For me, Ugo Tognazzi has been the greatest Italian actor right after Marcello Mastroianni. No one
like Tognazzi has been able to represent the complexity of the average middle aged Italian male, a
mix of extravaganza and melancholy, irony and bittersweet awareness of the flowing of time. Let’s
think about his voice, that unforgettable mischievous benevolent tone which could be charmer
but also incredibly honest at the same time. It’s like a cat purring.
Dino Risi once said that Ugo Tognazzi was «an actor non-actor. In love with women, the good life
and great food. He did quite a challenge, to switch from comedy to drama. Lots of people try, very
few can make it. He made it. It was fun staying with him, never a dull moment. And he almost
never studied his part. He was creating it on the spot».
In the documentary «Ritratto di mio padre» we will have the chance to explore more in detail his
character. Many of you will remain suprised by the huge effort he put in organizing amazing
parties for friends and colleagues, which became gatherings of the Italian Cinema. Ugo Tognazzi
loved to be surrounded by people, expressing in this case his second talent, the art of cooking. At
the same time the last years of his life were afflicted by a deep depression which probably
contributed to his health worsening and premature death. Maria Sole Tognazzi avoids this part in
his documentary, focusing on the rediscovery of the old family videos of his father and, in her own
words, learning to rediscover him.
Rediscover is a term which works for Ugo Tognazzi. Thirty-two years after his sudden death, his
memory is almost linked only to his portrait of Count Lello Mascetti in «Amici Miei». The funny
supercazzola monologue and the unforgettable jokes arranged with his group of friends ended up
overshadowing the rest of an important and complex career. I would like to mention «La voglia
matta» where he portrays a 40something man suddenly rejuvenating after the encounter of a
group of youngsters; «La donna scimmia» where is a cynical individual exploiting a woman
suffering of hyperthricosis; «La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo» which won him the award for Best
Actor in Cannes, where he is a wealthy businessman dealing with the kidnapping of his own son
and «Io la conoscevo bene», a small cameo of seven minutes, where he is a comedian capable of
any kind of self-humiliation to get again a small bit of success.
There is also another episode I would like to mention, a joke he took part in, in the style of his
most famous character Count Mascetti. In 1979, the satirical magazine «Il Male» who used to
prepare fake covers of newspapers to put in the newstands as a joke, involved Tognazzi in an
elaborate plan in which he would have pretended to have been arrested as chief of the terrorist
group Red Brigade. Tognazzi, who always had an anarchist spirit and who in the late 50s had
received a heavy censorship from Italian television for a joke about the fall from a chair of the
current President Giovanni Gronchi, accepted. So, one day, italians found in newsagencies copies
of La Repubblica and other journals showing Ugo Tognazzi grunting while arrested by fake
policement under big titles announcing that he was the leader of Red Brigades. It was a political
earthquake and Tognazzi too paid some consequences but he commented that he had simply
claimed back «the right to bullshit».
I hope you will enjoy our tribute to an actor, worthy of a rediscovery, a man that in the words of
Maria Sole Tognazzi was still «a child not wanting to grow up».