ROME — Villa Sordi opens its garden for a 15-day film retrospective beginning June 15, the anniversary of actor Alberto Sordi’s birth, with screenings devoted to his greatest screen romances and a new statue unveiled in his honour.
“Rome has never had a statue of Alberto Sordi,” says Giambattista Faralli, president of the Alberto Sordi Foundation. “On June 15 we will place one in the park of Villa de Santis, near Cinecittà, which is in every way emblematic of his life’s work.” The summer retrospective, he adds, will unfold in the garden of the villa itself. “We will screen a whole range of films featuring him with so many wonderful actresses. We are expecting you.”
Rome’s Mayor Roberto Gualtieri will attend the statue inauguration, he told Italy Now.
This year’s festival, titled Alberto Sordi e i suoi amori (Alberto Sordi and his loves), runs for 15 days from June 15. Screenings will feature films pairing Sordi with Brigitte Bardot, Sofia Loren, Silvana Mangano, and Monica Vitti, across storylines of love, jealousy, betrayal, and disillusionment.
Alberto Sordi was born in Rome on June 15, 1920, the youngest of four children, and went on to become the most recognised actor in the history of Italian cinema. He starred in more than 190 films across seven decades, directed 19, and won 10 David di Donatello awards as well as a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at Venice in 1995.
Sordi invented an entirely new genre: the commedia all’italiana (Italian-style comedy), which defined a generation of filmmaking. “He was a true intellectual who dedicated his entire life to cinema,” says Alessandra Maria Sette, curator of exhibitions at Villa Sordi. “He wrote, he intervened in screenplays, he invented new genres, and with his films he anticipated small social revolutions that were about to happen.”
The other Sordi
The festival arrives in a year of wider celebration. On April 16, the 10th edition of the Alberto Sordi Family Award honoured 22 figures in cinema, culture, and media at Rome’s Casa del Cinema, among them actors Edoardo Leo and Ricky Tognazzi. Sordi was widely considered parsimonious, yet donated billions of lire in secret to hospitals and care homes across Rome. He chose never to marry. “He wanted only to make cinema,” Sette told Italy Now. “He said so with admirable intellectual honesty.”
Additional reporting by Alina Trabattoni
