Scola, Ettore

(1931-)

   Cartoonist, screenwriter, director. Although he enrolled first in medicine and then in law at the University of Rome, Scola's talent for comic sketches and cartoons drew him from an early age to the satirical magazine Marc'Aurelio. There he met a host of other comic writers who would later also figure prominently in the Italian film industry, including Steno (Stefano Vanzina), Cesare Zavattini, Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli, Ruggero Maccari, and Furio Scarpelli. After serving an apprenticeship as uncredited gag writer on a host of made-to-order comedies such as Toto Tarzan (1950), he earned his first screenwriting credit on Sergio Grieco's Fermo tutti, arrivo io (Hold Everything, I'm Coming, 1953). He next teamed up with the more established screenwriter Ruggero Maccari, to write Mario Mattoli's Due notti con Cleopatra (Two Nights with Cleopatra, 1953), which initiated a screenwriting part-nership that would see Scola and Maccari work together on more than a dozen films and share the Nastro d'argento for screenwriting four times. At the same time, beginning with Lo scapolo (The Bachelor, 1955), Scola began a close professional relationship with writer-director Antonio Pietrangeli, subsequently writing or cowriting all of Pietrangeli's major films. He also began to work extensively with Dino Risi, collaborating on the screenplays of Il sorpasso (The Easy Life, 1962) and I mostri (The Monsters, 1963, but known in the United States as 15 from Rome) before making his own directorial debut with Se permettete parliamo di donne (Let's Talk About Women, 1964), a series of mordant comic sketches highlighting the defects of the Italian male, all starring Scola's favorite actor, Vittorio Gassman.

   After directing several more satirical comedies in the late 1960s, among them L'arcidiavolo (The Devil in Love, 1966), which saw Gassman teamed up with Mickey Rooney, Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l'amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? (Will Our Heroes Be Able to Find Their Friend Who Has Mysteriously Disappeared in Africa? 1968), and Dramma della gelosia: tutti i particolari in cronaca (The Pizza Triangle, 1970), which was not only popular in Italy but also nominated for the Palme d'or at Cannes, Scola began the 1970s with two more politically engaged films, Permettete? Rocco Papaleo (My Name Is Rocco Papaleo, 1972), shot in the United States and highlighting the dark underside of the American dream, and Trevico-Torino, viaggio nel Fiat-Nam (From Trevico to Turin, 1973), a self-financed quasi documentary about the exploitation of southern Italian migrant workers who had become factory fodder in northern cities like Turin. Scola then returned to comedy to make what many regard as his most accomplished film. Undoubtedly one of the high points of the commedia all'italiana, C'eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much, 1974) traces the trajectory of both the hopes and the disappointments of Italian postwar history through the intersecting and diverging lives of three men and the woman with whom they all at some time fall in love. Ingeniously dovetailing social and political history with cinema history, the film also carries out an affectionate homage to the great achievements of Italian postwar cinema and is dedicated, rather appropriately, to Vittorio De Sica, who also appears briefly in the film as himself.

   Following Brutti, sporchi e cattivi (Down and Dirty, 1976), a funny but merciless portrait of subproletarian life in a shantytown reminiscent of the early films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Scola produced what has been his most critically acclaimed film to date, Una giornata particolare (A Special Day, 1977). Bringing Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren together again in a moving story of a chance encounter between a harried housewife and a homosexual radio journalist on a rather particular day in Fascist Italy, the film was nominated for two Oscars and the Palme d'or at Cannes, in the event winning the Cesar Award in France, a Golden Globe, two David di Donatello awards, and three Nastri d'argento. I nuovi mostri (The New Monsters, 1978), directed collaboratively with Dino Risi and Mario Monicelli and providing an update on the social malaise uncovered 15 years earlier, was followed by La terrazza (The Terrace, 1980), Passione d'amore (Passion ofLove, 1981), and Il mondo nuovo (That Night in Varennes, 1982). The charming (and silent) Ballando ballando (also known as Le Bal, 1983) proved to be another critical triumph, receiving an Oscar nomination, the Silver Bear at Berlin, the Cesar in France, and five David di Donatello awards in Italy.

   Generally unaffected by the crisis that debilitated the Italian film industry in the following years, Scola directed another dozen fine films. Among them La famiglia (The Family, 1987) stands out as a remarkably detailed portrait of an Italian middle-class family seen over a period of three generations and Concorrenza Sleale (Unfair Competition, 2001) for the way in which the director is able to explore the consequences of the 1938 anti-Jewish laws in Italy through their effects on the daily lives of two neighboring shopkeepers. Scola's most recent work, Gente di Roma (People of Rome, 2003), written in collaboration with his two daughters, Paola and Silvia, and shot entirely on digital film, is an affectionate portrait of Rome and its disparate, and often zany, inhabitants.