Mario Sesti - La voce di Fantozzi

His characters (from the Mega-Director to Signora Pina), his places (the Region of Lazio in which his office is located), his fellow travelers (from Antonio Ricci to Renzo Arbore, from Lino Banfi to the producer Bruno Altissimi, from Maurizio Costanzo to Michele Mirabella), as well as intellectuals (from Domenico De Masi to Christian Raimo, from Marco Travaglio to Dario Fo) and stars (from Roberto Benigni to Maurizio Battista to Fiorello) and even his car (the Bianchina) conjure up the history, misadventures, prodigious success and explosive originality of the ragionier Ugo Fantozzi and his creator, who for this film wrote dialogues, assisted with the production and conceded a last, memorable appearance/interview (illuminated, for the occasion, by Luca Bigazzi). This final, tragic, adventure of Fantozzi’s is also recounted by young artists (like the video-maker Gianluca Abbate and the illustrators Annalisa Corsi and Francesco Schietroma), who have re-created his image and restaged some of his most celebrated scenes, by the musicians and sound designers Stefano Di Battista, Federico Badaloni and Jacopo Sinigaglia (who have reinvented the sounds of his films) and by the folk singer Wrongonyou.

He disrupted the TV (with his character Professor Kranz) and brought comedy into literature and Kafkaesque humor into the cinema. And yet what the most famous bookkeeper in Italy changed forever is something that comes before language, culture, entertainment. No one is able to mimic his husky voice—and who hasn’t done so at least once, in jest, perhaps saying first “I feel as if I were Fantozzi”—without an entire world opening up, as in the great novels, revealing a vision of the tragic misadventures of the most popular comic character in contemporary Italy? The film explores this unique voice and the whole of his universe and also records, for the last time, the voice of the man who created all this.