Celebrations are under way for the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Vittorio De Sica (1901-1974), the great actor and equally great director who won four Oscars for Best Foreign Film (Shoeshine, 1947; The Bicycle Thief, 1949; Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, 1964; and The Garden of Finzi-Contini, 1971). But how much of this well-deserved success is owed to his partnership with Cesare Zavattini, screenwriter and scenarist? It was a partnership that began in 1943 with the film The Children Are Watching, which for De Sica marked his passage from sparkling comedy to works of social relevance. This Almanac will focus on Zavattini (1902-1989), whose hundredth birthday will come next year. But I’m not writing about Zavattinin because I have a taste for early celebrations.
I met him, and I interviewed him when he celebrated his eightieth birthday; at home I have a lithograph of him bearing an affectionate dedication in his hand. How did Zavattini get his start? I’ll yield to his publisher, Valentino Bompiani (1898-1992), who described their encounter in his diary. It was 1931: “When Zavattini came to see me, I didn’t even know his name. When I saw him in front of me, big and shy, he did not inspire trust. He took out a wad of papers. Every once in a while he would mutter something.
The manuscript sat on a corner of my desk. One day, thumbing through it, a sentence caught my eye: ‘The head of the office said to the employee, “I forbid you to think about death in the office.”’ I sat bolt- upright in my chair. I read more. I called Zavattini, and he came back.”
That was the first book, entitled Let’s Talk All About Me, which was an immediate and clamorous success. It was followed by The Poor Are Crazy, I Am the Devil, Totò the Good, the pamphlet Hypocrite 1943, the autobiography Beyond Words, Steeping, The Truuuth, the collections of poetry in dialect Stricarm’ in d’na parola, and Avrès-Vorrei, and the collection of correspondence One, a Hundred, a Thousand Letters. It was September 1982. On the phone, Zavattini’s instructions had been precise: “Get off the highway at the second Parma toll gate coming from Milan.
Head for Viadana, Guastalla, Luzzara, my town. On my house there’s a sign saying “Caffè Bar Zavattini.” He waved broadly at me from the second-floor window. It was almost noon. “You came all this way because on September 20 I’ll be 80?” he asked. He didn’t wait for a response: “I don’t like birthdays, ceremonies, commemorations. Besides, what is 80 years? My mother Ida is 100.” He wanted to show me the house, the self-portrait by the great “naif” painter Antonio Ligabue, the large kitchen, the table with fourteen chairs, the study with its collection of pastels, brushes, pencils, color boxes, lithographs, serigraphs. “But I wasn’t born in these rooms, I was born downstairs, where the bar manager now lives,” Zavattini explained. There was a window open, and you could see the courtyard: “Here below, when I was a kid, they played bowls.”
The sunshine and warmth didn’t keep him from remembering bygone winters. “In the mornings, on foggy days – he recalled – the old ladies would come along who sold vegetables and chestnuts on the street. My mother kept piping-hot coffee ready in a pot. I can still hear the noises the old ladies made when they drank: you know, that sound of partly closed lips, a slurp, more like breathing than drinking.” I had to bring him back to the present birthday, even though he tried to get away, carrying on about his insomnia and the torment of not managing to get to sleep before dawn. Aside from insomnia – I said to him – what is it like to be 80? “It’s fantastic,” he replied . “If I have something to say, it’s easier to say it. Old age is a help in trying to express something, or expressing more. I don’t feel the so-called reduced capacities of old age.” I asked, “Is your memory still infallible?”
He replied: “I don’t care at all about any memory lapses. Normal memory, that of someone not as old as I am, is a sort of coexistence with things in common. Imagine having a flash of memory. It’s better, it’s the sign of real growth, of an instinctive capacity to choose. Let’s go eat.” But where was his beret? The black beret was not to be found. He looked for it behind the pillows, on tables and chairs. Finally he saw it sticking out from under a chair, on the floor. Zavattini calmed down, and we were able to go downstairs. On the street a kid called to him: “Buongiorno, Signor Zavattini. Did you sleep well?” His answer was, “Awful. But I’m very well.” At the restaurant we drank a very young wine called “La Brusca” that was the color of pomegranate seeds. Zavattini was rightly charmed by the taste the balsamic vinegar gave to the lettuce and red radicchio.
There was a moment of melancholy. Cesare told me that someone proposed that he write a book on funerals. He had drawn and painted so many of them, thin lines like rows of ants interrupted by the fluttering of tiny flags. I didn’t think the idea of a book was wrong. But maybe it was wrong to ask Zavattini where he had gotten this interest in the gloomiest of rituals. Out of a vast distance of time jumped Zavattini the altar boy, with his black frock and incense burner in his hands. And out came the funeral of his younger sister, and Cesare’s voice cracked with emotion: “We buried her in a tiny little spot, in an almost invisible corner.” Zavattini left his home town when he was little more than a boy. He was a tutor in a boarding school, a proofreader in Milan. Then came his first books, and his dreams dictated by some fairytale-like surrealism: the maids who got down to polish the pavement because some gentleman walked by, the character Mac who, as death approached, combed his hair carefully because “the young girls from the first floor will come up to see me;” and that utopia of tender beauty: perhaps there would not be so much inequality in the world if God had forced men to think every evening about the finger of a child. On that day in September, 1982, we walked together the way people walk in small towns: slowly, reading the posters on the walls. Zavattini went to Luzzara a couple of weeks each year. It was better meeting him where he was born. Besides, Cesare’s voice had its Emilian accent intact. We passed in front of an osteria where we could hear the excited voices of people playing cards. When we reached my car, I hugged Zavattini and finally told him I wished him a very happy eightieth birthday. Cesare again looked at the incredibly deserted street. He said, “Have you noticed how many balconies there are?” He gestured upward with his arm, as if he wanted to show me – despite the blinding sunshine – a row of stars. (trad.Interpres-Giussano)