(Rome) For decades, the inseparable Taviani brothers have jointly signed landmark films in Italian cinema, including the masterpiece Padre PadronePalme d’Or at Cannes in 1977: Vittorio died in 2018 at the age of 88 and his brother Paolo followed him on Thursday at the age of 92.
“With Paolo Taviani, a great master of Italian cinema is leaving us. With his brother Vittorio (died in 2018 at the age of 88, Editor’s note), he created unforgettable, deep, committed films, which entered the collective imagination in the history of cinema,” greeted the mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri on X.
The secular funeral of Paolo Taviani, who died in Rome following a “brief illness”, will be held on Monday in the capital, according to Italian media.
The Taviani brothers, who formed a rare duo in the history of 7e art, have co-signed a total of around fifteen feature films marked by a very literary style, mixing history, psychoanalysis and poetry.
Shock movie, Padre Padronewhich can be literally translated as “Father-boss”, is an adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Gavino Ledda, about the story of a young shepherd escaping the despotic control of his father who, out of financial necessity, had him forced to abandon school, leaving him illiterate until the age of twenty.
“Paolo Taviani was one half of an enchanting duo […] With his older brother Vittorio, a sort of grace touched their films of inimitable moral rigor and poetry,” reacted Thursday evening the former president of the Cannes Festival Gilles Jacob.
After the death of his two-year-old senior, Paolo Taviani found the strength to shoot one last film alone, Leonora Addiopresented at the Berlinale in 2022.
When preparing Leonora AddioVittorio, to whom the film is dedicated, was no longer physically at his side, but “he was with me”, confided the patriarch of Italian cinema during an interview in Berlin with AFP.
Strongly inspired by the master of neo-realism Roberto Rosselini, the two brothers, sons of an anti-fascist lawyer, were interested in social themes from their beginnings in the 1960s.
Golden Bear in Berlin
“Vittorio and I decided to make films when I was sixteen and he was eighteen, seeing Paisa by Rosselini,” he told AFP. “We then understood that films could change our lives and reveal who we really were.”
“Years later, we won the Palme d’Or for Padre Padronehanded over from the hands of Rosselini, and it was like a circle closing,” he underlined.
Passionate about cinema since their youth, the two brothers born in Tuscany moved to Rome in the 1950s. One of their first films, The subversives (1967), prefigures the events of 1968 in the form of an investigation into the Italian Communist Party at the time of the funeral of one of its founders, Palmiro Togliatti.
Inspired by Brecht, Pasolini and Godard, they then toured Under the sign of the Scorpio (1969), their first color film with Gian Maria Volontè in the lead role, which will also be their first big success.
After the coronation in Cannes of Padre Padronethey returned to the Croisette in 1982 with The night of San Lorenzoa film with a magical atmosphere which received the Grand Jury Prize.
In 2012, with Caesar must diewhere they performed Shakespeare’s tragedy to the inmates of the Roman prison of Rebibbia, the Taviani brothers won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival.
In 1986, they also received an honorary Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, paying tribute to their entire career.