Mastroianni: Master of Bemused Aplomb

Marcello Mastroianni, who died Thursday in Paris at the age of 72, did not disappoint in real life. He was in person every bit the witty, affable charmer you hoped him to be from the countless films that made him an international star for more than 35 years.

From the world-weary journalist of Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita� (1960) to the romantic and determined widower of * RELATED STORIES: F24 and Section A.

1992’s “Used People� to Fellini’s “Intervista� (1987), a memoir film in which Mastroianni played himself, he continued to work right up to the end, despite the increasing vagaries of foreign film distribution.

Only this month he was seen in one of the most challenging roles of his career, in Raul Ruiz’s sly, surreal fable on the mysteries of the human personality, “Three Lives and Only One Death,� in which he segued from one identity and circumstance to the next with the bemused aplomb of which he was the master. In 1994 he played an elegant man of the world transfixed with love for a dwarf in Maria Luisa Bemberg’s “I Don’t Want to Talk About It,� a fable of unexpected love and its equally unpredictable consequences.

*

“I like very much to act!� he exclaimed in a 1993 interview. “That is my food! Cinema doesn’t excite me to watch. I would rather eat with my friends, sit around with them, say stupid things, over a nice meal. The thing is to act. What happens afterward is of no consequence. If a film is a failure, they don’t put you in prison.

“An actor in the beginning--as a young man, as a boy--is trying to express himself. He lacks courage, so he assumes the skin of another. An actor is like a canvas without paint: He needs the colors of somebody else.�

Mastroianni admitted that being emotionally needy was the other side of an actor’s personality. “An actor is like a child: He wants everybody to be interested in him. A child is accustomed to be loved and not to have to give back. If you want to be loved, really loved, don’t ask an actor!�

At his bedside when he died, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, was Catherine Deneuve and their 24-year-old daughter, actress Chiara Mastroianni, who has acted with both her parents. Yet he remained married for more than 45 years to former actress Flora Clarabella, with whom he had a daughter, Barbara, a furniture designer and maker, both of whom were also with him at his death.

“We’re good friends--that’s another kind of love,� Mastroianni said of Clarabella. “We know each other, and we can accept each other’s limits.�

In later years and especially in person, Mastroianni, a chain-smoker, frankly did not look well, and he left one concerned for his health. He was a little stooped, a little paunchy, overly pale. Yet he remained a handsome man. His charisma, his magnetism, were ageless. He said that during the filming of “Used People,� his first American film, one of his co-stars, Sylvia Sidney, now 86, told him: “If I were two or three years younger, I’d catch you!�

His magnetism was as enduring as was his deep, mellow voice; with a gesture he could summon up an entire image of the warmth and grace so characteristic of Italy, its people and places. To spend some time in his company was to become aware of how much of his own bemused personality--empty canvas remark notwithstanding--he has invested into a very wide range of roles.

He will always be associated with Federico Fellini, serving as his alter ego not only in “La Dolce Vita� but also “8 1/2� (1963), as the director in crisis. And besides “Intervista,� he appeared in “Ginger and Fred� (1986), teamed with Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina, as an aging pair of ballroom dancers. Among his best-remembered roles are the Sicilian husband trying to do away with his wife in “Divorce--Italian Style� (1962), his Casanova in Ettore Scola’s “La Nuit de Varennes� and all those romantic comedy teamings with Sophia Loren for Vittorio De Sica. He had a final teaming with Loren in Robert Altman’s 1994 “Ready to Wear.�

*

Mastroianni’s acting career had a Hollywood twist of its own. He got his big break in 1948, when director Luchino Visconti cast him in his stage production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,� first as Mitch and later as Stanley Kowalski.

At the time, Mastroianni, who had studied to be an architect, was in a small acting company in Rome appearing in a production in which Giulietta Masina, who already had made a few films and was married to Federico Fellini, had taken a role.

“Because of her, an impresario came to see the play, and afterward in the dressing room he asked me, ‘Would you like to be a professional actor in Visconti’s company?’ He was the most distinguished director in the Italian theater at the time. Very important, luck. An encounter can change your life, like in the old-style Hollywood movies. I had other friends, perhaps better than I, who didn’t have this chance.

“Stanley Kowalski is an incredible, beautiful role. I knew well his milieu. My father was a carpenter, and I was rough as an actor. . . .I stayed 10 years. We did Shakespeare, Goldoni, Alfieri. I did two plays with Vittorio Gassmann. I have enormous admiration for him. He is the most cultivated actor in Italy.�

Mastroianni said the three people who most influenced him were “Luchino Visconti--I learned many things from him; second, Fellini--my best friend--and the third I’m waiting to meet.

“I plan to make 50 or 60 more films before I die, and I don’t want to die,� Mastroianni said firmly three years ago. “At my age I can take pleasure in that I always did everything for spiritual needs, never for money.�

* RELATED STORIES: F24 and Section A