Italian cinema great Mario Monicelli kills himself
Baku, December 1 (AZERTAC). One of the greats of post-war Italian cinema, Mario Monicelli, has killed himself by jumping out of a hospital window, according to BBC News.
Monicelli, 95, was dubbed the “father of Italian comedy” for directing films such as Amici Mei (My Dear Friends) and I Soliti Ignoti (Persons Unknown). He leapt from the fifth floor of a Rome hospital where he was being treated for terminal cancer. He received numerous awards and was nominated four times for an Oscar.
Monicelli was admitted a few days ago to San Giovanni hospital where he was being treated for prostate cancer.
He made his debut as a director in 1949 and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival 10 years later for The Great War, a comedy about two young Italians who try to avoid going to the front line during World War I.
“A comedy that is ironic, sometimes bitter, in some cases even dramatic, tragic: This is what Italian comedy is,” Monicelli once said.
He also helped launch the careers of Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale and Vittorio Gassman, with his 1958 film I Soliti Ignoti - released in the US as Big Deal on Madonna Street and in the UK as Persons Unknown.
Mario Monicelli directed 70 films, often focusing on stories about ordinary people confronted by extraordinary circumstances.
A Very Little Man (1977) was one of his best-known works about a man who takes justice into his own hands after his son is killed in a robbery.
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