 THE FILM
CRITICS APPLAUD
"BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR"
GIGI ANGELILLO
for "GIDE IN LOVE"
BY DIEGO RONSISVALLE...
"an important film of great intensity..."
"Gigi Angelillo confirms his talent as a fine actor bringing to his role both emotional intensity and subtle mystery veined with melancholy..."
"... paced like a thriller... director Diego Ronsisvalle intelligently uses the protocols of investigative cinema..."
"GIDE IN LOVE is an agitated, geometrical, romantic film, but also vertiginous, irrational, disturbing... a beautiful vaporous work of dawning, precisely because it is nocturnal with all the lights ablaze..."
An important film of great intensity... "UN AMORE DI GIDE" ("GIDE IN LOVE") directed by Diego Ronsisvalle is paced like a thriller... Excellent actors (Olivia Magnani, Alessandro Haber, Gigi Angelillo)... create a dark implacable atmosphere not only of a world (Taormina, the fifties, its glamorous intellectuals...) but above all a basic fact of life: the destiny that binds men to other men.
Ronsisvalle intelligently uses the protocols of investigative cinema... The stereotype of millenary Sicily, even the edgy editing and voiceovers, all ignite in a chain reaction... Each element is perfect and necessary... Directing transforms from slate to dark green and lapislazzuli... like a Baroque painting, and even the voiceover insinuates...
GIDE IN LOVE is an agitated, geometrical, romantic film, but also vertiginous, irrational, disturbing... a beautiful vaporous work of dawning, precisely because it is nocturnal with all the lights ablaze... An important digression on the fact that sometimes the rather modest and absurd destinies of individuals may weigh even more heavily than we may think on the course of time and history.
Maria Pia Fusco
Arnaldo Colasanti
Santa Marinella Film Festival
SYNOPSIS
Danielle Russo, a young journalist on the editorial staff of the Paris literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Littéraire, is sent to Sicily in 2000, to the elegant resort town of Taormina. She is to do some research on the famous writer Truman Capote’s stay there in 1950. Yet, when the young woman meets a local journalist who offers to help her, she is drawn deeper and deeper into an intriguing labyrinth of shocking "truths". The local reporter is investigating events related to a mysterious crime that also made the headlines in 1950. An elite set of intellectuals, regulars in Taormina, are involved: André Gide – historic guest at the Hotel Timeo - and Truman Capote, Jack Dunphy, Peggy Guggenheim, Jean Cocteau, Jean Marais.
the famous in Taormina in 1950
ANDRE GIDE (Paris 1869-1951). In 1950 André Gide is aged 81. He would die the next year in Paris. Gide was winner of the Nobel prize for Literature in 1947. A true free spirit, both in his ideas as well as his lifestyle, he was one of the most influential cultural figures in France of the time. He dared to openly declare his homosexuality in the novel The Immoralist (1902). His other works include: Fruits of the Earth (1897), Strait is the Gate (1909), The Caves of the Vatican (1914), Travels in the Congo and Return from Chad (1928), Return from the URSS (1936). In 1950 Gide was beginning his final diary journal.
TRUMAN CAPOTE (New Orleans 1924 - Los Angeles 1984). In 1950 Truman Capote, 26, is already a prolific writer. His first success, in 1946, was Miriam, winner of the prestigious O. Henry Award. In 1948, he published the strongly autobiographical Altre voci, altre stanze, and then a collection of short stories A Tree of Night in 1949, and in 1950, Local Color, about his lengthy stay in Europe (two years, mainly in Sicily).
JEAN COCTEAU (Maisons-Laffitte 1889 – Milly-La-Forêt 1963). In 1950 Cocteau is 61. He is one of the most representative authors of French poetry and fiction, as well as being a playwright and important filmmaker: La Machine Infernale, Les Parents Terribles, Le Sang d’un poète, L’Eternel Retour, La Belle et la Bète, L’Aigle à deux tètes, Orphèe.
JACK DUNPHY (Atlantic City 1914 - New York 1992). In 1950, Jack Dunphy is 30. A choreographer, he was noted for his long relationship with Truman Capote.
PEGGY GUGGENHEIM (New York 1898 - Venice 1979). In 1950, Peggy Guggenheim is 52. The wealthy New York heiress and patron of the arts, is a prominent figure in the history of twentieth-century art. In 1948, she bought the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice and transferred her entire art collection there. She discovered and supported American painter Jackson Pollock. In 1950, Guggenheim has already been a long-time friend of Cocteau’s, having organised an exhibition of his work in Paris in 1937.
JEAN MARAIS (Cherbourg 1913 - Cannes 1998). In 1950 Jean Marais is 37. He became one of France’s most famous and beloved actors on the stage, screen and television. Marais was Jean Cocteau’s partner for many years, and was the leading actor in most of the director’s films.
