The actor Gian Maria Volonté wins a place in Treccani in the year in which the 30th anniversary of his death is celebrated. A long entry dedicated to the life and career of the great interpreter of memorable films such as “Sacco e Vanzetti” (1971) by Giuliano Montaldo, “The working class goes to paradise” (1971) by Elio Petri and “Il caso Mattei” (1972 ) by Francesco Rosi is published in volume 100 of the Biographical Dictionary of Italians, edited by Marina Pellanda, which appears on the eve of the anniversary of his birth.
Born on 9 April 1933 in Milan and died in Florina (Greece) on 6 December 1994, Volonté is considered one of the most important theater and film actors in Italian cinema with “extraordinary interpretative skills, based on a natural mimetic ability and on actorly work obsessive, at the service of the best cinema of civil commitment”.
At seventeen he left for France living day by day, selling newspapers and picking apples and then returning to Italy, approaching the theater. In 1959, he was the first in Italy to direct and perform “Krapp's Last Tape” by Samuel Beckett: an avant-garde gesture because Beckett established himself in Italy with difficulty, only starting from 1960-70. 1959 was also his first very successful television participation as Rogozin in “The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, reduced, written and interpreted by Giorgio Albertazzi, directed by Giacomo Vaccari, who suddenly imposed him on the public as “one of the most interesting and promising actors of the new generation” (Peano, 1967).
In the summer of 1960 the actor worked with Enriquez in two Shakespearean plays: “Romeo and Juliet” and “Anthony and Cleopatra”, thus meeting Carla Gravina. Their relationship, born outside of marriage, caused quite a scandal, but continued despite the ostracism that also affected the two actors at work, and on 3 July 1961 Giovanna was born, who would bear her maternal surname. At times his restless research, his questions, his anxiety for clarifications made him miss prestigious opportunities: through his choices not dictated by market logic, he never gave up questioning his role as an intellectual and an actor, so much so that he left a also a sign for the films he refused to star in.
In 1972 Volonté said no to Francis Ford Coppola for “The Godfather” and in 1976 he rejected “Il Casanova” by Federico Fellini and “Novecento” by Bernardo Bertolucci. The decade 1970-80 was particularly difficult. Seeing realistic auteur cinema dying out, he identified the worst form of censorship in the market. In this climate he allowed himself long stays away from Italy (in France, on a sailing boat in 1970), but also, in 1976, dedicating himself to a brief political experience, a singular and generous attempt to bring his commitment and competence as a man of entertainment in public life: elected city councilor in Rome on the lists of the Italian Communist Party, he resigned not long after because he believed that this was not the most congenial terrain for him.
Between 1978 and 1979 he shot “Christ Stopped at Eboli” with Francesco Rosi (it was the fourth film with the director) and gave rise, from the columns of the newspaper “L'Unità”, to a very tough fight (also on the judicial level ): the campaign on the theme of 'voice-face', which affirmed the principle according to which an actor is an actor only if, in addition to giving his face, he also gives his own voice to the character he plays. The following year he was diagnosed with lung cancer and to financially support the surgery that saved him he agreed to play Plessis in Mauro Bolognini's television adaptation of Stendhal's opera “La Certosa di Parma” (1982).
Volonté – who gave an important contribution to Italian cinema, to westerns, to the films of Elio Petri and Rosi but also to Italian comedy in Mario Monicelli's “Armata Brancaleone” (1966) – in the following years he reduced his cinematographic activity to dedicate himself to theater again. He regained international attention with “La mort de Mario Ricci” and with “Il caso Moro” (1986) by Giuseppe Ferrara, where he played the Christian Democrat politician, earning the Silver Bear at the 1987 Berlin Film Festival. After ” Chronicle of a death announced” (1987), his fifth collaboration with Rosi, he began to prefer international productions, as in the case of “L'œuvre au noir” (1988; L'opera al nero) by André Delvaux and “Tirano Banderas” (1993; Il tyranno Banderas) by José Luis García Sánchez, but he did not fail to give his contribution to two other Italian films based on Sciascia's works, “Porte Aperto” (1990) by Gianni Amelio, for which he received the David by Donatello, and “A simple story” (1991) by Emidio Greco. In 1991 he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival. He suffered a heart attack on the set of “To vlemma tu Odyssea” (The Gaze of Ulysses) by Theo Anghelopulos (released posthumously in 1995), while he was busy as always in the fight against war and the culture of death. (by Paolo Martini)
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