by Sophia Loren
“Tonight I’m still scared, but I’m not alone,” I concluded, as I peered into the audience searching for my family. “I want to share this special evening with the three men in my life. My husband, Carlo Ponti, without whom I wouldn’t be who I am today. And my two sons, Carlo Jr. and Edoardo, who taught me to conjugate the verb ‘to love’ in a million ways. Thank you, America.”
It had been Karl Malden, one of Hollywood’s finest character actors, who had called to inform me of my prize a few weeks before. It took me completely by surprise. It was such a wonderful surprise that I had wanted my family to experience it themselves and so I’d kept the news to myself so they would discover it on their own.
“Mamma!” Edoardo shouted into the phone a few days later. “Mamma!” “An Honorary Award at the Oscars! I heard it on the radio. Why? Why didn’t you tell us?”
I was laughing up my sleeve about the little prank I’d played on them. You don’t get a chance to play as good a prank as this one every day!
I didn’t think I’d ever experience anything as wonderful as that again. But I was wrong. In 1993 I got back up on the stage at the Academy Awards to “honor a dear friend with a towering film history”—Federico Fellini. Twelve nominations, four Oscars for Best Foreign Film, two produced by Carlo: La strada, in 1956, and The Nights of Cabiria, the following year. Sharing this privilege with me was my dear friend Marcello, who was perhaps even more excited than I was.
Federico Fellini got a long standing ovation amid tears and smiles, just as I had.
“Please-ah sit-ah down-ah, be comfortable,” said the maestro with his delightful Italian accent. “If someone here has-a the right or a little bit-a the right to feel uncomfortable that’s-a me!”
As I handed him the statuette, which he was very familiar with, he kissed me, and turned to his long-time friend: “Grazie, Marcellino, grazie che sei venuto . . .” (Thanks for coming, Marcellino).
“Prego, you’re welcome,” Marcello replied, embarrassed and amused at the same time.
They were talking as though they were on a train from Rimini to Rome thirty years before. And instead they were in Hollywood, standing before the who’s who of world cinema.
The audience clearly understood, from Federico’s and Marcello’s gestures laden with emotion, just how deep their personal and professional relationship was. It went way back in time and had made the whole world dream.
The great Fellini, who would die just a few months later, didn’t forget to mention his wife: “Thank you, Giulietta, and please, stop-a crying!”
Three years later Marcello would also leave us. The last time I saw him was in Milan. He was getting into a car on his way to the theater to rehearse The Last Moons by Furio Bordon. I was getting into another car, headed toward the airport. Marcello gave me a long hard look. Maybe he’d guessed we’d never see each other again.
I still find it very hard to go back to the days surrounding his death. The world shouted and talked about it, participated in it, and paid him tribute. I, instead, remained shut away in my room, shrouded in privacy. I didn’t want my pain to get mixed up with that of others, I didn’t want to parade my feelings for the media to lap up and exploit. I stayed by myself, trying to find a way to understand just what exactly had happened. The day of his funeral I sent a host of orchids, that their freshness might accompany him on his journey and give him the love I will always have for him.
The next decade of Italian Oscars still had some great satisfaction in store for us. In 1999 it was Life Is Beautiful’s turn, the film won three statuettes. And I was the one, this time wearing an Armani gown, to hand Roberto Benigni his prize for Best Foreign Language Film.
“And the Oscar goes to . . .” I said as I opened the envelope, “Robbberto!!!!” The auditorium was overwhelmed by our totally Italian celebration. As I waved the envelope in the air like some young girl, Roberto embarked on a comical obstacle race by walking across the tops of the rows of seats toward the stage. Steven Spielberg gave him a hand to prevent him from crashing down on the heads of the bejeweled stars seated there.
