{"id":3397,"date":"2013-03-04T17:09:26","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T17:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3397"},"modified":"2013-03-06T21:21:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T21:21:24","slug":"the-importance-of-calling-me-steno-an-interview-with-stefano-vanzina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/latest-news\/the-importance-of-calling-me-steno-an-interview-with-stefano-vanzina\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of calling me Steno, an interview with Stefano Vanzina"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Stefano<\/a>
Stefano Vanzina, aka Steno<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here’s an interview with Stefano Vanzina, aka Steno, the director of numerous Italian comedy films from the 1950s onwards. \u00a0He also made a couple of effective straight films, including one of my very favourite – and hugely influential – poliziotteschi,\u00a0From the Police with Thanks<\/strong>. \u00a0The interview was published in an ancient copy of Italian newspaper L’Unita and is translated by me (apologies for any errors!)<\/p>\n

He’s the founder of the now famous Vanzina cinema family (his sons are Carlo and Enrico), and Stefano Vanzina, perhaps better known as Steno, loves to talk about them.\u00a0 What they make of their careers, we’ll wait and see.\u00a0 At 68 years old, having directed 75 and written nobody knows quite how many films, he says that he doesn’t now feel as if he’s retired.\u00a0 Nonetheless, recent years have seen a mood of celebration and critical re-evaluation of his career.\u00a0 He’s now considered to be a true master of Italian comedy cinema who touched all his films with a kind of honest craftsmanship. Over the years he has worked with such icons as Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, Alberto Sordi and naturally Toto.<\/p>\n

Small in stature, thin, nervous and pragmatic, with a slightly old fashioned moustache that matches the colour of his slicked back hair, Steno is still at work.\u00a0 He has just released Mi faccia causa<\/strong>, which he considers a remake of his celebrated Un giorno in pretura<\/strong>, and he’s already thinking about a film for TV he’s due to start shooting in the Spring: I clan<\/strong>, a story about the mafia written with De Caro. He’s tireless.\u00a0 He says that completing a film nowadays is much more difficult than it used to be, he laments the laziness of producers and the tastes of the public, but then acknowledges that for him things continue to go well.\u00a0 Like his films or not (and his last film, Mani di fata<\/strong>, was extremely mediocre), Steno continues to sail peacefully through a crisis in Italian cinema, perhaps squeezing his eyes in the face of fashion or microscopic changes in costumes.\u00a0 As in the episode of Sandrelli in Mi faccia causa<\/strong>, this tells of a model and worker who, in opposition to the absenteeism and degeneration, ends up taking her work back to the bedroom.<\/p>\n

\"Mi<\/a>
Mi faccia causa, a late period Steno film<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q: Steno, is it the case that your son, Enrico, an avowed cinephile, teased you with the idea of doing this remake?<\/em><\/p>\n

What? You think I’m so narcissistic that I pay homage to myself? No, the idea clicked while I was chatting with producer Fulvio Lucisano.\u00a0 We were due to do another film, but there were problems.\u00a0 Then I said: “Why don’t we remake Un giorno in pretura<\/strong>?”\u00a0 “Ok,” replied Lucisano, without giving me the chance to think about it any deeper.”<\/p>\n

Q: Of course you updated the situation and modernised the characters.\u00a0 But do you think that despite these changes, deep down it remains the same film as it was thirty years ago.<\/em><\/p>\n

Have you never been in a magistrate\u2019s court?\u00a0\u00a0 Spend a day at one and then ask me the same question.\u00a0 Certainly we changed the locations (in 1954 the magistrates courts were in via del Governo Vecchio, the palazzo which later became the headquarters of the feminists.)\u00a0 But the stories have stayed the same: little scams, bizarre accusations, abusive fabrications.<\/p>\n

Q: Yes but then it was Alberto Sordi who played the character Nando Moriconi in the funny episode ‘Maranella’, there was Peppino de Filippo in good form.\u00a0 It was, if you’ll forgive me, a slightly richer cast.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Ah, Sordi.\u00a0 Today that episode is considered to be a cult movie, but what would you think if I were to tell you that the producers back then didn’t want him.\u00a0 For Gianni Hecht and Carlo Ponti it was a vulgar sketch, they said that having Sordi in the nude wouldn’t make people laugh; they even tried to make me cast Walter Chiari instead, because he was better looking. But we made the right choice.<\/p>\n

