10  Roberto Perpignani

The main conversation with Roberto took place over three days in June 2001. His career started through serendipity with Orson Welles, he matured as an editor with Bernardo Bertolucci and has cut for the Taviani Brothers for many years. We talked in his apartment in Rome where he lives with his wife Annalisa and their twin daughters.

I can’t say how important the figure of my father was because he died when I was very little – I was five years old, but I remember perfectly that the house was full of photo machines, because he was a photographer. I realised after where my passion for images and photography came from.

My father had been Director of the Photographic Office of the Ministry of Public Education and it was he who took a large proportion of the photos of art in Italy so I grew up with the images of classical and ancient art.

When I was born he was sixty years old and he was waiting until the end of the war to restart the work, because all the art works were covered and stored during the fighting.

I have this precise memory of the photographic apparatus. He was doing his own processing and the darkroom was the kitchen (laughs). The tripods were enormous, how big I cannot say because I was very little and they were taller than me. Now my son is studying photography.

There is a Greek Venus – ‘Callipigia’– literally the Venus with a ‘great arse’, (laughs) and somewhere I have a photograph of it by my father. I think I started with my sexual imagination on the Greek proportions!¹

My mother I can say was a very nice person and very noble, but she always did simple work. Her mother was an ‘Ironer’, and she started when she was ten years old, taking the things that had been ironed to the customer. She ran a dry cleaners in Milano and then she went to South Africa, following a lyric theatre company as a wardrobe assistant.

She remained there six years and when she came back she met my father who was twenty-five years older than her. They were happy until he died. My father said – I was drawing all the time – ‘this boy is going to become an artist’. When he died my mother thought that she had to realise this idea, but when I had to go to high school she said I have no money to buy books and I decided to go to night school, and I went for four years to study painting. It’s very nice because they gave me the diploma even though the course was officially five years.

During the day I was working. I learned to do many things. At first I was attracted to working with children who had problems. I took part in some exhibitions with my paintings and I think I could have gone on. From fourteen I was involved in politics in the Communist Party, and I conceived my role with a lot of responsibility. If I wanted to be a painter I had to offer something with my work, but I didn’t know how to absorb social problems and translate them into paintings.

(Roberto showed me one of his paintings. It reminded me of the work of Käthe Kollwitz; graphic, and uncompromising.)

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When I was twenty a friend called me, actually Mariano, the son of one of my half-sisters, about joining him to assist Orson Welles. I was studying infant psychology and painting and I used to go to the cinema club as part of cultural and social engagement. I didn’t know what to do and another friend said you must be mad, but I knew nothing about cinema. It was a very strange moment.

So I went there. In fact it was a garage where Welles had put two flat bed Prevost² editing tables. It was at a villa by the sea at Fregene; the Villa Mori which was the family home of his wife Paola Mori. They were working on the documentaries on Spain, which he made for Italian TV.

The young Roberto Perpignani working with Orson Welles (Courtesy of Roberto Perpignani)

He loved Spain – it seems he wanted to be buried there. He delivered this work without commentary. The TV directors didn’t like Welles voice speaking in Italian – ‘too much accent’ – so stupid, and in the end not his words either. So we delivered the work. The material was mute and we made an international sound mix – wild tracks, voices and music – but without commentary. He made about ten different documentaries, e.g. Encierro de Pamplona, Feria de Sevilla, Catholicism, Spanish Art, amongst others. He conceived it as a diary. His eye plays an important part in showing us his Spain.³

When I started all I had to do was to compose the reels – the film was 16mm – whilst behind me were these two cutting tables and shadows moving. I couldn’t understand what was happening there. After little more than a week, Welles said to the guys to teach me to use the cutting table. I started under his gaze. It was very embarrassing. I felt useless. He was not austere; he was leaving me the time to learn. In the first moments I made a lot of mistakes but I saw he was very, very patient. Gradually he became more and more demanding.

I didn’t realise, but Welles’ wife, Paola Mori, was the sister of Patricia Mori who was married to another nephew of mine, older than Mariano. So Mariano went to work there because he was the brother of the husband of the sister of Welles wife! So in a certain way I had a link with this strange person coming from somewhere in America called Orson Welles.

Six months went by working on the documentaries on Spain. When we finished there he left to shoot ‘The Trial’⁴ in Paris and we stayed to finish the mixing, Mariano and I. At a certain moment he wanted us to rejoin him in Paris with his two cutting tables; we went as a package! (laughs). Some months later Renzo Lucidi,⁵ who cut ‘Mr Arkadin’⁶ was asked to help with the sound editing of ‘The Trial’ and he recommended Fritz Müller,⁷ a nephew of his, who in fact is credited on the film. I cannot say if he was a young editor or a good assistant, but for sure he had more experience than us.

For a long while we worked in the Gare d’Orsay⁸ where the film was shot, which was full of dust. At that time the station had fallen into disuse on the ground floor but was still functioning below ground level. We moved from 16mm to 35mm, from documentary to fiction and from claustrophobia to agoraphobia. Also there was an official French editing team who did nothing except keep a copy as the cutting went along, the same as Mariano and I who were the unofficial team although we were actually working with Welles!⁹

At that time I was due to report for Military Service. As I was in Paris my mother went on my behalf. This was a risk because it was an obligation to appear in person. It turned out okay because I was the only child of an unmarried woman, and had her maiden name since my father could not give me his name because his previous wife would not give her consent. It was a sort of miracle and if the authorities had insisted on my return from Paris my life would have been changed forever.

I can say Welles was a fascinating person even if he was rude many times and although he was unpleasant, in a lot of small ways he was surprisingly sensitive. My personal crisis – a youthful insecurity, symptomatic of immaturity – was only resolved because of the intervention of such an imposing figure as Welles.

We have to be absolutely clear: during my work with him Welles did the editing himself. I remember watching him construct, and the manipulation of the pieces – watching him under the tension of finding his expression through choices. They are saying he is baroque – it’s because he is always showing us what he means.

During the editing of the documentaries about Spain I remember Welles cast a dancer/choreographer called William Chappell as Titorelli¹⁰ in ‘The Trial’. Welles put him up at the villa to be able to instruct him for the role. One day he gave him material of Beatrice (Welles 8-year-old daughter) dancing the flamenco to cut. When Welles saw what he had done after three demanding days of work he said ‘You are a genius!’ and then showed him the door. Immediately he left the room and shut the door. Welles said, ‘Put it all back together again’.

Welles was a tireless worker and in following him you had to ask of yourself an inconceivable endurance. Before meeting Welles I was a little lazy and after, I changed my metabolism and could not work hard enough, with a rhythm so intense and my new way of life was totally conditioned by this experience. It was physical; his presence was so imposing. After I worked with him I couldn’t say what I had learned because I had no ability to see myself from the outside. Only years later did I realise that I had absorbed Welles way of thinking by noticing that when selecting material I put the signs or marks on the film in the same way as Welles!¹¹

Bernardo Bertolucci once said: ‘Nino Baragli¹² attacks the material but Roberto has to absorb the material first. Then he gives it back to you elaborated, giving form to a feeling – instinctively, involuntarily absorbed from the material’. Now I feel I use my brain more! In Portugal, where I was cutting a film in 1978, I did an interview and the headline was ‘More to Feel than to Think’.

