ZEFFIRELLI, Franco

Nationality: Italian. Born: Gianfranco Corsi in Florence, 12 February 1923. Education: Studied architecture at University of Florence, and at Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence. Family: One son, one daughter. Career: Theatre director, from 1945; designer for opera, from 1946; made only acting appearance in Zampa's Angelina, 1947; assistant director to Visconti, for films and theatre, from 1947, working on La Terra trema, Bellissima, Senso ; opera director, from 1953; directed first film, 1957; made Jesus of Nazareth for TV, 1977. Awards: Academy Award nomination, Best Director, for Romeo and Juliet, 1968.

Films as Director:

1957

Camping (+ co-sc)

1965

La Boheme

1966

The Taming of the Shrew (+ co-sc); Florence—Days of Destruction (doc)

1968

Romeo and Juliet (+ co-sc)

1972

Fratelli sole sorella luna (Brother Sun, Sister Moon ) (+ co-sc)

1977

Gesu di Nazareth (Jesus of Nazareth ) (for TV) (+ co-sc)

1979

The Champ

1981

Endless Love

1982

La Traviata (+ sc); La Bohème (for TV)

1983

Strasphere (doc)

1986

Otello (Othello ) (+ sc)

1988

Il Giovane Toscanini (Young Toscanini )

1990

Hamlet (+ co-sc)

1992

Storia di una Capinera (The Story of a Blackcap ) (+ sc)

1993

Sparrow (+ sc)

1996

Jane Eyre (+ sc)

1999

Tea with Mussolini (+ sc)

Other Films:

1947

Angelina (Zampa) (role)

1948

La terra trema (Visconti) (asst d)

1951

Bellissima (Visconti) (asst d)

1954

Senso (Visconti) (asst d)

1995

Placido Domingo: A Musical Life (role)

Publications

By ZEFFIRELLI: books—

Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus: A Spiritual Diary, San Francisco, 1984.

Zeffirelli: The Autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli, London, 1986.

By ZEFFIRELLI: articles—

"Versatility," an interview with Gordon Gow, in Films and Filming (London), April 1973.

Interview with B. J. Demby in Filmmakers Newsletter (Ward Hill, Massachusetts), September 1973.

"Knowing, Feeling, Understanding, Then Expression," an interview with A. Stuart, in Films and Filming (London), August 1979.

"A Dialogue with Franco Zeffirelli," in American Cinematographer (Los Angeles), October 1981.

Interview, in La Revue du Cinéma (Paris), May 1986.

Interview by Jean-Michel Breque, in L'avant Scene Cinéma (Paris), May 1987.

"Une aventure esaltante mais risquée," an interview with J. M. Brèque, in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), July/August 1988.

Interview with Steve Grant, in Time Out (London), 17 April 1991.

"Breaking the Classical Barrier: Franco Zeffirelli Interviewed by John Tibbets," in Literature-Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), April 1994.

"A Beachhead of Anti-Politics," an interview with Nathan Gardels, in Los Angeles Times, 6 April 1994.

"Anti-Politics of the Image," an interview with Nathan Gardels, in New Perspectives Quarterly (Los Angeles), Summer 1994.

On ZEFFIRELLI: articles—

Lane, John, "The Taming of the Shrew," in Films and Filming (London), October 1966.

Chase, D., "The Champ : Round Two," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), July/August 1978.

Pursell, M., "Artifice and Authenticity in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), October 1986.

Stivers, Cyndi, "Hamlet Revisited," Premiere, February 1991.

"Alas, Poor Mel," in The Economist (London), 27 April 1991.

Van Watson, William, "Shakespeare, Zeffirelli, and the Homosexual Gaze," in Literature-Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), October 1992.

Rooney, D., "Zeffirelli Suffers the Unkindest Cut," in Variety (New York), 11/17 March 1996.

Lee, A., "Zeffirelli's Revenge," in New Yorker, 22 April 1996.

Calderale, M., in Segnocinema (Vicenza), May/June 1996.

Simmons, James R. Jr., and Philip Weller, "'In the Rank Sweat of an Enseamed Bed,': Sexual Abberation and the Paradigmatic Screen Hamlets: Freud's Footprints in Films of Hamlet," in Literature/ Film Quarterly (Salisbury), April 1997.

