Totò and Abruzzo
125th Anniversary of Prince De Curtis
15
FEBRUARY 2023
Totò
Ennio Flaiano
Giulia Rubini
Maria Pia Casilio
There are countless events and celebrations taking place these days, especially in Naples, to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of Antonio De Curtis, better known as Totò. The “Prince of Laughter” was born on February 15, 1898, in the Rione Sanità neighborhood of Naples, and it is truly remarkable that this great actor’s interpretive power has survived three centuries unscathed, remaining as fresh as ever to this day.
When one speaks of Italian comedy, and in particular of the commedia dell’arte, it is impossible not to immediately picture Totò and all his performances throughout his forty-year film career. The only truly timeless icon of Italian cinema, Totò has been compared by many critics to comedians of international stature such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers. His unique acting style and masterful use of physicality and gestures have undoubtedly made him the most popular Italian comic actor of all time.
Top: Totò in a still from Questa è la vita by Luigi Zampa (1954).
Bottom: Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr., directed by Keaton himself in 1924
After a difficult childhood spent in the Rione Sanità neighborhood, where Totò already displayed his playful and eccentric nature, he began performing in small shows as a character actor while still a teenager. It was only after World War I that he moved to Rome to perform in variety shows.
Between 1923 and 1927, he began to gain greater national recognition, and in 1930 he was on the verge of being cast by Stefano Pittaluga in a film titled Il ladro disgraziato, which, however, never saw the light of day.
Totò’s true debut on the big screen came in 1937 with Fermo con le mani by Gero Zambuto. The film, produced on a shoestring budget, was an attempt to emulate the Charlie Chaplin films, and Totò himself was not very satisfied with it; nevertheless, this experience marked the beginning of a film career that established him as the star of a successful series of films dedicated to him, such as Totò al giro d’Italia, Totò cerca casa, Totò Cerca Moglie, and dozens of other films produced from the 1940s to the 1960s.
In addition to this series of comedy films, Totò played several dramatic roles and appeared in various masterpieces of neorealist cinema and Italian comedy, such as Mario Monicelli’s Guardie e ladri (1951), Mario Mattoli’s Miseria e nobiltà (1954), Monicelli’s I soliti ignoti (1958), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Uccellacci e uccellini (1966), and Dino Risi’s Operazione San Gennaro (1966).
A still from I soliti ignoti by Mario Monicelli
The 125th anniversary of the birth of the “Prince of Laughter” provides an opportunity to shed light on Totò’s connection to Abruzzo, highlighting the Neapolitan actor’s key contributions to “Abruzzese cinema”—including his friendship and collaborations with Ennio Flaiano, as well as his performances alongside the Abruzzese actresses Giulia Rubini and Maria Pia Casilio.
Totò was a “gentleman”; at the very least, he possessed the calmness, tolerance, and courtesy of a southern gentleman. That was my first impression. He greeted people by tipping his hat; he never made a fuss about himself, never told tall tales, nor did he fall prey to those frenzied bursts of joy or bouts of depression that, in the film industry, are the result of long and inexplicable waits.
The crew members called him “Prince”.
Ennio Flaiano on Totò, excerpted from “Le canzoni di Totò” by Vincenzo Mollica
Totò and Ennio Flaiano became close acquaintances following the two films starring the Neapolitan actor, which Flaiano had written for Mario Monicelli (Cops and Robbers) and Roberto Rossellini (Where Is Freedom?). In particular, during the production of the latter film, in which Ennio Flaiano was called upon by Rossellini as a dialogue writer, the two had the opportunity to get to know each other deeply, and Flaiano’s portrait of Totò is that of a serious, shy, and composed man, at times childlike and playful; an actor with a self-taught background, possessing an inventiveness that stood apart from ties to the rest of the world and from historical and social contingencies: a pure, timeless comic abstraction.
He was almost always smiling, with a touch of indefinable irony. When I handed him the sheet with his lines, he would read it with a very serious expression, but with every word—and with a surprise that never failed to catch him off guard—his face would break into a continuous, seemingly comical reaction, with a childlike intensity.
Ennio Flaiano on Totò, excerpted from “Le canzoni di Totò” by Vincenzo Mollica
A still from Where Is Freedom? by Roberto Rossellini
Prince Antonio De Curtis’s film career is also linked to Abruzzo through two outstanding performances alongside two great character actresses of Italian cinema, hailing respectively from Pescara and Castelnuovo (AQ): Giulia Rubini and Maria Pia Casilio.
Both actresses were chosen at a very young age, quite by chance, by the two pillars of neorealist cinema, Luciano Emmer and Vittorio De Sica, for the role of the innocent and lost young provincial girl—a character both continued to portray successfully until the late 1950s.
In 1954, Totò starred in Mario Mattoli’s film Il medico dei pazzi (The Mad Doctor), based on Eduardo Scarpetta’s farce of the same name, alongside Tecla Scarano and Maria Pia Casilio, who was appearing in her fifteenth film in just two years.
Casilio made her debut a few years earlier in Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D. and quickly rose to fame through her roles in Dino Risi’s Viale della speranza and Pane, amore e fantasia, directed by Luigi Comencini; the latter was written by another illustrious Abruzzese: Ettore Maria Margadonna. Maria Pia Casilio quickly became one of the most talented and enduring character actresses of the entire Italian comedy era and remained active until the 1990s, when she concluded her career with a cameo in the film Tre uomini e una gamba by Aldo, Giovanni, and Giacomo.
In 1956, however, Totò teamed up for the very first time with Peppino De Filippo in the film La banda degli onesti, directed by Camillo Mastrocinque and featuring Giulia Rubini from Pescara. Like Casilio, she enjoyed a long period of popularity as a character actress playing the role of the young, naive girl from the provinces, only to retire from the screen in the late 1950s to devote herself entirely to her family. She made her debut in 1953 with Luciano Emmer and appeared in films by some of the most important directors of the era, including Valerio Zurlini, Mario Soldati, Mario Mattoli, and Luigi Comencini.
A still from La banda degli onesti. On the left is actress Giulia Rubini.
Although today, 125 years after his birth, we are able to give Totò the credit he deserves for raising the quality of Italian cinema and, in particular, for immortalizing certain comedies that are still regarded worldwide as cinematic masterpieces, throughout his career he was particularly hard on himself:
I’ve reached the age when one takes stock, and I’ve accomplished nothing. I could have become a great actor, yet out of the hundred or more films I’ve made, no more than five are worth watching. But even if I had become a great actor, what would have changed? We actors are nothing but peddlers of empty words. A carpenter is certainly worth more than we are: at least the little table he makes endures, long after he’s gone.
Actors, as we know, write in the sand: a tiny little wave is enough to erase their work. What is an actor?
He’s nobody, a storyteller… What remains of us? Nothing. Who are we?… We’re like something superfluous, and for that very reason, we’re not indispensable…
You can’t do without bread, but you can do without going to the movies.
Totò in Franca Faldini, Goffredo Fofi, Totò: The Man and the Mask, L’ancora del Mediterraneo, Naples 2000
Today, these words seem more exaggerated than ever when applied to the prince of comedy, but the question of the future of cinema remains deeply troubling.
Can we really live without cinema?
Samuele Coccione
An exile by necessity, but mostly out of masochism.
I love movies, books, and boredom.
I’ve been writing about Abruzzo cinema ever since it was “cool”
to be stuck at home.
I live in Milan, but I dream of working remotely with my feet soaking in the Tirino River.