Roberto Benigni, 70 years old: billiards, music, friends and youth all in one street
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Roberto Benigni turns 70 today. There is a clear watershed in his life and in the visceral relationship that the director had with his “his country”, as they proudly claim in Vergaio, a hamlet of Prato. This is the party that the neighborhood organized on the occasion of the awarding of the Oscar received in 1997 for Life is beautifulto. Today there is a bar down the main street that bears that name, run by Cristian Moretti. But he, «Robertino», from that day on slowly abandoned the coexistence with the place that rocked him for 25 years, amidst joys and failures. The same in which he shot many scenes that today are considered cult – like those of Berlinguer I want you well And All Benigni – the same one who welcomed him with his old friends on his return from his attempts around Italy. «Once – explains one of his closest friends, Brunero Mati – he went to record a program on TV in Rome and I went to pick him up at the station to bring him back here. We walked along Corso Mazzoni, in the center, he asked me how he had gone. Many around here had seen him in the performance but had turned up their noses. I kept silent about the criticisms, I said that he should have been patient ». A dowry that the young Roberto obviously possessed, given that his mother would have wanted him in the textile industry, tell other friends of the time. Worried as she was by the fact that the spectacle, the path that this thin son wanted so much to take, did not lead to a salary. Brunero, 71 years old and with dark glasses, works on the other hand behind that same counter in the club that he had shared with his friend who was about to become “il Benigni”.
Less worried about the penniless artist (at the time) was perhaps his father Luigi – “a dancer, a showman, the one who animated the parties, from whom Roberto inherited the sense of the show” – who saw in him the gifts that the ‘could at least have made him happy. The life of the child and adolescent who turns 70 today was all in one way. At the bottom the small house he shared with his parents and sister, in the middle the Casa del Popolo – where he worked as a volunteer bartender with Brunero – at the bottom the warehouse of Giovanni Masi, from which Benigni went to get dressed for free, sifting through used clothes and so exotic that they came from the United States to be sorted.
“He was a sincere friend. We played together all day: billiards, rummy, ‘soldino’ (a kind of bowls with loose money, ed.) », Remembers Brunero. “He had a sense of the show like his father, he played accordion and guitar. Once he came back here to the bar and explained to me that he had sent some material to Adriano Celentano’s Clan ». Which, however, did not hire him in his ranks of artists. The self-produced and improvised shows followed: «One evening I accompanied him to Pisa to a party of the Unity and there was only one spectator, we went back».
The debut, between doors in the face and the commiseration of some of his fellow citizens (“The country is like this, it judges you and then celebrates you”) was always among friends. Across the street, in the Lapio Brothers musical instrument shop: ‘He was here every night. He did theater – explains Nicola Lapio, who keeps the photos and memories of that time in the same tiny store – he also ventured at home; and here he was at home. He tested with four or five of us his sketches of him, here in front, he knew from our reaction if a piece was funny. He would take the guitar and improvise on a chord for long minutes ».
Then the films, Rome, the success and the Oscar, the watershed. “I, he and his sister were the only ones who drank coffee like this: a single tear to drink at once”, Brunero recalls thinking of the years spent together behind the counter. “Greetings, show me,” he would say today. “Not to talk to Benigni, but because I want to be with my friend a little longer.”
27 October 2022 | 09:24
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