Nichetti, Maurizio

(1948-)

   Actor, director, animator. An architecture graduate with a background in mime, Nichetti joined the Bruno Bozzetto Film company in the early 1970s, working as cartoonist and animator and appearing as the harried animator in the charming live action-animated feature, Allegro non troppo (1977). Having founded Quellidigrok, an independent mime school, in 1974, he left the Bozzetto company in 1978 in order to make his first independent feature film, Rataplan (1979), an almost silent comedy that received high praise at the Venice Festival and was hugely successful at the box office. This was followed by Ho fatto splash (IMade a Splash, 1980), an amusing variation of the Rip Van Winkle theme in which a boy, played by Nichetti himself, wakes up after a 20-year sleep and finds himself needing to adapt to contemporary society. Two years later, Domani si balla (Tomorrow We Dance, 1982), again starring Nichetti himself, was part tribute to Melies and part satire on the television industry, and moreover showcased Mariangela Melato's considerable talents as a dancer.

   After a variety of other shorts and extensive television work, Nichetti founded his own film production company, Bambu, to make Ladri di saponette (Icicle Thieves, 1989), a playful homage to Vittorio De Sica's neorealist classic Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), but done as another satire on television and the encroachment of advertising. The film attracted international acclaim with Nichetti winning his second Nastro d'argento for Best Original Story. There followed a host of internationally acclaimed films that mixed animation and live actors: Volere Volare (To Want to Fly, 1991), the amusing trials of a man turning into a cartoon character, which was awarded a David di Donatello for its screenplay; Stefano Quantestorie (1993), in which a young man of the 1960s lives out a number of possible alternative lives; and Luna e I'altra (Luna and the Other, 1996), where shadows live out independent existences. More recently, as well as continuing to make screwball comedies such as Honolulu Baby (2001), he has also widened his artistic activities to include directing opera and lyric theater, beginning with a much-praised production of Gioacchino Rossini's Barber of Seville at Trento in 1999.