In twenty-one separate interviews -- two with director Bernardo Bertolucci -- Angela Baldassarre sheds light on what motivates filmmakers in their work. Focusing on Italian directors as well as American directors of Italian descent, The Great Dictators -- collected over the course of six years -- unearths a variety of personalities and dreams.
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About the Author
Angela Baldassarre has reviewed for Variety, The Globe & Mail, Entertainment Weekly, Tandem, and Word magazines. Vice-President of the Toronto Film Critics Association, she published The Great Dictators: Interviews with Filmmak-ers of Italian Descent in 1999.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Benign Dictator,
By Richard Fitzpatrick (Toronto) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Great Dictators (Essay Series 42) (Paperback)
At the recent launch of film critic Angela Baldassarre's The Great Dictators: Interviews with Filmmakers of Italian Descent Baldassarre gave heartfelt thanks to her parents for supporting her in pursuing a career in the precarious profession of freelance journalism, who never doubted her even when she was 19, "working in a bar and as a terrible private detective." The place erupted in laughter. The moment was indicative of Baldassarre's seamless blending of genuine emotion with playful humour. Her interviewing style in The Great Dictators comes across as insightful, provocative, and sensitive, both in timing and in the enlightened sense of the word. No doubt The Great Dictators will come to be well thumbed by film students. The cast of 20-odd directors (significantly?, there are no female subjects) is mouth-watering: Bernardo Bertolucci, Anthony Minghella, Al Pacino, Steve Buscemi and Dario Argento among others. It must have taken a sleuth of genius to compile a list like this! But the beauty of this collection is that anyone vaguely interested in understanding the human condition, outside at all of grappling with the technical niceties of filmmaking or listening in on in-house anecdotes, will be enchanted with the thoughts that unfold within. Italians have a wonderfully enlightened and expressive approach to studying the human heart, and their filmmakers are among their most articulate exponents of this enquiry. In a discussion with director and sometime scriptwriter Richard LaGravanese about his film Living Out Loud (1998) LaGravanese explains that he chose a female character for the lead role because he felt he could take a female lead more places creatively because a male "rarely gets angry." To which Baldassarre inquires, "You don't think that men get angry too?" LaGravanese's response is intriguing: "No, I think they express it in a different way. I think that men are deeply angry, they just don't know it. They're not as connected emotionally, and they have fewer outlets available to them than women. We've got to face it, we're not that well-rounded." Beautiful and measured metaphors spill off the pages. At one stage, Gabriele Salvatores - "who has never been married" - explains the reasoning behind his recent transition from theatre to film: "Theatre is like a marriage," he explains. "You have to keep rekindling the passion through long relationships. Cinema, on the other hand, is passion: brief, condensed. You gamble it all in a shorter period of time. "And in this particular moment in my life," he smiles coyly, "I'm less disposed towards marriage." Baldassarre introduces each interview with a subjective reflection or some background information. The intro piece for one of her interviews with Bertolucci (her favourite "living" director) is charming: "Few of us ever get the opportunity to meet a childhood idol. Not that I was exactly a child when I first discovered Bernardo Bertolucci, but at thirteen, having gone to see The Conformist with my junior-high class in Italy, I felt that I was being reborn into a new world. A world not just of images and sounds - which are typical of most films I'd seen until then - but of astounding thoughts and passion." But Baldassarre's gift as an interviewer is that she remains invisible as much as possible. The light never strays from her stars once the action begins - she interjects only at appropriate moments to tease the narrative along. The luck of her actors is that they had such a benign dictator to direct them.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Delightful and Inspiring! Molto Bello!,
By Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Great Dictators (Essay Series 42) (Paperback)
I loved reading her book about filmmakers with Italian heritage in their blood. And many of them are actually born and bred in Italy, and some of the conversaziones (interviews) were conducted in Italian and translated back into English by Baldassare. This book is titled in a funny way and it's not a terribly applicable title, which is probably one of the reasons it failed to do well on its initial run, because "great" or "poor" these are men of honor, and not dictators. Anyone who's been on a set on any of Steve Buscemi's films will know right away, he's a gentleman from the inside out, from the toes up as my grandfather used to say. Never a harsh word, nor a Fascist leaning, the opposite of what you think of as a dictator.The surprise is learning that the aggravating Roberto Benigni has a thoughtful and reserved side to him. Of course, Ms. Baldassarre interviewed Benigni before he made PINOCCHIO, and perhaps the fame hadn't hit him yet. Remember him jumping up and down trying to look into Sophia Loren's cleavage the night he won the Oscar? Pathetic! And yet in this interview it's apparent he's familiar with Kierkegaard and Sartre and a dozen other philosophers. I did not realize that Franco Brusati wrote the screenplay for one of my favorite movies, Zeffirelli's ROMEO AND JULIET. It was interesting to find out also that Don Coscarelli, the American auteur who made the PHANTASM movies, came from Libya like Moammar Gaddafi. Now, there's a dictator for you! But, why no women?
