Welcome, Sordi is sponsored by the Italian Consulate General, the Italian Cultural Institute, and Amici dell'Italia Foundation, in collaboration with RAI International. Prints are courtesy Cinecittà International except where otherwise noted. We especially thank Amelia Antonucci, Piero di Pasquale, and Rosanna Santececca for their kind assistance.Alberto Sordi has been called Italy's Everyman-to Romans he is simply "Albertone"-but around the world he is the maestro of Comedy, Italian Style. It is with great pleasure that we welcome this consummate actor and director as our guest on December 5, and present a selection of his films throughout the following week. It was in the genre that came to the fore in the 1960s known as commedia all'italiana that Sordi took on the mantle of Italy's tragicomic Everyman. Commedia all'italiana, with roots in neorealism, was an art form derived from acute social observation, substituting black humor for stark drama, and amoral practicality for moral anguish. And it says something about postwar Italian sensibilities that the Everyman character is no Jimmy Stewart figure with an airbrushed soul. Rather, from the early fifties to the present, Alberto Sordi has created a gallery of small-change bigshots and mini-Machiavellis, ingenious ragpickers and ridiculous nobles, mama's boys practicing their wiles on an uncaring world. As a mirror for l'uomo, he made vanity, manipulation, and duplicity a plastic art. The ultimate screen comedian, Sordi is a master of garrulous dialogue and delivery, but he possesses "a silent-screen face.... Calm and iconic, it can hold the camera indefinitely, as one emotion slowly crosses over into another" (William Grimes, New York Times). Sordi came into show biz dubbing Oliver Hardy for Italian audiences, and ascended to popularity in Fellini's The White Sheik (1952). In 187 films, he has worked with every great Italian director, from Fellini to Monicelli to Risi to Zampa; he is also a smart scriptwriter, and has directed films himself since 1966. In short, unlike his Everyman characters, there's basically nothing Albertone can't do well. Welcome, Sordi. Friday December 5, 1997
