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Interview with Fabrizio Berruti A Prince Named Totò (Un Principe Chiamato Totò, 2007) Director: Fabrizio Berruti Presentation: He was the ultimate entertainer: a comedian, film and theatre actor, writer, singer, and songwriter. Antonio De Curtis was also known as Totò and is considered to be one of the greatest Italian artists of the last century. He was mostly renowned for his comic roles. Famous narrators such as American actor Ben Gazzara, Academy Award winning actor F. Murray Abraham, daughter Liliana de Curtis and other protagonists from Italian cinema tell the life of the greatest Italian artist in A Prince Named Totò, a documentary directed by Fabrizio Berruti. This documentary describes the many ups and downs of Totò’s life, oscillating between joy, incredible success and unexpected tragedies, like his blindness and the bitter betrayals he lived through. The documentary is a family album in which you will be able to see previously unseen documents, like a valuable collection of 15 comics made by Antonio De Curtis in 1954, his first screen test for the cinema, also with manuscripts, love letters, unpublished poetry, songs, and pictures made available for the first time by his family. “Through the places he loved in Italy: Capri, Viareggio, Napoli, Roma, Costa Azzurra,” say Diana de Curtis and Barbara Calabresi, “viewers will discover the more secret and private sides of both Antonio de Curtis the man, a serious and melancholy prince, and of Totò, the immortal artist”. Italian songwriter Lucio Dalla has written and performed a song for the film.Synopsis: Totò, the mythical comedian of Italian stage and screen, was the illegitimate child of a noble man in one of Naples's poorest neighborhoods. As a child, he enlisted in the army simply to eat three square meals a day. Later, his dizzying success in show business brought him riches he had never dreamed of, plus stories of love and jealousy, the most important being with 16 year old Diana who eventually became his wife, only to leave him and inspire the Italian classic torch song Malafemmina, meaning bad woman. Trivia: • Toto's French dubbed voice was Louis de Funès |
