L’uomo segreto

Un Flaiano misconosciuto, il suo lato dolente,  il più vero. 

Noi siamo tra quelli che credono che dietro la vulgata insistente del Flaiano uomo d’ingegno, spiritoso, formidabile battutista, fustigatore dei costumi, bravo sceneggiatore un po’ irritabile e permaloso, c’è in realtà un’altra persona. C’è un uomo di una purezza adamantina che ha conosciuto, fin da bambino, tutte le forme del dolore.

Scrittore esistenziale, notturno, e a suo modo religioso, è uno dei grandi autori italiani del Novecento. L’UOMO SEGRETO mostra il suo cuore tragico e il suo essere poeta. Rischiara il suo lato umano — il rapporto con la madre, la moglie, la figlia malata, e le altre donne — che nessuno ha mai potuto raccontare perché ostinatamente e sistematicamente lui lo nascondeva. E scava nel rapporto ombroso, eppure viscerale, che lo legava a Pescara, la città dov’era nato e dove un giorno, ancora bambino, era stato messo da solo su un treno per Roma, con una piccola valigia, qualche libro, vestiti niente…

THE SECRET MAN

The unknown Flaiano, his wounded, true self

We are among those who consider Flaiano one of the greatest Italian writers of. the 20th century. Not the icon of intelligence, the critic of custom and the brilliant acute journalist, insistently handed down to us, but one of the names destined to last. His extreme modesty – during an era dominated, within the sphere of culture, by the creed of the peacock – resulted in his leading his entire life under a shadow that hid his true worth from his contemporaries. Time, however, is beginning to do him justice.

A nocturnal, existential writer, religious in his own way, Flaiano had nothing in common with either Neo-Realism or the avant-garde – the two imperatives of his time. Aloof, as well, from the creeping cynicism haunting Italian comedy, he possessed instead the clear, unyielding gaze of the Sceptic. He was the quintessential modern man, singular, with no attachments and no abode. But he was capable of great pity (pietas), all of a sudden; ready to take all the suffering of the world upon himself.

is not by chance that Flaiano was the only critic in Italy to grasp the importance of Rossellini, beginning with Stromboli, when all the others censured him for involution. Flaiano was also the only one to defend Domenica d’Agosto, Luciano Emmer’s first film, against generai critical disdain. And, he was the first to affirm the sense of art in the work of Totò and Peppino de Fillipo. And so on, and so on.

L’Uomo Segreto reveals Flaiano’s tragic core, and the fact that he was a poet. It recounts aspects of his humanity – his relationships with his mother, his wife, his ailing daughter and other women – which no one could relate before, as they were obstinately and systematically concealed by the man himself. The film also delves into the morbid, though visceral, rapport tying him to Pescara, where he was born. It was there one day, when stili a boy, that he was put on a train all alone with a small valise containing a few books, and no clothing.