“American Gigolo”, “Taxi Driver”, “Raging Bull”: three titles (all written by him, the first also directed) may be enough to certify the greatness of Paul Schrader, expected in Turin at the Cinema Museum on Wednesday 22 May at 7pm for a masterclass in the Temple Hall of the Mole Antonelliana and then at 8.30pm at the cinema Massimo for the special screening of “First Reformed”, a 2017 film with Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried for which he obtained his only nomination for ‘Oscar, for best screenplay.
«Schrader – says Enzo Ghigo, president of the Museum – is one of the most important authors of our time but also a fine connoisseur of European cinema and culture. It is a true privilege to pay homage to a monument in the history of cinema, which continues to create masterpieces.”
Active for fifty years now (his first official work in cinema was in fact the screenplay for “Yakuza”, directed by Sydney Pollack in 1974 and starring Robert Mitchum), the 78-year-old Schrader has made over thirty films and is still very active: in 2022 he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival from the hands of Piedmontese Alberto Barberaa, in the next few days (the reason for his “convenient” visit to Turin) he will fly across the Atlantic Ocean to go to the Cannes festival, where he will present the world premiere of the new “Oh Canada”, which will see the return in one of his films as the protagonist of Richard Gere, in the role of an elderly writer who fled to Canada to desert the army in Vietnam (with him the young Jacob Elordi and Uma Thurman also star).
«Schrader – adds the director of the Museum, Domenico De Gaetano – excels in portraying men who face a self-destructive path, grappling with an existential crisis which is then emphasized by a violent and cathartic event. These men sit in their rooms, write down their thoughts, go from place to place, waiting for a change to come, while simultaneously raising the strong moral and philosophical tension that has always shaped his cinema.”
The American author’s visit to Mole will also be an opportunity to understand where his only “bond” with our city comes from: Gere’s character in the legendary film that definitively launched him, “American Gigolo”, at a certain point he declared that he was born in Turin, for no apparent reason.
Schrader, who also wrote Martin Scorsese’s major masterpieces, “Taxi Driver” (awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1976 and nominated for an Oscar for best film) and “Raging Bull”, but also “The Last temptation of Christ”, he will receive the Stella della Mole Lifetime Achievement Award on this occasion.
