A Journey on the Screen
Two of Italy’s top comedians, Massimo Troisi and Roberto Benigni teamed up to write direct, and star in this comedy about two men accidentally traveling back in time.
In a series of comic sketches, two friends, Saverio (Benigni) and Mario (Troisi) suddenly find themselves in 1492 while on a drive in the Italian countryside.
Saverio is enthusiastic, but Mario just wants a ticket home, until he meets Pia. Saverio will try to prevent Christopher Columbus from sailing to the New World so that America would never be discovered and Native Americans would not suffer…
Directors: Massimo Troisi and Roberto Benigni
Italy 1984 – 113 min.
Film in Italian, no English subtitles
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LOCATION
Embassy of Italy
3000 Whitehaven Street NW
Washington, DC 20008
MORE INFO
MASSIMO TROISI
Born into a humble background, Troisi studied to become a land-surveyor, but the theatre was his real passion. At the end of the ’60s, together with his friends Lello Arena and Enzo Decaro, he founded the cabaret group “La Smorfia”. Upbeat audience reaction to the trio’s stage shows paved the way to television work, and they appeared in a number of variety shows (“Non stop”, “Luna park”, “La sberla”), proving very popular. The threesome later split and Troisi made his first appearance in a feature-length film, “I’m starting from three (Ricomincio da tre)” (1981), for which he was director, screenplay writer and protagonist: in what was anything but a golden era for Italian cinema, the film was a huge box office success and earned critical acclaim to boot. The subsequent “Scusate il ritardo” (1982) picked up the character of the shy young man lacking the skills to manoeuvre his way through a life fraught with difficulties: this was another box office winner, though a certain repetitiveness was beginning to show through. A film that proved an even bigger hit with movie-goers was the profitable “Nothing left to do but cry (Non ci resta che piangere)” (1984), which Triosi co-directed and co-starred with Roberto Benigni: a zany fantastic comedy on the vicissitudes of two men catapulted from modern day back to the year 1492, it labours to juggle two quite different notions of comedy. After a small part in “Hotel Colonial” (1986) by Cinzia Torrini, Troisi returned to directing with the less than brilliant “Le vie del Signore sono finite” (1987), a bizarre love story set during the fascist era. Afterwards, he appeared in three more films by Ettore Scola, none of which were of particular merit: “What time is it? (Che ora è)” (1988) and “Splendor” (1989), both alongside Marcello Mastroianni, and “Captain Fracassa’s journey (Il viaggio di Capitan Fracassa)” (1990), adapted from the Théophile Gautier novel. Equally unimpressive was Troisi’s subsequent work, “I thought it was love (Pensavo fosse amore invece era un calesse)” (1991), which sought to imitate the success of the earlier films, but was beleaguered by uncertainties. Troisi came to international fame through the success of Il Postino, directed by Michael Radford. Troisi died in 1994 of a heart attack in his sister’s house in Ostia (Rome) twelve hours after the main filming on Il Postino had finished. It was reported that he postponed surgery to complete the film. He was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role.
ROBERTO BENIGNI
Born in Misericordia, a small town near Arezzo in 1952, Roberto Benigni learned to improvise songs and poems while in his teens. Although his early ambitions were to become either a priest or an accountant, he instead became part of Rome’s underground theater in the late 1960s. His onscreen debut came in the film “Berlinguer ti voglio bene” (1977), which he co-wrote. Soon after, he landed his own TV series, which propelled him to stardom in his native country and gained him notice in the international film industry. In 1986 he made his first English language film, “Down By Law” (1986), filmed in Louisiana. Back in Italy, he joined an all-star international cast in his second English-language film, “Night On Earth” (1991). His first big box office success in Italy was “Johnny Stecchino” (1991), about a good-hearted, innocent man who is mistaken for a mobster called Johnny the Toothpick. The film became the highest-grossing feature to date in Italian history. In 1993, he landed his first starring role in an English-language feature film when he replaced the late Peter Sellers as Inspector Jacques Clouseau in “Son of the Pink Panther”(1993). However, Sellers proved to be a tough act to follow, and Benigni received a nomination for “Worst New Star” by the Razzie Awards. Five years later, Roberto Benigni received worldwide acclaim for his film, “Life is beautiful” (1998). Benigni directed, co-wrote and starred in the comedy, set in a concentration camp. The film won a multitude of awards around the world, including an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Benigni himself won both an Academy Award and a BAFTA award for his performance in the film. Known for his excitability and effusiveness, the star was overcome by joy at the Academy Awards when he learned he had won, and jumped across the backs of chairs on his way to the stage to accept the award in broken English, using all the English words he knew whether they made sense or not, but endearing himself to the American public. He became the second actor in Oscar history to direct himself in a Academy Award-winning performance (the first was Laurence Olivier) and the first actor to win a Best Actor Oscar for a non-English speaking role. He has continued to star in both Italian and English films, his most recent being Woody Allen’s comedy “To Rome With Love” (2012). Benigni is married to actress Nicoletta Braschi, and they have appeared together in many films.
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