Italian director Dino Risi, who helped create the postwar genre of bittersweet comedies known as Commedia all'Italiana, was commemorated by friends and colleagues here on Monday following his death at the weekend.
A non-religious ceremony was held at the House of Cinema, located in the central Villa Borghese park, hosted by his filmmaker sons Claudio and Marco Risi.
Although he made his name with such classic films as Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life) and Poveri e Belli (A Girl in Bikini), Risi's most successful film internationally was Profumo di Donna, for which he was nominated for an Oscar and which was remade in English as Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino taking on the lead role originally played by the late Vittorio Gassman.
Risi, who died at the age of 90, came to Rome in 1950 after directing a number of shorts and documentaries in his native Milan. He immediately demonstrated an individual style which differed from the Neorealism popular at the time and which later became known as Commedia all'Italiana.
Films like Poveri Ma Belli reflected Risi's own scepticism, often mistaken for cynicism, over the benefits of the economic boom of the 1950s as well as his dry wit and keen eye for the shortcomings and strengths of postwar Italian society.
The genre, initially defined as 'romantic Neorealism', became immensely popular and was adopted and expanded by a host of other directors including Mario Monicelli, Alberto Lattuada, Pietro Germi and Luigi Comencini.
Risi's most popular Commedia all'Italiana film was Il Sorpasso, the biggest grossing film of its time.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he alternated between making commercial films and personal ones. At times he was able to combine the two and created such hits as Operazione San Gennaro (The Treasure of San Gennaro) and Profumo di Donna.
Monicelli, the last surviving Commedia all'Italiana director, recalled that ''Dino and I made the same types of films which looked at the reality of Italian life without any intention of sending a message''.
''We were part of a group of filmmakers who were in love with their profession and who were aware that we were a 'group'. There was never any jealousy or envy between us, never an argument,'' he added.
''Many defined Risi as being cynical or disenchanted with life. But it wasn't he who was cynical but society. A society which our cinema chose to unveil without pity, to underscore the problems and shortcomings of a world which was rapidly and irreversibly changing into something horrible, dominated by consumerism, competition and the rules of the market,'' Monicelli said.
''Dino had the courage to go right to the bottom of this without giving anything or anybody any benefit of the doubt,'' he added.
In closing the commemoration, Marco Risi said: ''If my father had been here he would been uncomfortable hearing all the heartfelt messages. And he probably would have said something like: 'If I was at your house, I'd go home.' Thank you all very much''.
