Il Messagero 28-01-01
TRANSLATION
The interview with the director, who´s filming "Gangs in New York" at Cinecittá and received the Rodolfo Valentino award last night
Scorsese: my amarcord of America «I want to tell the moment in which in the 800 the Country was opened to the world»
By LEONARDO JATTARELLI - Rome -
Only Rodolfo Valentino has succeeded in the enterprise. Stanato has him, placed under the reflectors and ridato the word has him breaking a silence that lasts from almost one year. Martin Scorsese, myth and teacher of the cinema, that he yesterday has received the prestigious prize entitled to the everlasting Rudy in an evening of frill to the Hilton together with Di Caprio and to Virna Lisi, have decided to tell and to tell clippings of his secret set to Cinecittà, film become by now a kind of metropolitan legend: Gangs in New York. Ninety million dollars, one of the most expensive epics of the history of the cinema with a shiver cast: Leonardo Di Caprio, Cameron Diaz, Daniel Day-Lewis.
For the first time we succeed in breaking the barriers of his armored set...
I need extreme concentration. Of a very difficult film is treated, of a history that asks to be original, fresh, with great surprises. I have him in mind since the '70 and I would not like to disperse nothing.
An epic all American that is historically moved in an Italian space as Cinecittà. Why this choice?
Cinecittà for me has always had a special taste, it is a magic place of which some have gone out among your most famous films. And Gangs in New York, believe me, itwas already born probably in me from when I was child in my Little Italy. Therefore I wanted that the film had a po of Italian blood, even if it is exquisitely a film American.
It will now find difficult to return to work on the road. Have the studioses spoiled her?
Here I have all New York in a palm of hand, it is true, and it is an unique feeling. It is easier to cross Cinecittà that the Big Apple, there is no doubt. But I needed indeed a faithful reconstruction in the New York of half Eight hundred that it doesn't exist anymore. Search of the details, riproposizione scenografica of documetazioni that I have tracked down in so many parts of the world.
How are you found to work with a young superstar as Di Caprio?
I am a great admirer of Leonardo since his first films, first still that exploded with the Titanic. It is an instinctive actor that the character of De Niro remembers to me, of Al Pacino. With di Caprio as with Daniel Day - Lewis is established a feeling of great familiarity, very beautiful.
"The gangs in New York" represents a rediscovery of his roots?
Undoubtedly, because from when I lived to Little Italy I was aware that in that space, many years before, he was installed the first community of Irish immigrants that had populated the city. And the history of the film is developed really in the district in which the first cathedral was raised Catholic St. Patrick. This native community, women and children, will have above all to defend from the attacks of the new immigrants, from the gangs of Irishmen Protestants that the true Americans are defined and don't admit interferences. My film, settles down in short instant, in which, for the first time, America opens doors to the world.
And it arrives really in the moment in which today's America time page with the election of Bush...
I don't have idea of how the things they will go with the new administration. But it is certain that, cinemaly speaking, by now the independent cinema has become very strong, it has created supereroi, the great fiction of the effects special and certain it won't be stopped. It could be a bench of test.
When will you finish the resumptions of "Gangs of New York?"
Will still want us six, seven weeks. It is a very complicated job.
Does it already have in mind new projects?
I am keeping on working to the documentary on the Italian cinema. A part is finished, but they is still there a lot of things to add, to see again.
According to Scorsese, is it still time of divismo?
The superstars have a great power on I screen him/it, damage expression to our feelings. We dream with them and they give them us so many hopes. But, I recommend to me, remembered that behind the taking car someone always exists.
Thanks to Ann !
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