San Totò by Paolo Isotta

 San Totò

by Paolo Isotta is more than a book: it is a commented catalog of his movies , and at the same time there are important reflections on an artist that it is not only immortal but the italian personification of comicity.

I was more than convinced that he was a real prince, while the story is a bit different from the one commonly told everywhere: Totò born Antonio had just a mother, but was fatherless. They were pretty poor and only later, when her mother will begin the relationship with De Curtis, was recognized as legitimate son at the age of 30 years.

Antonio de Curtis was a melancholic person, sometimes egoist. 

De Curtis hated to see "around" Totò, when he wasn't filming; he preferred to visualize him in the rooms of the servants; he preferred to be set free by him when he wasn't on the set. 

Antonio de Curtis was a person extremely generous, a man in love with a lot of women (in this sense he won't never forget a girl who killed herself because Antonio refused of marrying her, putting also the name of the sventurate girl to his daughter) and luxuries of various genre. He wasn't just an actor, but also a singer, although his voice wasn't that great one; not only; he was a poet; the most remarkable poem he wrote the one of La Livella, where a poor man, in the grave discusses with a noble one, scandalized of having as a companion, close to him, someone poor! What a scandal. But rich or poors, insisted the poor man, once dead we are all equals.

Totò! I grew up with Totò, I absolutely watched all his movies and to me he has always meant a person extremely funny, generous in his donating to the viewers hours of comicity and sunny, funny time.

When they filmed his movies, you must know, like also when he was playing in the theaters, Antonio didn't love to follow the official script. So, it was important for the rest of actors to understand pretty quickly what Totò wanted to do and how to answer back.

In this sense it is emblematic what told Fellini when Totò, better, Antonio de Curtis started to be more old and sick; he said that when he was on the set, performing, he was vivacious he knew where he had to go, he constantly run here and there; once everything over, he returned to be a lifeless gray man.

These kind of actors, it is true, are never happy in the real life, because comicity implies seeing the grotesque, the sunny grotesque of the existence, and the possibility of bypassing sufferance and tragedy for reaching the heart of people with hilarious facts.

To Totò reaching the heart of people with his movies was extremely simple, because he was a real show-man.

Yes, I agree with Isotta when he writes that to him the movies signed by Pasolini were not as good as the other ones were.

I have memories of them and they are still scaring me to death; I was little at that time and I have been always a sensitive person; in a movie, Le Streghe, Totò wears a wig;  someone committes a suicide.

We were living in the area moments like that ones told in the movie, and all that desperation seen in the movie meant to me a long moment of destabilization.

Where was the sunny Totò? The one who made us laugh and smile? I have always been scared by the movies made by Pasolini where Totò was involved in.

I know that Pasolini is considered the most important intellectual of the XX century in Italy; he reflected his thoughts and feelings in movies. He was a tormented soul.

Totò wasn't the best person for an operation like that one.

Totò was born to donate to the world a solid, sunny laugh!

In the books is also treated the professional relationship established by Antonio with Peppino de Filippo, and much more. 

Highly recommended

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori