Enrico Vanzina, a screenwriter, producer, director and journalist, has a lot in common with the central figure of The Evening in Rome, his third film behind the camera, adapted from his namesake crime novel and presented in the Grand Public section of the Rome Film Festival (it will hit cinemas in April): like him, Federico, portrayed by Massimo Ghini, not only does what he does but has been married for fifty years to the same woman and is still in love with her. The difference is that, in the fiction, he finds himself entangled in a murder mystery when a high-society financier (Luca Ward) sends him a young aspiring actor for a talent assessment. Rejected by Federico, after only a few hours the young man is killed by two gunshots, and the investigations led by the commissioner Carlo Buccirosso reveal a plot of forbidden loves, betrayals and lust, involving a network of people around Federico, aided in his personal sleuthing by a journalist colleague from Il Messaggero, played by Ricky Memphis. The film opens with a dedication to genre cinema and melodramas that have accompanied us for years, and it feels like a love letter to that popular cinema that is no longer made in our country, to which Vanzina is deeply attached. Speaking about this, the director began by saying: “Once I wrote: there is a restaurant that used to be called Steno, Enrico and Carlo, and in that restaurant there’s no Steno left, there’s no Carlo left. At this point I am behind the counter, I’m in the kitchen, I’m serving at the tables… They’re no longer there but the menu is still the same.”
And he continues: Checco Zalone is my absolute idol because he’s the only one who keeps a steady course in observing the country through his mask. (…) Totò was the king of ignorance, through whom he unmasked power. I always remember a film by my father, Totò in Color, the famous theatrical piece in the sleeping car with the honorable Trombetta, and at a certain point he looks at him and says ‘ma mi faccia il piacere!’. That line alone made clear the relationship between politics and truth back then. It’s not that this cinema died; but right now comedy isn’t enjoying a wonderful moment, for a very simple reason: an entire generation of young people, even with great talent, has been lured by the lure of auteur cinema. (…) There are very few directors who still want to tell the country. Perhaps because television tells it too much, perhaps because of social media, but cinema has a different gaze. I would show an hour of Italian-style “commedia all’italiana” in schools, with 40 films of that genre, which perfectly tell the story of our country from postwar to today, and it’s also entertaining. Italian-style comedy became mainstream in the sixties. A film like Guardie e ladri, by my father and Monicelli, which started the trend, was snubbed in Italy, went to Cannes and won; the writers Brancati, Flaiano, Pinelli, Age and Scarpelli contributed to the writing of those comedies… comedy has told this country. The genre, however, was perhaps a bit crushed by the avalanche of content on streaming platforms; we no longer even have those talents who did the special effects, the costumes… Many years ago I made a film that was a great success, Savages. We had to shoot the scene of these people crashing by plane into the jungle and we didn’t know how to do it. It cost too much and we had little money, so I turned to Margheriti, a genius of genre cinema who one day called me and said ‘today we shoot the scene’. I went to his house outside Rome; in the garden he had rebuilt the airplane model, perfect, which he controlled by hand, and underneath he had crafted the jungle with chicory and lettuce, and I stood there thinking, ‘this is the film’s collapse; how do we do it?’ And yet I went to projection and it was perfect—this was the strength of Italian genre cinema.
Why this return to the mystery? Because I love the genre and for years I thought I wouldn’t have the breath to write a novel. Not that I doubted my writing ability, because I know how to write, but I couldn’t manage to write one. Writing a mystery was a detox from comedy. I never thought I would turn it into a film, but this concerns me personally, concerns my life; the protagonist is a little like me, the film touches on themes that matter to me, and I didn’t want anyone else to do it without the tone I wanted to give it. Perhaps a better director could have done it, but I wanted a popular cast, a certain atmosphere, to end with the song by Tenco, to cast Ricky Memphis as the journalist, to have the newspaper be Il Messaggero, where I work; there were many things I liked doing on my own and, with a bit of presumption, for better or worse, I decided I would make this film myself.
The story is set in modern times, albeit with a somewhat retro flavor, in this milieu of Rome’s high nobility, which somewhat recalls that of La Dolce Vita. But does it still exist today? Still so? It does exist. I, like Ghini, go to the stadium, I also teach in the suburbs, but I also move among them; I live near the grand noble palaces and I know them all, and I must say that in the film, which might appear as a fierce critique of that world, there is in reality some affection. There is a certain grandeur in them. Before your colleagues asked me what I think: I am fiercely republican, fiercely liberal, but I’m a bit like the English, even those on the left, who have respect for the queen, which is a national, cultural identity. When I dine with these princes I feel that, despite their fragilities, with a world that is falling to pieces and sometimes rendering them ridiculous in the way they live, they carry something very important behind them. They preserve something and they are fighting to live in a modern way while remaining attached to tradition, and I like that very much.
Of all Enrico Vanzina shared with us in just fifteen minutes, we cannot recount everything, because besides being a writer he is a fantastic raconteur and we would end up revealing too much. Now the director dreams of making a film about contemporary Milan, the city of managers and influencers. In the meantime, next spring you will be able to see at the cinema The Evening in Rome, set in what Sorrentino (cited in the film) defined as the great beauty, with a dash of decadence, irony and melancholy. In the cast, in addition to those mentioned, there are Rocio Muñoz Morales, Martina Stella, Nicoletta Romanoff, Florence Nicolas (whom many will remember from her early films under the name of Florence Guerin), Elvira Zingone and Riccardo Terrana.
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