Giancarlo Giannini is one of those actors who don’t just play a character: they reinvent it, rewrite it, transform it into something that didn’t exist before. His career, more than half a century long, is a journey through Italy, its contradictions, its passions, its wounds.
He is an actor who knew how to be popular and sophisticated, comic and tragic, political and sentimental. An interpreter capable of moving from theater to cinema, from comedy to melodrama, from dialect to language, without ever losing authenticity.
5 great interpretations by Giancarlo Giannini
Giannini was the face, body and voice of an unrepeatable season of our cinema: the one which, in the Seventies, found in Lina Wertmüller a director capable of describing Italy like no one had done before. Giannini was his alter ego, his mirror, his detonator.
The first meeting that defines this collaboration is Mimì metalworker wounded in honor (1972). Here Giannini gives life to a character who is already a manifesto: Mimì is a simple man, overwhelmed by politics, work, desire, the fear of not being up to par. Giannini plays him with a mixture of comedy and desperation that will become his signature. Every gesture, every look, every hesitation tells of an Italy that changes too quickly, an Italy that no longer knows where to look. His interpretation is memorable because he never judges the character: he accompanies him, observes him, lets him make mistakes. Mimì is ridiculous and tragic at the same time, and Giannini manages to make these two souls coexist without ever forcing them.
The following year arrives Film of love and anarchy (1973), perhaps her sweetest and most vulnerable role. Giannini plays Tunin, a farmer who arrives in Rome to carry out a political attack and finds himself overwhelmed by an impossible love. Here the actor abandons the comic mask and opens up to an almost infantile fragility. Tunin is a man who doesn’t know how to live in the world, who doesn’t understand the rules, who lets himself be guided by his heart. Giannini interprets him with a surprising delicacy: the shining eyes, the broken voice, the shyness of the gestures. He is a character who thrives on contrasts – the anarchist and the lover, the revolutionary and the scared boy – and Giannini holds them together with a naturalness that few actors possess.
It arrives in 1974 Overwhelmed by an unusual destiny in the blue sea of Augustthe film that crystallizes his alchemy with Mariangela Melato. Here Giannini is Gennarino Carunchio, a Sicilian sailor, proud, stubborn, ferocious and tender at the same time. His performance is an explosion of physicality: he walks, screams, laughs, gets angry, falls in love with a truth that seems improvised, but never is. Gennarino is a character who risked becoming a caricature, and instead Giannini gives him depth, makes him human, makes him credible. His transformation – from servant to master, from victim to executioner, from wounded man to man in love – is one of the most powerful in Italian cinema.
Then it arrives Pasqualino Seven Beauties (1975)the film that earned him an Oscar nomination. Here Giannini reaches an intensity that becomes almost destabilizing. Pasqualino is a man who goes through the horror of war, hunger, imprisonment, and who survives thanks to a mixture of cunning, desperation and self-love. Giannini interprets him as a tragic clown: funny, despicable, touching, disgusting, irresistible. Every scene is a leap into the void. His performance is memorable because he never seeks the spectator’s sympathy: he seeks the truth, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it hurts. It is one of the bravest interpretations in the history of our cinema.
In the end The Innocent (1976)the meeting with Luchino Visconti. Here Giannini abandons dialect, comedy, popular instinct, and immerses himself in an aristocratic, decadent, sensual world. His Tullio Hermil is an elegant and cruel man, tormented by desire and jealousy. Giannini plays him with a refinement that surprises those who knew him in Wertmüller’s films. Every word is measured, every gesture is controlled, every emotion is held back until it explodes. It is the definitive proof of his versatility: an actor capable of reinventing himself without losing his identity.
Related News :