ITALIAN JOURNEY – PROGRAMME 1

ROME – ROMAN CINEMA

From ‘Spartacus’ to ‘La Dolce Vita’, Rome has a long history of cinema behind it, and not just as a film location. 

The city has always been a source of inspiration for film directors like Federico Fellini, and more recently it has inspired a new generation of directors such as Nanni Moretti.

20 years ago Nanni Moretti, director of ‘Caro Diario’ and ‘Aprile’, launched the career of the Tuscan actress Laura Morante. Laura has recently come back to Rome to live there permanently.

Gabriella: Nanni Moretti insisted on working with you in his first films, ‘Sogni d’Oro’ and ‘Bianca’.

Laura Morante: Yes, he did. ‘Sogni d’Oro’ was the first film I made with Nanni, and I now know he really had to struggle to get in to do the part – he and others have told me that since. I still don’t know how he managed to pull it off, because in the film I played the part of a high school student, and Nanni was a teacher who fell in love with me, and at the time I was six months pregnant. So I don’t know how he managed to convince people I could be a high school student with a…We had to film the whole thing…in close-ups. Yes, in close-ups, so people wouldn’t notice my pregnancy- there are scenes where I had to run and well, and as a matter of fact I couldn’t run at all. So altogether it was pretty…He managed to come up with a whole story…but in the end he managed to make me…I was absolutely unknown at the time.

Gabriella: And he was right to do so! How stubborn of him!

Laura Morante: I don’t know if he was right or wrong, but he certainly knows how to bring out…he’s always had a very strong will. And at the time he wasn’t as powerful as he is today. He managed to get me to do the part even though I was absolutely unknown and nobody wanted me to do it.

Gabriella: So in a way, you started your career with ‘Bianca’, Nanni discovered you, and he became more famous as a result of it, so you must have benefited each other.

Laura Morante: Well I don’t know if I was of any benefit to him, I couldn’t say that. But he certainly helped me. I don’t know, I think it would have been exactly the same if he’d chosen someone else.

Gabriella: You spent a long time in France, your daughter was brought up there, you stayed there quite a while. Then you came back to Rome. What is it that ties you to our city?

Laura Morante: Well, I must say I’d had quite a bad relationship with it before I came back. For me Rome represented the place where I came to live as a young girl, because I left my family when I was seventeen, and I came to live here, and to me Rome was a heartless, threatening city. I felt lonely. I felt, I felt lost. And I didn’t have a penny. So for me it represented all those bad things. It was a hostile city in which I was determined to stay just for the sake of sticking it out. I used to take the train home to Tuscany at seven in the morning, it was the first train to leave at that time of day, and I used to get to the station at six to make sure I wouldn’t miss it. I was so scared of not being able to get home to my family. I’d rush to the station when it was still dark. 

Gabriella: What is it you like about this quarter, about this area between Trieste and Coppede?

Laura Morante: The thing I like best about this quarter is that people don’t come here to visit. This is a living place. The city centre is a place to visit, but this is an area you live in. Nobody comes to visit the Trieste area. People live here and that’s it. I also like it because it’s kept its traditions – though it’s being renovated now – and it’s a very leafy area. There are lots of trees here and I love that. There are palm trees, and magnolias, two of my favourite trees. And there are parks too, with multitude of colours…the colours of Rome – reds, yellows, ochres – that are…And in the city…in this area there are so many craftsmen. This quarter is full of craftsmen, of small workshops, of markets, of things that make it really pleasant to live in. It’s a bit like a village. And there isn’t too much traffic. There isn’t…and at the same time it’s just two steps away from the city centre.