Umberto Pizziand a sort of certificate, each of his photos and a stamp for notoriety: if his lens doesn’t frame you, if he doesn’t wink his left eye to focus, you’re nobody. Stars, pseudo-stars, politicians, bankers and managers are looking for him, they want him, they show off, they accentuate it in order to be, they call it “Umbe! .. Umbe!”. And there they were, mouths full of food, betrayals, torn kisses, tumble, cream-stained lips, panties-less females and drunken males; Marcello Mastroianni “exploited” by women or Sophia Loren pinched with her lover; Aristotle Onassis chased by prostitutes, Gianni Agnelli in a car with a very young girl, too young for him. He has caught anyone, for over fifty years, and uses his target as a machine gun, and when he talks he is not talking about shots, but about “shots”. He hits or hits.
On Saturday 7 October he turned 80, every day he takes the train from Zagarolo to Rome, then gets on his scooter and arrives at Fatto, often holding the fruit and vegetables from his garden (“listen to these peaches, they are wonderful”) , or with the tarts cooked by his wife (“the jam is ours”). Then he starts the tour together with his target, and every afternoon he brings the shots back to the editorial office.
(80 YEARS OF UMBERTO PIZZI TOLD BY HIS PHOTOS. GREETINGS MASTER!) Let’s start from your origins.
As a boy I attended a boarding school with an art school in Pesaro, but I was denied everything, not even able to draw Giotto’s famous “o” with a compass. You are not from Pesaro.
I come from a proletarian family, my farm worker father, housewife mother, and we were nine brothers, that’s why I went to boarding school. Then I found a camera of the time, the Voigtlander one of the bellows ones, and from there I understood. What you wanted to immortalize
The history and misery of the world: calculate that I was born in Zagarolo, a small town not far from Rome, completely bombed during the war; when I read Steinbeck’s Furore, I realized that we were fifty years behind those pages. So Rome.
At the age of eleven I stopped studying, the whole family moved to the capital; I have been doing any kind of job or chore ever since, I remember unloading trucks and returning home with bloody hands every night. At 18 the first turning point. With the camera
No, I went to work with a wealthy gentleman, Della Casa, who also owned a large luxury hotel in Via Veneto: he had lost a leg, so I would take him around, perhaps on one of his Rolls Royces. Boring life, but well paid; I didn’t see a future. Until
my boss’s masseur was a lover of photography, and thanks to him I started studying, both the secrets of the car and English. You speak it well
I still manage, but then I had to: I traveled all over the Middle East and worked mainly with American newspapers. The adventure begins.
The masseur introduced me to a representative of the FAO and I agreed with her for a series of missions. I have traveled all over the East for years; I went from Africa to Iran, in incredible, fairytale-like places, now destroyed; I talked and met what was then the unknown, always with the car around my neck. Then I would return to Rome, sell the photos to FAO, and leave again. A formidable mess tin.
I went on like this until 1966-67 but I wasn’t earning anything and besides I got married: I couldn’t continue to be away for whole months. It’s time for the scoops in Italy.
Very quietly. The head of the FAO advised me: ‘Follow the paparazzi, see how they work, steal their secrets, you will need it for reportage’. Via Veneto and the Dolce Vita
No, that was over: Fellini had decreed his death with his film. But you know how it was born
A group of unfortunates gathered in front of the Termini station who survived thanks to the ‘snap shots’, a sort of instant photos for tourists; one day Edilio Rusconi arrives, then director of Oggi (and future editor), and says: ‘What are you doing here
Go to via Veneto, new American actors have arrived, a photo of them and earn more’. So, just like that. Nice insight.
It was a mix of prelates, stars, champagne, big cars, whores chasing chicken and then taking them to rented rooms in the best hotels. In fact, you photographed Onassis hooked by two women.
Exactly. He was used to it. At that time I was alone working, the old paparazzi cleared, the only one to save himself was Tazio Secchiaroli, who ended up on Fellini’s sets, for the others nothing … “Cleared”
After the Dolce Vita they didn’t understand that the character should be followed, flushed out, studied in his habits; informants were needed: at the Grand Hotel there was a porter to whom I often gave something. You paid for it
. Never gave money to anyone. I gave him a watch, or something else, I considered cash unprofessional. The first “real” earnings
With the three months attached to Liz Taylor I bought a small house in Rome, not in the center, but a roof nonetheless. Attention: to get the right service I followed her to London, to Italy, everywhere, but after that I sold the shots in ten countries around the world. She didn’t love you.
