“I wanted to make a film that felt like cinema and little television. Using big words, which smack of auteur cinema”. This is how Neri Marcorè presented the film which sees him make his directorial debut, Zamora, screening on the evening of May 22nd at the Corso Multiplex in Piacenza. In conversation with Carlo Confalonieri, the popular actor said that he was inspired by the cinema of the great masters of Italian comedy: Risi, Monicelli, Scola. “They managed to put together, in a film, even involuntary comedy, made not of jokes but of situations – said Marcorè -, from which they then moved on to drama. As life teaches us. This is what I wanted to tell, thanks to Roberto Perrone’s book, on which the film is based.”
The film is set in the 1960s. Walter Vismara is a thirty-year-old man who works as an accountant in a small factory in Vigevano. When the company he works for closes without warning, Walter will find a new job at another company in bustling Milan, where he will be under the supervision of his boss, Cavalier Tosetto. The latter has a fixation for football, forcing his employees to compete in a football competition once a week, which sees a challenge between bachelors and marrieds. Walter, who has no particular appreciation for football, immediately lines up in goal. This choice of his leads the engineer Gusperti to target him, sarcastically nicknamed him “Zamora”, in reference to the famous Spanish goalkeeper of the 1930s. Walter is therefore forced to endure Gusperti’s humiliations both on the pitch and in the office, which will then lead Walter to devise a plan to take revenge on Gusperti.
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Inadequacy is precisely one of the main themes of the film, played by many new faces starting from the protagonist, Alberto Paradossi. “I met him while doing an audition. I liked the fact that each actor was measured in his role. Maybe having little-known faces, thus creating that suggestion where you don’t think that it’s that actor or actress playing that character, but that it’s really the protagonists of the film who move on stage – he said -. Because relying on those you see a little too often takes away a bit of the magic.”
A double appointment, yesterday’s one for Marcorè in Piacenza who, half an hour after meeting the public in the hall at the Corso, took to the stage of the Municipale with the show “The Good News“, which alternates and intertwines Fabrizio de André’s songs with narrative passages taken from the apocryphal Gospels which the author himself was inspired by.
An opportunity to appreciate the talent of the artist, who in addition to being appreciated for his biting comedy and his qualities as an interpreter, is also a director and, as we could see on stage, also a singer and musician, taking up the guitar.
With the music of Fabrizio De André, Gian Piero Reverberi, Corrado Castellari, the dramaturgy and direction of Giorgio Gallione, the arrangements and musical direction of Paolo Silvestri, “La Buona Novella” saw Rosanna Naddeo on stage alongside Neri Marcorè , Giua (vocals and guitar), Barbara Casini (vocals, guitar and percussion), Anais Drago (violin and vocals), Francesco Negri (piano), Alessandra Abbondanza (vocals and accordion).
La Buona Novella is Fabrizio de Andrè’s first concept album, with score and lyrics composed to give voice to many characters: Mary, Joseph, Tito the thief, the mothers’ choir, a carpenter, the people. With the apocryphal gospels – which does not mean false, but hidden as Marcorè has well explained – the God who became man is more so than ever. And in this true, painful, and therefore salvific humanity, lies all of Andrè.
For those who missed it, tonight – 23 May – the show is repeated at the Municipale.
