In a book entitled “Carissimo Simenon, Mon cher Fellini”, a collection of letters exchanged from 1960 to 1989 between the great film director and the great writer, under the date of 20 May 1985, one reads, “Dear Fellini, Giulio Nascimbeni came here yesterday. He is a very friendly person and it was a pleasure talking to him. It was the first interview I had given for the past two and a half years, and also the last because I have decided not to receive any more representatives of the press or professors. And never mind if all those I have refused to see are a little vexed with me...”.
I apologise for this quotation, which concerns me personally, but I thought it necessary to give the utmost credibility to what I am about to say. On 19 May, 1985, I was in Lausanne at the house of Georges Simenon. It was late afternoon. The writer got up from his armchair and went to open a bottle of fresh white wine. He handed me a glass and added with a smile, “This is Loire valley wine, from the places where Maigret was born”.
This mention of his famous character prompted me to ask Simenon, “Is it true that, despite a great actor like Jean Gabin having played the part, after you saw the Italian TV series, with Gino Cervi as the great detective, you declared - this is my Maigret? Simeon replied “I confirm”. The Lausanne episode came back to mind while various initiatives were celebrating the centenary of the birth of Gino Cervi (Bologna 3 May 1901 - Punta Ala 3 January 1974).
I am old enough to have memories that go well back in time (it is a sad and yet comforting privilege). I was a child when, in 1935, I was taken by my parents to see a film entitled “Aldebaran”, directed by Alessandro Blasetti, in which Gino Cervi played the part of a navy officer so in love and jealous of his wife as to put his career at risk. It was a mediocre film.
Three years later, the Principal of the high school where I studied decided that we school children ought to see the patriotic (in an anti-French sense) film, “Ettore Fieramosca”, again directed by Blasetti. Cervi was the leader of the thirteen Italian knights in the famous and victorious “Barletta challenge”. Then, finally, I saw Cervi “in person”.
A guest of relatives for a Christmas holiday in 1938-39, I went to Milan for the first time and one evening was taken to the theatre where one of the unforgettable Italian companies of actors, the Compagnia dell’Eliseo, was performing Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night or What you Will”. Playing Orsini, Duke of Illyria, Cervi was already on stage when the curtain opened. The starting cue went “If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it, that surfeiting the appetite might sicken and so die”. I was struck by the grey streaked hair of the actor, who in “Aldebaran” had seemed to me to be blond. And who did I see and admire for the first time in the role of Viola, who dresses as a man and thus creates all the misunderstandings on which the comedy is based? Viola was Andreina Pagnani (1906-81) who twenty-five years later, in 1964, was to become the meek, thoughtful and patient Louise, the wife of Maigret-Cervi. I remember that Pagnani stared at length, with a look of surprise on her face, at that boy in the zouave trousers and pullover (it was me of course) who stood right at the foot of the stage, applauding like mad. Son of a well-known theatre critic, Antonio Cervi, who after seeing him perform in an amateur recital, said his performance was “terrible”, Gino became famous throughout the world when he played Peppone, the communist mayor with the golden heart in a small town in Emilia, continually at loggerheads with the parish priest Don Camillo, the equally great French actor, Fernandel (1903-71).
Giovannino Guareschi’s “Small world” stories, for years combated by the Italian left, were tremendously successful. The books were translated into many languages and published in thousands and thousands of copies. But there is no doubt that their popularity was boosted by the five films which the stories inspired, starring Gino Cervi and Fernandel. The director of the first two films was French, Julien Duvivier (1896-1961), an outstanding protagonist in film history.
Cervi-Peppone, with that look of a big eater of tagliatelle and tortellini, his “Stalin” moustache, always ready to become angry and then forgive, to threaten “storms of beatings” and to be moved when his old teacher tells him, a communist, to defend the monarchy, this character of endless appeal became, with Cervi, the sanguine and merry symbol of the Italian provinces.
Maigret and Peppone should never however cause us to forget that Gino Cervi should also be remembered for other roles. He was Cyrano in a triumphant “performance” that also widely appealed to French audiences. In 1942, he was the protagonist of “Quattro passi tra le nuvole”, Blasetti’s film that anticipated post-war neo-realism. On stage and at the cinema, in a film dated 1954, he was the Bologna cardinal, Prospero Lambertini, an impetuous and ironic spirit who became pope in 1740 with the name of Benedict XIV. He was Renzo Tramaglino in the first talking picture based on Alessandro Manzoni’s book “The Betrothed”. It was 1941.
On stage he played in the immortal works of Shakespeare. He was Othello in “Othello, the Moor of Venice” and Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. He dubbed Laurence Olivier in two excellent films directed and interpreted by the great British actor, “Henry V” and “Hamlet”. After listening to the Italian version, Olivier remarked: “I don’t know Cervi, but his voice is definitely better than mine”. Cervi’s voice. Standing in front of his coffin, the parting words of Eduardo De Filippo were “Goodbye, the most beautiful voice of the Italian theatre”. Sometimes, in the dead of night, the TV presents a series of dear ghosts. Sleep is hard in coming, the headphones help listen without bothering the neighbours, the rooms are surrounded by darkness and silence.
By pressing the keys on the handset, from the old and misty distance of black and white, a close-up of a pipe appears and of a thick finger pressing tobacco in the bowl. Or else, another night, always in black and white, a large neckerchief appears round a bull-like neck.
In those moments, almost moved, I restrict myself to a greeting: welcome back Gino Cervi/Maigret, welcome back Gino Cervi/Peppone. (traduzione Interpres sas-Giussano)