Of course Welles used to think a lot but during the editing in many cases he was more realising the reactions to the elements important because the connections you make with the reality (of the film) are not always the result of conscious research or work. Many times you discover things and you are attracted by what you have found.

This double experience with Welles (documentary and fiction) was very significant. I am writing now about that. In the first years of cinema there was a capacity to express the character of reality, and at a certain moment they discovered that they could use the medium to tell stories, having the opportunity to use the realistic pictures of cinema. It’s a magical mélange, because you have the feeling that it is something true, objective in the photographic sense, and at the same time you are telling a story in your own way. It’s the specific originality of cinema.

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When I started to work in cinema I never took a pencil to draw or a brush to paint; never more. I also stopped my political activity. I think I lost something anyway but it was a sort of revelation. So it is right to say that Orson Welles gave me the answer to my instinctive research. And so I went on, allowing the work to absorb me, literally day and night.

Also I got married to the daughter of the owner of the hotel in which I was staying in Paris (laughs). I was twenty-one and my wife was nineteen, and two years later my first daughter, Allesandra was born. In fact it is very strange to reconsider one’s own life.

Politically at a certain moment I had a discussion in the party, because they were asking me to be more present and I said to them you are really boring. I am sure I can do more by myself than you inside here.

In 1968 I didn’t belong to that movement, except that my work was constantly committed. At that time I didn’t feel directly engaged – also because the students were not my brothers. I was closer to simpler people. There was a distance between me and those guys.¹³

I restarted my subscription to the party in 1972. Why, because when I was married the first time it was to someone who was not engaged politically. When I remarried – went to live with another woman – she was more politically engaged – it was a sort of a pose – it’s very important with whom you are living and sharing things.

RC:Were you provoked by the experience with Welles into treating cinema differently?

RP:At that time cinema was essential to the social context – to express, to represent and the quality of people working in cinema was very important. I thought that each of us had to give the maximum – it was like a mission you know, and as with all missions there was the problem of leaders. Welles was a leader. I was looking for leaders because I was unsure about myself. When I met Bernardo Bertolucci, he was a leader. When I met Bellochio¹⁴ he was a leader. I remained very comfortable in my role as a collaborator because I thought my work could contribute.

When I went to see a film I was very demanding and it was not a job. But there was something very nice; I discovered I could be happy in my role because there was a space to offer yourself. I had been fascinated by Welles as an exemplar of a fine mind and that put me in the position to be enriched by each new encounter. Italian cinema was full of activity, both commercially and culturally, and it was involving all generations. Of course I belonged to the youngest but our work was giving us the feeling of being actually very present in the social context with our ideas, our engagement, our passion.

It’s very strange – I remember that when making ‘The Trial’ I was not sure it was the best film of Orson Welles and it’s exactly what I thought after. But if you go inside the film each shot is the maximum; the camera, the point-of-view, the acting, the editing and not least representing Kafka.¹⁵ Welles never did a film ‘with the left hand’. I can say for instance that I like more ‘Othello’¹⁶, and I think ‘Falstaff’¹⁷ is so full of poetry representing the authentic dichotimies of life. I’m not a blind fan of Orson Welles in any case. I don’t like ‘F for Fake’,¹⁸ but I love ‘The Immortal Story’,¹⁹ where he gave us a lot of very precious emotions – despite the form sometimes being intentionally provocative or abrupt.

What I absorbed from him was a lot of sweat; sitting at the cutting table – back and forth – a cigar there – never we do it tomorrow, we do it now. If we are too tired it’s a pity.

At that time I fell in love with my future wife. I had to come back to the hotel in time because she was closing the door at

2 o’clock in the morning. Once I was making a relay with Mariano at 10 o’clock in the evening and Welles was coming back from the hotel where he took a shower and he was ready for it! He had a big Havana in his mouth. I didn’t know how to break his strength, but I started to work. He said do that – it was done. You know, after two to three hours he was destroyed because I was too fast, it’s unbelievable. I was attacking him like a boxer in the liver, in the liver, in the liver; I have to break him, and at a certain moment he said to me ‘Roberto, let’s go home!’ I jumped and I ran to the hotel, just in time. You know I was loving him but I was also loving my wife. It was really very funny.

I was so young, so impetuous. Once I left and closed the door with the handle and he is shouting ‘Roberto’ and I nearly broke his hand. His hands were quite big but ‘molto delicate’ not a tough hand. Sometimes you need a break and once I went to the bar and I came back with an orange. He was at the door and he said ‘why did you go?’ Suddenly I remembered that he was allergic to oranges. ‘To get this’ I said. ‘Go away!’, he screamed. So I had fifteen more minutes. It’s something very funny.

Another time he was working with Fritz Müller. I did not have a good relationship with Fritz, he was always upstaging me. Welles said. ‘Roberto, did you do that?’ I said, ‘No, because you didn’t tell me to do that’.

‘No I told you’.

‘No, I can say that if you told me, I would have done it’.

‘No, I told you’.

By this time Fritz had gone out into the corridor.

‘Perhaps you said it to Fritz in English, and you know you have to tell me in Italian’

I stood up and he came towards me. I was pushed against the cutting table and I was blindly looking with my hand behind me to grab the joiner; I remember I was prepared to hit him in the face.

Cross fade.

The next image I remember was being back at my editing table trying to cut and ten minutes after he turned to me and said: ‘Roberto, do you want coffee?’ I cannot say anything more expressive.

I was preparing for the mixing. He said let’s see what you have to do for the music for the sequence of K, Anthony Perkins, running away from Tintorelli’s studio and there is a big group of girls running after him. We had to prepare music with pieces on two tracks. He said ‘take this and put it first’ and so on. At the end it was very complicated, but I had my notes and I had my marks.²⁰

‘Can I count on that?’ ‘Sure’ I said. ‘I’ll see you at the mix’ he said, and left.

I started to work, but the notes and the marks were not matching, but I understood the meaning so I did it. I went to the mixing room. I said. ‘Orson, you asked me to do something but there was a technical problem’ and he said, ‘Okay, don’t worry’.

‘But I did it, do you want to hear it?’

‘No’

‘I did it the way you asked me, do you want to hear it?’

‘No’

At twenty years old you are too demanding and unyieldingly proud.

At the end of the reel he was standing in front of the screen. It was an image from ‘Citizen Kane’. ‘Roberto, put your sequence on the projector!’ I went to the projection box and laced the tracks myself. I explained to the engineer, in French, I asked him to be very attentive, we cannot make any mistakes. We started. It was like magic. The engineer was a magician and we arrived at the end. I was holding my breath. Welles turned round and said ‘Bravo’.

