THE FAMILY
from the film
by Ettore Scola
The actor Vittorio Gassman
THE FAMILY
from the film
|
The actor Vittorio Gassman |
This is the day of my baptism celebrated at the house in the new Prati Neighborhood, just acquired by my grandfather on a mortgage. In twenty years it will be ours. Among the people posing for the customary photograph, is my grandfather sitting in a chair and I am the one in the baby-carriage. Little Adelina is holding me precariously in her arms. She is the niece of our maid Nunzia, whom you can see in the background on the right.
- Be still, be still!
This lady with the blue eyes is my mother. Before getting married she studied voice so at night she doesn't put me to sleep with the usual lullabies, but with romances and arias from lyric opera.
Aunt Mellina, aunt Margherita and aunt Luisa are all my father's sisters, all three unmarried. And this is doctor Giordani, our family doctor, a bachelor.
My Grandfather. Literature Professor at the University of Rome, disciplined amateur poet. Proud slanderer of Carducci, of whom he likes to say: "The republican lion has become the Queen's puppy".
- What will you become? A genius or an imbecile?
< What nonsense! He will become a child of God!
- Eh, as a career, that's rather modest.
- Mom ...
< But they are bad for you, you'll get a stomach ache, a fever, typhus!
The boy, to whom Grandma is recounting all of the diseases associated with overeating is uncle Nicolino, my mother's brother, who lives in Macerata and who is visiting for the occasion.
The child whom Adelina is attempting to feed is my cousin Enrico; he too came to celebrate [my baptism]. But he lives in Rome. He is the son of uncle Michele and aunt Ersilia, nicknamed by my three aunts "I Fratelli Cairoli", who knows why?