The Italian actor remembered for his roles in “La Dolce Vita” and “8½” is featured on the poster for the 67th Cannes Film Festival.
Created by Hervé Chigioni and Gilles Frappier for the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, the poster features a photogram from Federico Fellini’s “8½,” which was presented in the Official Selection at Cannes in 1963.The choice of Marcello Mastroianni suggests organizers’ desire to pay tribute to an actor whose name is inextricably linked to the Cannes Film Festival, where he won the Best Actor award twice for his performances in “The Pizza Triangle” (1970) and “Dark Eyes” (1987). According to the organizers, the choice is also a celebration of “cinema that is free and open to the world, acknowledging once again the artistic importance of Italian and European cinema through one of its most stellar figures.”On seeing the poster for the first time Chiara Mastroianni, the actor’s daughter, said simply: “I am very proud and touched that Cannes has chosen to pay tribute to my father with this poster. I find it very beautiful and modern, with a sweet irony and a classy sense of detachment. It’s really him through and through!”The 67th Cannes Film Festival takes place from May 14-25.
About Marcello Mastroianni
Mastroianni made his onscreen debut as an uncredited extra in Marionette (1939) when he was fourteen, and his first big role was in Atto d’accusa (1951). Within a decade he became a major international celebrity, starring in Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958); and in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita opposite Anita Ekberg in 1960, where he played a disillusioned and self-loathing tabloid columnist who spends his days and nights exploring Rome’s high society. Mastroianni followed La Dolce Vita with another signature role, that of a film director who, amidst self-doubt and troubled love affairs, finds himself in a creative block while making a movie in Fellini’s 8½ (1963).His other prominent films include La Notte (1961) with Jeanne Moreau; Pietro Germi’s Divorce, Italian Style (1961); Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), Marriage Italian-Style (1964), A Special Day (1977) and Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear (1994), all co-starring Sophia Loren; Mario Monicelli’s Casanova 70 (1965); Stay As You Are (1978) with Nastassja Kinski; Fellini’s City of Women (1980) and Ginger and Fred (1986); Marco Bellocchio’s Henry IV (1984); Nikita Mikhalkov’s Dark Eyes (1987); Giuseppe Tornatore’s Everybody’s Fine (1990); Used People (1992) with Shirley MacLaine; and Agnès Varda ‘s One Hundred and One Nights (1995).He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor 3 times: for Divorce Italian Style, A Special Day and Dark Eyes. Mastroianni, Dean Stockwell and Jack Lemmon are the only actors to have been twice awarded the Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival.
A Marcello Mastroianni season of films anyone?
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