Carlo Verdone was and continues to be a living monument of our pop culture, by virtue of his ability to be transversal, to have occupied a place of privilege in our imagination when, from the beginning of the 80s, between cinema, television and cabaret, he began to establish himself.

Today marks 75 years for Carlo, a unique, very fertile artist, connected not only to Italian comedy, but even more to its evolution, to a desire to talk to us about life in a profound, real, bittersweet way. It has given us authentic masterpieces, films that have impacted our lives, our way of expressing ourselves and even speaking.

So this Top 5 becomes a way to retrace his path and ours too, that for 40 years thanks to him we have been crying, laughing, reflecting on who we are, on how messed up it is to be Italian and how beautiful it is to be so.

Carlo Verdone: 5 films for the 75th birthday of an icon

“Talk powder” (1982)

If I had to indicate the film that represents the sum of Carlo Verdone’s cinematic vision, so particular, so ambivalent and wonderfully ambiguous, I would have no doubts: “Borotalco”. At the beginning of the 1980s, Carlo Verdone together with Enrico Oldoini wrote and directed a magnificent comedy, brilliant in its depth, evolution and themes.

Sergio (Carlo Verdone) and Nadia (Eleonora Giorgi), two door-to-door encyclopedia sellers, are divided by everything, including success and personality. Sergio’s fortuitous meeting with the fixer Manuel Fantoni (Angelo Infanti) and the consequent arrest will offer Sergio the opportunity to impersonate him, pass himself off as a man of the world, a friendship with Lucio Dalla to conquer Nadia.

“Borotalco” is a masterpiece of the genre, it really is. The definition of the characters, their connection to dreams, aspirations and mirages, become in Verdone’s hands a metaphor of that Italy of the 80s, ready to become yuppie, superficial, consumerist and liar. Packed with iconic moments, with extraordinary chemistry between Giorgi and Verdone, and with a magnificent soundtrack by Dalla and Stadio, this bittersweet, bitter but never truly cynical comedy, and with a brilliant ending, is one of the greatest gifts that Carlo Verdone has given us.

“White, red and green” (1981)

Simply a piece of our soul as spectators. After the beautiful “Un Sacco Bello”, which launched him from the small screen, Carlo Verdone, under the protective wing of Sergio Leone, creates a continuum (but not a sequel) of his previous chapter and with Leonardo Benvenuti and Piero De Bernardi creates a grotesque, parodic and ferocious road movie.

“White, red and Verdone” is a journey into the Italy that emerged from the 70s and tries to understand something about that decade, divided into three episodes in which Verdone plays three characters who have become legendary: the clumsy and very unlucky returning egypt Pasquale Amitrano, the talkative and unbearable bourgeois Furio Zoccano and the naive Mimmo, who accompanies the gruff Nonna to vote. Carlo Verdone creates a road movie where the search for meaning in this country and its inhabitants is a mere chimera, a sarcastic condemnation of our defects, of our inability not to be mama’s boys, infantile, self-centered.

Connected to the Italian flag with the three FIAT models driven by the three characters, “Bianco, rosso e Verdone” is however also a bittersweet tale of three failures, three ordinary human beings, in which Verdone connects to silent cinema, slapstick comedy and the great comic cinema from overseas. Sensational success and a foot in the history of our cinema.

“I’m Crazy About Iris Blond” (1996)

After “Honeymoons”, Carlo Verdone calls Claudia Gerini back and in “I’m crazy about Iris Blond” he gives us one of his most bitter but also profound films, an exquisitely crafted mix of comedy and romcom. Romeo Spera, a former unfulfilled promise of Italian music, completely incapable of being alone and a collector of terrible sentimental stories, randomly runs into Iris (Claudia Gerini) in a bar in Brussels.

The girl, with a strong and cheeky character, gifted with an incredible voice, soon becomes his Muse and together they found an electropop duo. Naturally, things will become quite complicated and the skill of Carlo Verdone (author of the screenplay together with Francesca Marciano and Pasquale Plastino) is to make us become fond of a character who is a loser, yes, but with a good heart, capable of getting up every time, starting again and defending his own dignity.

The chemistry between Gerini, sensual, clever but ultimately desperate, and this vulnerable and human Verdone is irresistible. Another brilliant and mature ending, another film in which we talk about the rediscovery of the greatest love: the love for oneself. “I’m crazy about Iris Blond” remains one of Carlo Verdone’s most mature, complex and also melancholy films, but he always finds a way to surprise us, make us smile, teach us something.

“Schoolmates” (1988)

One of the best generational films in our history. “Schoolmates” belongs to a particular period of our cinematography, in which our cinema proposed the doubts, fears and reasoning of a generation, that of the Baby Boomers, who felt they had failed or in any case had betrayed themselves, of not knowing what to do with their lives and how to change it.

If Gabriele Salvatores reached absolute heights with his escape trilogy, Carlo Verdone, together with Piero De Bernardi, Leonardo Benvenuti and Rossella Contessi, created the most personal of his screenplays, to guide us in a hilarious, bitter and melancholy reunion between former high school classmates. “Schoolmates” has an incredible cast on its side. In addition to Carlo Verdone, we find Christian De Sica, Nancy Brilli, Massimo Ghini, Eleonora Giorgi, Alessandro Benvenuti, Maurizio Ferrini, Piero Natoli, Angelo Bernabucci and many others, all perfect in giving us a human insight that is desolate to say the least, but also tender.

Profoundly political in its subtext with which it mocks the hypocrisy, the bigotry, the vile and malignant petty bourgeois soul of its protagonists, it is actually very lenient with its protagonists. Clearly connected to the great American cinema of the genre, above all “The Big Cold” by Kasdan, is the most particular film of Verdone’s career.

“To the Wolf” (1992)

Perhaps it will surprise some to find “To the wolf wolf” in this list. But this film, written by Carlo Verdone together with Filippo Ascione, Leonardo Benvenuti and Piero De Bernardi, is instead one of the most profound and best directed of his career. Everything revolves around Vanni (Sergio Rubini), Livia (Francesca Neri) and Gregorio (Carlo Verdone), who try to understand where their father Paolo (Giampiero Bianchi), a famous writer, has gone.

That journey for all three will mean taking a break from their lives, but also dealing with arguments, envy, misunderstandings that led them to drift apart. With perfectly written and interpreted dialogues, a tone of social and customary satire which however merges with a multi-faceted intimate process, “To the Wolf to the Wolf” is a film with which Carlo Verdone decides to focus heavily on the psyche of his protagonists, on their feelings and relationships. We talk about family, about fatherhood, but without rhetoric, without sugarcoating its ability to shape us even against our will.

This is also a deeply personal film for Carlo Verdone. Which reminds us how much this actor and director has always been able to impress us with his ability to lay himself bare, and in doing so to also talk to us about ourselves, about our lives, about how we are often deprived of happiness and eager to have it.