The great Alberto Sordi He would dismiss the matter with one of his proverbial withering jokes: “What are you talking about?” Meanwhile, the whole world remains speechless and more inclined to laugh than to indignation at the absurd suspicion formulated by the Swiss authorities over 60 years ago, but which is only coming to light today: According to the government and the army of Bern, As a great Roman actor he was “a potential spy for the USSR”, in fact a “subversive” capable of revealing military secrets to enemies, and as such he had no right to build a house in Switzerland.
Pierfrancesco Favino al Messaggero: “The Oscar? It is no longer a guarantee of quality”
Sordi “is a Russian spy”
A surreal story “that could have appeared in a comedy by Albertone himself,” comments incredulously Carlo Verdone, who is considered the heir to the actor with whom he made two films: “Journey with the Father” and “Troppo forte”. “I see him working with the faithful screenwriter Rodolfo Sonego: together they would have had a lot of fun writing a film centered on a famous Italian actor who, like Sordi himself, seeks refuge to escape the chaos of Rome ..” to the Alps, but they let him in because they think he is a spy allied with the Russian communists. Die of laughter.
The ban and the appeal
The sensational story was discovered by director Felice Zanoni, who rummaged through the cantonal and federal archives before revealing it to the “Urner Wochenblatt”, the newspaper of the canton of Uri. And he found the official document that in 1962 denied Albertone the purchase of a large plot of land in Andermatt, a famous ski resort in the Vrsar Valley, at the confluence of the roads leading to the Alpine passes of San Gottardo, Furka and Oberalp.
Sordi has always loved investing his earnings in bricks and mortar, starting with the purchase of the beautiful Caracalla Villa, where he lived until the end and which housed the museum dedicated to him. After becoming rich and famous through the successful films made between the late 1950s and early 1960s (The Moralist, The Widower, The Policeman…), he also wanted to own a house in the mountains to to spend his winter holidays there. But the Swiss authorities decided to deny him this opportunity, considering him a threat to national security: the country he chose was too close to some military infrastructure and the great actor was “thanks to his lightness”, that is, his Ability to take control too great People could have stolen their secrets and then sold them “to the enemies.” That's the incredible motivation. Albertone appealed because he was keen to build the villa at 1,347 meters in the mountains of Switzerland. But the court ruled in favor of the Swiss Federal Council, the actor could not buy the land and the message remained hidden until Zanoni discovered it.
ALSO POPULAR IN THE USSR
Deaf subversive and also a potential spy in the service of the Soviet Union, a bogeyman of the Western countries at the time? “It is such an absurd accusation that it does not even deserve a comment,” reacts Christian De Sica, who has been very close to Alberto since his youth and from whom he has learned the secrets of comedy more than from his father Vittorio. In addition, the personal life and career of the great actor, who died in 2003 but always remained alive in the hearts of the public, speak in his favor: a devout Catholic trusted by several popes, personal friend of Giulio Andreotti and defender of family values Although he never married (“What, I'm bringing a stranger into my house?”), Sordi made no secret of his sympathies for Christian democracy and a strong anti-communist sentiment, although he never openly declared or denied this political orientation.
Also very popular in the USSR, he wanted to make a film in Moscow in the 1970s. “But the Soviet authorities imposed so many conditions, prohibitions and controls on him that Alberto decided to give up,” says Paola Comin, the actor's historical press secretary. In his films, Sordi has often played the anti-hero: in “The Great War”, Mario Monicelli's masterpiece, he plays, together with Vittorio Gassman, the cowardly soldier who in the end only redeems himself by choosing to do so at the cost of his life Not doing it denounces his companions. In Tutti a casa by Luigi Comencini he is a lieutenant who can't wait to run away with his soldiers after September 8th.
The only film in which he plays a man of the left, a former partisan who is disappointed by the outcome of politics, is “A Difficult Life” by Dino Risi. Was Albertone spying for the Soviets during the Cold War years? What are you saying'. In reality, there was a (false) spy in Andermatt: James Bond, protagonist of the film Operation Goldfinger, which was filmed in the Swiss city in 1964. But it didn't scare anyone, so much so that the street where the set took place has since been renamed James Bond Street. Read the full article
on Il Messaggero