in memoriam

Tullio Kezich, 1928 – 2009
Italy's Sharpest Intellectual
By Irene Bignardi

When Tullio Kezich turned eighty, a year ago, I felt the necessity to thank him publicly.

First, a personal, public thank you because, unknowingly, he had been my master  — to read his wonderful mini-reviews in "Panorama", forty lines of impeccable writing and unconventional cinematic wisdom, was a refreshing and seductive experience, a lesson in good writing from which I tried to learn.

And then a public thank you. Because Tullio, as a renaissance man was like Charles Chaplin, whom he often cited as an example, somebody who could read, write, watch, create, invent. I mean, he could watch movies and write admirably about them. He could write scenarios, cultural chronicles, memoirs, stories, plays, always mixing humor and style, high culture and low culture, always being able to recognize the value of pop culture and the sophistication of highbrow works.

But, in particular, now that he is gone, we will miss his writing. I, as well as many others, though not necessarily always  agreeing with what he wrote about each movie (and who always does? Critics are like a sieve through which you recognize yourself). But everybody had to agree on his consistency, on his clear vision, and on his style, the perfection of a way of writing which, with him,  made the "review" a special and unique genre of literature.

Who would care to reread certain critics years later, when les jeux (of a movie) sont faits and all passions are spent? Well, it is always a pleasure to re-read Tullio, just for the brilliance of his words.

There was his writing on the Western, which in his personal cultural blend he could put side by side with the sophisticated middle-European literature of Italo Svevo (Tullio came from Trieste, and this was something he would never forget, inextricably intertwined in his personality). There was the cinema of his friend Ermanno Olmi, whose films he produced for TV and for whom he wrote the much-honored script of The Legend of the Holy Drinker (La leggenda del santo bevitore), and also his personal experience on the set of La dolce vita, which made him the official Felliniologist of Italy. Then there were his brilliant plays inspired by Svevo and Bassani and his lovely memoirs of a precociously clever and curious youth. Tullio Kezich was one of the sharpest intellectuals of our country. With the gift of being full of humor: we will remember him when, after a dinner, he would place two saucers next to his ears and pretend to be Mickey Mouse.

Irene Bignardi
© FIPRESCI 2009

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