Scarpelli, Furio

(1919-)

   Screenwriter. One half of the famous Age e Scarpelli screenwriting team, Scarpelli worked regularly with Agenore Incrocci for almost four decades to create many of the great classics of Italian screen comedy. Their partnership began with a collaboration on Mario Monicelli's Totb cerca casa (Toto Looks for an Apartment, 1949), the first of over a dozen films they would help to write for master comic actor Toto. After working together on a host of films ranging from romantic comedies to action adventures, in 1958 they laid the foundations for the so-called commedia all'italiana with their screenplay for Monicelli's I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958), for which they shared their first Nastro d'argento. They subsequently wrote many of the great classics of the genre together, including La grande guerra (The Great War, 1960), Tutti a casa (Everybody Go Home, 1960), Il sorpasso (The Easy Life, 1962), I mostri (15 from Rome, 1963), and C'eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much, 1974). In 1965 they shared an Oscar nomination for their work on Monicelli's I compagni (The Organizer, 1963), and in 1980 their script for Ettore Scola's La terrazza (The Terrace) earned them the award for Best Screenplay at Cannes. They were both also credited with helping to write Sergio Leone's Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966), although it appears that much of what they wrote was ultimately judged to be too comic and so not included in the final shooting script.

   Following his amicable professional separation from Incrocci in the mid-1980s, Scarpelli continued his prolific activity as a screen-writer, collaborating in particular on many of Ettore Scola's later films. He also frequently ventured into more dramatic territory with films such as Renzo Martinelli's Porzus (1997) and Carlo Lizzani's Celluloide (Celluloid, 1996). In 1996, after having already shared two Oscar nominations with Incrocci for earlier films, Scarpelli was nominated a third time for his work on Michael Radford's Il postino (The Postman, 1994).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira