Paolo Villaggio with Fantozzi and Fracchia told "the average Italian"
The Genoese actor was a television and film interpreter of characters linked to a paradoxical and grotesque comedy.
Paolo Villaggio: great Italian comedian who left an indelible mark
While there are many “comedy” actors, Italian comedians can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Toto, Franco Franchi, Paolo Villaggio precisely.
There are many similarities and differences with the great De Curtis, aka Totò.
Unlike Totò, Villaggio did not give his name to the films. But on the other hand he named them after his "double" Hugh Fantozzi, the avatar he created and interpreted in ten films.
Reference has often been made to a sharing of the same fate between the two Italian comedians. They would have been ignored for a long time by disdainful criticism, only to be "rediscovered" belatedly.
After a successful career in cabaret and television, Villaggio entered the movies from the main door.
In 1970 he was the infanticide alemanno in Brancaleone at the Crusades di Mario Monicelli. Then he was seen next to Vittorio Gassman in two films. Without a family, people with no property seek affection e What do we have to do with the revolution? And nin 1974, in Don't touch the white woman by Marco Ferreri.
The conversion to national-popular cinema
After the first one Fantozzi, directed by Luciano Salce when Paolo Villaggio's book of the same name became a best-seller, the actor definitely converted to national-popular cinema, capitalizing on a success destined to grow in the following decades.
Village, compared to Totò, who was always the protagonist of the films, was able to alternate the main role by adapting to team play. Especially in the seventies, in films like The firefighters, Heroic mission the firefighters 2, School of thieves, School of thieves part two, Rimini Rimini.
Furthermore, Villaggio's comic career was punctuated by Author's film. From the greatest of all, Federico Fellini, who in 1989 directed him as supporting actor of Roberto Benigni in Voice of the moon, to Ermanno Olmi of Secret of the Old Wood (1993). To get to Dear fucking friends (1994), again with Monicelli.
If the major directors were able to enhance the most bitter and melancholy traits of his great loser "mask", not for this Paolo Villaggio betrayed the character who had given him fame. He continued to bring the epic woes of Fantozzi.
Other variants of his comic repertoire were less fortunate. The German Professor Kranz of Germany (with Salce) and a couple of Fracchia directed by Neri Parenti.