When the ham finally hopped up on the stage and ran toward me, our embrace was a round and spiraling one. Just like his speech, unstoppable, exhilarating, laden with brio and culture. I watched him awestruck as he talked about dives into the ocean, hailstorms, the dawning of eternity and thought about those who had lost their lives so that today we can say that life is beautiful. A kiss for Giorgio Cantarini, the little boy in the movie. And, of course, after thanking his parents in Vergaio for having given him the greatest gift of all, the gift of poverty, he dedicated his words to his wife, Nicoletta Braschi, who was shedding tears of joy.
In those years filled with prizes and acknowledgments, I reaped the fruit of all my work, the joy and sacrifices, fun, and discipline. In 1996 Carlo and I were nominated Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. I’ve received career awards that include a César d’Honneur, Berlin’s Golden Bear, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award. Each one of them is charged with my feelings about and special memories of people who appreciated me and chose me, who enlightened my life from a different perspective. I harbor a feeling of gratitude and a sense of wonder for each one of them.
In 1998, Venice, too, paid tribute to my career, awarding me with a Golden Lion, but when I received the news I was going through a particularly difficult time in my life. I felt weary, stressed, and vulnerable. Carlo and the boys as always helped me out, and they supported me by going to receive the award in my place. And they cried along with me, even as I lovingly watched them.
In those difficult months I once again poured all my love into the kitchen, which has always been my world of peace, my bulwark in the face of all the world’s trials and tribulations. That’s how my second cookbook, Recipes and Memories, was born. It was the simplest and most natural way for me to share the flavors of my existence, linking them to the episodes and encounters that had led me all the way to this moment in my life. The book was very popular, and reminded me that, at the end of the day, real success is often hidden in the domestic secret of simplicity.
“CAZZABUBBOLI”
My prizes are all right there on the shelves. Every now and again I give them a dusting, smiling inside as I do. I like to remember them all, one by one, I like to keep them in order and I like to travel in my imagination from Hollywood to Berlin, from Cannes to Venice to New York. But then I like to come back and smell the fragrance of my native land once more.
Francesca and Nunziata, the TV movie later adapted for the cinema, based on the novel by Maria Orsini Natale, tells the story of two Neapolitan pasta makers between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author had sent Lina Wertmüller the manuscript before it was published, and she’d fallen in love with it. Then, as often happens in cinema, ten years went by before anything happened. And so, at the turn of the new millennium, Lina and I, accompanied by a marvelous cast, distilled its harmony in each and every frame.
Once again, the location was to our advantage. We shot part of it on the magical island of Procida, which greeted us with enthusiasm, little by little unveiling its hidden, genuine essence. Although it isn’t far from Pozzuoli, I’d never seen it before and I left my heart there. In the bay of Corricella, at Punta Pizzaco, on the panoramic road overlooking Capri, in the midst of the ancient buildings surrounded by citrus groves that jut out over the water, we all breathed at a slow and natural pace, which made our work on the set sweeter and less difficult. Cinema has its tricks, and not all the scenes were shot in the Gulf of Naples, nor was all that pasta, which was at the center of the story of real pasta. The pasta that we put out to dry in the sun, were miles and miles of plastic spaghetti.
In any case, acting under the expert guidance of someone like Lina, along with her favorite actor, Giancarlo Giannini, was like being part of a family.
And the family in this story is indeed a large one. Playing Donna Francesca, I have gray hair
and wear as many strings of pearls as all the children I’ve had. Besides my own children, I also adopt an orphan, Nunziatina, because of a vow I once made to the Virgin. She is the only one who follows in my footsteps, those of a proud, ruthless, self-made businesswoman who’s made a huge fortune. Everything is going just fine until, one day, Prince Giordano Montorsi, tired of playing the role of the prince consort, wakes up from his aristocratic lethargy to try his hand at banking, with disastrous results for the fate of the family. Francesca tries to warn him when she first senses the danger. “You were born a prince, be a prince then, let me take care of the pasta business . . .” But her words are of no use.
This movie offered me a beautiful story, fifteen large, showy hats, which we ironically referred to as “cazzabubboli,” and a character that was both strong and weak at the same time, just like me. The great monologue at the end is Lina’s greatest gift to me: “You can’t die of pain, Nunziatì, but it’s still bad . . .”
However, my maternal roles didn’t end there. Eight years later I was back on the screen with Rob Marshall’s Nine, as Guido Contini’s (Fellini’s) “Mamma.” It was an ambitious movie, adapted from the famous Broadway musical inspired by 81/2. I had accepted the part in memory of Federico, with whom, by a twist of fate, I had never managed to work, or maybe it was because I wasn’t his type of actress. I had also accepted the role because I liked the idea of working with Daniel Day-Lewis, whom I believe to be the greatest actor around today.
Neither the original ideas in the script nor the excellent cast, including Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, and Marion Cotillard, were enough to make the movie as good as its inspiration. I will always remember a tender, moving dance with Danny who cultivates his neurotic creativity in his mother’s shadow. And I will also always remember with tenderness that remarkable season of Italian cinema that I had the privilege and honor to experience firsthand.
XV
VOICES
THE MEN IN MY LIFE
I was a mother both on and off the set, and, thanks to my son Edoardo, became both at the same time in two films. My life really is like a fairy tale that, like all fairy tales, begins and ends its chapters with great happiness as well as great sorrow.
Carlo passed away in Switzerland on January 10, 2007, at the age of ninety-four, defeated by the diabetes that in the last few weeks of his life had steadily weakened him. Edoardo and I were there to hold his hand, while his other children, Guendalina and Alex, and our Carlo Jr., were flying in from the United States or Rome.
I can still remember the call I got that dark winter evening from the hospital, telling us to hurry because the end was close. I can still remember an endless, hopeless night. I can remember how cold the dawn was when we said farewell before his last journey toward Magenta, where he was born and where he was to be buried.
Death is as ugly as it is normal. There’s something profoundly unnatural about having to let go of someone you love so much. You turn this way and that trying to find support, knowing full well that there isn’t any. And you feel completely alone, abandoned even by words.
Then again, is there really anything left to be said when, after fifty-six years of life together, the end comes? Every morning when I wake up I struggle to believe Carlo is no longer here. I search for him in every corner of our house. I find him in our children’s voices, which are identical to his, in the expressions of our grandchildren, who have meanwhile arrived to brighten my days. They complete my maternal feelings, in a way I would never have expected.
Lucia and Vittorio, Leonardo and Beatrice have made me the happiest grandmother in the world. In my treasure trove of memories I find a portrait they drew of me that makes me feel prouder than any photo could. I’m putty in their hands, I vanish completely. Not having the task of raising them I can spoil them as much as I want to, stuff them with chocolate, pamper them and hug them until they plead with me to stop. In their smiles, in their talents, I project my own happiness, my dream of a more peaceful future, of a better tomorrow. They’re very lucky, and I hope they’ll be able to give back to the world everything they’ve been given, just like their parents have done.
Today, Carlo Jr., who pursued his love of music, also thanks to his father’s advice, is an orchestra conductor. When I see him up on the podium, so comfortable, confident, self-assured, my heart races and I burst with pride. He’s worked with some of the greatest names, including Mehli and Zubin Mehta and Leopold Hager, and has conducted many orchestras around the world, including the Russian National Orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, and the orchestras of both the Teatro San Carlo and the arts festival Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. And he has found his true love: the Hungarian violinist Andrea Mészáros, who shares with him the same passion for music and the raising of their two marvelous children. But the podium isn’t enough for him. For some time he’s been working to place his experience at the service of young people, convinced that music is a powerful instrument of individual growth and social emancipation.
