Amedeo Nazzari (1907-1979), Italian acting legend.

Amedeo Carlo Leone Buffa, known by the stage name Amedeo Nazzari (Cagliari, December 10, 1907 – Rome, November 5, 1979), was an Italian actor, one of the legends of acting, an important part of Italian cinematography and theater. Son of Salvatore Buffa, owner of a pasta factory, and his mother Argenide. Nazzari, the future actor will take his stage name from his maternal grandfather, Amedeo Nazzari, former president of the Court of Appeal of Vicenza, who then moved to Cagliari. Amedeo Buffa was only six years old when his father died and his mother moved with him and his sisters to Rome. Here he completed his studies in a Salesian college where he matured his artistic vocation from the first school plays, then moved to the amateur dramatic scenes and finally, then abandoned his engineering studies, for the actual theater. His professional debut took place in 1927 with the company of Dillo Lombardi, to move in the following years to more important companies such as those of Annibale Ninchi, Memo Benassi and Marta Abba. In 1935, he was noticed by Elsa Merlini, who offered him a part in the film "Ginevra degli Almieri". The film will not be successful and Nazzari will return to the theater. Once again it was an actress, Anna Magnani, who sensed his talent: a young emerging artist at the time and wife of director Goffredo Alessandrini, Magnani insisted with her husband that Nazzari be part of the cast of Cavalleria . His physical ability, enriched by the charm of the uniform, became the main attraction of the film, which, presented in Venice at the Venice Film Festival and then shown in all Italian cinemas, was one of the biggest profits in 1936. In 1938 he wears the uniform for his second public success, the pilot Luciano Serra, again under the direction of Alessandrini. By now Nazzari was a well-known face and had many job offers, but his constant discussions with producers to interfere with the dialogues of the films he starred in and to suggest script changes that were not foreseen in the scripts created a reputation for him as a character unpleasant and unruly. In 1941, at the IX International Film Festival in Venice, Count Giuseppe Volpi awarded the Cup of the Ministry of Popular Culture as the best actor for the film "Caravaggio, the "damned" painter, also directed by Alessandrini, also in the year next, for the famous film "La cena delle beffe" finally consecrated him as a star of the cinema of the time. The film, directed by Alessandro Blasetti, is a costume drama set in Medici Florence. Adapted from the poem of the same name by Sem Benelli, it achieved tremendous success with the public and remains in the historical memory of Italian spectators for a number of reasons: first of all because it contains the first scene of a female nude (a shot of a few seconds from Clara Calamai in the nude breast and that the film will be forbidden to be watched by minors under 16 and will be condemned by the church authorities), then because he brings together two young lovers in the cast, Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida, who after a few years later he will find a tragic fate accused by the partisans of collaborationism and massacred, finally for the intense and slightly Gigionesque interpretation of Nazzari, who in this film expresses his most famous words: "… e chi non beve con me, péste lo cólga!!", which is repeated by everyone, with the Sardinian accent of the protagonist, and over time it becomes literally obsessive. After a series of small films of performed during the war period with great difficulty, after 1945 he won important roles with Blasetti's "A Day in the Life" (1946), in which he played a partisan leader, "The Bandit" (1946), directed by Alberto Lattuada with Anna Magnani together, and The Captain's Daughter (1947), based on Pushkin's novel of the same name and directed by Mario Camerini, in which he joined Irasema Dilian. In great demand even abroad, he first went to Spain to act in three films, then to Argentina, where, however, he was offered to play the role of a criminal and corrupt Italian. With the idea that he had to slander his country, Nazzari refused to fulfill the contract and the news reached Evita Perón, who, after having illustrated the script, took the protection of the artist and offered him to stay in Argentina anyway to visit the country, and to meet many Italian immigrant families in person. In Italy in 1949, he starred alongside Vittorio Gassman, Silvana Mangano and Jacques Sernas in Il lupo della Sila. A year later, again with Silvana Mangano, Nazzari starred in the film "Il brigante Musolino". In 1949, he starred alongside the Greek-born actress Yvonne Sanson in the popular drama "Catene", directed by Raffaello Matarazzo, a film that was a huge success at the box office (in fact, it was the highest grossing of 1949 – 1950 film season), and opened for Nazzari a very successful second chapter of his career: "Catene" was in fact the first of a long series of tear-jerking films that moved the Italian public during the first half of the fifties, reviving a