Una giornata particolare (1977) was the best-known film by Italian director Ettore Scola, who died Tuesday in a Rome hospital. A film starring Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren in a moving yet incisive political drama that captured the hearts of a large audience. In it, Mastroianni is a radio worker fired for his homosexuality who meets his neighbour (Loren) on the day Adolf Hitler visits his colleague Benito Mussolini.
Scola was eight years old himself at the time. After the war, he grew up a communist and humanist, and later in the 1970s personally ensured that the cinematic legacy of the Neorealists and Frederico Fellini was not diluted. From that time stem his great successes, such as C'eravamo tanto amati (1974, about the disillusions of three resistance friends), the rowdy, black-humorous slum comedy Brutti, sporchi e cattivi (1976) and the viciously ironic group portrait of the self-righteous intellectual class La terrazza (1980).
With the latter, he stepped on a lot of long toes, something he still gloats over, he told me last year in a master class I had the pleasure of attending in Bari, Italy. I have written about it elsewhere reported on how he clearly showed on that occasion that he had lost little of his enthusiasm, sharpness and commitment. No Berlusconi friend, it was clear, and he also said that, given Italian politics, he found it hard to love Italy. Still, he did not fail to offer encouragement to the younger generation. Don't lose heart, he reminded them.
Afterwards, I spoke to several more of those young Italians, and all of them expressed that Scola was their hero and inspiration. The fire he lit with films that were always a big party has continued to burn. Thank you Ettore!
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