Edoardo, instead, has confirmed his talent for cinema. I can still see him, a little boy playing with puppets and inventing stories and scenes while his brother accompanied him on the piano. Maybe there’s some truth in the idea that a person can have a calling, and when they do it’s obvious right from the start. He had always wanted to be a filmmaker, and he has pursued his ambition with intelligence and love. Sasha Alexander, his beautiful wife, is an actress, always trying to find a balance between her work in television and taking care of their children. Today, compared to my day and age, women are probably luckier, they’re judged more often on the basis of what they know how to do, more than how they look. But, as opportunities grow, so do all the problems related to balancing family and work. The world is more complicated, more demanding, and women have to make more sacrifices, in proportion to the gratification. And yet, in the end, you’re always back on square one, and each one of us must come to terms with oneself.
I’ve said it many times: my children are my best movies. And their happiness is the award that honors me the most.
“Mamma,” Edoardo said to me one day as he was standing at the door to our house. Carlo was no longer with us, and Lucia, his firstborn, wasn’t a year old yet. “Mamma, Sasha and I have decided to get married!”
It’s no secret I’ve always had a soft spot for weddings, and although the one between Carlo and Andrea, first in Geneva and then in Saint Stephen’s, a fabulous basilica in Budapest, had warmed my heart, it hadn’t completely appeased my desire for white veils and gowns.
“How wonderful, Edoardo!” I said softly, happy with this new joy that I had given up expecting.
He looked at me quietly, as if to let me speak first.
“Where?” I asked timidly, expecting to hear the name of some Hollywood location.
“In Geneva, in the Russian church . . . Sasha’s Orthodox, you know, besides, Papà really loved that church . . .”
Carlo wasn’t a churchgoer, and yet he was mysteriously attracted to that small, wonderful church in the heart of the old city. Whenever he and Edoardo would go out for a walk, something they did rather frequently in the last years of his life, he’d make sure they would always walk by it. “Let’s go there . . .” he’d say, almost timidly. And Edo knew that “there” meant the Église Russe. We’re not the ones to choose where and how to express our soul’s most sacred breath. The truth is that we’re chosen.
TRIBUTES
At this point in my life and career, hiding around every corner is a party, a surprise. On May 4, 2011, Hollywood devoted a gala evening to me. Roberto Benigni said, in the video message he sent me that evening, “When I hear the name Sophia, I jump, and jump again because it’s an explosion of life. Like a kiss on the cheek. It’s something marvelous, and you can see my heart beating, my heart thumping, going boom boom. She is Italy, and very Italian. When she moves, when she walks, all of Italy is walking. You can see Sicily, Tusca
ny, Lombardy move. Then Milan, Florence, Naples, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum, pizza, spaghetti, Totò, De Sica, she holds all these things and all these people inside.”
Words are nothing compared with the gestures, the mimicry, the comedy that’s part of every single breath Roberto takes. The great comedian even sang a song that sounded a lot like “O sole mio,” and that ended with a mischievous farewell: “Grazie Sofia, amore mio, corpo inesauribile, bye bye.” (Thanks Sofia, my love, inexhaustible body, bye bye.)
It’s a good thing he got us all laughing, otherwise the tears would never have stopped flowing. That evening for me was like a third Oscar, in joy, importance, emotion. My children were there as escorts, my daughters-in-law to reassure me. Billy Crystal was master of ceremonies. John Travolta and Rob Marshall, Christian De Sica, actress Jo Champa, film executive Sid Ganis, and many other friends remembered our years together. It was all that an actress, woman, and mother could possibly wish for.
On December 12 of that same year, at the Parco della Musica auditorium in Rome, the boys and I remembered Carlo and our love for him on what would have been his ninety-ninth birthday. Sitting in the audience, watching Carlo Jr. conduct the soundtrack of our lives, with his energy and bravura, and Edoardo reading a short and moving speech in the form of a letter, for a moment there I felt the empitness his death had left us with had been filled. To the notes of the themes of Doctor Zhivago, La Strada, Two Women, all of which Carlo produced, and accompanied by the music of Armando Trovajoli, and Nino Rota, my nostalgia was transformed into gratitude for all the things that had led us to that point. And for an instant the four of us were together again.