Giulio Base in search of Proust (and of the film that Visconti was to make) – Corriere.it

Looking for Proust. The long story of the French writer’s masterpiece that was to become a film by Luchino Visconti and never became one, at the center of A’ La Recherche by Giulio Base (produced by Agnus Dei by Tiziana Rocca). He wrote it with Paolo Fosso, directs it and performs it, in French, alongside Anne Parillaud, whom we all remember in Nikita.

the fresco of a historical period, and a tango for two. Ariane, the actress tells it like this: a free, rebellious, nonconformist, avant-garde aristocrat finances the film to propose to Visconti, her friend; he, Pietro, a B-movie screenwriter, a successful loser with a deep admiration for Luchino. Which is evoked, told, but will never be seen. The film set at the time of the events, in the 70s.

The unique set, a house on the Via Flaminia which was the country residence of the future Pope Alexander VI. Upon his death it passed into the hands of the Farnese first and then the Borghese. Today from Count Carlo Resseguier de Miremont, he bought it from Nicola Rescigno, the conductor who hosted Maria Callas, Fellini, Mastroianni, Alain Delon and other celebrities here, and already this family group in an interior introduces us to a Visconti style .

The genesis of failure Research at the cinema a matryoshka, an ancient story with legendary contours. Proust seemed the natural landing place for Visconti’s rigorous passion. A project that he dreams of all his life, the intellectual filmmaker leaves Milan and discovers Paris in the 30s, and through Jean Renoir he gets to know the poetry of small things, the importance of detail.

Giulio Base, like his protagonist, loves Visconti. And he says that actress and producer Nicole Stphane bought the rights to In search of lost time: The first person he thought of was Fellini who turned to Flaiano for the screenplay. But the aesthetics and sense of memory of that novel river were foreign to his dreamlike dimension. He drew back. He didn’t do anything about it. Then Flaiano’s adaptation came to Ren Clement. Nothing done. Check out Visconti. He was mirrored in the homosexual Baron Charlus who first appears in In the shade of the flower maidens. the second volume of Research, which was to be the heart of the Visconti film together with Sodom and Gomorrah. The Narrator meets him on the Balbec seafront (an imaginary place on the Normandy coast, in reality Cabourg) while he is walking with his grandmother; then Proust’s health worsens, he retires from worldly life to devote himself only to the novel.

Visconti gave up on the Proust film when Helmut Berger made a scene at him after learning that the protagonist would be Alain Delon. From the three months you start with him The fall of the Gods. Yet Visconti for Research had already contacted Marlon Brando, Charlotte Rampling, there was talk of a sensational return of Garbo… Nicole Stphane did not give up and turned to Harold Pinter, thinking of Joseph Losey as director. Another script, another failure.

In the villa on the outskirts of Rome there is the strange couple formed by the noblewoman Ariane and the trivial screenwriter Pietro. Against the background of the climate of the time, the 1970s, the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974, two years before Visconti’s death, confronts and collides with a breath of seduction. Ariane – explains Giulio Base – also a kind of pirate, she is not subtle. He tells the writer to copy ideas from those who had snouted on Research for images. Above all the screenplay by Suso Cecchi d’Amico, the sketches by Piero Tosi. And then the costumes by Tirelli, the trait d’union, the costumes come from that tailor shop. I came to you because you are the only Italian screenwriter capable of writing in French, Ariane confesses to Pietro. Visconti has returned beauty in the highest form to the various arts. As for Proust, forget that he is a boring writer. In some pages a modern Dagospia, he tells all the gossip of counts and marquises. And the scent of memories of the Madeleine crosses the ages and time.

Proust, Visconti. Julius, the Operation Research a film to make your wrists tremble… I did it with a touch of lightness and simplicity.