Cesare Zavattini
(Luzzara, 1902-Rome, 1989) Italian narrator, playwright, journalist and screenwriter.His dedication to letters had a first development through the journalistic genre, in which he achieved a certain literary prestige with his articles published in various newspapers and magazines: Gazzetta di Parma (1935-36), Cinema Illustrazione, Secolo Illustrato and Le Large Firm (1937-38).
Cesare Zavattini
Through these journalistic works, Cesare Zavattini became known as a keen and ironic observer of the world around him and, at the same time, an author gifted with an extraordinary fantasy and a humor close to the best surrealism that at that time was cultivated in the literatures of all Europe.
All this was reflected in different volumes that were collecting his numerous loose writings, most of them dispersed until then in the aforementioned media.These are titles as lucid and fruitful as Parliamo tanto di me (We talk a lot about me, 1931), I poveri sono matti (The poor are crazy, 1937), Io sono il diavolo (I am the devil, 1941) and Totò il buono (Totò the good, 1943).
While shining for these In journalistic and literary writings, the Luzzara writer became known in the mid-1930s for his ability to generate film plots and his ability to turn them into scripts.Thus, once World War II was over, he became one of the best exponents of the new aesthetic trend of neorealism, to which he contributed with his successful work as a screenwriter alongside the director Vittorio de Sica.
Within a new humanism that, from clearly populist overtones, was called to exalt humility-and even poverty-seen in the light of a Christian approach, Cesare Zavattini developed a fruitful cinematographic career in which It is obligatory to remember his responsibility as a screenwriter in some of the most representative films of this neorealist aesthetic, such as Ladri di biciclette (The bicycle thief, 1948), Miracolo a Milano ( Miracle in Milan, 1950), Umberto D (1951), L'oro di Napoli (The Gold of Naples, 1954), Il tetto (1956), La ciociara (1960) and Il giudizio finale (The final judgment, 1961).Later, Zavattini also triumphed as a screenwriter (it is true that already within the genre of comedy) with another masterpiece by the aforementioned Vittorio de Sica, Matrimonio all'italiana (Italian marriage, 1964).
In the midst of this assiduous dedication to writing for the big screen, Cesare Zavattini did not abandon the cultivation of literature proper, although it is true that in this his second stage as a writer he radically changed the course humorous of his first youthful writings towards costumbrista satire and analysis of post-war Italian society.
As a precursor of this new trend in his writing, his famous pamphlet entitled Ipocrita (Hypocrite, 1943) had already appeared in 1943, a work that was followed by new literary works characterized by his search for social controversy, such as the comedy Como nasce un soggeto cinegrafico (How a cinematographic argument is born, 1959) and the volume of autobiographical writings entitled Straparole (1967), work full of numerous linguistic discoveries that returned to regain his pleasure for writing humorous overtones.Along the same caustic and burlesque lines, he returned to literature with Al macero (Al afflicted, 1976) and to the film script with La veritàaaa (La verdaaaad, 1982).
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