Paolo Sorrentino: “The monologues in my films? They are all books left on page 9"

Paolo Sorrentino: “The monologues in my films? They are all books left on page 9."

One of the most anticipated masterclasses of the event was held on Friday 2 December, at 19pm Turin Film Festival 2022.

Astra has arrived at the theater Paolo Sorrentino who was welcomed by a huge crowd, who after hours of waiting, managed to meet the director Oscar Prize. Without a doubt, one of the most anticipated events of the Turin event.

Sorrentino, interviewed by director David Grieco and the artistic director of the festival Steve Della Casa, answered several questions regarding the importance of monologues in his films.

“My need to make monologues comes from the desire to make literature. They are almost all books that I started writing and then left on page nine." Then, he continues with several references to the film Il Divo: “There are interior monologues, with a reference to Shakespeare, like that of Giulio Andreotti played by Toni Servillo. That monologue wasn't in the first drafts of the screenplay. It was born from Andreotti's indecipherability. The only way I found to have my own point of view was to step out of character.

I asked Toni to do it with the same style with which he did a monologue at the theater in Rasoi”.

Pressing on the importance of theatre, Paolo Sorrentino also draws a parallel with the playwright Chekhov, managing to transpose the typical dialogue with someone who doesn't speak, typically Chekhovian, to the film YOUTH (2015), starring Michael Caine. “We did about fifteen takes. Michael was looking forward to that moment very much, perhaps too much, and he made a lot of mistakes, getting angry with himself."

The meeting ends with one of the resista's dearest themes, namely his consideration for cinema and the importance it has in his life: "The spectator looks for something he knows or something he has already heard about in my films." . The problem is always that the spectator searches for the truth within the film. I pursue exactly the opposite objective, that is, I am not at all interested in the truth."

And then he concludes “As a boy I was a volunteer assistant in production, after some mistakes I was demoted to guard a projector very far from the set, which illuminated a building in the background. I thought, I'm leaving. When they relieved me I went straight to the producers, to whom I had sent my first short film, but I didn't have time to speak because they told me they found it interesting. So I thought: then I'm not leaving."