Eventually she got used to it, she nicknamed me ‘Rubber Face’, according to her when I saw her I smiled, while at the moment of her photo I became serious, determined; Richard Burton tolerated me a lot less. You got rich.
Exaggerated. My first bank account came thanks to the Rolling Stones. And in 1970, they are in Rome, staying at the Parco dei Principi hotel. I’m okay. A car stops, Mick Jagger gets out, I snap, he pushes me, I fall and smash the camera. Immediately I go to the lawyer, who blocks the instruments for the concert. Result: they paid me 1,750 pounds, with which I opened the account. You met him more
Sure, and every time he said to the bodyguards: ‘Make him do what he wants, this is too expensive’. Other dangerous intersections
In the end none, at most I punched Depardieu in the face, just because he was drunk, I caught him in a residence with Sylvia Kristel, he wanted to hit me; it went wrong.
(THE 80 YEARS OF UMBERTO PIZZI TOLD BY HIS PHOTOS. GREETINGS MAESTRO!) Then
With Fellini and Masina: between them they were a bit like brother and sister and I often surprised them with their respective ‘friends’ and I hit, especially him. A fight with Fellini
No, in a metaphorical sense, but with him there was taste, a sort of revenge for how he had treated the paparazzi in La Dolce Vita: as infamous. Sex, lovers, ostentatious horns: they are a recurring theme.
Yes, but only once did I let the private sphere into the professional field: a friend calls me, he had given his wife a sganassone because he was a cuckold; ‘Umbe, you have to save me, his lover and a big shot of the carabinieri’. That is fine. I’m okay, I follow her, and after 24 hours I catch them. Click. How it ended
To thank me he gives me a tip on Sophia Loren, married to Carlo Ponti: ‘She goes out with a scientist’. Get caught. I then sold the shots in the United States, a resounding bang and a $ 10,000 prize. Loren very happy.
I ended up in prison for her: we were on the island of Saint Lucia in the Caribbean. It seems impossible.
Step back. After the scientist’s story, I also recounted the next one: the infatuation with Ettore Scola while they were filming A special day. Ettore Scola
He was deadly, everyone fell in love with him, including Loren, and I caught them in Cannes. We arrive in the Caribbean.
He was shooting another film, I’m leaving, bad luck wants me to get it in his own hotel, he finds out; coincidentally, the next day the police stopped me, Aldo Moro had just died and they accuse me of being a brigatista. Two days in jail and they send me back to Italy. Only time in prison
. No, three in total. The other two
Seven days in Athens for photographing Theodorakis (composer, in prison during the dictatorship of the colonels, ed); finally in Prague after the Soviet invasion. What the public liked at the time
Not so much the horns, more the lifestyle, who they went out with, the yachts, what they ate, what they drank, where they went on vacation, how they went there, the extravagances: at that time we didn’t travel, so they traveled with the imagination.Okay, but Mastroianni’s stories had appeal.
Attention: the image of him was somewhat falsified, it was not that tombeur de femmes described; more than anything else he was seduced, used and often set aside. He was then massacred by his mother, who slipped into the sets and insulted him: ‘Stop going out with these four sluts’ (here Mastroianni seen by Pizzi in the archive photos). You’re debunking myths.
And many things have not come out. For example
The story of Carlo Ponti (Loren’s husband) with Dalila Di Lazzaro: those shots were purchased before going out, for some colleagues they were cashier’s checks to be cashed, real ATMs. Other “ATMs”
Angelo Moratti. One night I pinch him outside the hotel with a woman. He shocked. Frozen. He immediately comes to me and takes a huge roll of bills out of his pocket. A Corona method ante litteram.
And no! I suggested to Moratti not to be offended, I refused the money, then I opened the machine and removed the film; and I have always refused to go to Di Lazzaro e Ponti, and when a director of a weekly proposed them to me, I also sent him to that country. So you deleted Moratti’s photos.
Since then, whenever he met me, anywhere, he would come over to greet me. Your relationship with Onassis
A nice filibuster, he was interested in everything, he stopped me and asked me how much I earned … with Andreotti the same.And Gianni Agnelli
led him. To the lawyer
Always in the professional sense. The climax was in 1980: Fiat was about to put thousands of workers on layoffs and I caught him out of the Jackie O ‘in Rome with a girl. I take pictures. Fiat fears disaster, so the next day Luca Cordero di Montezemolo calls me and tries to buy the images. Rejection. ‘If you want them, you have to buy a newspaper for them.’ So it was: they contacted me, I sold the service. It never came out.
(Here the complete interview published on Fatto Quotidiano)