I was so moved and confused so I said in his ear ‘This time I had to think’. He turned towards me as if he was a pagan god who could burn me with his eyes. Why? Because all the year before when I did something not exactly as he asked, he was saying ‘why did you do that?’ To justify myself I used to say ‘I thought that’, and he would answer every time ‘You don’t have to think’. And now, after a year, I found the moment for demonstrating my involvement

RC:Did you ever have any contact after that?

RP:No, and I’m very sad for that. (long pause) You are the first person I’m telling something which provoked in me a very big ‘senso di colpa’ (sense of guilt). I was working with Bernardo on ‘Before the Revolution’²¹ and in the same studio there were the Italian distributors for ‘Citizen Kane’. They thought it was too long! So they said to me ‘Could you cut “Citizen Kane”?’ and I said ‘No!’²²

Bernardo said to me it’s better you accept, because if you don’t do it someone else will. It’s better this person is you. You can understand it was like cutting my father! (laughs). They said to me the film has to be ten minutes shorter and I did it.

First I put the titles on the first sequence. Every time I had to consider a cut I felt a deep sense of guilt. I reduced many ‘lengths’ trying to be as ‘soft’, as invisible as I could. I had also to readapt music, because they didn’t have the ‘international’ track. I met this guy who was originally supposed to do the re-cut, and I said it was very difficult, and he said it was not difficult at all – for instance the first reel is redundant. He was quite prepared to remove the documentary (News on the March).

After a while I started to hide the fact that I had done this, but I cannot die with this sense of guilt, it’s too great a weight on me.

When, at the end of our work in Paris, I said goodbye to Welles, I was so moved I shook his hand so hard I nearly broke it. I cannot forget him screaming ‘Wow!’ It was a few days before Christmas and I realised that I couldn’t work with him anymore. Why was that – because I was getting married. I had to be free if I was going to follow him. If I had a family it was not possible. When he came back to Rome I was already an editor. I was very happy, but in front of him, not because of Citizen Kane, I was really embarrassed to meet him as an editor, as a son comes in front of his father. I was not able to be proud in front of him – I remained his assistant. The relationship was never resolved, but really it was a form of love.

Once in the eighties, we were waiting for Welles to arrive in Rome for a lecture at the University. I obtained a lot of tickets for the students at the Film School. I was really anxious. He didn’t come. It was what I expected but I realised I was hoping for it and couldn’t help myself.

I wonder about Welles and ‘Heart of Darkness’;²³ I always remember his project: I = eye. Through the eye of the protagonist he wanted to capture the eye of the spectator, saying you are Marlowe. Coming from radio he could say that. (‘War of the Worlds’²⁴ was so convincing). During all his life he was playing with the dichotomy of what’s true and what’s false. Kane had many points of view on something. Cinema can only take you to the window and the voice – ‘Rosebud’. In ‘Heart of Darkness’ Marlowe saw on a map of the Congo this river that was a snake with its head in the ocean and I’m sure Welles was fascinated by the snake, because he was betrayed. He was a Titan who was destined to lose! Someday I must write about him, but first I must understand him better.

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RC:Remembering what the Tavianis²⁵ said yesterday when we met them at the studios, how did you come to music?

RP:It’s very strange, because I cannot say that I have a good knowledge of music, but I have always had a very big interest in popular music – all these records are popular music (he gestures to the shelves behind me) – and it’s a political choice, this preference. I have an intentional interest in this form.

I met a guy at the university who founded the department of ethnomusicology, doing research and developing an archive with Alan Lomax.²⁶ Professor Carpitella was also interested in other forms of expression, ‘non-verbale’, means of communication. For instance gestures. I worked with him making visuals for videos on body language – in Napoli, in Sardinia – total contrast – fascinating. We were just working in Sicily discovering gestures not in synch with the words in a schizophrenic way, that is, the opposite meaning between the gestures and the words. We also made some research at the Palio di Sienna²⁷ studying the collective rhythm reacting in a certain way together. So I was thinking a lot about music and you saw I have a harmonica and I play to feel lighter. There was a time I had it in my boots while I was used to wearing a ‘poncho’.

Speaking about how the Tavianis were talking yesterday, in fact I am afraid about the non-sense of a certain way of using music in cinema, because there is a big risk that the images, the main expressive structure, along with all the other elements, although it seems the opposite, becomes poorer. The forms have to be free to give an authentic contribution. If one is not free then there is not the originality there could be. It’s a bad habit to consider the elements determined by virtue of some principle of hierarchy; so you can call the composer when the film is about to be finished to make it complete. You feel you are dressing up the film. It’s not exactly what we call music, it’s a signal – like they become painters for illustration. I don’t want to be excessive but in fact there are many things to say on this subject considering a lot of different cases.

Morricone²⁸ is a great musician ‘in assoluto’ (in absolute terms) even if we are used to think of him in terms of cinema but he has all his life been involved in research, taking part in a group called Nuova Consonanza. He felt all his life that, in a certain sense, he betrayed his master who said about him that he could become a good musician. One day a friend of mine who was a composer of musique concrete and electronic music, Vittorio Gelmetti, met Morricone and the latter started to complain saying ‘You are free, you are the one’, and Vittorio, who had not a penny said ‘What are you talking about? You have everything you want. You have a house just in front of the Piazza Venezia. Leave me free!’ Sometimes it is difficult to be objective. It is certain that everything has a cost, as much if you are free but poor, as it is if you are a prisoner in a castle.

There is a very good mood when I meet with musicians, because we belong to the same part of the movie, and we are used to collaborating. Nicola Piovani,²⁹ the Taviani’s composer, in a meeting, when asked about his music said, ‘I write it, I direct the recording and then Roberto is cutting it!’ (laughs). Paolo or Vittorio said yesterday, ‘I don’t care if it’s a perfect cut as long as it is what the film needs’. I cut following an emotion and it’s the same way the musicians work.

Once we were talking about rhythm and I wanted to be more precise about this, as expressive, dynamic. You link the spectator to something and he is conditioned to be moved; it’s sedure, taking with you, seduction. So I think it is a case of talking more of expressive scansions, and if we want to signify a sense closer to the term rhythm I prefer ‘cadence’. The use of music needs research. Maybe it’s been done but we don’t know. A school is a good place for this to happen.

RC:When the Tavianis call you the ‘Stravinsky of the cutting room’ they mean you are deep in musicality. We don’t want to be pretentious in cinema and it’s very important to understand the popular idiom.

RP:Whenever ‘Stravinsky’ reappears I feel bad and I consider it an embarrassing, obsessive, ironic game. I have something to tell you about the role of someone who is not cultured enough – not structured at the beginning. In other words, someone who had a complex about not having the circumstances for going to high school and for that reason he studied all his life. It’s as if I was looking for ‘riemplire’ (to be fulfilled) I had a lot of holes and day by day in different periods of my life I tried to understand something more. I worked to fill the empty space but not always in a rigorous way. For instance, working so hard that I hadn’t time enough to read but instead concentrated on watching images. Definitely it is good to be conscious of lacking something because you don’t risk being pretentious. Moreover you are always studying, looking for something – there’s always a ball to run after.

