{"id":3959,"date":"2020-01-20T11:36:33","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T11:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sixtiescinema.com\/?p=3959"},"modified":"2020-01-20T11:36:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-20T11:36:33","slug":"peter-gonzales-falcon-revisits-fellinis-roma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomlisanti.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/20\/peter-gonzales-falcon-revisits-fellinis-roma\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Gonzales Falcon Revisits “Fellini’s Roma”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Happy 100th Birthday Federico Fellini! In honor I am re-sharing my below post from 2018. Glad to report that since my interview with Peter, he finally received the recognition he deserved for his starring role in Fellini’s Roma<\/em> and received an award from the Amarcort Film Festival (which is dedicated to Federico Fellini and held in Rimini, Italy) where he was the guest of honor.<\/p>\n

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After a long wait the entertainingly off-beat movie Fellini\u2019s Roma<\/em> (1972), director Federico Fellini\u2019s \u201clove letter\u201d to his beloved Eternal City, has been released on Blu-Ray<\/a> by the Criterion Collection. The spectacularly produced movie featuring sumptuous production design is essentially divided into three parts as it blends \u201cpast and present reality\u201d and Fellini\u2019s \u201cparticular kind of fantasy.\u201d The first two segments are autobiographical in nature with Fellini as a young man who comes to Rome in the thirties with an ambition to become a journalist and what happened after during the war years. The third part of the movie takes place in then current time of 1971 and is more documentary in style. Peppered throughout are cameos from the likes of Gore Vidal and Anna Magnani in her last film appearance.<\/p>\n

The Blu-Ray features many extras including deleted scenes; trailers; a booklet; and commentaries from film historians and friends of Fellini. The one extra obviously missing is remembrances from the film\u2019s star Peter Gonzales Falcon who symbolized a young Fellini during the thirties and forties segments. When asked if they contacted him to participate, the actor replied, \u201cNo, I am out in the boonies in Texas and have been here for a long time. Maybe they didn\u2019t know how to reach me. Also I don\u2019t think there has been much of an institutionalized response to my work for whatever reason. I look at a lot of books on Fellini and only a very few even include me in them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Gonzales Falcon acting career literally began as a Hollywood fairy tale. A senior majoring in Drama\/Speech at Texas State University now called Southwest Texas State University, in 1968 he accompanied a female friend to an open casting call for the movie comedy Viva Max<\/em> filming on location in Texas. While waiting in an outer room, he heard someone yell, \u201cThat face!\u201d That someone was director Jerry Paris and it was tall, dark-haired Mexican-American Gonzales Falcon\u2019s handsome chiseled face that got Paris excited. After reading for the director, Peter got the role as one of the Mexican soldiers who accompany General Peter Ustinov when he recaptures the Alamo. Others in the cast included Jonathan Winters, John Astin, Keenan Wynn, Alice Ghostley, and Kenneth Mars.<\/p>\n

Knowing it was going to be at least a twelve week shoot including time in Italy to shoot interiors, the excited young man decided to drop out of school to pursue his dream of acting. An extra added bonus was that the movie\u2019s leading lady was stunning Pamela Tiffin returning to make her first American film since departing for Rome in 1967. \u201cShe was a big movie star. I first saw her in State Fair<\/em> and then in another film. I thought she was just wonderful and very beautiful.\u201d  You can read more about Peter\u2019s experiences on Viva Max<\/em> in my book Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>After Viva Max<\/em> completed filming in Rome, Gonzales moved to London where he modeled for a year. He was back in Italy to try to ignite his acting career and boy did he\u2014landing the lead role in Federico Fellini\u2019s opulent Roma <\/em>(1972) while simultaneously shooting another movie L\u2019ospite<\/em>\/The Guest<\/em> (1971) for director Liliana Cavani. Describing the plot of the latter, Peter remarked, \u201cThe film was a complex story-within-a-story. I played a young catatonic man in an insane asylum put there by his family. Lucia Bos\u00e9 [who had just prior appeared in Fellini Satyricon<\/em>] was a big Italian movie star and still is. She played my caretaker in the asylum and starts having fantasies about me in the film because her cousin was killed by the Nazis in the town square and they put her in the asylum when she was about fifteen years old.\u201d According to preeminent Italian film historian and author Roberto Curti (whose most recent books include Tonino Valerii: The Films<\/em><\/a> and Diabolika: Supercriminals, Superheroes and the Comic Book Universe in Italian Cinema<\/em><\/a>), “the film\u2019s main protagonist was a writer (Glauco Mauri) who reports about the conditions in psychiatric hospitals (a very heartfelt theme at the period, which resulted in1978\u2019s Legge Basaglia<\/em> about the reform of Italian asylums).”<\/p>\n

When The Guest<\/em> was released, Gonzales received a nice review in Variety<\/em> that described him as \u201ca fresh and sensitive new face in a dual role as inmate and flashback romantic.\u201d However, per Roberto Curti, The Guest<\/em> \u201cwas badly received by critics, even by those who had praised Cavani\u2019s previous films, from Francesco<\/em> to I cannibali<\/em>. Its grosses were allegedly very low (they are not even listed in the Platea in piedi<\/em> book, which means they were minimal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"aroma7\"<\/a>In the autobiographical and much more successful Fellini\u2019s Roma<\/em>, Peter essentially portrayed a young Federico Fellini as he encountered the city for the first time during the thirties. With minimal dialog, the talented actor is able to embody Fellini and capture the viewer’s attention throughout the movie as his young man is first welcomed into the home of a friend of his mother\u2019s and experiences the chaotic city from dining a fresco on city streets, to its brothels with aging broken down prostitutes and music halls. When the movie debuted in 1972, it received very good notices (it was a hit at the Cannes Film Festival) but is not considered top tier Fellini by most due to its irreverent pacing and storytelling. The review from Variety <\/em>was typical of the notices it received\u2014\u201cBy any measure, Roma<\/em> is a fascinating film. It does not entirely reflect, however, Fellini\u2019s exceptional talent as a creative filmmaker.\u201d<\/p>\n