Sonego, Rodolfo

(1921-2000)

   Screenwriter. One of the most respected screenwriters in postwar Italian cinema, Sonego studied drawing at the Turin Academy of Fine Arts before taking part in the Resistance movement during World War II. Following the war he moved to Rome where he wrote and directed a number of documentaries on scientific and art-historical subjects for the Lux Film company. After earning his first screenwriting credit on Giorgio Ferroni's Tombolo, paradiso nero (Tombolo, 1947), he worked with Carlo Lizzani on Achtung! Banditi! (Attention! Bandits! 1951) and helped to write Alberto Lattuada's Anna (1951) and La spiaggia (Riviera, 1953). Having met actor Alberto Sordi on the set of Franco Rossi's Il seduttore (The Seducer, 1954), Sonego initiated what would become a lifelong personal and professional relationship that would see him as a regular screenwriter on practically all of the films in which Sordi either acted or directed, thus allowing him an opportunity to modulate Sordi's characters as time went on so as to present a composite portrait of the changing face of the ordinary Italian male. Among the host of films he penned for Sordi were Il vedovo (The Widower, 1959) and Una vita difficile (A Difficult Life, 1961), directed by Dino Risi; Il vigile (The Traffic Policeman, 1960) and Bello, onesto, emigrato in Australia sposerebbe compaesana illibata (A Girl in Australia, 1971), directed by Luigi Zampa; Un eroe dei nostri tempi (A Hero of Our Times, 1955), directed by Mario Monicelli; and, directed by Sordi himself, Un italiano in America (An Italian in America, 1967), In viaggio con papa (Journey with Papa, 1982), Un tassinaro a New York (A Taxi Driver in New York, 1987), and Il comune senso del pudore (A Common Sense of Modesty, 1976). His numerous other screenwriting credits include collaborations with Mario Camerini on I briganti italiani (The Italian Brigands, 1962), with Tinto Brass on Il disco volante (The Flying Saucer, 1964), and with Vittorio De Sica on Una breve vacanza (A Brief Vacation, 1973).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira