Rinaldo Smordoni, the unforgettable protagonist together with Franco Interlenghi in the 1946 film Sciuscià, the neorealist masterpiece by Vittorio De Sica, winner of the first Italian Oscar and the first Silver Ribbon in the history of the Sngci, has died at the age of 91.
In 2014 he was one of the protagonists of Mimmo Verdesca’s documentary Protagonisti per semper, selected for the Nastri d’argento and awarded at the Giffoni Film Festival, while in 2016 he participated in the docufilm Sciuscià 70 also by Verdesca. In 2022 he presented the new 4k restoration of Sciuscià at the Festival del Cinema Ritrovato, where the large Bolognese audience gave him a long and warm standing ovation with 5 minutes of applause.
“Although I did a completely different job in life, taking on the role of little Giuseppe, under the direction of De Sica, was an experience that marked me forever” he said in an interview with Il Messaggero on the occasion of Smordoni’s 90th birthday , who was a marble worker and for 31 years an Atac bus driver in Rome.
Smordoni immediately attracted De Sica’s attention for his stage presence and naturalness and the whole film was built on his character. For this reason the role of the mother was entrusted to his own mother and they asked him directly to select one of the other children. And he chose Franco Interlenghi. He later acted in two other films: he was Gavroche in Manhunt (1948), an adaptation of Les Misérables, and he had a small part in 11 Men and a Balloon (1948). Then he retired from the scene.
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