Top Italian cinema critic Gian
Luigi Rondi died at his home in Rome overnight, ANSA sources
said on Thursday.
The critic known for his omnipresent white silk scarf and
conservative leanings was known, feared and respected in equal
measure both in Italy and abroad.
Born in December 1921 of a Carabinieri policeman father
in the northern town of Tirano, Rondi grew up in Genoa and Rome
and fell in love with film early on - much like younger brother
Brunello, who grew up to become a screenwriter and to befriend
director Federico Fellini.
He had spells as director and president of the Venice Film
Festival, was chief of the Rome Film Festival Foundation from
2008 to 2012 and served as president of the David di Donatello
awards, Italy's equivalent of the Oscars.
After earning a law degree at Rome's La Sapienza University
in 1945, Rondi was exempted from military service due to a heart
condition, joined the partisan Resistance in Nazi-occupied Rome,
and saw his first articles in print on 'Voce Operaia' (Workers'
Voice), a newspaper published by the Catholic Communist
Movement.
In 1946 he began writing a column in conservative daily Il
Tempo - which he would continue for the next 50 years - and
later expanded into radio, television, and abroad on French
paper Le Figaro, among others.
In the post-war period Rondi espoused conservative Catholic
views, earning the nickname of "The Black Doge" from L'Espresso
newsweekly and often clashing with Italy's leftist
intellectuals.
"You are not loved, Gianluigi," director Michelangelo
Antonioni - miffed that Rondi nixed his "obscure cinema" in
favor of the "explicit clarity" of director Pietro Germi - wrote
him in 1965.
"You may be feared, perhaps respected, but not loved".
"You're so hypocritical that when hypocrisy will have
killed you, you'll be in hell and believe yourself to be in
heaven," director, poet and philosopher Pier Paolo Pasolini
famously wrote Rondi after the critic slammed Ken Russell's The
Devils in 1971.
Rondi became known for his rigid moralism, something he
regretted later in life.
"I've been a moralist and not just moral, and for this I am
sorry," confessed the perennially arch and elegant critic, who
would have turned 95 in December.
His favorite film was Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's The
Night of the Shooting Stars (1982) and his favorite director was
Fellini, for inventing an entirely new way of practicing the
seventh art.
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