Gabriele Muccino - film director

Enjoyed box office success after partnering with Will Smith

Gabriele Muccino won awards in Italy before
achieving success in the United States

The film director Gabriele Muccino, whose best-known work so far has been the Oscar-nominated 2006 Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness, was born on this day in 1967 in Rome.  He is the older brother of the actor, Silvio Muccino.

Muccino, who also directed Smith in Seven Pounds (2008), spent several years in Hollywood following his success in Italy with L’ultimo bacio (The Last Kiss), which won him a David Di Donatello award as Best Director and for Best Screenplay.

His most recent work has been in Italy, with his latest film, Gli anni più belli (The Most Beautiful Years) released in February 2020.

The son of Luigi Muccino, an executive at the state television company RAI, and painter and costume designer Antonella Cappuccio, Gabriele enrolled at Rome’s Sapienza University to study literature, but was already fascinated with the cinema.

Indeed, he abandoned his studies soon after he began them, choosing instead to attend Rome’s renowned Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, where he worked unpaid as a director’s assistant, working with the highly-regarded Pupi Avati and Marco Risi.

With Avati’s encouragement, he acted before he directed, taking a role in a TV mini-series that ran for nine months, but disliked the experience and decided he felt more comfortable behind the camera rather than in front of it. His earliest efforts as a director included a short film, Nani, in which both his younger sibling, Silvio, and his grandmother appeared.

Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Stefano Accorsi in a scene from
Muccino's breakthrough movie, L'ultimo bacio

His first full-length movie, Ecco fatto (Done) was well received at the Torino Film Festival following its release in 1998 and Muccino’s reputation for stylish cinematography earned him a consistent stream of work in advertising, where he directed commercials for Aperol, Vodafone, Nescafé, Pepsi, TIM, Intimissimi and Lancia among others.

After modest success with Come te niente mai (Like You Nobody Ever) in 1999, Muccino’s major breakthrough came in 2001 with L'ultimo bacio, which starred Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Stefano Accorsi as a couple expecting their first child whose happiness is wrecked when Accorsi’s character embarks on an affair with an 18-year-old girl.

As well as winning him critical acclaim, the film grossed 13 million euros and enjoyed a run of six months in Italian cinemas. Early in 2002, the film was presented at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where it was well received.

More success followed for Muccino with Ricordati di me, which was shown to English-speaking audiences as Remember Me, My Love, which was released in 2003 and starred the Italian superstar actress, Monica Bellucci, alongside Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Laura Morante, with a role also for Muccino’s brother, Silvio.

Will Smith and his son, Jaden Smith, in a scene from The
Pursuit of Happyness, directed by Gabriele Muccino

Among his admirers by now was the American star Will Smith, who sought out Muccino to direct his own production, The Pursuit of Happyness, in which he was to star.  The relationship had its difficulties - Muccino could speak very little English when he arrived in Hollywood - but the two developed a rapport nonetheless. Smith had in his mind a particular interpretation of the film’s lead character and after Muccino had insisted that Smith watch with him two Italian cinema classics, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Umberto D (1952), the actor knew Muccino would direct sympathetically.

The two collaborated again on Seven Pounds. Both movies were box-office successes, together grossing almost 500 million dollars.  Muccino continued to work with A-list actors in America with the comedy Playing for Keeps (2012), which starred Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Catherine Zeta Jones, Uma Thurman and Dennis Quaid among others, and Fathers and Daughters (2015), featuring Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried.

In Italy, he directed Baciami ancora (Kiss Me Again) in 2010 as a sequel to L’ultimo bacio, with Accorsi reprising his role, this time opposite Vittoria Puccini, as well as L’estate addosso (2016), which was titled Summertime for English-speaking audiences.

Gli anni più belli, which features a title song written and performed by the enduringly popular singer-songwriter Claudio Baglioni, tells the story of four friends spanning 40 years, from their adolescence in the 1980s of Muccino’s youth to the present day, charting their own successes and failures but also how Italy has changed in that period.  Much of the film was shot on location in Rome, Naples and Ronciglione, a rugged town in the Cimini mountains near Viterbo in Lazio.

Muccino is married to the costume designer Angelica Russo, who has worked on several of his films.

The Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in
Rome is western Europe's oldest film school

Travel tip:

Located near Cinecittà in Rome, the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia (Experimental film centre) is the oldest film school in western Europe, founded in 1935 during the Benito Mussolini era by his head of cinema Luigi Freddi. Still financed by the Italian government, it focuses on education, research, publication and theory. With only six places per class, the selection process is highly competitive.  Situated six miles south of the city centre, Cinecittà is the largest film studio in Europe, spreading over an area of 100 acres with 22 stages and 300 dressing rooms, and is the hub of the Italian film industry.

The quaint medieval area of Ronciglione, used
for location shooting in Gli anni più belli

Travel tip:

Ronciglione, known locally as Ronció, is a town about 20km (12 miles) from Viterbo, on the southeast slope of the former volcano crater now housing Lake Vico.  The main sights include a well-preserved medieval centre, a castle originally built in the middle ages, with characteristic angle rounded towers, and a Baroque cathedral designed by Pietro da Cortona, rebuilt by Carlo Rainaldi between 1671 and 1695. Ronciglione is known for its carnival and the Palio of the Manna, which features riderless horses competing for each of nine contrades (parishes).  It is the birthplace of the singer-songwriter Marco Mengoni.

Also on this day:

1470: The birth of poet and scholar Pietro Bembo

1537: The birth of anatomist and surgeon Hieronymus Fabricius

1943: The birth of singer Albano Carrisi, who performs as Al Bano


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Angela Luce – actress

Film star and singer was born in Spaccanapoli

The actress Angela Luce has worked with
some of Italy's leading directors

Neapolitan actress and singer Angela Luce was born Angela Savino on this day in 1937 in Naples.

She has worked for the theatre, cinema and television, is well-known for singing Neapolitan songs, and has written poetry and song lyrics.

At 14 years old, Angela took her first steps toward stardom when she took part in the annual music festival held at Piedigrotta in the Chiaia district of Naples, singing the Neapolitan song, Zi Carmeli.

Her cinema career began in 1956, when she was only 19, when she appeared in Ricordati di Napoli, directed by Pino Mercanti. Since then she has appeared in more than 80 films and has worked for directors including Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mario Amendola, Luigi Zampa and Pupi Avati.

Angela won a David Donatello award for L’amore molesto directed by Mario Martone and was also nominated for the Palma d’Oro at Cannes.

She has acted opposite such illustrious names as Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, Vittorio de Sica and Totò.

Angela Luce (right) in a scene from Franco Rossi's
1960 film Morte di un amico

Her voice has been recorded in the historic archives of Neapolitan songs and she has won prizes for her singing. She wrote the lyric for the song Voglia, which, set to the music of Angelo Fiore, was awarded the Premio Unicef in 1984.

Angela has been quoted as saying she was ‘discovered’ by the Neapolitan dramatist Eduardo De Filippo. She has interpreted many significant roles from his plays in the theatre and appeared with him on Italian television in his play, Il contratto.

During a newspaper interview given last year on her 80th birthday, Angela said the occasion was a good opportunity to ‘thank God for giving her strength and health and a loud, clear voice’, so that she was able to sing without a microphone and, in church, without an orchestra.

The colourful street known as Spaccanapoli is close
to where Angela Luce was born

Travel tip:

Angela was born in Via Mezzocannone in the part of Naples known as Spaccanapoli, a lively area, rich with churches, historic buildings and bars. Close to her home is the main building of the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, known as Gesu Vecchio, which was built in the 16th century as a Jesuit College and became home to the University in the 18th century.

The church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta
is in the fashionable Chiaia district of Naples

Travel tip:

Angela made her first appearance as a singer at the annual song-writing competition the Festival of Piedigrotta, held near the Church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta in the Chiaia neighbourhood on the seafront of Naples. The competition was held to judge songs written in Neapolitan dialect and over the years inspired such classics as O sole mio, Funiculi, Funicula, Torna a Surriento and Santa Lucia.


More reading:

What made Vittorio de Sica a maestro of Italian cinema

How Vittorio Gassman was once called 'the Olivier of Italian actors'

Eduardo De Filippo and the 'essence' of Naples

Also on this day:

1596: The birth of violin maker Nicolò Amati

1911: The birth of film music composer Nino Rota

1947: The birth of controversial Lega Nord politician Mario Borghezio


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Lino Capolicchio - actor

Acclaimed for role in Vittorio de Sica classic

Lino Capolicchio's acting talents shone on the
 stage, television and the big screen

The actor and director Lino Capolicchio, who starred in Vittorio de Sica’s Oscar-winning film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, was born on this day in 1943 in Merano, an alpine town in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of northern Italy.

