Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember

Starring:Marcello Mastroianni, Leonor Silveira, Diogo DÃ³ria, Renato Berta, Manoel de Oliveira
Director: Anna Maria TatÃ²
Studio: Fox Lorber
Product Type: DVD

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Director Anna Maria Tatò couldn't have chosen a better title for her portrait of Italian legend Marcello Mastroianni, the great actor and her companion for 22 years. Mastroianni is not so much a subject as a host in the tour of his life, regaling the audience with anecdotes and pondering his career with a seriousness leavened by an amiable self-deprecation. We wander through his career on the stage with an array of stills and a few rare recordings, and his career in the cinema with a bounty of generous clips (which are, frustratingly, unidentified on screen) and a smattering of behind-the-scenes footage. I Remember is hardly probing or analytical, and the most controversial statement you'll find is Mastroianni's repudiation of the "Latin lover" label ("a crazy, stupid idea. It cheapens me"). What you get is a glimpse of his often overlooked range of projects and parts; engaging stories about such directors as Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, and Vittorio De Sica; and the offbeat sensibility of an actor who delighted in parodying his image (his dream projects, he confesses, are playing an old Tarzan and a deaf mute in a wheelchair: "to pander to my laziness... maybe I'd even win an Oscar"). At over three hours, the film takes its own lazy time, but that tongue-in-cheek charmer Marcello is a relaxed, amiable, inviting personality, good company and a delightful storyteller. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews:

Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember.......2005-08-12

Mastroiannis unaffected warmth and love of his craft shine through his anecdotes, shattering the vain, romantic-hero stereotype he loathed. For an endearing portrait of a consummate leading man, look no further. Fans of Italian cinema- and anyone remotely interested in the craft of film acting- should adore this worthy tribute.

Wonderful, but get comfortable........2002-02-11

You get the feeling watching this documentary that there was too much good content, too many stories, too many insights into Marcello, the man, the actor, the lover, the romantic, that a shorter film would have proved impossible. Clocking in just over 3 hours in length, "Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember" is the perfect retrospective of Mastroianni that any fan of his would truly adore. As charming in person as he was on screen, Marcello is relaxed, reflective, and takes his time telling vivid stories about the directors he worked with, the women in his life, and a considerable amount about the cities he's visited and the random people therein that haunt his memory. With over a hundred films on his resume, and a life most people can only dream of, the pace of the documentary is satisfyingly slow, and allows Marcello to reveal himself more openly. He sits and chats on his boat, in his Paris penthouse, in the backseat of a car winding through the mountains, in outdoor cafes -- anyplace he feels comfortable. It's so satisfying to see an actor laugh at himself, and still draw an artful smile when thinking about all the small, wonderful details in his life. In a way, this is Marcello's goodbye to his fans, for he died a year before this film was released. With that, I'm more than willing to give Marcello a little time to tell his story. A must see for fans of his work, as well as fans of the directors he's worked with, most notably Fellini.

You'd better be a Mastroianni fan.......2000-03-03

If you enjoyed MM's work, there is no better film than this, with extended monologues by MM intercut with scenes from his films. (The stories about the one he made with his brother were really cool). Lots of talk about his contemporaries, but the best parts are his musings on life and art; you really wish you could have known him as a person. On the down side, it is pretty long and the subtitles are often washed out during the b/w sequences. I watched over two nights.

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