Franco Zeffirelli imbues his theater, opera, and film productions with a dazzling array of baroque imagery, visual pyrotechnics, sumptuous sets and costumes, and overt eroticism. Of his major motion pictures, nearly all are adaptations of classical derivation set in another era. To many viewers, his films are hollow, banal, and superfluous romantic exercises, but Zeffirelli defends his love of the past and tradition by saying: "We have no guarantee for the present or the future. Therefore the only choice is to go back to the past and respect traditions. I have been a pioneer in this line of thinking, and the results have proven me right. . . . The reason I am box-office everywhere is that I am an enlightened conservative continuing the discourse of our grandfathers and fathers, renovating texts but never betraying them."

After studying architecture at the University of Florence, Zeffirelli took up acting. Luchino Visconti saw him in a production of Jean Cocteau's Les Parents terribles and hired him to act in stage productions of two works—Eurydice, by Jean Anouilh, and Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky. Zeffirelli also involved himself in designing sets and costumes for Visconti's stage presentations, and appeared in the film L'onorevole Angelina, directed by Luigi Zampa and starring Anna Magnani. As a result of that film, he was offered a seven-year acting contract at RKO-Radio by screenwriter Helen Deutsch. Zeffirelli turned the offer down, however, to become Visconti's assistant on three films—La terra trema, Bellissima, and Senso. Zeffirelli's natural talent in the realms of set and costume design and his love of opera provided an obvious segue into staging opera productions. These productions gained a reputation for opulence and for the focusing of attention on the lead female singers. Zeffirelli, who says he "adores fun, fantasy, and women," emphasized these elements in his operas. His most famous and successful association in opera was with the volatile Maria Callas, for whom he staged productions of La Traviata, Lucia de Lammermoor, Norma, and Tosca. His lengthy apprenticeship in the various theatrical arts earned Zeffirelli a reputation as a Renaissance man of sorts. He turned to feature film directing in 1967, bringing his romanticized traditionalism to The Taming of the Shrew, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. While unarguably a bowdlerization of Shakespeare, its slapstick and boisterous merriment was engaging.

Romeo and Juliet was another matter entirely. Here the very heart of Shakespeare was replaced with Romeo and Juliet as flower children. It was an unabashed combination of theatricality, nude love scenes, and a Mercutio which Zeffirelli describes as "a self-portrait of Shakespeare himself as a homosexual." The film was tremendously popular with the young movie-going audience and received Academy Awards for cinematography and costume design.

Fratello sole sorella lune (Brother Sun, Sister Moon) was also aimed at the young, this time the "Jesus freaks," members of a fundamentalist religious group, but this outrageous portrait of St. Francis of Assisi was a complete flop.

Zeffirelli's 1978 Easter television presentation, Jesus of Nazareth, employed a star-studded cast and surprised many serious critics with its sensitivity and restraint. This was not the case, however, with his syrupy diminishing of The Champ, a sentimental classic that should never have been updated.

Zeffirelli disavows the explicitly erotic Endless Love, a vehicle for Brooke Shields, which, he says, was a beautiful story of the tragedy of two families in its original three-hour-version. He labeled the truncated version "trash" and vowed to stop with his attempts to capture the young audience. Appropriately, his next picture was the opulent and admirably cinematic presentation of La Traviata. For his Hamlet, however, he courted controversy with his casting of heartthrob Mel Gibson in the title role.

Zeffirelli's Hamlet was similar to his earlier The Taming of the Shrew in that both attempted to bring Shakespeare to the masses by casting bankable Hollywood names—Mel Gibson, Glenn Close—alongside classically trained Britons—Paul Scofield, Alan Bates, Ian Holm. Zeffirelli defends his extravagant approach to filmmaking by saying, "I am a flag-bearer of the crusade against boredom, bad taste, and stupidity in the theater," but he is still the target of critical barbs such as those from a Time magazine reviewer who stated he was "a director in need of a director."

Zeffirelli's other recent films of note include Tea with Mussolini and Sparrow, a typically ornate but otherwise ponderous account of a young novice nun in 1850s Sicily who is forced out of her convent because of a cholera epidemic. She returns to her hometown and promptly falls in love, but rejects her suitor to return to the nunnery. Once there, she is conflicted by her feelings for her beloved and her religious commitment. Almost driven to insanity, she eventually garners the fortitude to persevere in her religious calling.

In recent years, Zeffirelli primarily has concentrated on directing opera productions in Europe and the United States, including a stint at New York's Metropolitan Opera, where he directed a 1995 production of La Traviata.

—Ronald Bowers, updated by Rob Edelman