Capolicchio appeared in more than 70 films and TV dramas, and dubbed the voice of Bo Hazzard in the Italian adaptation of the American action-comedy The Dukes of Hazzard.

As a director, he won awards for Pugili, a drama-documentary film set in the world of boxing based on his own storylines, but it is for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, for which he won a David di Donatello award for best actor, that he is best remembered.

The movie is about a wealthy Jewish family in Ferrara in the 1930s, whose adult children, Micol and Alberto, enjoy blissful summers entertaining friends with tennis and parties in the garden the family’s sumptuous villa.

Capolicchio’s character, Giorgio, from another middle-class Jewish family, falls in love with Micol but she only toys with his attentions. In any event, everything changes with the outbreak of war as northern Italy’s Jewish population become targets for the Nazis and their Fascist allies.

Capolicchio with his co-star Dominique Sanda in Vittorio
de Sica's Oscar winner The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

The movie won De Sica one of his four Oscars as a director. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow both won Best Foreign Language Film, while Bicycle Thieves and Sciuscià were both awarded honorary Oscars.

Trained at the Silvio D’Amico Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, Capolicchio made his stage debut in 1964 at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano in a play by Carlo Goldoni under the direction of Giorgio Strehler, who also used him in some subsequent Shakespeare productions.

By 1967 his acting talents were held in such high regard that he was given a small role in Franco Zeffirelli’s movie version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, which starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

His first major starring role came in Escalation (1968), a drama directed by Roberto Faenza, before the chance to play Giorgio in The Garden of the Finzi-Contadinis followed in 1970. The movie was such a success, winning critical acclaim as well as public popularity, that Capolicchio became famous almost overnight.

Capolicchio continued to work well into his
70s with a number of TV roles

Many more parts followed, including several films for the director Pupi Avati, including his 1976 movie La casa dalle finestre che ridono (The House with the Laughing Windows), the 1984 film Noi tre (The Three of Us), in which he plays Mozart’s father, and Ultimo minuto (Last minute) in 1988.

For a period in the late 80s, Capolicchio focussed on teaching, taking the acting chair at the Experimental Centre of Cinematography in Rome. During this period he discovered new talents such as Francesca Neri, Sabrina Ferilli and Jaja Forte.  Later, while he was holding auditions for his film Pugili, he came across a young actor of great talent who has gone on to enjoy a successful career in Pierfrancesco Favino.

Pugili, shot in 1995, was named Best Film by the international press at the Turin Film Festival.  Awarded the Vittorio de Sica Award in 2012 for best actor and director, he continued working into his 70s, with parts in TV dramas such as La piovra and the massively popular Una grande famiglia.

Updated August 2022: Lino Capolicchio sadly passed away in Rome in May, 2022, at the age of 78.

Trauttmansdorff Castle is one of the attractions of Merano

Travel tip:

Located in a basin surrounded by mountains that rise up to almost 3,350m (11,000ft), Merano is a town of around 40,000 inhabitants in Trentino-Alto Adige, known also as the South Tyrol, which is most famous for its spas. The writers Franz Kafka and Ezra Pound were both residents at one time or another. Among the attractions for visitors are the Gothic St. Nicholas' Church and, a little outside the town, the Trauttmansdorff Castle and its gardens.

The Rotonda Foschini in Ferrara

Travel tip:

Apart from the impressively well preserved Castello Estense right at the heart of the city, Ferrara - situated midway between Bologna and Venice in Emilia-Romagna - has many notable architectural gems, including many palaces from the 14th and 15th centuries.  Among them is the striking Palazzo dei Diamanti, so-called because the stone blocks of its facade are cut into the shape of diamonds. The palace holds the National Picture Gallery, which houses many works from the  masters of the 16th-century School of Ferrara, including Lorenzo Costa, Dosso Dossi, Girolamo da Carpi and Benvenuto Tisi.

More reading:

Vittorio de Sica - the maestro behind Bicycle Thieves and other classics in Italian cinema history

The Shakespeare adaptations that made Franco Zeffirelli into a household name

How La Dolce Vita actor Marcello Mastroianni became the epitome of Italian cool

Also on this day:

1862: The birth of adventure novelist Emilio Salgari

1969: The death of Giuseppe Meazza, Italian football's first superstar


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