Franchi, Franco

(1922-1992)

(Born Francesco Benenato.) Actor. An amateur singer and performer at country fairs, Franchi met comic actor Ciccio Ingrassia in 1957 and thereby initiated the most successful comic partnership in Italy of the 1960s. The duo originally did stage revues and musical theater but soon graduated to television and film, through which they gained enormous popularity. Beginning with minor appearances in Mario Mattoli's Appuntamento ad Ischia (Rendezvous at Ischia, 1960) and Vittorio De Sica's Il giudizio universale (The Last Judgement, 1961), Franchi and Ingrassia went on to star in over 120 films of varying quality, mostly knockabout farces and often hastily concocted parodies of other well-known and successful films. Although hugely popular with audiences, the duo was generally maligned by the critics, who often found the humor of the films too lowbrow. Franchi's talents emerged more clearly, however, in films such as Che cosa sono le nuvole? (What Are the Clouds?), the episode directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini for the compilation film Capriccio all'Italiana (Caprice Italian Style, 1968), and in his role of the Cat to Ingrassia's Fox in Luigi Comencini's much-loved television adaptation Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1972). From the late 1970s, while not abandoning the cinema altogether, Franchi appeared mostly on television, although he returned to the big screen in the mid-1980s to give what is probably his most memorable performance in the role of Zi' Dima in Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Kaos (Chaos, 1984).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira