PIETRO GERMI: THE GOOD THE BEAUTIFUL THE BAD-Claudio Bondi
The film centres around the four significant periods of Pietro Germi’s work: neorealism, his great genre films, the invention of the Italian comedy and his attempts, towards the end of his career, to follow new narrative structures. These reference points do not cover all areas of his filmography, but they do provide a neat summary of the artistic journey that lead him to change genre but never style. Therefore we move from images of a Sicily that bears a remarkable resemblance to the landscapes in John Ford’s work, to Gadda-inspired detective plots set in the Rome of the 1950s, to the three great comedies that are central to his filmography and finally onto the highly-debated films he made with Adriano Celentano, Gianni Morandi and Dustin Hoffman, which were still very successful with the public. A sixty minute portrait that reveals the formidable cinematic legacy of “the great carpenter”, as his friend Federico Fellini affectionately called him. The documentary uses archive footage from the Teche Rai, excerpts from his films and previously unseen material that has been meticulously restored.
Claudio Bondi
Born in Rome in 1944, graduated in Arts from the Institute of Theatre History at Rome University in 1969. Won a scholarship for the two-year directors’ course at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, from which he graduated in 1971.
1971 to 1974: assistant director on Roberto Rossellini’s TV movies: Augustine of Hippo, The Age of the Medici, Leon Battista Alberti; director of “behind the scenes” documentary for Blaise Pascal; collaborated with Vittorio De Seta and Marianne Ahrne (now head of the Swedish Film Institute) on the TV series Divorce and the film Vicino lontano. Wrote and directed numerous TV series for Rai Uno, Rai Tre, Orf, Zdf, Reiac Film, Veradia Film , Cinelife, C.E.M, Intervideo, Telesia, Four Corners Prod. Inc. (New York), Promo Media (New York), Telelatino (Toronto), Nitra S.A. (Madrid), Satel Film (Vienna), Almaro (Munich).