Dear Albertone, 

The sound of laughter, the way one’s eyes move, but also those hand gestures that are worth more than a thousand words: it takes little to feel at home. These are all unmistakable elements that belong to us and that we find in everyday life, because maybe they characterize an uncle, a neighbor or that guy who is yelling in traffic. But there’s only one actor who enclosed all of these mannerisms–of the everyday Roman–on the big screen, and for this Alberto Sordi is one of the family. 

You don’t know how much you made us laugh, dear Alberto, but you also don’t know how much you did us good. You always brought us back home, and I’m not just saying that as a Roman, but also as an Italian. You took the good and the bad of this country and turned it into something so powerful that it remains etched in everyone’s memory. There were many laughs, of course, but with your talent you also made us cry. Through your characters, you made us Italians recognizable to everyone with both our strengths and weaknesses: so boastful and deeply good, so unfortunate and tragicomic, sometimes even harsh and ambiguous, full of values or subtly wicked like only certain bourgeoisie of the booming years, that economic and cultural time that you told from every possible angle.

You discovered us, you put us in front of the mirror, and we had a lot of fun while it happened.

Over the 50 years of your acting career, you portrayed Italians of every generation. You portrayed my grandfather, my father and even me, because history repeats itself and the dream of Un americano a Roma (1954) touched the children of the post-war period as much as the children of the new Millennium with dreams of being greater, cooler like the Americans in the movies. The rowdiness of Onofrio del Grillo has never completely disappeared, and the compromises of Il boom (1963) have not changed over the decades. Your Guido Tersilli forever changed the image that everyone had of the physician, while your Remo and Augusta of Le vacanze intelligenti (1978) gave voice to the most popular thoughts of Italians in the face of the peculiarities and innovations of contemporary art, wary and rather incredulous that those strange works at the Venice Biennale could have so much value. You told morally corrupt stories like that of Il Vedovo (1959), in which a businessman hopes to gain from his wife’s death, and examples of zeal and political pressures–like those surrounding Otello Celletti in Il Vigile (1960)–still provide material for scoop and scandals today.

You told our stories well because you knew us well; you knew our weaknesses and you gave them to us as food, packaged with a care and irony that have never been matched. Our way of being, our fears, our tics have come back to us in films and unforgettable phrases. You portrayed those characteristics typical of a people so perfectly that they became your own: an irreverent joke is now an Alberto Sordi joke, and a thunderous and ringing laughter is yours too. That beautiful, full voice–that you lent as a dubber to Oliver Hardy in many films with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy–is still imitated today.

Perhaps the most iconic phrase of all is the warning Sordi gives in Un americano a Roma to a plate of pasta (which at first he avoids eating to appear more like an American):

“Maccherone, you provoked me and now I’m going to destroy you.”

You have treated us well with your ability to joke about everything. As your Marchese del Grillo (1983) said, “When joking, you have to be serious.” And so you also told about the war, or rather, the two world wars, from equally profound points of view in La Grande Guerra (1959) and in Polvere di Stelle (1973).

You were also a well-rounded figure on TV: I think of Tuca-Tuca with Raffaella Carrà in Canzonissima (1971), and also your debonair participation in the Sanremo Festival 1981 with the song “E va’, e va’”–quick flashes of a complex and overflowing personality.

And then you were a reference point for all Romans, who you made famous with your loud speech and an unmistakable accent exported all over the world. You loved Rome so much that you never wanted to leave it: you openly rooted for the football team that bears its name, and you were mayor for a day–the day of your 80th birthday (June 15th, 2000). You never wanted to get married and you left without biological children, but with many children of art. There is one above all: actor Carlo Verdone, whom you crowned your heir on several occasions, forging with him a human, as well as artistic, bond of great value. Unforgettable was the film In viaggio con papà (1982) in which you really were father and son.

Dear Albertone, when they asked you why you had decided not to get married, you answered ironically that you didn’t want strangers in the house, and yet you entered the homes of everyone. You were both a friend and the preferred actor of immense directors like Ettore Scola, Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli and many others, but you were also a director yourself for about 20 films. You acted with many stars, from Monica Vitti to Nino Manfredi; you performed in theater and on radio, and played in the army band during the war, when the call to arms could have interrupted your nascent career. You lived more lives, but always with the sly Roman laziness that you never hid. Many have imitated you, but only to pay you homage and never to mock you. How could they, after all, make fun of a master of pranks like you? You left us 20 years ago, but true artists never leave a void if they have created as much as you have. There is always something to look at, to review or to talk about. Even today it is easy to love your cinema: they’ve never gone out of style, because the subtle criticisms implied in your films still fit perfectly with the Italians of the New Millennium.

Belying your public image, you were a very reserved man, who elegantly knew how to keep the private sphere separate from the professional one. You were almost mysterious in some ways, but always respectful and respected by everyone. With calm and a smile you said what you thought without ever backing down. Even when it was necessary to bring baseness to the screen, you did it with class. So we thank you Albertone, for your films, for your jokes, for your ways of doing things and for what you told from the big and small screens. As a boy, they told you that you couldn’t be an actor with that “big face”, and instead you were one of the greatest. And that face? We’ll never forget it.