LUCIANO TOVOLI, AIC, ASC, IMAGO: REMEMBERING VITTORIO DE SETA

Vittorio De Seta [Palermo, October 15, 1923 – Sellia Marina, November 28, 2011] was a director and screenwriter, widely regarded as the father of Italian documentary cinema. During the 1950s, he created numerous documentaries set primarily in Sicily and Sardinia, such as Isola di fuoco and I Dimenticati.

In 1961, he made his feature film debut with Banditi a Orgosolo, the first of four feature-length films he directed, followed by Un uomo a metà (1966), L’invitata (1969), and Lettere dal Sahara (2006). In 1971, for RAI, he directed Diario di un maestro, a four-part series adapted from the autobiographical book Un anno a Pietralata by Albino Bernardini, which became one of the most acclaimed successes in Italian television history. He later created another four-part miniseries, Quando la scuola cambia (1979), with cinematography for both series handled by Luciano Tovoli.

Banditi a Orgosolo, De Seta’s first feature film, was a collaboration with cinematographer Luciano Tovoli and won the Nastro d’Argento for Best Black-and-White Cinematography. In addition to Tovoli, De Seta also worked with notable AIC cinematographers such as Dario Di Palma, on Un uomo a metà and Antonio Grambone, on Lettere dal Sahara.

 

Upon graduating from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1960, I found myself with my diploma in hand, very eager to get on a film set. My unexpected “master’s program” turned out to be my collaboration with Vittorio De Seta on Banditi a Orgosolo.  At the time, Italian law required film crews to include graduates from the Centro Sperimentale, so I was determined to put my diploma to use. I spoke to my friend Giulio Questi about my eagerness to start working immediately.  Coming from a working-class background, securing employment was my top priority.

Giulio Questi, a talented director who never quite gained the recognition he deserved in truth, introduced me to Vittorio De Seta, a celebrated documentarian who had won awards at Cannes. De Seta was looking for an assistant who could handle multiple tasks. Up to that point, he had worked alone, handling both image and sound for his documentaries. We met at Café Rosati in Rome, where he described his project to me. A week later, we set off to shoot what was initially planned as a 15-day documentary, but which ultimately extended to six months and became a full-length feature film.

After the release of Banditi a Orgosolo, it was well known within the industry that I had contributed to the film’s cinematography. However, when people contacted me, they assumed I was an Italian-American or an Italian-Australian who had built a career abroad and returned to Italy at the age of fifty. To avoid confusion, I decided to credit myself as a camera operator, even though I had never actually operated the camera on that film but had worked closely on the cinematography.

I still have the Master Weston light meter that De Seta handed me after Marcello Gatti AIC had left the project, saying, “It’s yours! Now show me what you can really do!” We entered competition in Venice alongside Olmi’s Il Posto and Pasolini’s Accattone, and Banditi a Orgosolo deservedly won the 1961 Nastro d’Argento for Best Black-and-White Cinematography. At the time, De Seta, perhaps somewhat selfishly, did not acknowledge my equal contribution to the film, and since I had made the wrong decision about how to credit myself, I had no grounds for complaint. It was only many years later that he admitted the truth.

Years later came Diario di un maestro, which represents the pinnacle of De Seta’s work. It was a phenomenal success: the first episode alone drew 13 million viewers in prime time on a Sunday. At the time, television could deliver such extraordinary achievements—an ambitious drama with exceptional ratings that tackled a delicate topic: the struggles within an underprivileged school on the outskirts of Rome. I shot it with a single camera, entirely handheld.

For Diario di un maestro, De Seta needed someone akin to a documentary reporter—a cinematographer capable of doubling as an operator. Initially, he had begun working with Swiss cinematographer Renato Berta, as I was engaged on a film by Fabio Carpi. They had set up two dollies in the classroom, moving back and forth, but the children constantly looked directly into the camera, which was incompatible with the documentary-style approach required for the project. Within a week, they decided to part ways, leaving De Seta in despair. He was on the verge of abandoning the project when he called me, as I had just finished Carpi’s film. The situation reminded me of what had happened with Marcello Gatti on Banditi a Orgosolo eleven years earlier—one week of misunderstandings followed by a complete deadlock.

Once again, I decided to step in, recognizing that this film was a unique and powerful social endeavor with the potential to be an important cinematic work, particularly from a political and social perspective. I visited the classroom and immediately realized that the only way to shoot it was with a handheld camera. I told Vittorio, “Let’s do a one-day test. We’ll use an Éclair NPR 16mm, I’ll stay in the classroom, and Bruno Cirino (who played the teacher) will deliver his lesson. But you need to stay outside—you take up too much space, and the children wouldn’t understand your presence. Maybe hide behind the blackboard; otherwise, they’ll bombard you with jokes, and we’ll be unable to shoot. I’ll simply provide you with a faithful visual report of what happens. Then we’ll develop the footage, watch it together, and you can tell me if you like it.”

I shot the test with only a sound engineer and a camera assistant. We eliminated the clapperboard, replacing it with an electronic counter inside the camera to avoid drawing the children’s attention. When De Seta watched the test footage, he literally burst into tears of joy. “It’s real, Vittorio… it feels possible. Let’s continue for another week, and then we’ll reassess.”

Four months later, we were still filming the new educational program that De Seta had developed in collaboration with his advisors—young teachers who strongly believed in this unique experiment. It’s important to note that De Seta had no reference footage to compare against before viewing the dailies. Naturally, our screening sessions—also attended by the editor—became in-depth analyses of the material, identifying redundant shots, unnecessary zooms, and excessive movement. We established a visual language in advance, which I was expected to adhere to, though in the moment, I often followed my instincts. Even today, I have never been—or wanted to be—an obedient robot.

Deep down, I always wanted to be a reporter—not a war correspondent, though the influence of Robert Capa lingered in my mind. However, Capa was killed by a landmine, so I pursued my passion through more peaceful documentary work, such as my 1972 collaboration with Michelangelo Antonioni on Chung Kuo, China. Perhaps Diario di un maestro should have been credited jointly, as De Seta himself admitted years later in an interview. In reality, my contribution to the framing and cinematographic choices was crucial in making the film “possible.”

The incredible success that followed—13, 14, 15 million viewers per episodes in prime time—was beyond anything we had anticipated. I was simply happy to have played the role of a “pure reporter” for four months, helping to shed light on a fascinating social and educational landscape. The film exposed the outdated Italian school system, which routinely expelled children already burdened by life’s hardships. However, when these same children were brought back into the classroom under a radically transformed educational approach, they made astonishing progress after just four months of filming. We, too, learned a great deal from those extraordinary children, who knew every inch of their impoverished neighborhood in Tiburtino Terzo and navigated its social complexities as naturally as fish in water.

I vividly recall a striking moment with Umberto, the quietest and most reserved boy in the class. One morning, as he entered the classroom, he saw me leaning against the door, my Éclair NPR resting on my shoulder in standby mode. He paused, gave me a challenging look, and said, “Ah, Luciano… good for you that you don’t give a damn!”

For the four episodes of the miniseries Quando la scuola cambia, I once again experienced the profound satisfaction of contributing through my work—again, shot entirely handheld with the same faithful Éclair NPR that had accompanied me in China with Antonioni.  By that point, my understanding with De Seta was absolute. We no longer needed words. We shared the same passion, the same conviction that our work could help change, even in the smallest way, an education system that, even nearly ten years after Diario di un maestro, was still shockingly outdated—especially when it came to children who did not fit into the so-called “normal” mold. To call it “backward” would have been a generous understatement.