directed by Diego Ronsisvalle
screenplay Diego Ronsisvalle
director of photography Maurizio Calvesi
editor Pietro Lassandro
art director Andrea Salomon
costumes Sabrina Beretta
sound Anton Giorgio Sabia
music Carmelo Mafali, Bruno Ventura
production coordinator Franco Della Posta
produced by
Augusto Allegra for Lastrada srl
cast
Danielle Russo Olivia Magnani
Signor Lagrua Gigi Angelillo
Filippo Baiamonte Guido Caprino
Platamona Alessandro Haber
Cultrera Nicola Di Pinto
Gesuino Mariano Rigillo
director’s note
The structure of this film combines fragments of library footage from Taormina in the fifties, and the narrated events of the story set in Taormina 2000. Much like an intriguing investigation, it confronts past and present to get to the truth. When a film is set in the past, there is always the risk of manipulating the historical backdrop, an inevitable overstatement of it. Here, it is very muted. This was one of the basic ideas of the film: to change the point of view, to shift the eye of the camera from objective to subjective, to tell the story through the eyes of an outsider in terms of the true characters. That is, without sacrificing or belittling any part of the main story. This gives way to an investigation, precisely, one that is developed very cautiously, almost in disbelief, with a sort of baffled impatience as expressed on the face of this protagonist from Paris. The young woman, Danielle, has the cultural make-up of the elitist milieu for which she works. To the same degree, the local journalist who helps her, though he is a complete product of his milieu, rejects this with a sensitive critical force that goes beyond the bounds of this beautiful paradise. In a story that is nevertheless extraordinary, there emerge simple everyday situations, as well as complex and monstrous ones, from the vilest to the most generous. The "rhetorical" fame of the magnificent site is placed side by side with the lives, personal details – even the most minute and seemingly negligible – and psychologies of the local figures. To tell their stories most convincingly, bending to the sharpness of the rare footage of that era, that works as a support to realities of today. That is, to the enigmas of quite another magnitude in terms of the past. Perhaps if we had chosen to draw and combine only from the past, the result would have been a montage film, with footage from the cinématèques of the world, from the Rossif. But this was not the initial idea. Perhaps it will be for another time, for another film. DIEGO RONSISVALLE
SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF 1950
- In February the anti-communist McCarthy campaign begins in the United States.
- The Korean War breaks out on 25 June.
- Italy makes diplomatic moves throughout Europe to keep the city of Trieste which risks being claimed for annexation by Tito’s Yugoslavia.
- The first Rome-New York flight is inaugurated on 5 July.
- The European convention for the protection of basic freedoms and human rights is signed in Rome on 4 November.
- Pope Pius XII celebrates the 1950 Jubilee. He receives Paul Claudel, an enemy and severe critic of André Gide, in a special audience. Claudel, on the occasion of the Holy Year, presents the Pope with his Catholic drama L’annuncio fatto a Maria.
BIOGRAPHIES
producer AUGUSTO ALLEGRA
Augusto Allegra is a producer from Messina, Sicily, and partner of the film production company FILAND srl in Rome. With FILAND, Allegra produced such films as Stai con me directed by Livia Gianpalmo, Modena Modena by Daniele Malavolta, in co-production with NC, and with Arturo Paglia and Giuliana Gamba; Gloss by Valentina Brandolini, and Cover Boy by Carmine Amoroso. The latter has been awarded at several international festivals. Allegra has also produced a number of shorts. Un amore di Gide (Gide In Love) is the first film to be produced by Augusto Allegra’s company Lastrada srl.
director DIEGO RONSISVALLE
Rome, 1971. Diego Ronsisvalle is a director of films, documentaries, television fiction, and commercials. He studied at the New York Film Academy in Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Center, and at Columbia University. Ronsisvalle has worked with directors such as John Woo, Woody Allen, Wim Wenders, Tony Scott. He made his debut in film directing with Gli Astronomi (2002), which premiered at the Taormina BNL Film Festival. In 2004 he directed Le dame di casa d’Este, presented at the Venice Film Festival. The feature Un amore di Gide (Gide In Love) is his third feature.
actress OLIVIA MAGNANI
Actress from Rome, Olivia Magnani, gained international recognition for her performance as Sofia in the film Le conseguenze dell’amore by Paolo Sorrentino (2004) for which she received the Golden Globe in 2005 as "Actress Revelation". An actress "not by chance" but by vocation, Magnani trained in Paris at the prestigious Cours Simon (1996-1998), in Rome at the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte drammatica Silvio D’Amico (1999-2001), and continued her training with several British, Russian and French actors and directors. She made her acting debut in 1997 in Marianna Ucria by Robero Faenza. In 2006, she played the leading role in the film Maria Venera by Beppe Cino. She received awards for "Best Leading Actress" at the festivals of Bastia and Varna (Bulgaria) for this film. During that same year, she was cast at the Comédie Française in La Jungle by Mattieu de La Porte. Olivia Magnani has also appeared in the television series Al di là delle frontiere by Maurizio Zaccaro broadcast since 2003 on Rai 1.
actor GIGI ANGELILLO
Actor Gigi Angelillo made his debut in 1964 at Turin’s Teatro delle Dieci. This was the beginning of an intense career for theatre, television, cinema and as a dubbing actor. He has received two "Best Actor" awards for his performances. Some of the most recent films in which he has appeared include Mio Cognato by Alessandro Piva, Cuore Sacro by Ferzan Ozpetek, Romanzo Criminale by Michele Placido, L’Amico di Famiglia by Paolo Sorrentino. For television, he has acted in Lo Stratagemma dei Bellimbusti by M. Missiroli, Il Processo Matteotti by G. Casalino, Il Primo Cittadino by G. Albano, Mai con i Quadri by M. Caiano, ICS by A. Negrin, Edda Ciano Mussolini by G. Capitani. During his long stage career, Angelillo has worked with some of the most important companies in Italy. In 1978 he co-founded, with Ludovica Modugno, the Società Teatrale L’Albero. He has dubbed the voices of many popular animation characters such as Paperon de Paperoni, Alf, for which he received a "Best Dubbing Actor" award in 2001. |
