(by Stefania Fumo).
Film director Ettore Scola has
died in Rome aged 84, sources said Wednesday.
He had been in a coma at Policlinico Hospital's heart
surgery department since Sunday night, and died late last night
surrounded by wife Gigliola and daughters Paola and Silvia.
"The tenderness, passion and irony of the last kiss we gave
one another will stay with me forever," said Italian movie star
Stefania Sandrelli.
"(He) had a refined intelligence, a beautiful irony," said
movie star Sophia Loren.
"He was a gentleman, I was very attached to him".
"We have loved you so much," tweeted actor Alessandro
Gassmann, paraphrasing the title of Scola's 1974 film We All
Loved Each Other So Much (C'eravamo Tanto Amati), a fresco of
post World War II Italian life and politics dedicated to fellow
director Vittorio De Sica.
Born in the Campania town of Trevico on May 10, 1931, Scola
won eight David di Donatello awards (the Italian Oscars) and was
nominated for five Academy Awards in the course of his long and
prolific screenwriting and directing career.
In 1978 he received a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film
for his film A Special Day (Una Giornata Particolare) starring
Sophia Loren as a Fascist housewife who befriends her gay
neighbor, played by Marcello Mastroianni, on the day he is being
exiled by the dictatorship.
President Sergio Mattarella was among those who mourned his
passing on Wednesday.
"A protagonist of Italian cinema is gone," Mattarella said
while expressing "deepest sympathies" to the Scola family.
"The culture and entertainment worlds all over the globe
have lost a great master, one who narrated our contemporary
history with extraordinary acumen and sensitivity".
"The passing of Ettore is the passing of one of the great
masters of Italian cinema," said leftwing politician and LGBT
activist Nichi Vendola of the Left Ecology and Freedom (SEL)
party.
"For many of us, it is also the passing of a dear friend
and comrade in battle".
"His cinema is an example of civic and political
commitment," tweeted Turin Mayor Piero Fassino. "We are grateful
to him for all he gave and taught us".
"Scola lived through over half a century of the history of
our country with irony, lucidity, and elegance," said Senate
Speaker Pietro Grasso. "He made us... think about our society
and its changes".
Former French culture minister and prominent Socialist Jack
Lang hailed Scola as "a friend of absolute loyalty".
"He participated in all the battles of the progressive left
in France and Italy," Lang said in a message sent to ANSA.
"Conscious of the Italian experience of the damages wrought
by (Silvio) Berlusconi-owned television, he warned his French
friends against the risks of creating a private broadcaster that
would then be entrusted to this destroyer of Italian cinema".
Also on Wednesday, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini,
former Rome mayor and film director Walter Veltroni, and
director Giuseppe Tornatore were among the first to turn up to
pay their respects at the funeral parlor at Policlino Hospital,
which was closed to the public.
A public ceremony to commemorate Scola will be held at the
Casa del Cinema in Rome, Thursday at 10:30am local time.
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