- Franco Fabrizi,I Vitelloni, Italy-France, 1953. When he couldn’t get Fausto Tozzi for the chief stud among Rimini’s “overgrown calves” – youngbloods, idlers, drones, wastrels – Federico Fellini brushed aside all usual suspects (Vallone, Walter Chiari, Alberto Sordi) and hired the Elvis-looking Fabrizi – and then had him dubbed by Nino Manfredi. Fellini’s first global triumph was the major influence on such US treasures as American Graffiti, Bye Bye Braverman, Diner, Mean Streets, even Seinfeld.
- Jack Palance, Le Mépris (US: Contempt), France-Italy, 1963.
Rome producer Carlo Ponti desired a film by Jean-Luc Godard. (Why?) French New Wave auteur chose Alberto Moravia’s English-titled novel, A Ghost at Noon… for Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak. Hey, this is a Ponti product, so it has to be his missus, Sophia Loren, and her best partner, Marcello Mastroianni. Jamais, said Godard. Ponti suggested Monica Vitti. + Raf Vallone. But he was shooting The Cardinal and, according to Godard’s then wife, Anna Karina, Vitti “turned up more than an hour late, staring out of the window like she wasn’t interested at all, so he went back to his original idea.” He’d long been looking for a Bardot subject. So, BB + Sinatra? Non, she preferred + Michel Piccoli. They first worked together eight years earlier in René Clair’s Les Grandes Manoeuvres, 1955.“She’s a loyal girl,” agreed Godard. “Without her OK, the film would never have happened – it’s the first time she acted her real age, 29. She was extraordinaire.” Hence, Le mépris remains her most frequently seen movie on French TV. Martin Scorsese still loves it. “It has grown increasingly, almost unbearably, moving to me,” he told Criterion. “It’s a shattering portrait of a marriage going wrong…also a lament for a kind of cinema that was disappearing one of the most frightening great films ever made.”
- Marlon Brando,The Godfather,1971.
- François Cluzet, L’Enfer, France, 1994. The Italian was second choice after Burt Lancaster in 1964 – before the role of Romy Schneider’s jealous husband finished at the opposite end of virility with French chanteur Serge Reggiani. He was about to be replaced by Jean-Louis Trintignant when realisateur Henri-George Clouzot’s heart attack cancelled any more shooting. (He had already shot 15 hours of the film and tests, including footage of himself in the role). Claude Chabrol helmed the 90s’ version.
Birth year: 1917Death year: 2002Other name: Casting Calls: 4