The best Gigi Proietti’s documentary movies

One of the most controversial, original and loved figures of Italian cinema. The most censored director of all time. An anarchist of the film, a gifted experimenter, an inventor of dreams. A truly great artist.

2020 marks 100 years since the birth of Federico Fellini, the most prominent Italian director and one of the symbols of the insuperable cinematic heyday of mid-20th century. Fellini had always been a mysterious director, not only in his cryptic symbolism but also in his idiosyncratic, excessive mixture of psychoanalysis, Catholicism and faith in the mysterious. In this documentary, his relationship with the paranormal, luck and fate, alongside the coexistence of organized discourse and transcendence to the imaginary, is examined via friends, collaborators and distinguished fans (Friedkin, Gilliam, Chazelle). A great testimony to why rationalists and ideologists have a hard time with his work, ‘Fellini and the Spirits’ is an appropriate yet unexpected tribute.

This brisk, engaging documentary surveys the life, work, and legacy of Vittorio Gassman, the Italian screen icon who began his illustrious career as a serious dramatic stage actor before going on to subvert that image in classic works of commedia all’italiana by Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), Dino Risi (Il Sorpasso), and Ettore Scola (We All Loved Each Other So Much). Through a wealth of interviews, film clips, and archival footage, Sono Gassman! reveals how Gassman’s comedic screen persona cannily reflected and critiqued mid-20th-century Italian society, while shedding light on the complex inner life of the man himself.

Docu-film directed by Carlo and Luca Verdone realized on 2013 in occasion of the tenth anniversary from the actor’s death happened on 24th February 2003. Through this documentary Verdone’s brothers with deep respect towards the Roman actor trace an affectionate and sincere portrait not only about an Artist but, above all, about a man with his habits, his ideas, his tics, his vices and his virtues. And for the first time Mrs Aurelia – Alberto Sordi’s sister who is dedicated the documentary – opens the doors of the beautiful house of Via Druso where the actor has lived since 1958. In this way we are led by Carlo Verdone (a sort of Virgilio whose Dante Alighieri wrote about but we are not in the Hell but in the Seven Heaven where there is the source of the Italian Cinema) and on the tips and staying in silence we can go into the rooms of this wonderful house which reveals the true, authentic character of Alberto Sordi.