Alvaro Vitali, the much-loved face of Italian comedy, desecrating symbol of an era and unmistakable embodiment of the character of Pierino, has died in Rome at the age of 75. The actor had been hospitalised for about two weeks due to relapsing bronchopneumonia. The news was confirmed in the late afternoon of 24 June.
Born in the capital on 3 February 1950, Vitali began his career under the wing of Federico Fellini – who noticed him and wanted him in some of his films – but it was the strand of sexy Italian comedy that consecrated him to the general public. Between double entendres, irreverent gags and barracks jokes, Alvaro Vitali became a popular icon and, for many, a grotesque but sincere mirror of Italy in the 1970s and 1980s.
The character of Pierino: legend and parody
Straddling provocation and caricature, Pierino was his alter ego par excellence. With his schoolboy apron, nasal laugh and childlike irreverence, Vitali brought to the cinema a character capable of making three generations laugh.
His films – from Pierino contro tutti to Pierino colpisce ancora – filled the cinemas and, over time, became cult Italian trash films. A physical, grotesque comedy, which today may seem out of time, but which at the time interpreted without filters the imagery of a society in transformation, between cultural repressions and libertarian thrusts.
A career on the borderline between art and pop culture
Although often relegated to comic and ‘genre’ roles, Vitali worked with film masters such as Fellini, Pasolini, Steno and Lattuada. His facial expressions, petite physique and innate instinct for comic rhythm made him unique. He was the ‘average Italian’ taken to the extreme, a deformed but recognisable mirror of our culture.
In recent years, Vitali had moved away from the stage, but never from the public’s heart. He had reappeared in TV programmes, participating ironically in sketches and nostalgic re-enactments of his Pierino, always with a smile and without taking himself too seriously.
Remembrance and legacy
It was his ex-wife Stefania Corona who had given news of his hospitalisation in recent days, speaking publicly about his battle with bronchopneumonia. Today is the moment of silence and farewell.
Italy loses a symbolic face of its popular cinema, a comic mask that, beyond tastes and fashions, marked an era and made millions of spectators laugh.
Pierino is leaving, but he will remain in the collective memory with that unmistakable laugh of his. That of someone who knew how to laugh even at his own miseries, with a sneer at sadness and a sneer at respectability.
