There is a stretch by Adriana Asti who strikes more than any other and who magnetically attracted not only those who saw it at the cinema, but also those who sat in the theater, even away from the stage: those big eyes, dark and very very high, wide open on the world as in perennial search for discovery and reassurance.
Adriana Asti – who died tonight in sleep, in Rome, at the age of 94 – was curious, intimidated, excited and surprised in front of the world and people. At the same time it hated conventions, formalisms, stupidity and for this reason it has never been gladly in the elected circles of Italian culture.
He had the allergy to the “fences” and also for this reason in life he suffered too formal ties (the family, the first marriage), as well as on stage escaped every stereotype on his art. Because – today we must remember it – Adriana was a great personality of the Italian theater and an irresistible muse of diversity on the screen precisely for its constant diversity.
Born in Milan on April 30, 1931 from a family of dramatically impoverished entrepreneurs at the end of the Second World War, rigidly educated in a college of German nuns, in love with a father with whom she lived in constant conflict, she had left home at just 17 years old, convinced by Romolo Valli to follow the “carriage” theater company.
He felt “ugly” with that minute physique, the dark hair cut “to the boy”, the belief of not “knowing how to do anything, let alone the actress”. But soon he discovered instead that the theater was the place of security, the place where suddenly the reality around disappeared and there was only the comfort of the words written by others, often sublime and universal.
He had unsurpassed masters from a young age: Memo Benassi, Lilla Brignone, then Romolo Valli who presented her to Giorgio Strehler and Luchino Visconti.
At the “Piccolo” school in Milan he also began to travel to Europe, Visconti offered her the first important roles for the cinema with “Rocco and his brothers” (1958). But already in ’52 he made his debut with Strehler in Milan in the “Elizabeth of England” by Bruckner and then on TV with Silverio Blasi (“game of four”) while Visconti chose it in the same year for “Il Cogiolo” by Arthur Miller.
“It was Visconti who suggested the ‘movement to the dusè, that is, the gesture of passing a hand in my hair – told Walter Veltroni in a famous interview – but I had already learned that maker from Memo Benassi, a giant”.
The theatrical partnership with the two great Milanese directors lasted until the early 70s passing through masterpieces of Natalia Ginzburg, Harold Pinter and Pirandello (with the regions of Vittorio Gassmann).
Meanwhile, the friendship with Pier Paolo Pasolini and his young pupil Bernardo Bertolucci (of which his partner will be for a decade) who had been unbalanced by the door of the best author cinema.
Pasolini’s “Accattone” recited Pasolini, “The disorder” by Franco Brusati and then in “Before the revolution” with which Bertolucci consecrated it unforgettable protagonist.
Titles followed that marked a generation such as “The Visionaries” by Maurizio Ponzi, “put one evening for dinner” by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, “Ludwig” still with Visconti, “The ghost of freedom” by Luis Bunuel.
But Asti did not disdain popular cinema with marked sensitivity directors such as Flavio Mogherini or Marco Vicario, Mauro Bolognini and Vittorio De Sica (“A short holiday”).
In the early 70s he met Giorgio Ferrara during a tour in America with “Orlando Furioso” by Luca Ronconi and they fell in love by binding life and art: much younger than her, Ferrara directed her in her most beautiful film (“A simple heart”, 1977) and then in the theater in “finding himself” by Pirandello.
In the meantime, it had also become a face now known to the television public thanks to highly successful scripted novels such as “La Fiera della Vanità” (Anton Giulio Majano), “I Nicotera” (Salvatore Nocita), “Saturday evening from nine to ten” (Ugo Gregoretti).
Although he was an indisputable protagonist, versatile and always different on stage (just remember his partnership with the Festival of the two worlds of Spoleto since the famous “happy days” directed by Bob Wilson in 2010 or the collaborations with André Ruth Shammah and Luca Ronconi), the cinema made it the protagonist mainly thanks to the meeting with Marco Tullio Giordana who wanted it for “Pasolini, a crime. Italian »in 1995 and then” The best youth “in 2003 with which he won the silver ribbon and the golden globe.
Long earlier, already in 1974, the Academy of David di Donatello had remembered her with a special prize in the year in which, thanks to “a short holiday” he had also obtained the first silver ribbon.
A few years ago he had confessed to Walter Veltroni: «I see the future eternal, at this point of life. Children think they are immortal, they never think they are like those who leave, they die. This thought of being immortal, since I am still very childish, I always have it ».
Today, in reminding her with the intimacy of a friendship that has become a profound species after the disappearance of her husband Giorgio Ferrara two years ago, Marco Tullio Giordana recalls: «When she happened to get tired on some formal occasion with pedantic and barbosa people, Adriana lost their senses and was being taken away. It is not a way of saying, it was true, I saw him do it. The thought that this time must be passed out because it was getting bored to death is a bit. “