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Benign Dictator,
By Richard Fitzpatrick (Toronto) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Great Dictators (Essay Series 42) (Paperback)
At the recent launch of film critic Angela Baldassarre's The Great Dictators: Interviews with Filmmakers of Italian Descent Baldassarre gave heartfelt thanks to her parents for supporting her in pursuing a career in the precarious profession of freelance journalism, who never doubted her even when she was 19, "working in a bar and as a terrible private detective." The place erupted in laughter. The moment was indicative of Baldassarre's seamless blending of genuine emotion with playful humour. Her interviewing style in The Great Dictators comes across as insightful, provocative, and sensitive, both in timing and in the enlightened sense of the word. No doubt The Great Dictators will come to be well thumbed by film students. The cast of 20-odd directors (significantly?, there are no female subjects) is mouth-watering: Bernardo Bertolucci, Anthony Minghella, Al Pacino, Steve Buscemi and Dario Argento among others. It must have taken a sleuth of genius to compile a list like this! But the beauty of this collection is that anyone vaguely interested in understanding the human condition, outside at all of grappling with the technical niceties of filmmaking or listening in on in-house anecdotes, will be enchanted with the thoughts that unfold within. Italians have a wonderfully enlightened and expressive approach to studying the human heart, and their filmmakers are among their most articulate exponents of this enquiry. In a discussion with director and sometime scriptwriter Richard LaGravanese about his film Living Out Loud (1998) LaGravanese explains that he chose a female character for the lead role because he felt he could take a female lead more places creatively because a male "rarely gets angry." To which Baldassarre inquires, "You don't think that men get angry too?" LaGravanese's response is intriguing: "No, I think they express it in a different way. I think that men are deeply angry, they just don't know it. They're not as connected emotionally, and they have fewer outlets available to them than women. We've got to face it, we're not that well-rounded." Beautiful and measured metaphors spill off the pages. At one stage, Gabriele Salvatores - "who has never been married" - explains the reasoning behind his recent transition from theatre to film: "Theatre is like a marriage," he explains. "You have to keep rekindling the passion through long relationships. Cinema, on the other hand, is passion: brief, condensed. You gamble it all in a shorter period of time. "And in this particular moment in my life," he smiles coyly, "I'm less disposed towards marriage." Baldassarre introduces each interview with a subjective reflection or some background information. The intro piece for one of her interviews with Bertolucci (her favourite "living" director) is charming: "Few of us ever get the opportunity to meet a childhood idol. Not that I was exactly a child when I first discovered Bernardo Bertolucci, but at thirteen, having gone to see The Conformist with my junior-high class in Italy, I felt that I was being reborn into a new world. A world not just of images and sounds - which are typical of most films I'd seen until then - but of astounding thoughts and passion." But Baldassarre's gift as an interviewer is that she remains invisible as much as possible. The light never strays from her stars once the action begins - she interjects only at appropriate moments to tease the narrative along. The luck of her actors is that they had such a benign dictator to direct them.
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