“I would really like to make a film. The fact that so many beautiful things come out in the cinema drives me more and more and makes me want to do them.” This is how Roberto Benigni answers his future in the cinema, where he has been working since 2005 with “The Tiger and the Snow”. Director is absent, and answers today on the sidelines of the award ceremony of his honorary doctorate in fine arts at the headquarters in Rome of the University of Notre From me.
Even though he always attracts an audience of millions on television, be it with Dante or the Articles of the Constitution, director Roberto Benigni has disappeared from the cinema since 2005 with “The Tiger and the Snow”. And he also seems to miss the big screen when he listens to him today being awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts at the headquarters of the University of Notre Dame in Rome. We read that he was recognized for his work “illuminating paths of hope and beauty even in the midst of unspeakable tragedy and despair” and for “also earning the admiration of His Holiness Pope Francis” and “for his countless achievements.” and inspired contributions to art, comedy and literature.” “All my joy to you,” he begins with a blue toga and cap on his head in a rousing Benigni show that becomes a poetic beauty lesson about his encounters with Notre Dame, Our Love Woman, will. Starting from the Madonna del Parto by Piero Della Francesca in Monterchi (AR), where his pregnant mother, “very poor and had nothing to eat,” sought shelter. “All my life I have tried to steal this fresco because of its beauty. It became my personal universal Madonna, it’s so human,” he says. Then there is the Annunciation Recanati by Lorenzo Lotto, on display in Rome, which “shows for the first time a Madonna who is almost afraid. It is the revolution she has brought about for the women of the world. We talk about feminism, But how much has the Madonna done… – he exclaims – Philosophical thought has not gone into this in detail. Your thought is a “yes” to God, who suffered, who revolutionized the history of the world.” And then there is Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in Dresden, “discovered” when he was a jury member at the Berlin Film Festival. A “huge” painting, he says, of “the Madonna and Child” that “expresses the joy of being living beings in this world. Here,” he says, “I didn’t even see fear of death in it.” The same greatness found in Dante's “unsurpassed” seven tercets about the Virgin Mary. A story that seems like a film, one of his films, about art history. But when will Benigni work on the big screen again? “Every time I was in public I said: I was preparing a film, and that was the truth,” said the Oscar winner on the sidelines of the ceremony. “I always have the door open, I have never stopped and I would really like to do it,” he assures. “I also had many offers, in Italy and abroad, as an actor. But what I would really like to create is a personal work, even if it is small and not big, but one that has meaning, that touches my heart and also what is happening in that moment. We are surrounded by events so powerful that we cannot help but feel the reflections in our soul. The greatest thing there is to be “being an artist,” he continues, “is to bring joy. I would like to make a short film in which you can be transported into a moment of joy and carefreeness. To do this you have to have it all. The pain of the world is on your shoulders because to give pleasure you have to have the pain. They hold each other together.” As for the success of There's Still Tomorrow, the film by Paola Cortellesi that broke all the records of “La vita è bella” this year, Benigni emphasizes: “I would really like to return to the cinema, both for Paola Cortellesi's film as well as Matteo's.” “Garrone, who is in a very good position for the Oscars and who I tried to support with all my might because there is an immense feeling there. Well, I would really like to make a film full of emotions too.”
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