popular genre, the melodrama, already much loved in Italy in the days of silent cinema, but at that time mistreated by film critics, who characterized these films as cinematic photonovellas of unimportant; only in the seventies these films will be re-evaluated by the same ones, who purposely invented the term neorealism of the appendix. From this series of films, all with Yvonne Sanson, directed by Raffaello Matarazzo and with great success at the box office, we remember "Tormento" (1950), "Nobody's Children" (1951), "Who is without sin … ” (1952) , “Come Back”! (1953), "The White Angel" (1955) and "Melancholic Autumn" (1958), the last film in which Matarazzo directed the acting couple Sanson-Nazzari. However, there were also "dedicated" roles: in the film "Processo alla città" (1952) by Luigi Zampa, in which Nazzari sketched the figure of a courageous Neapolitan magistrate who opposed the Camorra of the early twentieth century, while in "Il brigante di Tacca del Lupo" (1952) directed by the famous actor Pietro Germi, presented at the Venice International Film Festival, he played the role of a soldier in post-unification Italy, dedicated to fighting brigandage Lucanian. In Mario Monicelli's Proibito (1954) he had the opportunity for the first time to play a Sardinian character in a story of family strife. In 1957, he was chosen by Federico Fellini to star in "Nights of Kabir", in the role of a decadent star with whom he made fun of himself. Also in 1957 Nazzari married Irene Genna, an Italian-Greek actress, with whom a year later he had his daughter Maria Evelina, now also a theater actress. In the sixties came several disappointments: the role of Prince Salina in the "Leopard" of the director Lukino Visconti, proposed to him, went to the American actor Burt Lancaster late in order to receive funds from an American production company; in Lattuada's remake of The Captain's Daughter under the title The Storm (1958), the character of Pugachev, which had been his, was assigned to Van Heflin. From Hollywood came the proposal to shoot a film with Marilyn Monroe, but this time it was Nazzari who refused, due to the difficulty of acting in English and the fear of being ridiculed in the singing and dancing scenes (the film Let's make love, then it would be done with Yves Montand). In 1968 he took part in the film Trajan's Column, an Italian-Romanian co-production, with Antonella Lualdi and Franco Interlenghi. In Italy, the golden age of Italian comedy began, but, with a few sporadic exceptions, such as Luigi Zampa's Frenesia dell'estate and Dino Risi's Il gaucho, both from 1964, Nazzari refused to interpret this kind of scenario, (means afterwards. , on matters of taste and respect for oneself and the audience). Thus, while young actors would be flooded with job offers, Nazzari would appear less and less on the big screen, limiting himself to film roles in international productions, such as Il papavero è anche un fiore (1966). , "Il clan dei siciliani" (1969) in Joe Valachi, "Secrets of Cosa Nostra" (1972). Some satisfaction came from television, where he starred in television remakes of two of his most famous films, "La cena delle beffe" and "The Captain's Daughter", and appeared as a guest of honor on popular programs such as "Il Musichiere", "Studio Uno" and "Settevoci". In 1963, he also tried his hand at television, taking part in the Saturday night "Grand Prix" variety show, along with "New Year's Lottery", and turned some famous carousels for a popular aperitif, repeated his most famous joke as a slogan: "… e chi non beve con me, péste lo cólga!! In 1969 Rai dedicated the first eight evenings to him to broadcast a retrospective of his most famous films. The cycle, which achieved very high ratings, was edited by Gian Luigi Rondi. In the same year, the actor was included in the television mini-series "La donna di cuori", directed by Leonardo Cortese for Rai 1 (then called Programi National), surrounded by Ubaldo Lay and Sandra Mondaini. Thanks to a deep and bold voice, in keeping with his character, Amedeo Nazzari is one of the few Italian actors of his time who was never dubbed member of Freemasonry. Beginning in the seventies, his television and film engagements became less and less due to a severe form of kidney failure that forced him to undergo a series of weekly dialysis sessions. In 1975, he participated in an episode of the television series "Inspector Derrick", entitled "The Man from Portofino" and broadcast by Rete 2 (now Rai 2) in 1979; the main subjective scene was shot, in Italian, in Portofino. In the last two films, "Nina" (1976) by Vincente Minnelli and "Melodrammore" (1978) by Maurizio Costanzo, he appears in small roles. He died at the Villa Claudia clinic in Rome on the evening of November 5, 1979, from cardiorespiratory collapse, a few months before his daughter Maria Evelina gave birth to his first grandson, Leonardo. Born Amedeo Nazzari Buffa, he was laid to rest in the monumental cemetery of Verano in Rome. © Reserved material | The exclusivity on this page is dated April 28, 2022 ___________________ Albanian cinematography in activity since 2013