Goodbye to Donald Sutherland, he was Casanova for Fellini and Attila for Bertolucci
He was 88 years old and had been confined to bed by illness for some time in Miami
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Goodbye to Donald Sutherland, he was 88 years old.
For some time the illness had forced him to bed in Miami, far from his Canada to which he had sworn eternal loyalty since he was a boy when, between a future as an engineer (he had obtained a diploma) and one as an actor, he chose the second option and left for London Academy of Art and Acting and then for a theater season in Scotland.
Like many of that generation, he began his career on television thanks to extras and small parts (mostly in Bad Guy) at the BBC and then in that hotbed of popular and horror cinema that was Hammer, where Christopher Lee reigned supreme. But his luck was to have a role alongside Roger Moore in the serial "The Saint".
Because the future 007 was convinced of the talent of that tall Canadian and pushed him to participate in the casting of "The Dirty Dozen" by Robert Aldrich. The triumphant success of that war adventure opened the doors of Hollywood to the young partner of Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson in 1967.
Born on 17 July 1935 in the Canadian district of New Brunswick, raised by parents of modest means between Nova Scotia and Toronto, Donald McNichol Sutherland has Scottish, German and English blood and it is perhaps for this reason that in his career he found the best satisfaction in cinema European even if the glory (and an honorary Oscar in 2017) came to him overseas.
This professional duplicity is confirmed, truly a fortuitous case, by his real debut in cinema, namely "The Castle of the Living Dead" shot in Italy by an obscure Lorenzo Sabbatini in 1964 and co-authored with Luciano Ricci from the Marche region. Immediately after the Italian parenthesis and the American success, Donald Sutherland finds himself at the center of the star system and can finally choose roles and characteristics that suit his acting style in which irony, understatement, the soft step and a voice triumph with low and unmistakable tones.
Politically involved, linked to his second partner Jane Fonda who also shares with him the attention of the FBI which targets him as a possible subversive for his statements against the war in Vietnam, Donald Sutherland finds his perfect Pygmalion in Robert Altman. In "Mash" (1970) she made sparks alongside Elliot Gould and then confirmed her as the protagonist in "A Call for Inspector Klute" by Alan J. Pakula. For him, the 70s were those of his consecration with "A Tuxedo-Red December in Venice" by Nick Roeg, "The Day of the Locust" by John Schlesinger, "Animal House" by John Landis and "Terror from Outer Space" by Phil Kauffman .
But it is precisely Italy that gives him the true measure of his acting stature with two masterpieces : the lunar Giacomo Casanova in which he incarnates himself for Federico Fellini and the ruthless Attila with which Bernardo Bertolucci transforms him into a memorable "Villain" in "Novecento ". From the 80s onwards his presence is a guarantee of quality and success in the most diverse genres: German spy in "The Eye of the Needle", family man in "Common People", English sergeant in "Revolution" by Hugh Hudson, parish priest detective in "The Rosary Murders", enigmatic government official in "JFK", cold businessman in "Revelations", up to the ruthless President in the "Hunger Games" saga.
Fully aware of the screen, Donald moves every time as a natural protagonist even for just a brief appearance. Sutherland had absolute command of the scene; he was not handsome but of such seductive charm that he soon appeared as a "New Lover"; he was not graceful but moved with the lightness of a dancer, he was not destined for the roles of hero and leading actor but also and above all as a "villain" he towered over every other presumed hero.
Furthermore, he had the gift of a velvety, baritone voice which, right up to the end, also guaranteed him the dimension of a great narrator. In fact, his was the voice that accompanied the Winter Olympics in Halifax and Canada wanted to pay him its final homage a year ago by printing a stamp with his effigy. Cultured, passionate about art, in love with Italy, Donald Sutherland is the perfect synthesis of a country, Canada, which has always been nourished by a dual culture: the European one in the heart, the American one on the surface. He knew how to combine this wonderful duality on his own.
(Unioneonline/D)
