C'eravamo tanto amati

Italian-style comedy, what a passion! Age & Scarpelli, aka Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli, the "company" that shaped the history of Italian cinema. Together, they created the greatest hits of Ettore Scola, Luigi Comencini, Dino Risi, and many others. With Mario Monicelli's I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Strangers) (1958), they inaugurated the era of Italian-style comedy, where comedy and neorealism, satire and drama, intertwined, portraying a country in transformation. But how did their workshop work? The screenwriter was an author twice over: "Cinema comes second, because the story comes first," said Scarpelli, who before turning to writing was an illustrator and caricaturist at the Marc'Aurelio Theater, where he met, among others, Age, Fellini, and Scola. Drawing was a parallel art, a way to capture characters, discover shadows and highlights, and we see it in the sketches accompanying Cuore di mafioso, a hilarious comedy of misunderstandings and crime that Sellerio has brought to bookstores. This is an unpublished work by Scarpelli, soon to be adapted into a film. The more attentive readers will find a theme similar to that of a famous film written by Age & Scarpelli, Mafioso, a masterpiece by Alberto Lattuada starring Alberto Sordi. Those extraordinary years of Italian comedy, filled with great actors, stories, and friendships, will be discussed by Giacomo Scarpelli, screenwriter and illustrator—who will bring with him a precious private album of photographs, drawings, and anecdotes—and Alberto Riva, journalist and writer.