the movie is released, any memory of Troisy is accompanied by Louis Bacalloff’s music, which was composed posthumously, during post-production. I have a lot of respect for Radford, but this movie is as much about him as it is about Massimo.” That soundtrack won him an Academy Award, and Troisi was a posthumous nominee for Best Actor and Adapted Screenplay. “Were you interested in awards? I don’t know. What would have made him happy was to see how people today love this humble postman and his desire for love.