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| Director, he was born on January 2 nd 1905 in Rome. Still university student, he wrote some comedies that were represented in the years 1930-32, to pass therefore to cinema, graduating in direction at the Experimental Center of Cinematography. After the collaboration to some screen-plays, he began in directing with L’attore scomparso (1941), that revealed him sensitive and prepared director. Subsequently he directed some works of scarce relief. In the postwar period he was affirmed in international field as one of the most meaningful authors of the Italian Neorealism, with To live in peace (1946), that got the prize of the critique as best foreign film in New York. Really the film didn't go out of the forms of the sketch and of the comedy of custom, and he deeply outdistanced from the work of Rossellini and De Sica of that years. The best vein of Zampa, that is the satire of custom and the ironic and amused observation of the daily reality, was nevertheless already present: it expressed more finishedly in the following Angelina (1947) and especially in the series of films that the director realized on the screen-plays of the writer Vitaliano Brancati. Among them they have to be remembered Anni difficili (1948), Anni facili (1953) and L’arte di arrangiarsi (1954), all pervaded of an antifascist and at times biting and caustic spirit, in the description of certain aspects of the social and politic Italian life, either under Fascism, either in the Christian Democratic regime. Subsequently Zampa alternated to work of civil engagement and great spectacular make, others of pure fun, not neglecting nevertheless to continue, even if in ways and different terms, his critical and ironic speech on the minute reality of the Italian society as in All of us are guilty (1959), or in The traffic policeman (1960), in Anni ruggenti (1962), in A question of honor (1966). But his more binding and stylistically rigorous work Processo alla città(1952), in which the Neapolitan life of the early Ninteen century and its bonds with the " racket " had a representation of strong relief, either on the plan of the environmental description, and on the psychological characterization of the characters. Good narrator, busy on the political and social sphere, savory illustrator of the Italian custom, gentle in the satire but often incisive and biting, Zampa can be considered a good artisan, that has left a non marginal trace in the Italian cinema of the postwar period, contributing with some meaningful work to its artistic and cultural rebirth. In 1948 he has published the autobiographic novel Il successo. (From Dizionario del Cinema Italiano 1945/1969 Author Gianni Rondolino Publisher Einaudi 1969)
Luigi Zampa dies on August 16 th 1991. FILMOGRAPHY 1945 - A Yank in Rome PRIZES 1946-47: Silver ribbon for the best subject ( To Live in Peace) |
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