20/07/2007

Michele Placido’s latest film, entitled Il grande sogno (“The Great Dream”) and written with Angelo Pasquini and Doriana Leondef, is set to go into production soon. The first exterior shots will be filmed in September in Calabria and the rest in February.

Produced by Pietro Valsecchi of Taodue Film and RAI Cinema, with French partners, the film carries a €7.5m budget.

The cast is made up of Italian and French names, including Elio Germano, Carole Bouquet, Laura Morante and Isabelle Huppert, as well as Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Jasmine Trinca with Riccardo Scamarcio as the young Placido.

Although an ensemble film, the story, however, is Placido’s own: the future director of Romanzo criminale [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michele Placido
film profile] arrived in Rome at the age of 20, and before becoming an actor served on the police force from 1967-69. Placido recounts those years of demonstrations and clashes in the streets with the help of Pasquini, who was on the other side of the barricades as part of the student movement.

The project, followed obstinately to “offer an original angle on ’68”, came to a halt four years ago for the release of The Dreamers [+see also:
trailer
interview: Bernardo Bertolucci
film profile]: the first draft of Il grande sogno even shared one character’s love of film with Bernardo Bertolucci’s film. But not its backdrop, naturally, which here, instead of that Parisian May, are the clashes in Rome’s Valle Giulia, which inspired Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous declaration, “I sympathised with the police officers! Because the police officers are sons of the poor”.

Placido did not share those words: at the time he wore a uniform and used his club (he was not at Valle Giulia only because he was off duty), but quickly understood that the students were “the expression of the same progressive wind that animated the Prague Spring”. Shortly thereafter, in 1969, he enrolled in the Academy of Dramatic Arts, helped by his division head. In the film, that superior officer who, seeing him in a Pirandello play saw the talent of an actor, will be played by Placido.

(Translated from Italian)