He liked to say that all his luck lay in his green eyes: «Without those – said Paolo Bonacelli and his big baritone voice broke into a loud laugh – Alan Parker would never have hired an Italian to play the Turk in “Midnight Escape” and I would never have even gone to Hollywood. Not that I was that interested, but they paid well!
The great actor of the Italian theater who passed away last night in Rome at the age of 88, is now seeking his reincarnation according to the Buddhist faith to which he converted years ago, but in the memory of cinema, television and the stage, Paolo Bonacelli is reincarnated every day for that virtuous ability to be “one, no one and a hundred thousand” that few have been able to cultivate better than him.
Born in Civita Castellana on 28 February 1937, graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome, called to make his debut by Vittorio Gassman for «This evening we act a subject» with the Teatro Popolare in 1962, Bonacelli was immediately a formidable «animal» on the stage.
His powerful voice makes him noticed even by those sitting in the back row, his corpulent but agile physique opens up a range of very different characterisations, the flexibility of his voice, with a sanguine diction and tones that pass effortlessly from persuasive to bombastic, allows him to bring to life the great protagonists of the theatre, from Shakespeare to Pinter, from Sartre to Moliere, even if he will always be linked to modern, alienating characters, ironic and surreal bordering on the absurd.
His is the generation of Glauco Mauri, Gianni Santuccio, Massimo De Francovich, Romolo Valli: protagonists capable of filling the stage without the poses of the old comedians, but with a charisma that becomes art.
Paolo Bonacelli remained linked to the theater all his life, also for that subtle pleasure of life “in company”, a different city every evening which for him, a refined gourmet, often translated into the search for the restaurant where “you can eat well”, getting angry with colleagues and friends if he then found it closed at the end of the show. To immediately understand what kind of person and artist he was, it is worth fishing out his reading of the “Three” on the platforms musketeers” conducted entirely for Radio Rai.
Here we immediately understand how Bonacelli could be simultaneously the Gascon D’Artagnan, the elegant Aramis, the suffering Athos and the pleasure-loving Porthos. He was everyone and no one, having always rejected the identification between actor and character.
«I am not the one who brings to the stage – he said -, rather I am the companion of the author’s imagination which I read in the words of the text and I strive to bring alive for the spectator. But when the curtain falls I am left alone with Paolo, with my life and my passions.”
If the theater was Bonacelli’s “wife”, it is thanks to a generous “lover” like cinema that his face became popular in Italy and around the world. Today, in fact, everyone remembers him as the lawyer in «Johnny Stecchino» with his friend Benigni, the sailor in «Comandante» for Edoardo De Angelis or above all the terrible fascist in «Salò», the last prophetic film by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Bonacelli had arrived on the set as a young man at the beginning of the 1960s and had been noticed by Mario Mattoli with a classy part in «Cadavere per donna» in 1964. Since then he has worked with all the greatest from Scola to Montaldo, from Bologninj to Liliana Cavani (in a memorable «Francesco» alongside Mickey Rourke), from Rossellini to Francesco Rosi (unforgettable in «Christ stopped in Eboli”); Antonioni and Bellocchio wanted him, but he has never denied himself to popular cinema and can also be found in comedies such as “Rimini Rimini” or “I’m hoping that I’ll get along”.
If in recent years it had rejected several proposals for TV dramas, the history of Rai is punctuated by its appearances between “The Tales of Father Brown” with Renato Rascel (1965) and “The Betrothed” by Salvatore Nocita, often relying on TV veterans such as Daniele D’Anza or Sandro Bolchi, but also on cinema authors such as Damiano Damiani or Carlo Lizzani.
In all, Paolo Bonacelli’s filmography well exceeds 100 titles and it is difficult to imagine figures like his in the near future, so humble in life, so monumental on the stage. He was last seen at the Venice Film Festival with «In the land of Dante» by Julian Schnabel. But from tomorrow everyone will be able to find in their memory the Paolo Bonacelli they prefer: every time it will still be a surprise because no one can confine him to a stereotype but everyone can love his elegance, skill, versatility and those green eyes that bewitched a true talent hunter like Alan Parker.