When I made these videos on Greek Philosophy I applied something without knowing. I was trying to give an image in an imaginative way – in the way that the audience could interpret. I became a sort of translator – trying to transfer the concepts from the verbal to the visual language – but in a very simple way, because I myself was fascinated and curious, so I was as the spectator, a role of someone who has to discover, to understand.

The cassette I made on Céline³⁰ is a case in point. The text was very interesting, but the writer was unable to resolve the problem of the images. At the end of my research I had 1200 images. I used everything, from Capa³¹ to Cartier-Bresson.³² So TV showed it twice, but couldn’t sell it because of the rights. I spent a whole year on it, and it was enriching and revealing.

By the way, although in my not so rich family I could not have records, I did have a mother singing operas, because she worked at the opera. It is no coincidence that I was an extra at the Opera Theatre for a whole year. You should know that at an early age I played in ‘Carosello Napolitano’, ‘ War and Peace’, ‘Casta Diva’, ‘Casa Ricordi’;³³ a lot of films she made wardrobe for. Also when I was following the studies about children I went to a course about popular dance because I had to dance with the children. You had to connect with the energy, but it was before my work in cinema.

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RC:At some point you became an editor.

RP:We came back to Rome – my wife and I and I went knocking on doors for work, but nobody knew me, and anyway Welles was too exceptional for normal cinema. So I was on the list of people not working. Once I had a call to cut ‘The Bible’ for John Huston;³⁴ it was true! I went but there were three Italians and three Americans; it seemed ironic that they had to invite someone from the unemployed list.

I did sound on archive films about German Wars. Then I synchronised the dubbing of an English film about a policeman named Norman, working day and night with my wife who was French and didn’t understand a word. For instance she prepared ‘tupid’ for stupid and I had to look on the floor; ‘where did you put the “s”?!’³⁵ The work was nearly perfect so I did it as a second job for some years for the money whilst editing for very little money.

Then I was introduced to Bernardo and he wanted to work with someone young rather than Baragli who was a classical editor. It was through a mutual friend – the teacher of child psychology – and we met in the Piazza del Popolo.

We started to edit at the beginning of December 1963 and we arrived at Christmas with something that was not clear. I was used to Welles saying cut here! I was used to following instructions but Bernardo wanted someone creating with him. Also I understood what he was looking for because we spoke about ‘À Bout de souffle’, ‘Les Quatre cents coups’, ‘L’Année dernière à Marienbad’, ‘Hiroshima mon amour’, ‘Jules et Jim’.³⁶

Bernardo said to me when he was going home for the Christmas holidays, ‘You have to share – I will leave you a sequence to do in the time that I am away. When I come back we will decide whether you stay as editor or as assistant, because I need an editor’.

I passed all the days watching the material, without the courage to cut. On New Years Day when everything was closed I went to the studio and persuaded the guard to open up and let me in. I started to cut and the next day I showed what I had done to Bernardo. That sequence is almost exactly the same in the completed film. I had to change my skin. I had to transform myself. I received the necessary shocks to be something, as someone who is thrown in the water and is faced with learning how to swim.³⁷

Very soon I met Lattuada³⁸ and Bolognini³⁹ but they belonged to another generation and I felt proud to be young. Lattuada structured his films like an architect – nothing to change, nothing to learn. Bolognini was someone I loved so much – he was another extreme – but I did not have a similar mood and storytelling style. But when I met Bellochio – at that time he had done his first film – and others I became the editor of the young Italian cinema.

Returning to Bertolucci, you must remember the difference. He was culturally well prepared. His father a poet⁴⁰ and he was used to visitors to the family home like Pasolini⁴¹ and Moravia.⁴² Bernardo himself won an award as a poet when he was 20 and made his first film at twenty-one. But we connected through our knowledge of the ‘New Wave’. French cinema gave us the space for creative freedom – it exists because you give it the form – the authority to dare.

We examined the sequence from ‘Before the Revolution’ which was Roberto’s test, which interweaves several narrative/emotional strands – landowner – painter – young woman – landscape, and is a good illustration of the freedom in the cutting.

I was lucky that I had the tape splicer⁴³ for this film because if I had to use cement the responsibility of the cut was intimidating. There is a sort of style – a form pre-established – a sort of convention. It works this way, not another way. At that time I had to try and consider attentively what I was doing. With a lot of insecurity, although I felt free from conditioning and not tied to conventions. Each cut had six splices. It was my own personal challenge.

We watched other sequences in ‘Before the Revolution’: falling off the bicycle – rhythm of the falls, music, staging, lenses, and the cuts: a sense of ‘now’. Also the woman in the bedroom: restructuring of action – neither in continuity or chronological – Keeping a shot – ‘piece in bin’ – habit formed with Welles of hanging up pieces he loved. Bertolucci went to see Pasolini and Roberto was left with a piece in the bin saying ‘use me!’ When she turns off the light Roberto is undercutting the linear nature of the sequence. It was illogical but the logic of a dream – freedom to dare.

I had many times the opportunity to be free in this way – the real richness of this experience – you have to be reached by something which is waiting to be discovered – if you recognise it – like out of the corner of your eye – please open the door. This kind of choice I am not sure I could make today. I can use my experience but I am not able to discover again. …

At this point in our conversation there was the most amazing clap of thunder, as though all Rome was shaking!

You see we need a shock like this otherwise you risk arriving at a certain point when you say I have done that before. When you have become just a harmoniser.

RC:The reason a shot is made is not always the reason you use it and that’s such an important thing to keep telling yourself.

RP:I remember Miklós Jancsó⁴⁴ used to say; ‘what you haven’t got you don’t need’, you are not forced to use everything at your disposal. It is always a question of being open minded.

I am trying to understand if we can make ourselves free of naturalism, because the storytelling is established and we know that there exist many other ways to tell a story. Not telling a story as it happens but to interpret the emotions – what you have inside – so we can really dare, if our instincts have not become impoverished we can once more attack the system. In our system of perception and thought we are totally open to play with the elements. We are living a continuous time but we are also living a vertical time – with the memory, suggestion – everything we saved as significant and it’s a continuous interaction – it’s something to develop.

RC::There is something valuable in the conventional language which you can use for another purpose – because there is a conventional way of representing you can subvert it. For instance the way Bun˜uel does in ‘Phantom of the Liberty’.⁴⁵

RP:Perhaps you have to accept that there is a level of imagination belonging in this case to the surreal – a game between realism and surrealism – and cinema forces you to find a balance. It is very provocative to deal with surrealism or un-realism alongside cinema’s natural form which tends to impose a language that supports convincing storytelling. Also there is something to be learnt from comics, which incorporate a sophisticated graphic non-linearity, where you can discover things you have missed or only perceive out of linear order.

RC:Is this European rather than Hollywood? What elements are at work? What is the value of history?

RP:I proposed to do a sort of anthology of significant moments in the History of cinema through sequences, alongside examples from every form of expression. The problem is not to allow the memory to forget and to provoke.

