Vito Annicchiarico, Witness of Rome Open City, Dies. He Played Little 'Marcello'. ”
Vito Annicchiarico, the little 'Marcello' from the film 'Rome, Open City', passed away this morning at 6 in hospital. Born in 1934, he could not cope with the loss of his wife, and passed away five months after the death of his Maria. The last witness of Roberto Rossellini's great work, he had managed to maintain ties with the Venturini family (financiers of the film), and with Teresa Gullace's sons, Mario and Umberto. Annichiarico leaves behind three children and three grandchildren. The funeral will be held on Monday morning at 10 in the parish of San Fedele, in via Mesula, in Pietralata.
Film critic Adriano Aprà called Vito Annichiarico “a gentleman with a gentle manner and an iron memory” who stumbled into cinema while working as a shoeshine boy in post-war Rome, the last witness of Roberto Rossellini’s great film. “It’s as if the wind had carried him away…”, says now someone who remained close to him until the end.
Annichiarico’s biography can only begin when Rossellini saw Annichiarico at Largo del Tritone, on the corner of Via Macelli, while he was waiting for some American soldier to arrive to have his shoes cleaned and he immediately fell in love with him. He was such a beautiful child. And he later said of him to his crew: “Oh this boy is a phenomenon”.
He took him to introduce him to Countess Chiara Politi, who would be the first financier of the film project in the premises of via Crispi. But with the excuse that they would offer him to clean 40 pairs of shoes. With the Countess, there were also in the headquarters of Cis Nettunia the screenwriter Sergio Amidei and the dancer Harry Feist who played the Gestapo major Fritz Bergmann.
Thus begins the adventure in the cinema of Mr. Vito. It is 1944 and until 1950 Annichiarico has been on the set several times with great directors such as Vittorio De Sica, Mario Soldati, Gennaro Righelli. Often paired with Anna Magnani who wanted to adopt him, and on stage with Aroldo Tieri in the play by Luigi Pirandello “L'Uomo la bestia e la virtù”.
“I took a long break from cinema”, he had told Veronica Pivetti during the presentation in Rome of the Lazio region's project: “100 films, one country… Italy”.
Massimo Ghini, who had starred alongside Lina Sastri in Carlo Lizzani's film, Celluloide, went to greet him on that occasion, eager to meet young Marcello directly, who told the story of his film debut there. Celluloide is in fact the 1966 film that retraces the story of how Rome, Open City, was developed, Rossellini's financial difficulties and the problems in completing the project due to the lack of film and funds. Then suddenly in 2005 Vito Annichiarico was sought after many years, Aldo Venturini's son, Claudio, for a new project: to shoot "The Sons of Rome, Open City" with Laura Muscardin. Vito retraces all the places where the film was shot, telling anecdotes and episodes related to that historical period.
The docu-film of the Nuvola film production by Amedeo Bacigalupo, wins an award at the Robert De Niro Tribeca Film Festival. Then the publication by Simonetta Ramogida of the book “Roma Città Aperta Vito Annicchiarico racconta il set con Anna Magnani Aldo Fabrizi Roberto Rossellini”, published by Gangemi, collects previously unpublished aspects and testimonies of that very intense period of Neorealism in which the young Marcello also took part in films such as “Down with Poverty! And Down with Wealth”, “Tomorrow is too late”, and “Who is God”. Annichiarico – it is remembered – also took part in the film “Cuore”, with Vittorio De Sica, and in “Un mese di onestà” by Domenico Gambino.
Of Rossellini, he will say: “He was like a father to me”. His father, while he was shooting the film, was in Ethiopia fighting in the Italian army. His great humanity led him to have an epistolary relationship with Mario Gullace, the son of Teresa Gullace, the martyr who inspired Rossellini to shoot the film, and later with his other son: Umberto Gullace, who I will see for the first time on the occasion of the presentation of the book on Rome, Open City.
With great emotion, little Marcello meets the “real” child of Rome Open City? Born in Grottaglie in 1934, after the Liberation with his father missing in Ethiopia to help his mother, in the post-war period like many other children, he was a shoeshine boy. It is he who leads Rossellini to the places where the film was shot, because the master of Neorealism tells him: show me where you live, take me to the church where you go to be an altar boy, show me the Oratory where you go to play football, These places are the places of Vito's heart. It is Pigneto where he lived with his mother and his brothers, Liliana and Aldo.
Rossellini also took Vito Annichiarico with him during the filming of “Paisà”, between Naples, Maiori, Minori. He was supposed to shoot some scenes, but – he later said – “as happens to boys around the age of puberty, I had suddenly changed. I no longer looked like a boy, perhaps emaciated by poverty”, and the part was therefore entrusted to Alfonsino Pasca, but he remained attached to Rossellini of whom he said “he was a piece of bread”.
The idyll for Anna Magnani lasted forever. When she spoke of that cinematic period and thought about the film she was always moved. Her film career ended in 1950, after graduation she began working in an American multinational, where she remained until retirement, as a hardware technician.
His mother had not wanted him to go to America where a big production would have paid for his studies, and would have allowed him to continue working. She did not want to let him go, and in the meantime Rossellini's cinema had also changed: the Ingrid Bergman cyclone had overwhelmed it. Mother Linda wanted her son to study.”
In 2016, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Syndicate of Film Journalists, Annichiarico was awarded the Nastro d'Argento “Speciale” that in 1946 was awarded to Anna Magnani and Roberto Rossellini. He had returned several times to via Montecuccoli, to the two doors, one in front of the other, where some scenes of the film were shot, retracing the scene of little Marcello who looks out from the stairs when “a sora Pina”, Anna Magnani calls him.
Four years earlier Alberto Crespi had wanted him in the docu-film “Voi siete qui” directed by Francesco Mattera. A major film production had recently contacted him for participation in a new project, Stayblack Productions.
Producer and director Jonas Carpignano of Stayblack is producing a documentary by director Spike Lee and they wanted him to participate. Little Marcello? He didn't have time. But for him, only great films, only great directors.
Article published on 5 August 2022 - 16:13
