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| Salvatore Giuliano won Rosi a Silver Bear at Berlin Film Festival |
Developing a style of dramatic political cinema, he created an international reputation for exciting filmmaking that remains powerful today. Borrowing from the success of American models he appropriated the gangster film and made it his own. He focused on creating a socially committed cinema that remained entertaining and accessible to audiences at home and abroad.
When Rosi was just four years old, his father took him to see Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid. Afterwards, his father dressed his son as Jackie Coogan and snapped his photo. Then Rosi senior entered the sepia image in a local look-alike contest. It won, and the young Rosi said that he knew from that point that he belonged in “show business”.
His two-floor penthouse apartment near the top of Rome’s Spanish Steps was filled with awards, including a 1962 Silver Bear from Berlin, for Salvatore Giuliano. Two years ago Rosi returned to Berlin where he received an Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement.
Over the course of his career he worked with many of the names that made the Italian film industry famous, including Luchino Visconti, Mario Monicelli, Luciano Emmer and Michelangelo Antonioni. One of the new leading lights Paolo Sorrentino was a friend and fan.
Rosi has always said that Visconti was the one figure who made the biggest impession on him. He once described him as his “mentor,” first working with him in 1949. He has said that he learned everything from him. “I became the director I became because of Visconti. The kind of neo-realism that he helped popularise along with Roberto Rossellini had a big impact on me,” Rosi has said.
American films, specifically the gangster films of the 1940s and 1950s, also had an impact on on him. La Sfida (The Challenge), which is set in Rosi’s home town of Naples included elements of both Hollywood crime films of that era and Italian neo-realism.
Rosi believed that his generation of directors was the first in Italy to absorb the influence of American films, which did not screen in Italy during the years of fascism or during the war. By the time the films made it to Italy, older directors like Visconti already had a mature style. Rosi, though, was younger and more impressionable.
He remained optimistic about the health of the Italian film industry. During a visit to the Italian Film Festival in the UK he commented: “We’re starting to see an improvement over the last several years. The Italian film industry really went through a dead period in the 1980s and 1990s, but now we’re starting to see more quality films produced. There also are more formulaic productions, and that always makes it tougher for serious films to find distribution channels. But they’re being made again, and they’re finding an audience.”
Rosi’s films frequently were made on a small budget, which he has suggested: “Can be a blessing because it’ll make you consider certain alternatives you wouldn’t have considered, if you had more money to spend. And sometimes those alternatives will be even more interesting than what you originally had in mind. But that’s not always the case. Very often a small budget means you have to cut corners to save money, and the end result is a film that looks like somebody cutting corners made it. It’s a shame when that reduces a film that could have been a classic.”
Even in his later years, Rosi used to go to the cinema often. Sometimes he wouldn’t watch a film for a couple of weeks, and sometimes he would watch three in one weekend. He remained fascinated by the cinema. He once said: “DVDs are convenient, but there’s still nothing like watching a great story made by great actors and a great director on the big screen.”
And, many of those films were, of course, signed by Francesco Rosi.
He is survived by daughter, Carolina, an actress. His wife of nearly 50 years, Giancarla Mandelli, died in 2010 aged 83.
Francesco Rosi born 15 November 1922 – died 10 January 2015.
Selected filmography: La Sfida / The Challenge (1958); Salvatore Giuliano (1962); Hands Over the City / Le Mani sulla Citta (1963); The Mattei Affair / Il Caso Mattei (1972)[ Lucky Luciano (1973); Illustrious Corpses / Cadaveri Eccellenti (1976); Christ Stopped at Eboli / Cristo si e Fermato a Eboli (1979); Carmen (1984)
Notable awards: Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear, Salvatore Giuliano (1962); Venice Film Festival Golden Lion, Le Mani sulla Citta (1963); Festival de Cannes Palme d’Or, Il Caso Mattei (1972); BAFTA Award, Christ Stopped at Eboli (1983); Plus multiple David di Donatello Awards (Italy’s Oscars).
Richard Mowe is co-director of the Italian Film Scotland, which will pay tribute to Rosi in March
