Thanks to him, the Italian public came into contact after the Second World War with the texts of the new American dramaturgy, with their analytical charge aimed at describing the controversial and cruel American society. The authors of the avant-garde texts of the lively American theater begin to underline the crisis of the “American dream”. They tell of the weakness of the values of a society founded on the obsessive search for material well-being. They highlight the fragility of the individual perpetually prey to his psychosis.
And it is during the rehearsals in Florence of the show La via del tobacco by the American Erskine Caldwell that Franco Zeffirelli’s life intertwined with that of Visconti: “He had had the idea of adding the character of an old grandmother to Caldwell’s script, mute witness from beginning to end of the stories of others.”
The very young Zeffirelli thus brought to Visconti from the Monte Domini hospice, a “little old lady, hopping like a bird”, Virginia Garattoni, a former circus performer. Visconti sees her and calls her “Mi-ra-co-lo-sa!”. The ice is broken.
From that moment Franco Zeffirelli began his career alongside Luchino Visconti as set designer and assistant director.
1947. Tennessee Williams writes A Streetcar Named Desire. The drama was performed on Broadway in December 1947 with Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and directed by Elia Kazan, remaining on stage for 855 performances. A few months later, Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for playwriting.
In 1951 Elia Kazan transposed it for the big screen. The cast retains all the actors from the theatrical version, except Jessica Tandy, in the main role of Blanche, who was replaced by Vivien Leigh. Williams himself wrote the screenplay.
It is Visconti who brings the real and terribly fragile characters of Tennessee Williams’ metaphorical streetcar to Italy. The Italian premiere in Rome, for the translation by Gerardo Guerrieri, was at the Teatro Eliseo, on 21 January 1949. Vittorio Gassman is the brutal and ferocious, but also rudely sensual, Stanley who “possesses” the docile Stella (Vivi Gioi), his wife dominated by her husband’s wild passion. The impeccable Rina Morelli is Blanche and her sick desire to be loved. Marcello Mastroianni is Mitch, an instrument in the strong and cruel hands of that Stanley who will destroy the victim Blanche’s last glimmer of rationality with violence and abuse.
With A tram that is called desire, Zeffirelli created his first set design for Visconti. These were decisive years for his training: “This method, which was the basis of his work, investigating the author and his personal memories, is the greatest debt I have towards him, and it is the principle of “relative realism” which still guides my steps and my choices.”
A Streetcar Named Desire was an important and difficult work which however ensured Zeffirelli recognition from Tennessee Williams himself. The latter in fact stated that the scene created by the young Italian set designer was “much more beautiful and interesting than Joe Milziner’s on Broadway.”
Almost 20 years later, Zeffirelli is in New York with Paula Strasberg who takes him to see Edward Albee’s new staging, Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf: “I hadn’t slept all night thinking about that masterpiece, and I put it in my head to secure the rights for Italy and France.”
This time it is the deadly hypocrisy of the American bourgeois class that is on the stage. To the tune of the Disney children’s song Who is afraid of the big bad Wolf? that the protagonists hum without apparent meaning, the author challenges the spectator. She asks him if he has the courage to face the harsh reality beyond the fallacious and hypocritical illusion.
The story of Georges and Martha’s confessions, uninhibited by alcohol and the late hour, bring to light the pieces of an unhappy marriage.
It is difficult not to see in this work with such a strongly existentialist flavor and in its forms of narration, some of the fundamental works of the Theater of the Absurd such as The Bald Singer by Eugene Ionesco!
Although skeptical about the success in Italy of a story so linked to the dynamics of American society, Albee granted the rights to Zeffirelli for the performance of the show: “My ardent vocation was to bring the best of classical and international theater to Italy: a plague that Luchino, the king of unwary dreamers, had attacked me.”
The show staged by Zeffirelli as part of the Venice International Prose Theater Festival (Biennale Teatro) achieved a resounding success, thanks also to the participation of great actors such as Sarah Ferrati, Enrico Maria Salerno (San Genesio Award for best actor) and Umberto Orsini.
A few years after the success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, on 22 October 1964, After the Fall debuted in Rome, a drama written by the consecrated genius of American dramaturgy Arthur Miller. The drama is dedicated to his ex-wife Marilyn Monroe just two years after her tragic death. On this occasion Zeffirelli works with Giorgio Albertazzi in the aftermath of the extraordinary success of Hamlet: “We worked with Giorgio again, shortly after, with another show that made an epoch, a very difficult text by Arthur Miller which was literally a requiem for dear Marylin: After the fall. It was the opportunity to have alongside us a justifiably famous actress like Monica Vitti, who gave us an extraordinary testimony of her talent.”
Monica Vitti’s interpretation convinces the Italian public and critics, giving her own interpretative key to the character of Maggie, the protagonist. In several interviews given by the actress at the time, she criticized Miller, accusing him of having relegated Marilyn to the role of hysterical diva and not to the more authentic role of defenseless creature and victim.
But it doesn’t end here. Zeffirelli returned to Albee in 1967 with A Delicate Balance for which the writer obtained the Pulitzer for playwriting that same year.