Filumena Marturano returns to prime time on Rai 1, with a winning couple who spare no effort and demonstrate all-round talent: Vanessa Scalera e Maximilian Gallo. The airing is scheduled for Tuesday 20 December at 21.25 as a new chapter in the Eduardo Theater collection. Produced by Picomedia for Rai Fiction, the TV film tells the story of a former prostitute who has been living for years, more uxorio, with Domenico Soriano, a rich Neapolitan pastry chef who was once her client. Filumena can no longer bear being only her lover and, in order to get married, she feigns herself on her deathbed. The film on Rai1 will present to the public a rewriting of the story created by Eduardo De Filippo in 1946 and interpreted by him in the theater and then in the cinema together with his sister Titina. A masterpiece then taken up by many other famous actors and directors.
Filumena Marturano
This is how director Francesco Amato talks about the TV film. “We decided to work on the emotional and psychological spheres of the characters. Something has been changed and adapted without distorting anything. Filumena represents stubbornness, fragility, tenderness". Vanessa Scalera admits: “I confess I was a little afraid at the beginning, but as soon as I arrived on the set I thought I shouldn't think about the others. Filumena, she would have been mine, and I hope in the future many young actresses will continue to try their hand at this character, Eduardo belongs to everyone ”. But the Apulian actress is keen to add: “Without Massimilano Gallo, my Filumena would certainly have been different. You are the best Soriano I could ever expect, helped me and dragged me into Naples, he's a great actor, with the pauses and the looks”. And he adds: “We worked on a fundamental aspect which is forgiveness.
If you start to forgive yourself you can forgive. Filumena and Domenico are two human beings who have failed for most of their lives, we find them in the final phase, descending“. The director claims that the idea was to 'unhinge' the theatrical patina to give the public a more cine-television product”. But each scene is the result of long rehearsals, made up of weeks of work first in the studio and then on the set. A work of psychological introspection on the characters and the credit goes to the extraordinary couple Scalera - Gallo. Among the other interpreters, all very good, also Nunzia Schiano, Marcello Romolo, Francesco Russo, Giovanni Scotti, Massimiliano Caiazzo, Anna Iodice.
Eduardo's masterpiece
Massimiliano Gallo explains: ” Without doing anyone wrong, Vanessa was the only possible Filumena next to me. There is such a strong feeling between us that it protects us both. My Soriano after a quest for eternal youth and the inability to communicate with Filumena, gives up. His tenderness comes out. Even if he turns out to be deceived, he accepts that children are all the same, we wanted to tell the fragility of these two extraordinary characters. Digging into the text we found many elements to explore, he chases after an infantile world. Filumena is a beautiful character, the fact that Eduardo has described the feminine in this incredible way makes you think. We are actors we must interpret a text not distort it, it would be a sacrilege”.
(Photo Ansa/Wikipedia)
