Carlo Giuffrè(1928-2018)
- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Carlo Giuffrè, a name which has become inseparable from three others,
Aldo Giuffrè, Naples and
Eduardo De Filippo. Younger brother
of Aldo Giuffrè, he has had, like him, a
very long and fruitful career, in the theater, in the movies and on TV,
both as good-looking manly protagonists or -and mainly as far as Carlo
is concerned - hilarious comedians in the Commedia dell'Arte style. One
of their rare meetings on the big screen, in
Tre sotto il lenzuolo (1979),
with Aldo as a cardinal and Carlo as a businessman who believes the
woman in his hotel room is a present to him from the cardinal, is
downright irrepressible. A native from Naples, Carlo Giuffrè never
disowned his hometown, quite the contrary. He indeed played in most of
Eduardo De Filippo's plays (some he
also directed), and everybody knows that the great Neapolitan
playwright always sets his works in the city that you must see before
dying. On the screen, whether big or small, Naples is the setting of
many of his films, in which he attracted girls, clowned or ruled as a
Camorra godfather, from his very first filmed appearance in De
Filippo's
Side Street Story (1950) to
Steno's TV mini-series
L'ombra nera del Vesuvio (1986).
As for Eduardo De Filippo, he was
instrumental in Carlo's successful career, since the actor has been the
performer of his favorite author for decades. Carlo Giuffrè met the
maestro in 1948, while in second year of Accademia Nazionale d'Arte
Drammatica and both men never parted ways until the playwright's death
in 1984. One of the most characteristic faces of Italian-style comedy
Carlo Giuffrè received a David de Donatello in 1984 and in 2007 he was
made 'Grande Ufficiale' by the Italian President.