Q: We’ve already talked a bit about Sordi.\u00a0 You made five films with him, the last being Anastasia nio fratello<\/strong>, so you must have good memories of him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Alberto was, at that time, around the beginning of the fifties, a continuous explosion of jokes and gags.\u00a0 There was nothing that could stop him.\u00a0 I very much liked the fact that each time I saw him I’d cry with laughter, as in the case of Piccola poste<\/strong>, where he tortured beyond belief those poor old men.\u00a0 Remember?\u00a0 Sordi knew how to hold his own against anyone, even Toto.\u00a0 In Toto e I re di Roma<\/strong> Toto understood well that he had opposite him a great actor, so in one scene he improvised a series of sneezes in order to get a laugh.\u00a0 Sordi, with the minimum of self-doubt, held his own with some by-play that was even more amusing.<\/p>\n

Q: Going back, Steno was born to be a writer or a director?<\/em><\/p>\n

The one and the other.\u00a0 I began working in the cinema together with Mario Monicelli, writing about six or seven screenplays a year with him. But the transition to becoming a director happened quickly.\u00a0 In reality I began, artistically, by writing for Marco Aurelio.\u00a0 My friends there were Metz, Marchesi, Maccari, Zavattini, Age and Scarpelli… the first time that Fellini came looking for work there it was me who received him.\u00a0 He was a boy; he bought with him a briefcase full of cartoon.\u00a0 He tipped them out on the table and I immediately realised that this youngster was something special.\u00a0 They looked like they were designed by Da Grosz<\/p>\n

Q: You have said before (in L’avventurosa storia del cinema Italiano) that Marco Aurelio and Bertoldo were where all the postwar directors started out.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Erminio<\/a>
Erminio Macario in Imputato alzatevi, Steno’s first writing job<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yes, that’s right.\u00a0 Then – and I’m speaking about the end of the thirties – it wasn’t easy to break into cinema.\u00a0 It was a closed world, privileged, where the earnings were good.\u00a0 As an assistant director I’d be able to stay in hotels which today I can only dream about.\u00a0 It was thanks to Metz that I was able to get my break as a ‘gagman’ among the group of writers of Mattoli’s Imputanto, alzatevi!<\/strong>\u00a0 The film turned out to be a crazy success, equaling the takings of Greta Garbo and Clark Gable films, who were the icons of the time.\u00a0 So Mattoli also hired me to work on the screenplay for his following film, Lo vedi come sei?<\/strong> with Macario, and he also took me on as an assistant director.\u00a0 I was made.<\/p>\n

Q: And do you have anything to say about Orson Welles?<\/em><\/p>\n

Excuse me, but why don’t we talk about today.\u00a0 You are really all the same you young critics.\u00a0 It was Ponti who came up with the idea for L<\/strong>\u2019uomo, la bestia e la virtu<\/strong>, perhaps because doing Pirandello gave the potential to engage great actors such as Welles.\u00a0 But in reality the film didn’t work.\u00a0 Welles accepted the contract for the money; he didn’t give a damn about the film.\u00a0 But on set he was always a perfect gentleman.\u00a0 He’s one of those directors who, when they work as an actor for another director, are able to behave like a guest rather than a master.<\/p>\n

\"L'uomo,<\/a>
L’uomo, la bestia e la virtu, directed by Steno<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q: Returning to today, now.\u00a0 Is it true that you reproached your son Enrico for doing screenplays that weren’t steely enough?<\/em><\/p>\n

No, that’s not true.\u00a0 But, talking about Rene Clair, I’m now convinced that the director is the defendant of the scriptwriter. \u00a0He needs to turn to the scriptwriter to write, to come up with the stories and ideas.\u00a0 Italian cinema is in crisis because for many years producers have believed that they can earn millions by merely putting together two comics and having them joke.\u00a0 The story comes afterwards.\u00a0 Of course, you never want to direct a film in opposition to your actor, but then you have to guide them, go along with them to a degree while curbing their worst excesses.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 What else has changed in making comedies over the years?<\/em><\/p>\n

Nothing, the avant-garde doesn’t exist in comedy.\u00a0 You can aim your farces at young people or make them for video, but the rules don’t change.\u00a0 It’s all to do with rhythm, the way the jokes are paced.\u00a0 Take Benigni, even he, at the end of the day, is influenced by Toto, Chaplin and the Marx brothers.<\/p>\n

Q: One last question, do you have any regrets?<\/em><\/p>\n

No, I don’t think so.\u00a0 I’m perhaps a little tired of doing comic films because – as the producers say – people can only laugh so much.\u00a0 I know how to make other films as well.\u00a0 For that reason I was really happy when a Roman critic, Cosulich, at the time of La polizia ringrazia<\/strong>, cited among all my possible inspirations Fritz Lang.\u00a0 He couldn’t have known it, but M has always been one of my favourite films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an interview with Stefano Vanzina, aka Steno, the director of numerous Italian comedy films from the 1950s onwards. He also made a couple of effective straight films, including one of my very favourite – and hugely influential – poliziotteschi, From the Police with Thanks?. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[1076,514],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3397"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3419,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions\/3419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}