‘Have you ever seen that?’

‘Yes, Pudovkin⁴⁶ did it in 1928’.

‘Oh, really!’

Or why do I feel so moved in front of a Caravaggio⁴⁷ painting?

What’s important is why the people ran from the room when the train entered the station – silent, black and white – so not real. It was an emotional response.

*************

With Bertolucci’s ‘Partner’⁴⁸ I shared his enthusiasm, but I was perhaps not critical enough to provide a dialectic of the form. I was not inside the literariness and the references to Dostoyevsky, Lautréamont and Artaud.⁴⁹ It was a provocative film. I felt that at least I could follow his mood, his way of being creative, letting it become mine. But I think that ‘The Spider’s Strategem’⁵⁰ was a very interesting and more mature film – a very rich moment in Bertolucci’s development.

I was convinced there was a cultural cinema for cultured spectators. I shared without concern that these kinds of directors could declare that they were the elite – and I’ve always been against elites so I don’t know how I could take part in it so spontaneously! (laughs) Perhaps it was because I wanted to be accepted in the elite world. But there is another feeling – the Nouvelle Vague gave me this feeling – it was a cinema for a selected group made by a selected group, even if, in spite of that, I really appreciated their work.

But it is also true that they constituted an aristocratic world, in the cultural sense at first, and I normally don’t feel at ease in sophisticated circles. It is the richness of contradictions. In cinema, as with everything, the problem is always a question of meeting the right people to nourish your interests. Possibly without sharing the snobbery.

It came at a moment when people began to call me ‘the intellectual editor’. It was not a compliment – totally not – but I was recognised as someone who did his work not in the traditional or easy way. There was a very special meaning and that was that a film edited by Roberto is not earning a penny! (laughs).

*************

You know in 1968 I started with the Tavianis and they changed my way of conception enough, also despite or because their cinema was intellectual too. It was not a popular cinema. Also in their films they brought to the forefront a research on the language and the form and it was really very attractive to me.

In fact I was so happy to cut the first film with them, ‘Under the Sign of the Scorpion’.⁵¹ At the time Italian cinema was full of interesting films: Antonioni, Fellini, Visconti and the younger ones. They came just at the right moment for me. Their ‘research’, which I shared in, went on obstinately into the middle of the seventies. I remember that there was a poster in the early seventies which had an inscription above a flock of sheep which said: ‘Retour a la normale’.

When I met Jancsó in 1975 (‘Private Vices and Public Virtues’⁵²) I got the feeling he was very young. He was perhaps 55 but he seemed younger than a lot of people I knew. The first time he came to the cutting room he said: ‘let’s cut like Godard!’ We invented a way – he was just trying to provoke himself because his previous films had been really great but with a progressive tendency towards formalism.

When Jancsó went back to Hungary he said he would call me, but he didn’t because he married his editor! Later I took my partner Annalisa to Budapest and he was very hospitable. I’ve been very close to him because I feel there is a link. I was his assistant in the shooting on the programme he did at that time for TV.

With the Tavianis ‘arrival’ I couldn’t have been more happy and satisfied. In fact in those years I was collaborating with many interesting ‘authors’. In 1968 the year of ‘Under the Sign of the Scorpion’ I also cut ‘Partner’ and ‘Tropici’, a film by Gianni Amico⁵³ telling about poverty and dignity in Brazil. Gianni was a very rich personality – even if not world famous in the commercial sphere he was a point of reference in France as well as Brazil and not least in Italy. Gianni and Bernardo were very close since ‘Before the Revolution’ and events made me part of this very authentic friendship. We have to remember that those films were not supported by big investors, but in most cases from state funds, just sufficient to make the creative work possible. Many of those films were made with 16mm film – ‘The Spiders Strategem’ is one of these, and I am happy, perhaps leaving aside timidity I can use the word proud, of having been part of this reality.

I was just starting to work on ‘The Conformist’.⁵⁴ The production office rang me and said you and Bernardo are just too close as friends, we have to realise this film for Paramount. We have to be sure the editor’s contribution is a critical, a dialectical contribution. We prefer to propose someone else to him. Of course this had already happened. Bernardo had already met Kim Arcali,⁵⁵ who, by the way was a very interesting person.

I was disturbed of course. I had already started to watch the material, but at the same time I had the feeling that I could not fight this choice. Also very often directors are not able to tell you straight, face to face. They are using the production – it is far easier.

I remained shocked. I passed through a very big crisis. I said I have to show I could also cut commercial films for the big market. So I cut a film called ‘The Police say thank you’ (‘Execution Squad’).⁵⁶ I thought it was a fascist film! I made a good job – very professional. This film was a big success – on the top at the box office. It was totally schizophrenic for me. I cut it under the producer’s gaze, but I cannot repeat here what I said when he tried to convince me!

*************

At that time the Tavianis were my salvation. I needed material that was challenging. We have arrived to today, after thirty-five years, without changing. One could say now it’s too late! I am sure there was a moment they could conceive it, but they never made the decision.

Firstly I respect them both. They are similar and very different at the same time and I have formed a contact between them. I learned to consider their intentions and make a balance between them. On the set they direct one shot each alternately – in the cutting room they are two directors simultaneously.

We had a lot to discover until ‘Padre Padrone’,⁵⁷ through the work on ‘Under the Sign of the Scorpion’, ‘ San Miguel’⁵⁸ and ‘Allonsanfan’.⁵⁹ For instance quick cuts to closeup and out again. Any moment, any style, any form must cross all the film – a structural symmetry.

From moment to moment, film-to-film, our work has gone on for thirty-five years, changing from time to time, following a natural evolution, but being faithful to the main inspiration. So far I have cut fourteen films with them, and it would be an enormous task to make an exposition of this total experience. Who knows, perhaps one day, but not just talking about the professional or human experience, rather analysing the films as I do when teaching in the School.

[This unique collaboration has included such delights as: ‘Night Sun’,⁶⁰ ‘The Night of San Lorenzo‘,⁶¹ ‘Good Morning Babylon’⁶² and ‘Kaos’⁶³ RC]

Regarding ‘Last Tango in Paris’⁶⁴ it was Franco Arcali’s original idea. The character is far closer to him than to Bernardo. Anyway Arcali fell ill and had to go to hospital. He had already cut five reels. Bernardo called me and said I am very embarrassed to ask you. I said I would do it with pleasure. After a long time I arrived to the end, fifteen reels, so you can say I cut ten reels. I stopped my work just before the last sequence. I waited for Franco to come, and so he cut the ending and retouched the whole film of course. But he was very disturbed. He could not accept sharing the credit. Bernardo suggested ‘in collaboration with Roberto Perpignani’ (which is in fact the credit on the film) but in fact, as we know, this is an objectively enigmatic expression. I wrote a letter to Arcali in friendship saying I did not want to take his place. I never had the temptation to be competitive, whether in an acceptable or unpleasant manner.

