Funeral Lina Wertmuller, Giannini: “Without her I would have remained a technical expert”

“I made the most beautiful films with her, she was my teacher, without her I would have remained a technical expert: she forged me like clay”. Thus Giancarlo Giannini in the eulogy for Lina Wertmuller. The funeral of the director who died two days ago at the age of 93 was held this morning in the Church of the Artists in Piazza del Popolo in Rome. An applause, like those that accompanied her artistic works, welcomed the arrival of the coffin in the square and her entrance into the church. “We have lost a great woman and a great director: without her I would have done nothing”, he Giannini again said, among the first to arrive at the church, with a voice broken by emotion. He uses the tones of irony, those preferred by Lina Wertmuller, Massimo’s nephew in the eulogy. “Making public such an intimate pain a little inflates it – he confesses – when a teacher leaves us, like Lina Wertmuller was, one regrets his genius but also a way of living and being a great intellectual: a figure that is very lacking in this period “.” She made me do things I never thought I would do: she was my artistic mother and will always be part of my life. ” With these words Rita Pavone – protagonist of ‘Giornalino di Gianburrasca’ – recalled the director. “She recounted humble and oppressed, always putting herself on their side, with intelligence and irony, ‘singing for those who had no luck’, as the song says. of ‘Movies of love and anarchy’. His extraordinariness was in telling the ordinary people of ordinary people “. To underline this ‘figure’ of Lina Wertmuller, during her funeral don Walter Insero, a personal friend of the director. “We remember a great artist, a woman who expressed and communicated her joie de vivre, who defined herself as a ‘director of good humor’ and who loved Pope Francis because she said that he reached people’s hearts with his sympathy. She conveyed sympathy. through her works, even with those white glasses that were her hallmark, “said the cleric.” She had a natural tendency to walk on the sunny side of the street, as he paraphrased Louis Armstrong. I was struck by her being a a simple woman, despite her great success and international awards: she did not pay attention to awards while appreciating their value “. Don Walter observes that “Lina has kept her soul of a street urchin all her life, she has never suffocated the little girl who was inside her. She remembered, quoting Fellini, that life is a party and should be lived together. She said not to let life play with you but you play with life “. And Lina Wertmuller knew how to play really well …