Matarazzo, Raffaello

(1906-1966)

   Director and screen-writer. Probably best remembered for the series of extremely popular heart-tugging melodramas he directed in the 1950s, Matarazzo had begun his career in cinema as a film critic writing for, among others, Alessandro Blasetti's journal, Cinematografo. Together with Blasetti and others who were connected with the journal, Matarazzo joined the revived Cines studio during Emilio Cecchi's period as artistic director and with Cecchi's encouragement began working as a screenwriter while also making several documentaries in the Cines series, among them Mussolinia di Sardegna (1933) and Littoria (1933). His first solo feature was Treno popolare (People's Train, 1933), a charming fictional travelogue to Orvieto, often regarded as a distant forerunner of neorealism, also notable as the first film scored by composer Nino Rota. This promising debut was followed by a number of light situation comedies and what came to be known as white telephone films, the best of which was L'Avventuriera del piano di sopra (The Adventuress from the Floor Above, 1941), which ably employed the talents of Vittorio De Sica and Clara Calamai in the leading roles.

   After the war, Matarazzo directed Fumeria d'oppio (Opium Den, 1947), a promising but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at reviving the Za-la-Mort character who had been made so famous by Emilio Ghione during the silent era (Ghione's son starred in the film). This was followed by Paolo e Francesca (Paolo and Francesca, 1949), a competent enough adaptation of one of the most famous episodes from Dante's Inferno. In the same year, however, Matarazzo finally struck box office gold with Catene (Chains, 1949), the first of a long line of enormously popular tear-jerking melodramas featuring the romantic couple Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson. Over the next decade he continued his run of box office successes with Figli di Nessuno (Nobody's Children, 1951), Chi e senza peccato (Whoever Is Without Sin, 1952), Angelo Bianco (The White Angel, 1955), and Malinconico autunno (Melancholic Autumn, 1959). By the early 1960s, however, with interest in the genre fading, his own star also waned and his last film, Amore mio (My Love, 1964), passed largely unnoticed.