After this I proposed to be Bernardo’s assistant on ‘1900’.⁶⁵ Unfortunately the start was put back. I was attracted by the chance to learn other things. The cutting room was too constricting. So instead I did the same thing with Maselli,⁶⁶ and then was just in time to cut the Taviani’s ‘Allonsanfan’.

When I was twenty-six I learnt Karate – before I was too timid – although it was a bit stupid it was not a total waste of time since afterwards I was able to be more direct. I have never convinced myself to make a film. If asked why I answer, ‘I prefer to be a good editor than a bad director’. I don’t need a recognised and showy role in society.

I was thinking of a film on Van Gogh, especially the illness. I asked an intelligent psychoanalyst to do analysis on me. He said no, because you are not ill. You are just interested in conceptual analysis. It was also because of my wife and daughters suffering.

This psychoanalyst encouraged me to make the Van Gogh before I was fifty, but I consider this door still to be open. It is my choice. Perhaps it is not so important in my balance. Also you have to be not in need of money for a long time to be a director. Perhaps I would like to make cultural documentaries.

I dream about an archive of images to interpret things. I am looking for a meeting point of the visual arts, because cinema risks not exploiting enough what the image has to offer. Also the cinema has this tendency to be objective – reproducing what is before the camera. Representing things in a realistic way can involve excessive simplification.

This is connected to Welles. For instance he was also a painter. I am enriched staying with him for one year. Each picture showed a potential.

The courage of Bertolucci’s ideas made me aware that expressive possibilities are limitless. We were so free from the naturalistic structure it was so fulfilling. I am grateful for the opportunity. You have to be lucky that this is offered to you.

Bernardo said once ‘Kim Arcali showed me what’s editing’. He forgot to specify narrative editing. He was a writer using editing to follow the narrative – I was more visual. But even if I know I was not complete, like a fruit I was not ripe, what we did we did together. And it wasn’t just a matter of pure editing it had the specificity of poetry.

He also said ‘Before Arcali editing was castration’ – not true, we were constructing a visual dynamic of emotions. Arcali rationalised their creative moment. Was sharing their intention not autonomous?

The relation between what the film-maker says and what the audience receives or understands – the stimulation comes from ambiguity. Or you do a show for people expecting a show.

*************

Gianni Amico, who found the money for ‘Before the Revolution’, after that became a director in his turn and made a documentary on Afro-Americans representing in images the music of Max Roach.⁶⁷ We cut for five days and nights without sleeping. I slept for a couple of hours on the floor on the fourth day. Gianni had a crisis with his ulcer and they took him to hospital. As he left he said ‘Roberto will finish it!’ We worked so hard we didn’t know if we were doing it right. Afterwards we had to re-cut for five days, but without the nights. In this way I thought I was involved in culture and politics in Italy. I was twenty-four. After that I cut almost all his movies.

Amico was also a friend of Glauber Rocha⁶⁸ who came to Rome and I helped him cut his first feature. ‘Deus e o Diabo na terra do sol’. It was a very emotional involvement. Rocha’s cinema is so excessive it risks being out of control and losing sight of the message. What comes out is a mystery in some cases!

I was also very attracted by the Portuguese Revolution and in 1976 I cut a four-hour film on the subject. There were many things in this project which were very attractive to me: the political subject and the high level of anthropological documentation. Before starting I felt it was necessary to learn the language and only after was I in a position to take on a one year commitment. It was shown in Cannes in a reduced two-hour version. I totally disagreed because it was a question of giving up the authenticity and the balance of the big fresco. Worldliness has its costs.

Making cinema is sometimes such a compromise – nothing of yourself in the work. An editor can be more conscious of the weight of this compromise than the director, because you are the audience – receiving the material from the screen. You have to be critical in an active and positive way.

I said once to Grazia Volpi,⁶⁹ who was my wife at that time, when I read the script of a film she was producing: ‘Why do you do that?!’

She said: ‘because we have the money’.

I said: ‘It’s not a reason’.

She said: ‘I am a producer’.

I said: ‘You are a producer and you represent the choice at the maximum level’.

There was another experience. Someone was making a film on Pasolini’s life including the murder. I was not sure at all but I accepted to cut this film. I discovered that I didn’t agree with the director’s way. So I started to organise a stylistic bluff, a le nouvelle vague – making a lot of ‘free’ cuts – it was such a misunderstanding. I gave a cultural form to something which was really poor.

We ended up going to the Cannes Festival. This was the first disconcerting thing. The critics were not able to attack the film openly; they were intimidated by the style. Just one of them said it’s not a good film despite being well edited. That critic is the one you see in ‘Before the Revolution’, Morando Morandini.⁷⁰ At last, I realised someone can recognise the bluff. After that I stopped accepting films that I can’t share in and in a meeting I declared that the young directors have to look for young collaborators to establish a balanced relationship.

*************

So, I fell in love with the Tavianis with ‘Under the Sign of the Scorpion’; a strange film, like a wall made without cement. It was considered an ideological film, both in the theme and also in the filmic expression. From then they went on with new kinds of stories and their obstinate investigation about the specificity of the cinematographic language. Such a committed cinema gave me the reason to feel involved, and much satisfaction. And it cannot be considered a contradiction if, over the years, the authors have mitigated their provocative tones. It is easy to understand how difficult it is to stay constantly on the edge of risk, especially in so critical a system as we have in Italy. In any case, year after year, my experience with them has gone on harmoniously, which is no small thing.

For instance I worked with Nanni Moretti.⁷¹ He was interesting but very neurotic – very possessive about the film always fiddling with the cut. The last day I couldn’t shut my mouth and I let go with a less than polite comment. He was offended – it was over a fade out – cutting three or four frames of black. He said ‘one more frame’. I always conceived friendship and collaboration as belonging to the same tree, and editing can be really more creative if done ‘a quattro mani’.

On the other hand working with Bellochio on ‘Salto nel Vuoto’ (‘A Leap in the Dark’), with Anouk Aimée and Michel Piccoli⁷² was a very interesting and rich experience. Every decision was a result of our work together. Also, in the spirit of great collaboration, I had the opportunity to work with Susan Sontag on her very personal journal on Venice,⁷³ as well as other good memories regarding the editing of ‘Empedocles’ by Klaus Gruber.⁷⁴

RC:What about the question of Aristotle, Greek Drama and it’s relation to cinema? For instance is a protagonist necessary?

RP:The protagonist in Scorpion is a collective. The Taviani’s questioned the point of the protagonist. In ‘The Night Of San Lorenzo’ the girl is the protagonist, but she is not a normal protagonist, but the story is built on her point-of-view. The Taviani’s were not in many cases looking for the traditional form – and this is very difficult – with editing it is easier to follow the tradition than it is to conceive in a different way, even if the material is showing the way.

RC:The convention of the screenplay is an inhibition. The Eastern European idea of writing a story first, giving the feeling is potentially much more open.

