MASSIMO TROISI: SOMEBODY DOWN THERE LIKES ME.
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The good people at CinemaItaliaUK are back for another season and they start in fine style with Mario Martone's documentary, Massimo Troisi: Somebody Down There Like Me. Best known in this country for Il Postino (1994), Massimo Troisi was a ground-breaking comedian and cabaret star in his native Italy. However, a shadow hung over his tragically truncated career.
Troisi was born in San Giorgio a Cremano on 19 February 1953 and a Neapolitan spirit infused his work as a writer, actor, and director. Mario Martone compares his films to those of François Truffaut, as they had a similar freedom, humanism, and restless impulsiveness. Writer Francesco Piccolo considers him the Italian Antoine Doinel, as he grew in his films while always playing a variation of himself.
Martone enlists the help of Anna Pavignano, a Piedmontese writer who became Troisi's partner and writing collaborator. She jokes that she brought a northern feminist perspective to his work and Piccolo notes that Troisi sought to subvert the macho image perpetuated by such actors as Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman, and Ugo Tognazzi and celebrate the doughty independence of Italian women. Pavignano shows Martone the jottings they used to base screenplays on and plays him a tape of her psychoanalysing Troisi in a playful, but still revealing manner.
Heading to Naples, Martone visits Troisi's childhood homes and points out that he moved from a traditional working-class neighbourhood into modern flats. On leaving school, he started a small acting troupe with friends Enzo Decaro and Lello Arena and had their first show banned by the local priest. As he suffered from a weak heart, he travelled to New York for surgery on money raised by his neighbours. Returning to convalesce, Troisi added Pavignano to what was now called `I Saraceni'.
Goffredo Fofi was among the first to recognise that Troisi was a special talent and he soon came to the attention of Dario Fo, who introduced the redubbed La Smorfia for an early stage performance. We see clips from satirical cabaret sketch about the Archangel Gabriel going to the wrong house for the Annunciation. In an interview with Isabella Rossellini, Troisi explains that his Neapolitan background informs his worldview and his humour and how the 1980 earthquake had affected him.
In 1981, Troisi made his directorial debut with Ricomincio da tre/I'm Starting From Three, in which he played Gaetano, a Neapolitan who seeks to escape from the city's insularity by relocating to Florence, where he falls in love with Maria (Fiorenza Marchegiani). His partnership with Lello in the film reminded many of 1930s stars Eduardo and Peppino De Filippo, while he was hailed as the new Totò. However, he was reluctant to be compared to comics with enduring legacies.
Striking a chord at a time when Naples was going through a cultural renaissance, Ricomincio da tre was a box-office hit that set a record that still stands by running for 43 weeks. It was followed by the TV special, Moro Troisi, viva Troisi! (1982), in which Troisi pondered upon his delicate health. He also opened Scusate il ritardo/Sorry For the Delay (1983) with a funeral, as Vincenzo (Troisi) falls for Anna (Giuliana De Sio). Martone draws attention to the number of times that Troisi touches his eyebrow and a montage confirms that this became a career-long trait.
Director Paolo Sorrentino admits to being a huge fan and borrowing from Troisi in films like The Hand of God (2021). A clip appears of Troisi being interviewed with Diego Maradona, who was then playing for Napoli. Another snippets explores Troisi's friendship with musician Pino Daniele. Such was his willingness to collaborate that he journeyed far and wide. But fame never went to his head and Piccolo avers that the genius of his screen persona lies in his relatability and the fact he sets his characters such low expectations.
The Palermo duo of Salvo Ficarra and Valentino Picone also owe a debt to Troisi. They claim his artistic soul mirrored that of Charlie Chaplin, as they were both able to balance humour and drama without either feeling contrived. This is evident in Non ci resta che piangere/Nothing Left to Do But Cry (1984), which he wrote and directed with co-star Roberto Benigni. Following janitor Mario (Troisi) and teacher Saverio (Benigni) back to a Tuscan village in 1492, this time-travelling comedy bears little resemblance to the work either actor had previously made. But they backed each other's ideas, with their readiness to experiment forcing the other to up his game.
In one scene, Mario tries to seduce a girl by singing her the Beatle song, `Yesterday', but they were also not above a bit of bawdy shtick.
By contrast, Le vie del Signore sono finite/The Ways of the Lord Are Over (1987) was set during the Fascist period and makes satirical use of the fact that Camillo (Troisi), a barber from Acquasalubre, hides the fact that he has been cured of the psychosomatic illness that had prevented him from walking. Pavignano recalls his pride in his direction of this dramedy. But, when Federico Chiacchiari and Demetrio Salvi published a book about him, Troisi laughed it off because he didn't feel worthy of academic assessment.
Pavignano and Martone listen to Troisi telling a childhood story about embarrassing his father by failing to jump a puddle. This is cross-cut to a scene from Ettore Scola's Splendor (1989), in which Troisi's parent was played by Marcello Mastroianni, with whom he would also team on Scola's Che ora è?/What Time Is It? (1989) and Il viaggio di Capitain Fracassa/Captain Fracassa's Journey (1990). Martone claims Scola as a father figure for Troisi, who won the Volpi Cup at Venice for the second of their collaborations. In a press conference, Scola states that Troisi wasn't a big fan of the Neapolitan temperament and felt that performers from Naples tended to overact. But Martone shrewdly indicates that, even while working for a noted auteur, Troisi retained his trademark blend of daydreaming, bashful inadequacy.
After a four-year gap, Troisi directed himself again in Pensavo fosse amore, invece era un calesse/I Thought It Was Love, But It Was a Barouche (1991), which charts the on-off relationship between restaurateur Tommaso (Troisi) and his jealous girlfriend, Cecilia (Francesca Neri). Ending with a wedding day truce that takes place away from the camera in an empty café, this treatise on love was followed by an even more exquisite disquisition, Il postino (1994).
Delaying transplant surgery because he couldn't envisage making the film with someone else's heart, Troisi asked Michael Radford to direct and cast Philippe Noiret as the exiled Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. They had an instinctive chemistry and, judging by the footage of them shooting a love scene, Troisi also clearly bonded with María Grazia Cucinotta as Beatrice. As editor Roberto Perpignani recalls, however, within 12 hours of the production wrapping, Troisi was dead at the age of 41.
He would never get to hear the Luis Enríque Bacalov score that would win an Academy Award or know he had been nominated for Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. He had essentially given his life for the film and Martone closes on the rapt faces of those attending an outdoor screening in Rome. It's a nice way to end a profile of a man of the people and a poet of emotions who can still touch audiences of all ages and backgrounds three decades after his passing.
Genuinely affectionate rather than entirely analytical, this makes for a fine primer, although the talking-head contributions are patchy and Martone's rapport with Pavignano is curiously stiff and clumsily stage-managed considering they share a writing credit. More useful are the extracts from Troisi's writings, which are read by Pierfrancesco Favino, Silvio Orlando, and Toni
British viewers will note how few of the films Troisi directed reached their screens compared to those he made for Scola and Radford. It's also frustrating how none of these films is readily available on disc or on streaming platforms. Perhaps this tribute will coax a distributor into action or persuade someone to mount a Troisi retrospective or a revival of Il postino to mark the 30th anniversary of his sad demise.