Intimate and touching portrait of one of the most talented Italian actors by the most important woman in his lifebut also a tale of the therapeutic value of true love, in the book “Carlo Delle Piane. The man I loved” (Martin Eden) by the Neapolitan singer and art therapist Anna Crispino, wife of Carlo Delle Piane. The book was presented yesterday by the author herself at the Magna Graecia Film Festival (section Magna Graecia Book Festival), in the Spazio Rai Radio 2 of the Terrazza Saliceti.
Character actor with a prestigious career behind him and films alongside Totò, Sordi and Fabrizi, promoted to protagonist by Pupi Avati, becoming one of his fetish interpreters (for the masterpieces “Una gita scuola” and “Regalo di Natale” he was also awarded in Venice), Delle Piane is portrayed with the typical strengths and weaknesses of a common man. In the book we discover his tender side, his fears, his relationship with music and with his most beloved cities, in addition to the most hidden aspects revealed by the woman who loved and understood him more than anyone else and with whom he experienced the thrill of true love.
Anna Crispino married Delle Piane in 2013, and remained by his side until that terrible 23 August 2019when the Roman actor passed away at the Policlinico Gemelli in the capital at the age of 83. “We met by chance at Santa Maria della Pietà, right in Rome,” Crispino tells us. “Carlo had gone to rehearse for a show and it was the first time for both of us in that theater. He had recently shot the short film about Alzheimer’s “Ogni giorno” and I was busy every day with patients with this disease; this created an opportunity to exchange on the subject. I left him my number and we gradually started to see each other, even though at the beginning we spoke on the phone because he was on tour.” A seemingly impossible meeting due to Delle Piane’s great phobia, that of physical contact, which accompanied him until the end, so much so that it temporarily disappeared when the camera was turned on. “This phobia manifested itself in him after waking up from a coma. He has never had psychotherapy sessions or taken psychotropic drugs. His therapy was cinema, where he gave himself completely because that was where the artist was.”
But how did the idea of telling the story of the man behind the actor come about?
«I started from a small paragraph dedicated to Carlo as a person in Massimo Consorti’s biography “Signore e Signori, Carlo Delle Piane” (Testepiene), but what pushed me to write the book was Carlo’s evolution, his questioning himself. I was surprised by the fact that a man so structured and full of fears was able to make new and different gestures. This confirmed to me that only a feeling, a deep feeling can make a person change. In fact, I would like the book to communicate this concept: feeling is the engine of everything. If we don’t love, we are neither free nor one hundred percent happy; while we can give the best of ourselves only when we feel loved and love in turn. The rest is surrogate».