RP:For instance ‘Private Vices and Public Virtues’ – if you read the script it is completely different from the film. Why is that? Jancso needed to ‘live’ the set – the moment – the emotions of discovery day by day. He bases a lot on visual emotions – the meanings. The scripts are just a base to start from.

But with ‘Under the Sign of the Scorpion’ the film is just like the script – not literally but everything is indicated. You would think many things are editing decisions but they are not.

This form is strange because it seems like a recording of pieces of reality put together to give the idea of a story. You understand that there is not a protagonist because the camera is always objective. With this objectivity you can reconstruct the main stories and at the time the form was not only provocative but very rich. When I worked on that film I was not used to considering cinema in the classical way, because my experiences, all of them, had been eccentric.

Any form is just one of a plurality of forms. It is funny to remember Griffiths doing 400 films in six years. So much development of the language in so little time! It is just as much of a shock to realise that Soviet Revolutionary Cinema lasted about six years as well.

*************

More recently I worked with Michael Radford on ‘Il Postino’.⁷⁵ It was a very significant experience and we became friends. Then he had the courage to ask me to cut ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’.⁷⁶ I’m sad to admit this film needed an editor whose mother tongue was English, and I wasn’t well enough prepared for that. But as usual I feel the need to react to my own inadequacies so I am working on closing the language gap.

Taking stock of my entire career, I would like to say something about the very strange fluctuating creativity of cinema. There is always hope for a balance but there is more often a conflict because management and authority represent the main dichotomy of the system. This should not be seen as scandalous if we consider that there has always been a problem between buyers or patrons and the artist, especially when there are considerable investments involved.

Actually cinema is just as much a cultural production, albeit mass culture, as it is an economic business. This confusion has ancient roots and, using the symbolism of conflict in the Middle Ages, we should remember that emblazoned on battle shields would be two feet on the ground and a head in the clouds. However it is not always recognised that creativity, the background of culture, is one of the essential motors of growth or human development.

But – and there are many ‘buts’ in cinema – there is one necessary clarification regarding the status of the collaborators who are so essential in cinema which allows the directors to make ‘their’ films and bring up the title of ‘author’. It is evident that in the case of Cinema the quality of the creative product is totally open and that the contribution of collaborators is a crucial question.

In European cinema as elsewhere, ‘A film by…’ is the winning formula and although invented for the ‘authors’ it works in the commercial sphere as well. In addition it became a sort of ‘caste’ title, whether the directors deserved it or not. Returning to Welles, an undisputed author, he was inclined to say that the system had created a sort of protection for very good collaborators which allowed the weakest of them to feel at ease. So we are the only ones responsible for recognising where quality actually lies.

By the way, I’ve been teaching for twenty-six years now and have spent a large part of my life believing in a relationship with young people. Certainly I consider my own young years the time in which I defined my choices and tried to develop them through a series of fortunate encounters.

Perhaps, unintentionally, I tried to stay young while on the other hand the directors were gaining in years. So I sometimes feel younger than the young directors. In any case I prefer to play the father role with my children or the role of teacher when I’m in school but absolutely not in the editing room. I realise now that dividing my time between editing and teaching has allowed me to reach my aims to the highest degree.

Notes

1.  Callipigia – This exquisite statue can be seen in the Museo Nationale in Naples. It once stood at the centre of a pool in Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome.

2.  Prevost – An intimidating editing machine for those used to Steenbecks or now Avids, but once predominant in Italy and other parts of Europe.

3.  Orson Welles Spanish documentaries – Series shown as ‘In the Land of Don Quixote’. Vivid and energetic in Welles passionate style – these should be re-issued.

4.  The Trial (Le Procès) – Starring Anthony Perkins and Romy Schneider as well as Welles himself, 1962.

5.  Renzo Lucidi – Also cut Welles’ ‘Don Quixote’ in 1992.

6.  Mr Arkadin – Welles starred and wrote the script of this thriller in 1955.

7.  Fritz Müller – Never established as an editor he later had a career as a film producer.

8.  Gare d’Orsay – Opened as a railway station in 1900 but closed in 1939, partly because the platforms were too short! Before it was restored and reopened as a Museum and Art Gallery in 1986 it served as a parking lot amongst other things and was therefore available as a very credible setting for Welles’ film of Kafka’s masterpiece.

9.  Official editing team – For many years, and not only in France, Film Industry practices led to doubling up of crews to satisfy national agreements. The true history of credits is therefore partly hidden.

10.  William Chappell – Born 1908, dancer and choreographer who turned to theatre direction and design. Friend and/or collaborator with Noel Coward, Frederick Ashton and Agnes de Mille.

11.  Welles – His work ethic was legendary – he stated to André Bazin that he didn’t believe in something if it didn’t have ‘the smell of sweat’.

12.  Nino Baragli – Extraordinary career – the first of his 180 plus editing credits was in 1949. Notable collaborations were with Pasolini and Sergio Leone. He retired in 1996 and turned his back on cinema (see interview before this one).

13.  1968 – The year of popular revolt in Europe, especially strong and violent in Paris. Now the backdrop to Bertolucci’s ‘The Dreamers’.

14.  Marco Bellochio – Distinguished director – first gained widespread recognition with ‘Fists in the Pocket’ (I pugni in tasca), 1965.

15.  The Trial and Kafka – Welles film has as strong an aesthetic as any of his films – several scenes are splendid exemplars of his particular signature, especially those involving Anthony Perkins and Romy Schneider. For instance there is a three-hander tense conversation with the actors physically touching and moving around each other which is like nothing else in cinema.

16.  Othello – Winner Palme d’or at Cannes festival, 1952.

17.  Falstaff – (Chimes at Midnight), 1965. Wells stars in the Falstaff story culled from Shakespeare and historical sources.

18.  F for Fake – ‘Documentary’ about fraud and fakery – Welles the magician takes conjuring to another level, 1976.

19.  The Immortal Story – Based on an Isak Dinesen novel, 1968.

20.  Sound tracks on magnetic film – Imagine the complexity of modern sound design being carried out physically from hastily dictated notes from a director who has no idea how unclear his instructions are.

21.  Before the Revolution – Bernardo Bertolucci, 1964.

22.  Re-cutting Citizen Kane – It should not be imagined that this is an unusual occurrence. When the rights in a film are sold to particular countries, or ‘territories’ as they are called, the distributors will often make their own version to suit their perception of what works for the local audience and to tailor the length to maximise the number of screenings in a day.

23.  Heart of Darkness – Welles nursed the idea of adapting Joseph Conrad’s novel even before he made his first film, ‘Citizen Kane’. The central character, Kurtz fascinated Welles – a genius destroyed by inner conflicts. The novel was to become an inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’, 1979 and was given a more direct transfer to the screen by Nicolas Roeg, 1993.

24.  War of the Worlds – In 1938 Welles masterminded a radio broadcast of H.G. Wells novel about an alien invasion of Earth, which was so effective that many listeners believed that the invasion was real.

