While probably less famous than other Italian directors of his era (but then there were so many), he was one of the best, and also one of the most commercially successful.
Even before, he had been a (great) screenwriter of countless famous movies - including the cult-favorite Il Sorpasso (The Easy LIfe), a vehicle (in more ways than one) for Vittorio Gassman at his best and Jean-Louis Trintignant, and three extremely perceptive portrayals of women - all directed by Antonio Pietrangeli: Adua E Le Compagne, with Simone Signoret in one of her best performances ever as an aging former prostitute who tries to start a new life, La Visita, with Sandra Milo as a small-town unmarried woman who answers a "lonely hearts" ad, and I Knew Her Well, with Stefania Sandrelli as a would-be starlet in booming (and cynical) Italian cinema.
They were all, more or less, victims - of society, mostly. His work as a director was similarly marked by an unusual attention to the outcasts and the misfits (he was, by the way, active in the Italian Communist Party), and sometimes by claustrophobic settings. His first big hit, We All Loved Each Other So Much, is a piercing depiction of Italy in the early 40s, seen through the lives (and failures) of three men and a woman. It's a great movie.
Each Scola movie is at least interesting - two which stand out are A Special Day, again a story of loneliness, this time set in Fascist Rome, and Passione D'Amore, the archetypal story of a very ugly woman trying to get love without pity in late-19th century Northern Italy (this was, of course, the source of the Broadway musical Passion).
Four of Scola's movies were nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award - A Special Day, Viva Italia! (which he co-directed), Le Bal (submitted not by Italy but by Algeria), and The Family (another huge hit). He won myriads of Italian film prizes (including several Davids & Silver Ribbons), three Cesars in France, the Silver Bear at Berlin, etc. He was one of the last film greats, and I really hope he will be remembered at this year's Oscars.
R.I.P. Ettore Scola
R.I.P. Ettore Scola
Ettore Scola, Italian film director and screenwriter, dies at 84
Prime minister Matteo Renzi says death of film-maker who directed 41 films over nearly 40 years ‘leaves a huge void in Italian culture’
Wednesday 20 January 2016 02.08 GMT
The film director Ettore Scola, a leading figure in Italian cinema for more than three decades, has died at the age of 84.
Scola’s work included A Special Day, a 1977 Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated movie featuring Marcello Mastroianni as a persecuted radio journalist and Sophia Loren as a sentimental housewife, meeting against a backdrop of rising fascism in 1930s Italy.
He also wrote and directed We All Loved Each Other So Much, a 1974 comedy-drama about the postwar lives of three partisans fighting for the liberation of Italy. The film won the Golden prize at the ninth Moscow international film festival in 1975. The following year he won best director at the Cannes film festival for The Good, Bad and Ugly.
Scola died on Tuesday in Rome’s polyclinic, where he had been in a coma since Sunday after being admitted to the hospital’s cardiac surgery unit, press reports said.
The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, paid tribute to Scola, saying he was a “master” of the screen “with an ability that was as incredible as it was razor-sharp in reading Italy, its society and the changes it went through”.
After entering the movie industry as a screenwriter in 1953, Scola got his first chance as director in 1964 with Let’s Talk About Women, an innovative work of nine vignettes in which Vittorio Gassman plays different characters who seduce women.
He directed 41 films over nearly 40 years, according to the Internet Movie Database.
Paolo Mereghetti, the Corriere della Sera’s cinema critic, said Scola had been a distinctive “political” voice in Italy’s postwar cinema.
A former member of the Italian Communist party, Scola even became minister of culture in a “shadow” cabinet set up by party leaders in 1989.
“He understood where Italy was going, and few cinema directors have that insight,” Mereghetti told the television channel Sky TG24.
Prime minister Matteo Renzi says death of film-maker who directed 41 films over nearly 40 years ‘leaves a huge void in Italian culture’
Wednesday 20 January 2016 02.08 GMT
The film director Ettore Scola, a leading figure in Italian cinema for more than three decades, has died at the age of 84.
Scola’s work included A Special Day, a 1977 Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated movie featuring Marcello Mastroianni as a persecuted radio journalist and Sophia Loren as a sentimental housewife, meeting against a backdrop of rising fascism in 1930s Italy.
He also wrote and directed We All Loved Each Other So Much, a 1974 comedy-drama about the postwar lives of three partisans fighting for the liberation of Italy. The film won the Golden prize at the ninth Moscow international film festival in 1975. The following year he won best director at the Cannes film festival for The Good, Bad and Ugly.
Scola died on Tuesday in Rome’s polyclinic, where he had been in a coma since Sunday after being admitted to the hospital’s cardiac surgery unit, press reports said.
The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, paid tribute to Scola, saying he was a “master” of the screen “with an ability that was as incredible as it was razor-sharp in reading Italy, its society and the changes it went through”.
After entering the movie industry as a screenwriter in 1953, Scola got his first chance as director in 1964 with Let’s Talk About Women, an innovative work of nine vignettes in which Vittorio Gassman plays different characters who seduce women.
He directed 41 films over nearly 40 years, according to the Internet Movie Database.
Paolo Mereghetti, the Corriere della Sera’s cinema critic, said Scola had been a distinctive “political” voice in Italy’s postwar cinema.
A former member of the Italian Communist party, Scola even became minister of culture in a “shadow” cabinet set up by party leaders in 1989.
“He understood where Italy was going, and few cinema directors have that insight,” Mereghetti told the television channel Sky TG24.