Fantozzi. L'eterno ritorno

Abstract

The idea behind this videoessay is that actor Paolo Villaggio has been gradually "swallowed" by his most famous character, the humble accountant Ugo Fantozzi, of which Villaggio, in his television debut, told the misadventures using third person narration.

In 1975, when Fantozzi became a movie character, Villaggio decided to assume in first person the main role. But the intensive exploitation of the character, coupled with the rapid exhaustion of his creative vein, have forced the author-actor to a draining repetition of the same gags. While Fantozzi gradually loses its satirical characteristics to become a more childish and cartoonesque figure, Villaggio's body, on the contrary, becomes visibly older and weaker, physically unable to support the role.

Following the transformations of the character and its creator-interpreter, our work intends to propose a journey through the Fantozzi's saga. An audiovisual essay built as a sort of medieval polyptych, in which each chapter can be considered autonomously and, at the same time, as a stage in a wider discourse around one of the most popular figures of postwar Italian cinema.