Milan, Feb 5 (Adnkronos)
It takes talent to call oneself Tinto Brass. And it takes unparalleled strength and courage to emerge unscathed from the storm that hits you at threshold of 89 years old. The master of erotic cinema he has just recovered from an ischemia that struck him last January and a few days ago he left the hospital where he was hospitalized for almost two weeks. “I spent five days in the emergency room – he tells Adnkronos – I didn’t realize where I was, I wondered where I wasand Caterina, why not come and I felt desperate. Then I realized that no one could enter because of the Covid, I have adapted to those foolish rules. But I knew she was always there waiting for me. ”
Brass welcomes us into the living room of his home in Farnese Island, good retirement alle porte di Roma, with his wife Caterina Varzi. A box of cigars lying on the sofa, the fleece blanket over his legs and the inseparable red-rimmed glasses dropped over his face. “I came home with a long beard, I looked like a bum – explains the director -. I don’t remember being washed for days. The emergency situation for anti Covid measures cannot be managed with measures that seriously limit people’s freedom. and their right to love and care in the most difficult moments “.
Caterina did not abandon him for a moment. On the contrary, every day, for hours, she waited for a doctor to come out to give her news. But with Covid having raised its head and hospitals on the verge of collapse, even in the structure of North Rome in which the director was hospitalized the beds were scarce. Until Caterina raised the case and through the lawyer Rita Rossi sent a letter to the health management. After 5 days, Tinto was transferred to the ward.
“After a cerebral hemorrhage, a stroke and two ischemias, my thinking is clearer – confesses Brass -. The freedom of a man is also evident in the face of illness and therefore death. In this moment of emergency, if a doctor asked me to choose between my life and that of a young person, I would not hesitate. I gave the world everything I had to give. Now all my hope for a better world lies in the young ”.
The fear of old age, however, it doesn’t seem to touch him. “It doesn’t scare me at all – He says -. I did what I could do and I have no regrets about anything. I live my life serenely and am hopelessly, ‘greatly’, in love by Caterina. This does not mean that I have lost the joy of living, I am happy with every moment ”. Not even the coronavirus scares him: “Let alone, I leave him outside the front door” he admits, and indeed, he says “ready to accept the challenge of a nice Neapolitan producer, to shoot my last film remotely”.
To grieve him, he does not hide it, but it is the thought of having to leave Caterina alone tomorrow. “But I am comforted to know that a woman like her will never be alone” he objects. Former psychoanalyst, former lawyer and actress, Caterina is one charming and cultured woman. She listens to him, encourages him and looks at him in love. “I obviously protest these statements,” he explains, as he retraces his first meeting with the director. “What binds us is the intolerance we both have with respect to hypocrisy and everything that is the representation of power – he observes -. And then there is a fundamental freedom that unites us deeply ”. Together with Caterina, Tinto made a short, ‘Hotel Courbet‘, which he brought to Venice in 2009 and wrote’Madame Pee‘for the types of Bompiani. In total, the master of erotic cinema made 30 films “of which 29 were censored – he points out -. With the exception of the film ‘La Vacanza’ which later received the critics’ prize in Venice. But Ziva remains my dream. I wrote it and never shot it ”.
In these days his thoughts are turned to young people, especially those who live a moment of isolation and maybe give up having relationships: “Break and don’t care about the rules” he suggests. As for sex, he doesn’t mince words: “With or without a mask, but do it anyway and do it often”. Just sex, the master points out, still continues to be a taboo for many: “Certainly not for me – he says – but for feminists of the last hour: they try to change their approach but they can’t because they are imprisoned in their ideology“. Today, he points out, sex is treated as ‘hit and run’ and it is never explored in the films “because you are afraid to enter a territory that is still a taboo” explains Brass.
Not for him, who has experienced all kinds of reality on the big screen and not just in terms of eros. In the 1950s, when Tinto flew to Paris, where he worked as an archivist for the Cinematheque, coming into contact with the greats of the Nouvelle Vague: “I was confronted with Godard, Truffaut – he explains -. I have a wonderful memory of Paris, I breathed great freedom, for me Paris represented a great joy of living “. It is from this comparison that his cinematographic conception was born, his way of understanding cinema, which had to be a break with tradition and therefore experimental. He has no regrets. Like when he gave up ‘Clockwork Orange‘. “I was shooting ‘The Scream’ – he remembers – I could have shot it immediately afterwards but it wasn’t possible, so he did it Kubrick but I have never repented ”.
He has always had an excellent relationship with his actresses on set: “At first they were suspicious but then they adapted completely to my cinematography – she admits -. Now I don’t see any … except Anna Admire yourself (protagonist of ‘Monella’, ed) who still comes to visit me and is always present and close. He also wanted me to meet his daughter ”. On the home library stand three election posters from when in 2010 he ran with Marco Pannella and Emma Bonino in Veneto. ‘Better an ass than an ass face’ reads. “Today I am following the crisis very little – he points out – there is no politician capable of breaking or doing new things today. Mario Draghi? He is a technician, he could be a good premier, he is certainly the least worst. Conte, on the other hand, is finished, that’s enough”.
All women in politics instead, he gladly gives advice: “They should have the courage to dare, to do more but fall into the same power clichés as men. This disappoints me a lot, women should break with the way men do, break away from their dynamics “. While to a young man who would like to do his own job he would say “to commit himself, to do it with determination, to follow his path, his vision of the world, challenging conventions”. The interview ends, but Caterina asks if there is anything else we want to know. So we take advantage of it: ‘He once said that the ass is the mirror of the soul, do you still think so’? “Yes – the teacher laughs satisfied – but now I have thrown away the mirror and the soul is left”. (by Federica Mochi)
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