Guido Alberti(1909-1996)
- Actor
This is 1962. Filmmaker Guido Anselmi is going through an artistic
crisis. He does not think he will be able to make the film he has
signed for. All he wants is to retreat into a world of his own, far
from the public eye. All he wants is peace and what he gets is ...
Pace, his producer, who keeps on pressurizing him into starting the
shooting. Everybody will have recognized the plot of
Federico Fellini's masterpiece
8½ (1963).
Marcello Mastroianni was Guido,
Fellini's alter ego, already a star at the time, but nobody knew Pace,
wonderfully interpreted by a fifty-three-year-old beginner, then
starting a second life as a movie actor,
Guido Alberti. Despite a rather ordinary
physical appearance, the newcomer immediately made a name for himself
thanks to his impressive presence and for thirty years (he made his
last film at the age of eighty-three), the more and more massive and
portly thespian proved a scene stealer, even in the tiniest roles. He
can be seen in a wide range of films, whether Italian, European or
American and he is at his best when donning the cassock or the robe
(from priest to bishop to cardinal to ... the Pope! in
Marco the Magnificent (1965))
or when embodying authority figures (at times menacing) such as prison
governor, police superintendent or prime minister. And he is
unforgettable as the right-wing party leader in yet another masterpiece
Hands Over the City (1963),
directed by Francesco Rosi As a character
actor, Guido Alberti was the indispensable
kind. He worked before the cameras of the greatest, Fellini, Rosi,
Luis García Berlanga,
Mario Monicelli,
Valerio Zurlini,
Roman Polanski but he was not averse to
more popular cinema, taking part for example in many a 'giallo'. He was
also active on television. The son of industrialist Ugo Alberti,
co-owner of the 'Strega Alberti Benevento' company, it looked as if
Guido Alberti would never break from his preordained destiny. In 1957,
He even became the board chairman of the firm. But Guido also had
literary and artistic aptitudes. For instance, in 1947, he founded the
famous literary prize 'Premio Strega', which is not common among
industrialists, before finally opting for the acting career. Guido
Alberti died in 1996, a few days before his eighty-seventh birthday,
after a long life, in accordance with himself