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Marcello Mastroianni
Occupation: Actor
Birth Name: Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni
Born: September 28, 1924, Fontana Liri, Italy
Died: December 19, 1996, Paris, France
The premier Italian actor of the postwar era, Marcello
Mastroianni was among the most popular international stars in movie history. A
speculative, almost introverted screen presence, he was the perfect foil for the
arid, often puzzling films of directors like Michelangelo Antonioni and
Federico Fellini,
with whom he achieved some of his greatest success.
Born September 28, 1924 in Fontana Liri, Italy, Mastroianni
worked in Rome as a draughtsman during World War II. Towards the close of the
conflict he was captured by the Nazis and exiled to a labor camp in northern
Germany, but he managed to escape and subsequently flee to Venice, where he
spent the remainder of the war in hiding. Upon returning to Rome in 1945,
Mastroianni accepted an accounting position with Eagle Lion (Rank) Films, and in
his spare hours performed with a local drama troupe, earning raves for an
appearance in Angelica which brought him to the attention of director
Luchino Visconti, who subsequently cast him in his production of As You Like
It. Mastroianni became a regular member of Visconti's company and starred in
dramas ranging from A Streetcar Named Desire to Death of a Salesman
to Uncle Vanya. In 1947 he made his film debut in I Miserabli but
did not reappear again onscreen for two more years.
Although Mastroianni enjoyed a successful and prolific
motion-picture career from 1949 onward, the films he made in his earliest days
as a screen actor were almost exclusively minor efforts, rarely screened outside
of Italy. In 1955 he co-starred with Vittorio De Sica and Sophia Loren -- an
actress with whom he would frequently be paired in the years to come -- in
Alessandro Blasetti's comedy Peccato che Sia una Canaglia and later
worked with director Mario Monicelli on Padri e Figli. Still, for the most part
both the casts and crews of his projects were undistinguished, and he remained
an unknown outside of his native land. However, in 1957 Mastroianni reunited
with Visconti for Le Notti Bianche, a picture which the actor later noted as a
film that re-ignited his waning interest in the performing process. He next
appeared as a supporting player in Monicelli's classic crime caper I Soliti
Ignot, and for the first time he enjoyed success in the overseas market.
However, his international breakthrough was Fellini's 1960 masterpiece,
La Dolce Vita;
a long, enigmatic exposé of the lives of Italy's Via Veneto set (Rome's wealthy
socialites and partygoers), the picture was a global smash, and star
Mastroianni, portraying a jaded, disillusioned gossip columnist, became a
worldwide success story.
Mastroianni's next major role was in Antonioni's 1961 effort
La Notte,
where again his distanced, expressionless demeanor fit perfectly into the film's
air of alienation and remote emotionality. It was a more assured Mastroianni who
next resurfaced in Pietro Germi's
Divorzio
all'Italiana, a black comedy which was an award-winning box-office smash
in Italy. It also proved to be a major hit on the international arthouse
circuit, where the actor won the British Film Academy "Best Foreign Actor"
award. The 1962 Louis Malle-helmed La Vie Privée, in which he co-starred
with Brigitte Bardot, was a success as well. Along with the great Jean-Paul
Belmondo, Mastroianni had emerged as the most in-demand actor on the European
continent, commanding fees upwards of 100 million lire per film and working with
Italy's most noted filmmakers. For 1963's masterful
Otto e Mezzo, he
reteamed with Fellini, and in the same year's I Compagni he reunited with
Monicelli. Under the supervision of producer Carlo Ponti, Mastroianni and Sophia
Loren -- Ponti's wife -- paired with director De Sica in 1963's
Ieri, Oggi,
Domani; the same principals also tackled 1964's
Matrimonio
all'Italiana, which like its predecessor was a hit overseas.
Sans Loren, Mastroianni continued appearing in Ponti
productions, including 1965's Oggi Domani Dopodomani and
La Decima Vittima, but without his
alluring co-star the actor's international stock plummeted. He also appeared in
the 1966 American television production The Poppy Is Also a Flower,
followed by the odd Spara Forte piu Forte Non Capisco with Raquel Welch.
Mastroianni quickly returned to Fellini's stable to begin work on the
long-planned Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna. However, disagreements between
the director and producer Dino De Laurentiis forced Fellini to walk out on the
project prior to production, leaving Mastroianni to star in Visconti's 1967
Camus adaptation Lo Straniero. He next travelled to Britain to star in
Diamonds for Breakfast, the first of his English-language films in which his
performance was not overdubbed. De Sica joined him behind the camera for the
1969 MGM production A Time for Lovers, while John Boorman helmed 1970's
Leo the Last. None of these pictures proved successful, however, and
Mastroianni returned to the comforts of Italy for his next several projects,
including 1970's Fellini's
Roma, before
starring in Roman Polanski's 1973 feature What?. He also appeared in a
number of pictures with his off-screen paramour
Catherine Deneuve.
After several critical and commercial disappointments,
Mastroianni scored with the Taviani brothers' 1975 historical drama
Allonsanfan.
That same year, he successfully reunited with Loren in La Pupa del Gangster.
Still, while he remained a highly prolific performer, appearing in several films
annually during the late 1970s and early 1980s, few of his projects managed to
penetrate the international market; too many disappointing efforts had dimmed
Mastroianni's stardom, and those movies that did expand into the worldwide
market were primarily those attached to a renowned filmmaker (as was the case
with Fellini's 1981
La Città delle donne
and 1986's
Ginger e Fred). For 1987's Oci Ciornie, he earned honors from the
jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and later won an Academy Award nomination.
Although now in his early 60s, Mastroianni did not begin to decrease his
workload. While the majority of his foreign films did not surface in
English-language markets -- the exception being Maria Luisa Bemberg's bizarre
De Eso No Se Habla, in which he portrayed a wealthy sophisticate who falls
in love with a dwarf -- in 1993 he appeared in Robert Altman's star-studded
Ready-to-Wear, sparring one last time with Loren. After completing work on
Raul Ruiz's acclaimed
Trois vies et
une seule mort (Three Lives and Only One Death), Mastroianni died in
Paris on December 19, 1996; he was 72. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
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