Giuseppe Sansonna: «A new film on the Conclave? Corrado Guzzanti the perfect director»

Giuseppe Sansonna, director and author of Rai, as well as film critic of «Linus», how does the Conclave appear to you, with the categories of the big screen?

«The greatest Italian theologian was Corrado Guzzanti. When he played Father Pizarro he explained to Andrea Purgatori: “We make them eat and sleep and think they are voting. In the end we will fix everything”».

After Benedict XVI and Pope Francis...

"Well, Ratzinger resembled the agent Barretta played by Robert Blake. Bergoglio was the good-natured version of Stan Laurel."

Returning to the Conclave.

«As Carmelo Bene said, the Church is the great spectacular representation of History: in that place there is thriller, waiting, the smoke».

Does the climate these days have any similarities with the stories of particular films?

«Luigi Magni told it best in Signori e signore buonanotte , in the episode Il santo soglio . In the sixteenth-century church the cardinals are willing to do anything to get to the election, until the appearance of the figure of Felicetto, played by Nino Manfredi, who pretends to be dying when he is run over by the two Richelieu, and in the end he is resurrected…».

Which film best captured the sacredness of the leadership of the Catholic Church?

"That light is found in the immense Michel Piccoli of Habemus Papam , directed by Nanni Moretti: by resigning from his role and showing a very human inadequacy, he gave shape to a dimension of sacredness. I also remember L'udito by Marco Ferreri, with the evocation of the goodness of John XXIII. There is the wait of the young Enzo Iannacci to be received by the pontiff and his sinking into the Kafkaesque meanders of the Vatican, meeting Vittorio Gassmann, version of Prince Donati, expression of the black aristocracy: the candor is crushed by the darkness. The strongest image, however, remains that of Piccoli lost, who feels the emptiness of his role."

In what context was Nanni Moretti's «Habemus papa» born and with what cineliterary mission?

«He wanted to tell, beyond the narcissism of the director himself who chooses to appear as the Pope's psychiatrist, the disorientation of a human being in front of the papal role, increasingly undefined, in a disintegrated world, with other decralized leaders and often close to nonsense... Inviting mercy, in a similar context, generates an objective difficulty in those who want to do good for humanity».

«The Young Pope» by Paolo Sorrentino?

"There was the ecstatic pope, the handsome Wojtyła, a skier and good looking. He starts out as a pure restorer, but changes and converts to the internal renewal of the Church. He is an orphan, he searches for peace in the sacredness of an existence born in solitude. The void of the lacerating contradiction stands out: you are the maximum of good and sacred, but you also have a role of great charm. In this context, Jude Law is a true cool icon."

While in the talk shows the commentators seem like the reborn Maurizio Mosca in an eternal papal version of "Calcio-Mania", the film "Conclave" is on Sky these days...

"It's a product of fashion, it's not a great film, it's a bit fake. It opens the papal question to the new LGBT frontiers. It seems a mix of provocation and obviousness."

Which director would you like to try to tell the story of the conclave?

«Martin Scorsese or Bong Joon-ho from Parasite : the Asian would tell the story of an unpublished pope, who lives in the Vatican basement and coordinates everything. But if it were up to me, I would entrust the film to Corrado Guzzanti: he would lightly tell the story of a pope who can no longer be imagined with a ceiling of sky frescoed by Michelangelo. Whoever comes after Bergoglio will have to fight against technoliberalism. Let's hope that cinema will help him grasp the contradictions of our time, unmasking the latest version of capitalism, enemy of the sacred and of the Church».