Great composer of soundtracks, the first Italian musician to obtain an Oscar nomination, Riz Ortolani is remembered by one of Marco Bellocchio’s closest collaborators, the set designer from Galati Marina (Messina) Marco Denticiwho in 2010 won David di Donatello and Nastro d’Argento for the film “Vincere” by the same director. Thirteen years after “Caldo grigio, caldo nero”, about the Giampilieri flood, Dentici returns to directing with “Ci vediamo da Riz”, of which the world premiere teaser trailer was presented on 19 July at the Taormina Film Festival.
An atypical documentary film that represents a physical and mental journey into the life of the Maestro, starting from his training at the Gioacchino Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro, his hometown, up to the high goals of artistic maturity, including the nomination for the prestigious statuette for “More”, a cult song recorded by his wife Katyna Ranieri for “Mondo cane” and later performed by Frank Sinatra and other artists. An itinerary lasting more than eighty years between concerts, recording studios, television studios, orchestral direction, on the podium of the most prestigious theaters in the world.
The film reworks the shapes, colors and temperatures of the music composed by Ortolani for over three hundred Italian and international films, including “Il Sorpasso” by Dino Risi, “Fratello Sole, Sorella Luna” by Franco Zeffirelli and over thirty films by Pupi Avati. “I decided to make the film because Ortolani is a character linked to works of great value. He was very famous in the United States and abroad, because his wife was a real star in those countries. Riz is one of those characters who have fallen into oblivion and I felt the duty to remember his figure and his depth”. A composite work, that of Dentici, far from genre conformity, in which numerous inserts from well-known and lesser-known films coexist, chromatic backgrounds in animation, scenes from fiction and numerous testimonies from famous people, such as Andrea Bocelli, Placido Domingo, Pupi Avati and Renzo Arbore. The fusion of all these elements leads the narration to temporal leaps in a form that is only apparently misaligned, which instead models the chronology of events in a form and at times that are not necessarily ordinary.
«It is more of a biopic than a documentary, and it distances itself from the typical structure of this type of audiovisual narration, based only on documents. It is made up of various elements, including episodes told by him in the first person; the title, in fact, is not accidental because it speaks of the maestro in the present as if he were still among us». The aim of the film is to restore luster to an undisputed artist and bring him ever closer to the new generations. «Through the testimonies collected I learned a lot about the importance of Ortolani on a musical level among American composers of the time such as Henry Mancini, who he frequented, because he was part of the climate of the great jazz bands of the time. He loved that genre so much and the soundtrack of “Il sorpasso”, like the film, became a world reference point because at the time it was one of the first jazz soundtracks in cinema. All peculiarities that it is right to make known». The film is scheduled for release in theaters in 2025.