Exclusive interview with Enrico Vanzina (Newsby.it)
Enrico Vanzina is one of the greatest masters of Italian cinema, known for writing many cult comedies such as Vacanze di Natale and Sapore di Mare. He worked with his brother Carlo Vanzina for a long time and continues his work today even after his painful death.
We were honored to have him exclusively at our microphones to talk about his cinema and the situation in our country from an entertainment point of view. The result was an interview full of interesting ideas and astute reflections.
Exclusive interview with Enrico Vanzina (Newsby.it)
Vacanza di Natale and Sapore di Mare are forty years old, what are their experiences?
“Nice. They were two fairly important or very important films in my brother’s and mine’s careers. They left their mark and gained even more weight over time than when they started. They are two films that have traveled through time. Time is the most honorable critic and has bestowed on them an inevitable fate.
They are films that have described our country and it still does.
“Sapore di Mare is a film about nostalgia shot in the eighties that tells the story of the sixties with a pretty strong ending, one of the best comedies of recent years in Italy. Vacanze di Natale is a photograph of a specific moment in the countryside, which, in the leisurely moment of the holidays, stages social cross-sections of the bourgeoisie, music, fashion, and the tics in a light way. He photographed precisely this moment, mixing lightness with a certain depth. What no one understood, Carlo and I did very few Christmas films, that these were observational films with a very important foundation, which was romance. They are actually two romantic comedies. In Sapore di mare it’s obvious, in Vacanze di Natale it doesn’t seem so, but the sentimental part makes it better than others”.
She and her brother share with Christian De Sica the fact of having an exceptional father, Steno like Vittorio De Sica. How did you and how did Christian experience it?
“To the end for Christian I don’t know. Of course we all saw it. Being born into a cinema family is a huge advantage, in your chromosomes as a kid you know cinema by heart, you hang out with a lot of people from whom you learn a lot. You then have to decide whether or not to continue at some point. Carlo never had any doubts and very soon became Mario Monicelli’s assistant director with incredible films such as Amici Miei and Armata Brancaleone, later becoming Alberto Sordi’s assistant director. At first I just wanted to write, but slowly I was drawn into the cinema. Then I became an assistant director. It wasn’t a choice, I saw all the negative sides. It’s a competitive world where if you screw up you’re out. Our father didn’t want us to do cinema because he saw his difficulties, then afterwards the problem arises that you have a father who is particularly clumsy like De Sica, who had a monument in Vittorio. In the beginning you have some advantages, but then you don’t because there are constant comparisons. I have many friends who have experienced the same thing, from Risi’s children to those of Comencini, Tognazzi, Manfredi. A lot of people are born in the entertainment world and then start, it’s complicated. Both my father and Vittorio De Sica were convinced we could do it when they saw our beginnings. My father called me to write one of the most important comedies of the time and it remains as iconic as Horse Fever. If he had not had confidence, he would not have called me to such a task. Vittorio De Sica himself gave Christian a lot of advice and pushed him. It wasn’t said Christian had a complicated start, he got off to a good start, then he seemed more inclined towards the theatre. We did it with Sapore di Mare and it was consolidated with Vacanze di Natale. Christian’s brother was a musician and chose a different path. In fact, there is a problem, we have to try not to think that we are as good as our parents, but we have to do our best because the initial advantage is very big.”
How much do you miss your brother Carlo on a professional level?
“I miss him so much, but more on a human level than on a professional level. I made 120 films, with Carlo 60. We lived our whole life together. I miss the physical fact of daily presence. He is always here with me. Now that I’m moving on, it’s like he’s here and I ask him how he would do it and he answers me. He was a very special person, reserved and with clear ideas. What made possible the small miracle of two brothers who worked together for many years, we saw the same way. We never had big discussions and the vision of what to do was very precise and came from our father’s mindset. We are anchored in Italian comedy, which then changed. These basics learned from Age and Scarpelli, Comencini, Sordi, Dino Risi, Monicelli, I even remember Totò. There’s a way of doing comedy in Italy that hasn’t changed, but it’s changed a lot. We had stayed true to Scola’s model and it was a miracle for the same point of view.”
Why do we in Italy always criticize the products of our house?
“It’s only happened in the last few years. There’s a fundamental prejudice against comedy, although I haven’t exactly done it. In Italy, comedy has always been viewed badly for ideological reasons and treated as a subsidiary genre. Instead, Italian comedy is what has told Italy best, nobody between theater and books has done it. If I were Minister of Culture, I would let you study at school to understand where we come from. It was the Cahiers du Cinema who reevaluated them, they discovered Risi and sent them everywhere. The problem is that there’s no comedy there lately. True comedy is the dramatic subject that is lightly covered. Today we only do love stories. There is no longer the previous division between actor, director, producer and screenwriter. Actors today are producers of themselves, they write, they make the films themselves. Cinema is a team effort, when I hear someone say “my cinema”, I want to hit them. Let’s take the basic music, think Fellini without Rota and Leone without Morricone. And above all writing, because cinema is basically written. Everything we see on screen was thought, written and invented. We have a cinema that is very egocentric, self-referential and for that reason has lost its sharpness.”
Who do you like among the newcomers?
“There are very few young people directing today because they were drawn to the auteur film moth. We have a round-up of what we call busy film directors who don’t realize that comedy films are more art house than art house films. I’m quoting Il Sorpasso or We loved each other so much, how can you say that these aren’t auteur films? The new generation tells little about their reality, but talks about exclusion, suburbs, they pay attention to a certain kind of neo-neorealism and less to the history of everyday reality. At the moment I see very few young directors making films that I like. I like some directors who do different things than me, like Matteo Garrone and Paolo Sorrentino, who are not very young anymore.”
The lockdown has driven people out of the hall, we’ve just gotten back into the hall with a bit of effort for young people who aren’t used to it. Will Streaming Kill Theater?
“It’s not like that in other countries, after all these catastrophes between Covid and war, it’s a complicated moment on the planet. In the West there is a clear recovery of cinema, only here this recovery is not progressing and I do not understand why . Maybe the answer is that movies aren’t that great.”
Future plans?
“I never like to talk about the future because, as Einstein said, it comes too soon. I write stuff, I have two or three projects. I do many things, I’m a journalist, I write novels. I am following the thriller The Corpse in the Grand Canal, a murder mystery published by Harper & Collins and set in the 18th century. I’m preparing something for a platform, a very complicated thing for cinema. I’m writing a comedy for myself à la Woody Allen”.
Thanks teacher…
“It is I who thank you for this space. Greetings to all movie buffs. Cinema never dies, I was born in a time when television was born, it seemed to be the end but we are always here”.