One of the all-time great performances in vintage cinema is Peter Ustinov’s performance as the Emperor Nero in Mervyn LeRoy’s 1951 film. Where will you go,
Ustinov gives us the full Nero, fully accepting the myths and slanders generated by the enemies of the young Roman emperor. Maybe it was extremely bad press, because thousands of years later, we still think Nero was him.
At any rate, Ustinov did not initially get the role. He almost did, but then a cable came back saying the film-makers were sorry, but it was too short. The great actor revealed that Nero was only 31 years old when he died.
The final cable read: “Historical research has proven that you are right that the part is yours.”
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where are you going Is in rich and glorious colors. There are thousands of artists in it and they are not AI generated. These people are real. It’s even said that Sophia Loren was an extra in this, but I haven’t been able to recognize her yet.
Postwar Rome was the host and originator of two events, realities that could not be more diametrically opposed. There was big-budget “Hollywood on the Tiber” and “neorealism.”
What both schools had in common was that the directors were determined to make their films in a city that had been abandoned by its conquerors and declared “open”.
What these two concepts of cinema – big budgets, dubbed Hollywood, and films that used practically people off the street – had in common was the reality of the powerful film studio built by Mussolini: Cinecittà.
Turned into a center for displaced persons after the war, Hollywood took it over. It was cheap offshore film-making for them and the Romans needed the revenue.
“Hollywood on the Tiber” was the opposite of what Roberto Rossellini was doing.
This column is not long enough to do full justice to this master of cinema, but needless to say, he was not going to Hollywood in search of artists.
The fact that Ingrid Bergman, a great Hollywood star, fell in love with him after watching his films, she gave up her life to work with him, marry and create a family with him, but her desire, to make cinema His desire did not stop. As realistic as possible.
His art was what he and others called “neorealismo”. It should be real and not a Hollywood filmed background. He had seen too much, knew too much for him.
Through “Hollywood on the Tiber,” we see Rome as America dreamed of it and, through Rossellini, we see Rome as it was.
blockbuster success of Where will you go This led to a flood of Hollywood films being made in Rome, arguably the last major film that ended Mankiewicz’s career. cleopatra (1963) with Taylor and Burton.
we watch Where will you go Now for the entertainment and the American accents spoken by the Romans. We look at Rossellini Rome, an open city (Rome, Open City) For the shooting of Anna Magnani and the simple, peasant humiliation in which she dies and lies in the street, her dress slightly blown in the wind.
The hanging of a priest – a real-life event that provided inspiration for the film – is not only poignant but also enigmatic. Real. You can smell it. paradox of Where will you go,
Both of these directors were in Rome, men for whom film was their domain, their own domain.
Writers, actors and set designers mattered. But they had a purpose: an audience and a camera that delivered the film to those of us who came to see it.
MGM had to contend with the growing power of television and the fact that people preferred to stay at home and watch the screen on a large box in the middle of the room. MGM lost the battle. One symbol of this was that I, and many children like me, came to know MGM from television.
Rossellini was not afraid of television and made a great film for this medium, but in his “Neorealismo” we see a real Rome that Quo Vadis and “Hollywood on the Tiber” could not express.