Robert De Niro presented a special screening of the newly restored 50th anniversary version of Bernardo Bertolucci's classic tale of the class struggle and the rise and fall of fascism, '1900', in a packed and adoring Roman piazza Monday night.
The Hollywood acting legend shared memories of sharing the set on the sprawling cult epic historical drama with Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Stefani Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, Alida Valli and Laura Berti and, at 82, candidly admitted that some memories simply weren't there any more.
There was stadium-like cheering, complete with a Mexican Wave in Piazza San Cosimato in Trastevere, the culmination of the 12th edition of Il Cinema in Piazza.
The Fondazione Piccolo America put on the event, a feisty group of young film buffs headed by Valerio Carocci that have been moving and shaking after occupying the nearby shuttered Cinema America movie theater.
A presentation-dialogue was hosted by Antonio Monda, a New York-based journalist and academic and former Rome Film Festival chief, and Carocci.
How did you meet Bertolucci?, they asked.
"I've forgotten, but I remember being struck by the script.
He was very nice, but at first I thought he was crazy.
"When we were shooting 1900, there was a scene where I played a very old version of myself.
"We shot it at the beginning of the film, which I found disconcerting, because it should have been shot later.
"And in fact, we reshot it at the end, Depardieu and I.
"The thing is, I was used to shooting in sequence, but Bertolucci didn't do that," said De Niro, who plays Alfredo Berlinghieri, heir to a wealthy family of landowners, starring alongside Depardieu, who plays the Communist farmhand Olmo Dalcò.
Carocci prodded the actor with a political question about why and how Bertolucci used Hollywood funds to make this manifesto of freedom against fascism: "Of course it's a film about fascism, but I don't know exactly what happened, and I don't even know if he was a communist or a socialist, but it was definitely for the people." Among the many "I don't remembers", De Niro hasn't forgotten the difficulties of Bertolucci's set, nor the quality of the local restaurants.
"I had a lot of difficulty with the language.
"There were people who didn't speak Italian, like me, and those who spoke French or only English.
"It was a real mess, but of that long production, I especially remember the magnificent restaurants in Reggio Emilia." De Niro was then asked about another great director, Sergio Leone, who directed him in Once Upon A Time In America.
"(He was) a man with a great sense of humour, a nice person who didn't flaunt any pretensions; in short, he was fantastic." And also "fantastic" for De Niro are almost all the actors and directors he mentions, from Joe Pesci to Al Pacino, from Meryl Streep to Sutherland.
At the finale of the event, the great Bob does not fail to greet the now completely delirious square, shouting "God Bless Italy." The restoration of 1900 was carried out by 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Istituto Luce-Cinecittà, and Cineteca di Bologna, with the collaboration of Alberto Grimaldi and the support of Massimo Sordella at the L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, under the supervision of Bernardo Bertolucci and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.
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