Four years after the death of his brother Vittorio, who was two years older, Paolo Taviani (born in 1931) presented himself in the main program of the festival in Berlin with a slightly experimental drama that is also a tribute to his brother, with whom he made films together for more than 60 years. “Leonora Addio” is the first film that Paolo made without the help of his brother, who passed away in 2018, and in addition to his brother, this film is also a tribute to their shared youth, to the country, and also to the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello, whose work they often discussed earlier dealt with. It is also obvious that “Leonora Addio” is a film made by a man aware that he is nearing the end of his life’s journey, and I have the impression that Paolo envisioned this film as his farewell not only to his brother, but also to film and the world.
And definitely “Leonora Addio” is not an ordinary, classic film, but rather a somewhat deterministic drama full of mystery, hermetic and quite difficult to decipher. The film is divided into two different parts, which differ not only thematically, but also stylistically, because the first part was shot in black and white, and the second in color. The film actually begins with documentary footage of Pirandello receiving the Nobel Prize in 1934, and two years later this great, but extremely controversial writer died. The life of one of the champions of the theater of the absurd was also quite absurd in reality, because he joined Mussolini’s fascist party in 1924 and became the Duce’s favorite writer who enjoys privileges that other writers do not have.
When Pirandello died, of course Mussolini gave him a grandiose funeral, and the action of the first segment begins ten years later. The war ended, and an official from Pirandello’s hometown in Sicily arrived in Rome to pick up the writer’s urn and scatter his ashes into the sea, as this was Pirandello’s wish. We follow the official’s journey from Rome to Sicily in a completely chaotic time of which Taviani is still a living witness, and it all seems completely absurd as he meets American soldiers, poor, sick and hungry refugees and returnees, as well as priests who are not yet clear how to establish themselves now that they no longer have fascism. Color arrives in the second segment, and that part is an adaptation of Pirandello’s last story “The Nail”, which is set in the Italian community in Brooklyn at the beginning of the 20th century. I can’t say that Taviani’s film particularly impressed me, but it is still a solid and atypical ending to a great and long career that leaves a lot of room for reflection.