25.  Vittorio and Paolo Taviani – See separate item before this interview.

26.  Alan Lomax (1915–2002) – Folk song researcher and preserver and visionary, he believed in putting sound recording at the service of ‘the Folk’, and singlehandedly inspired a resurgence of folk song and its history and tradition in many parts of the world.

27.  Palio di Sienna – Traditional horse race in the main square of the Italian city competed for by riders representing a dozen local groups.

28.  Ennio Morricone – Classmate of Sergio Leone, who first gained fame for the scores of the latter’s Spaghetti Westerns.

29.  Nicola Piovani – Distinguished composer, who apart from his collaboration with the Tavianis also worked with Fellini.

30.  Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) – French doctor, writer – e.g. Journey to the End of the Night (1932) – a prophetic vision of human suffering. A supreme pessimist, but undoubtedly an extraordinary writer, he was accused of collaborating with the Nazis in WW2 and fled from France, returning after his pardon in 1951.

31.  Robert Capa (1913–54) – Renowned war photographer who was born in Hungary and died when he stepped on a land mine in Indochina.

32.  Henri Cartier-Bresson – Born in 1908 in France many of his photographs are classics of what he always preferred to be labelled ‘documentary’ pictures. Amongst his friends have been several famous film-makers including Renoir in whose ‘Partie de campagne’ he plays a passing priest who is (not surprisingly) visibly disturbed by the sight of Sylvia Bataille on a swing.

33.  Carosello Napolitano – Starring the dancer and choreographer Leonide Massine, 1954. War and Peace – With Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda, directed by King Vidor, 1956. Casta Diva – A biography of Bellini, 1954. Casa Ricordi – A history of the music publishing company starring Mastroainni as Donizetti, 1954.

34.  The Bible – John Huston plays God, 1966.

35.  Dubbing – It has been a particular habit and skill of the Italians to replace dialogue in films, preferring to get good images rather than compromise to get a good recording. Playing with words or as in this case an individual letter is part and parcel of this painstaking work.

36.  À Bout de souffle, etc. films of the French New Wave by Godard, Resnais and Truffaut.

37.  Editors Baptism – Most editors, in this book or not, will have experienced the moment when they confront their ability to cut creatively. It can be painful and prolonged, but is never forgotten.

38.  Alberto Lattuada – Born Milan in 1914, he was co-director on Fellini’s first film ‘Variety Lights’.

39.  Mauro Bolognini – Fond of adapting classics, e.g. ‘La Dame aux Camélias’, 1990, starring Isabelle Huppert.

40.  Attilio Bertolucci – Eminent Poet father of Bernardo born near Parma in 1911, in a rural middle class family. Studied law but switched to literature. Wrote for many years for the newspaper ‘Il Giorno’.

41.  Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–75) – Poet, novelist and controversial filmmaker. His loose cinematic style, with a free camera and the use of non-professional actors, has many admirers. Editors share an envy of those who cut his films.

42.  Alberto Moravia – Italian writer whose work has frequently been adapted to the screen. Key to his life and work seems to be his suffering from tuberculosis from early childhood until he was 25. Kept at home and deprived of formal education he developed a very personal perspective on the world – as reflected in ‘The Conformist’.

43.  Tape Splicer – For those of us who started in the cutting rooms with cement joiners the tape splicer was a liberating invention, since it meant you could try a cut without having to commit to it as the film could be restored and other cuts considered. However too much indecision resulted in the film being so cut and rejoined that the material was hard to see.

44.  Miklós Jancsó – Sprang to international recognition in 1965 with ‘The Round Up’, a bleak but compelling picture of 19th century Hungarian history. Remarkable because of his style, often choreographing complex moving shots that last six or seven minutes.

45.  Phantom of the Liberty – Luis Bun˜uel, 1974. A surreal narrative, which challenges our belief in rational behaviour. Superbly structured in its illogicality.

46.  Vsevolod Pudovkin (1893–1953) – Most notable films ‘Mother’, 1926 and ‘The End of St. Petersburg’, 1927. Perhaps now admired more for his theoretical writing than his films, in which he followed on from Kuleshov’s experiments regarding juxtaposition of images and the control of meaning.

47.  Caravaggio – 17th century Italian painter of riveting canvases often as much informed by the clearly vivid relationship between the painter and his models as the subject material. Derek Jarman made a beautiful film about the artist in 1986.

48.  Partner, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1968.

49.  Dostoyevsky/Lautréamont/Artaud – In this trio the Comte de Lautréamont (1846–70) is the least familiar. He only became well known after his death, largely for his narrative prose poem ‘Les Chants de Maldoror’, a macabre story of the outrageous exploits of the main character who celebrates the principle of Evil.

50.  The Spider’s Strategem – Bertolucci, 1970. Based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges.

51.  Under the Sign of the Scorpion – Taviani brothers, 1969.

52.  Private Vices and Public Virtues – Miklós Jancsó, 1976.

53.  Tropici – Gianni Amico, 1969. He also assisted Godard.

54.  The Conformist – Bertolucci, 1970, based on a Moravia book, and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant.

55.  Kim Arcali – Editor, writer – Died 1978.

56.  Execution Squad (La Polizia Ringrazia) – 1972.

57.  Padre Padrone – Taviani brothers, 1977.

58.  San Miguel (St Michael had a Rooster) – Tavianis, 1972.

59.  Allonsanfan – Tavianis, 1973.

60.  Night Sun – Tavianis, 1990.

61.  The Night of San Lorenzo – Tavianis, 1982.

62.  Good Morning Babylon – Tavianis, 1987. Two Italians travel to Hollywood and build the elephants for the set of Griffith’s ‘Intolerance’.

63.  Kaos – Tavianis, 1984, based on several short stories by the Sicilian writer Pirandello (1867–1936).

64.  Last Tango in Paris – Bertolucci, 1972 with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider.

65.  1900 – Bertolucci, 1976 with Robert de Niro and Gerard Depardieu.

66.  Franco Maselli – Born 1930, still active as a director.

67.  Max Roach – Perhaps the most influential drummer in jazz history – collaborator with many leading musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. A living legend who went on to teach at Amherst College.

68.  Glauber Rocha – Brazilian director who sprang to prominence with ‘Antonio das Mortes’ in 1969 which caught the spirit of the revolt of May 1968.

69.  Grazia Volpi – Producer mainly with Tavianis since 1990.

70.  Morando Morandini – Intelligent and perceptive theatre and cinema critic who is still active – Also screenwriter.

71.  Nanni Moretti – Popular director who once played water polo for Italy.

72.  Salto nel Vuoto (A Leap in the Dark) – Bellochio, 1980.

73.  Susan Sontag, was a superbly intelligent and perceptive commentator on political and cultural matters including many essays on cinema, e.g. Bergman’s ‘Persona’.

74.  Empedocles and Klaus Gruber – The former was a Greek philosopher who wrote ‘On Nature’ in which he expounded the theory of the four elements; earth, air, fire and water. Gruber is a stage and opera director.

75.  Il Postino (The Postman) – Michael Radford, 1994.

76.  Dancing at the Blue Iguana – Radford, 2000.