"He never allowed himself to be buried, neither on stage nor in life." Thus reads the epitaph that Vittorio Gassman insinuated to the press at the time of his death, which occurred on June 29, 2000 due to a heart attack. He was 77 years old, too young for someone whose career spanned more than five decades and who constantly battled the passage of time. The great Italian actor, born in Genoa on a day like today a century ago, openly confessed that he would be happy if he could return again at twenty, or fifty, "which is perhaps the most beautiful age". But time was advancing unbeatable and Gassman, a soul as creative as it was tormented, dragged much of that sorrow with a succession of depressions.
Such a magnetic, energetic man, owner of a captivating charisma and synonymous with success in everything he did, also had his dark side. "Vittorio was afraid of death, like all of us. He was a little more so, because he was extremely sensitive and full of life. Therefore, death did not belong to him," said his widow, Diletta D'Andrea, at the beginning of the last April during the opening of the exhibition that the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome dedicated to Gassman on the occasion of his centenary.
And it is that this September 1, one of the most beloved Italian actors for his elegance, talent, versatility and humor, whether on the big screen, in the theater or on television, would have turned a century. Born in Genoa to a German father from a wealthy family and an Italian mother of Jewish origin, Vittorio soon felt the call of acting, so he moved to Rome to study dramatic art. His was a true passion for the stage and he made his debut at the age of 20 with Alda Borelli in the play La Nemica (The Enemy) by Niccodemi.
With the company of Luchino Visconti he put himself in the shoes of a vigorous Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams. He staged Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and played complex Shakespearean creatures like Hamlet, Othello and Iago. He started an itinerant popular theater and in 1979 he created a space in Florence in which he even taught and trained many actors. An all-terrain interpreter, he made his film debut with Giovanni Paolucci in Preludio d'amore (1946) and co-starred with Silvana Mangano in the melodrama Arroz amargo (1949).
Later he worked under some of the most important directors of the time, such as Mario Monicelli, with whom he shot the famous Rufufú together with his great friend Marcello Mastroianni, with Ettore Scola (The family, The dinner, The terrace...) or Dino Risi, who in Perfume de mujer gave him the award for best actor at the Cannes festival. But it was as a result of his appearance in Il Sorpasso (1962), that his career took a huge leap. Risi's classic, one of the best exponents of 'Italian Comedy', launched him to international fame. A genre in which he lavished himself in the fifties and sixties, with great successes such as The Great War, with Alberto Sordi, or Monsters of Today.
Thanks to his command of English, he was able to work in several Hollywood productions: from Rhapsody (1954), alongside Elizabeth Taylor and directed by Charles Vidor; War and Peace (1956), with Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer, until Sleepers (1996), where she had Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Brad Pitt as co-stars.
He also spoke Spanish well and participated in films such as La Corona Negra (1951), playing the lover of María Félix, and El Largo Invierno (1992), by Jaime Camino, where he acted under the burden of a deep depression. Despite this, the Barcelona director defended his professionalism on set. The mere presence of him, wrapped in 1.87 meters of height and crowned with a defiant gaze, magnified any film, giving it a quality that few performers could give on the big screen. He threw himself into the character, whether he was a villain or a heartthrob, and delved into it, removing and layering it, always familiarizing himself with the text.
Restless, infatuated, seductive, passionate and with a melancholic personality, he defined himself as "a person with a disgusting shyness" that acting helped to overcome. He constantly needed public recognition to boost his self-esteem. "I was born a liar and I chose the forgery profession", he recounted in his memoirs Il Mattatore, (The matador) as he was popularly known since he presented the RAI television program of the same name in 1959, a space in which he acted, sang and did interviews.
Gassman was a perfectionist in everything he did, pronouncing all dialects well and possessing exquisite diction. He recited Dante's Divine Comedy and poems with the same intensity as he read aloud the gas bill on the popular 1990s television series Tunnel. The Oscar resisted him, although among his recognitions are the Donostia Award at the San Sebastian Festival in 1988, a contest in which he already won the Silver Shell for best actor in 1971 for Brancaleone en las Crusaders; the Special Golden Lion in 1996 or the Prince of Asturias for the Arts in 1997.
"I have a lot of money. I have many friends. I have a wife and four children. They say that I am one of the three greatest actors in the world. So why does all this dissolve into a feeling of perpetual emptiness?" he wrote in his memoirs . Unfortunately, his life ended with a deep wound in the soul. For the rest of the world, his vast legacy-between films, works and books-remains unchanged. A footprint that will always be alive. One hundred years after his birth, Gassman is still eternal.
