All language subtitles for Extra3_track3_[eng]-eng

How did Antonioni choose me?
I really don't remember.

Because we're speaking
about 1952, not now.

In 1952, since I'd already made
other films like "The City Stands Trial",

Antonioni chose me
as the young actor of the moment,

I was the most requested
youngster, let's say.

I don't remember ever doing a screen
test, or going to see anyone,

he chose me straight away
for the part in the film.

Just a moment, there is a reason.

Turi Vasile and Diego Fabbri's
production company ‘Film Costellazione',

was the one that had
produced "The City Stands Trial",

and then "The Vanquished".
So it's likely that Vasile e Fabbri

had suggested
my name to Antonioni.

Because then, at the end of
the year, I also made with them

"The World Condemns Them",
directed by Franciolini,

where I played a really good
part with Alida Valli.

She was beautiful,
I fell in love with her.

I knew a bit about the
vicissitudes of this story,

which at first was the story of
a fascist who committed suicide,

making it seem like
it had been the communists,

and then it was changed,
and changed again.

But Antonioni didn't speak to me much
about it, he spoke to the script writers.

He only told me what
I should do as an actor.

He was very good at guiding the actors
and creating the right atmosphere,

he never told me
his political ideas

but he said: "Here you're like this...,
here you fall and hurt yourself...

...then you get home, and die..."

He told me and specified things
but we didn't really discuss the theme

or the fact that this story could
be followed up politically.

He treated me
as you would treat an actor

and an actor is an instrument
in the hands of the director.

And what a director! Antonioni
was to say the least extraordinary.

Extraordinary in delivering the cues,
in telling me how to walk,

where I should go,
what sort of face I should have,

he told me everything,
he was extraordinary.

He shot enough, if the scene wasn't
perfect, he carried on shooting.

It's not like today on television sets
where they say: "The first one's good".

Now in television they make
866 shots a minute

and they're always good: "Well done,
you were really good". But it's not true.

Sure, Antonioni
took his time,

but Fellini took more time
with "Spivs". He was very pleasant,

sometimes we'd take a whole
afternoon to shoot a scene.

But Antonioni was also very precise,

if he wasn't satisfied,
he wouldn't stop shooting.

What do I remember of the scene that
you've shown me with Gastone Renzelli,

the star of "Bellissima"?

Well, I remember shooting it,
but I remembered it a bit differently.

I remember that I stayed in a
corridor, waiting for him.

Whereas we meet outside:

"Well, what do you want?",
"Well, I need to speak to you",

"Speak", "No, wait..."

Yes, I didn't remember the scene well,
but I remembered shooting with him,

spending the whole day with him,
eating a lunch basket together.

Renzelli was nice.

So, I find the scene
beautiful anyway.

The film wasn't shot
as a live recording, that's clear,

but... when we dubbed it,

we changed the lines of the scene with
Anna Maria Ferrero in the garage.

That was very difficult, because, in
the first version, I was a dynamiter,

then instead I was a smuggler
who kills a policeman by mistake

on the gangway of the Marconi Bridge,
the bridge they were building.

We filmed there for a number of nights.

So there were some problems
doing the dubbing

but Antonioni told me what
I had to say.

And I said it, because it was
like dubbing a foreigner.

With my mouth I said one thing
but I had to dub another.

That is, I had to be agitated
in an exaggerated way

for a story which was okay before,

I'd even blown up
a factory,

whereas there, escaping, I'd shot
and killed a policeman.

The dubbing was done immediately
afterwards, not much time had gone by.

Ceratinly, after the showing at Venice,
we did the dubbing again

so that the film would be shown at the
cinemas with this new dubbing.

In the scene that we shot later,
which I don't remember shooting later,

the cameraman was Enzo Serafin,

and I think he was also in the scene
which we re-shot on Marconi Bridge.

The cameraman was never changed.

I can tell you about the relationship
with Antonioni, who was really nice.

We talked about women, he always said
that the most beautiful women in Italy

were Lucia Bosé with whom he
had made "Chronicle of a Love",

Silvana Mangano, Antonella Lualdi,
and I agreed with him.

I met Antonella Lualdi
the following year.

I said: "Yes-yes, Antonella Lualdi
is pretty as well."

Antonella Lualdi,
Silvana Mangano, Lucia Bosé

they were Antonioni's women,
the actresses which he liked the most.

We were under this Marconi Bridge
which was under construction

and we exchanged our ideas
about Italian actresses.

Besides, Antonioni was...
For one thing he was an ex tennis player,

and, in spite of his tics,
he was second category.

So he was a strong tennis player.

And when we shot
the scene in the car

with Anna Maria Ferrero
on the Cristoforo Colombo Avenue,

an idiot stopped with his car
and didn't want to let us film.

Antonioni got down
and started punching him.

Antonioni had some sides
to his personality a bit...

I'd never seen so much violence,
he punched someone bigger than him

because he didn't want to let him film.

Then when I became
a tennis lover,

I always thought
that he was a real tennis player,

he'd been a very strong
second category.

So he was a first class intellectual
but also a great sportsman.

I hope he lives for a long time yet.

I already knew
Anna Maria Ferrero because...

we'd met at Fregene
where we went on holiday.

I was engaged
to a girl, Patrizia Mori,

whose sister then
married Orson Welles.

I can't remember her name, then she
died in an accident in Los Angeles.

I was engaged and everyday I went
to Fregene and I took Anna Maria Ferrero.

So there was a lovely relationship
with Anna Maria Ferrero.

With her I made "The Big Night",
"Half a Century of Songs",

where we also sang together.

There was a great feeling between us,
we made about 4-5 films as a couple.

She had a long affair
with Vittorio Gassman

and now she's happily married
to the French actor Jean Sorel.

I also saw her in Paris
when I used to go and see Mastroianni,

I met her at a bar
at Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

She lives in Paris with Jean Sorel.

Leopoldo Trieste... he's been
my brother, my father, my cousin,

my uncle, he was everything.
I met him on the set of "I vitelloni",

he'd already played the lead
in "The White Sheik".

He was the 'black soul' of Fellini.
When Fellini had to make a film,

he took him all around Rome
by car and he told him things...

Leopoldo is a great character,
when he talked to me he said:

"You know, Franco, when I speak,
I let the words fall

but before they fall
to the ground, I pierce them."

In "Farewell to Arms",
we were always together,

we went in search of young
girls in all Friuli Venezia-Giulia.

He was a terrible lady-killer,

he always had small cakes, but
they were of no use at that time.

Leopoldo was an extraordinary
character.

Everyone remembers him as an
actor, and of course he was very good.

But he was a great playwright,
a great writer...

he's an exceptional man.

I never thought of him
as being older than me...

because at 20
or at 30 one is always the same.

When you have that spirit, that juvenile
way of doing things, you stay that way.

Leopoldo was young at heart,
he always has been right to the end.