Castellitto and Favino play bad guys in Narnia
An icon on Italian arthouse cinema and loved in France (where he will be shooting Jacques Rivette’s latest film after having starred in the director’s Va savoir), Sergio Castellitto has made his Hollywood debut in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the second charter of the fantasy film based on the C.S. Lewis novels. The film directed by Andrew Adamson will be released in Italy on August 14 on 700 screens by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
The Italian actor follows in the footsteps of Tilda Swinton’s White Witch in the first film, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe . “I wanted Italians for the bad guys this time,” said the director, who for the next (and perhaps last, given the not very enthusiastic box office results in the US) instalment decided to pass the baton to Michael Apted.
Castellitto plays Lord Miraz, Caspian’s evil uncle who after having banished his nephew (and legitimate heir to the throne) from Narnia wages war on the kingdom’s mythical inhabitants, the prince’s allies, which include centaurs, gnomes and talking animals, led (as in the first instalment) by the four young siblings who find themselves catapulted in the magical world during as London is bombarded during WWII.
“I was inspired by Shakespeare, in particular King Claudius of Hamlet; and by Charles Laughton, my favourite big-screen bad guy, a mix of ruthlessness and irony,” said the actor, who in performing in English “sought a different acting style” and discovered himself to be perfectly at ease in a genre that, at least today, is rarely made in Italy: “Films such as this one are not made here, and not only for financial reasons. In America, fantasy is free and democratic whereas we are slaves to ideology.”
This point of view is shared by the film’s other Italian actor, Pierfrancesco Favino, who plays General Glozelle, Miraz’s lieutenant. “The only example of fantasy in Italy is Pinocchio [+see also:
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film profile]. The problem is that they tell stories in Hollywood with a freedom that we don’t have, thus we think only of audiences and end up making increasingly less films in which truly believe,” said the actor, who has before in the US, in Night at the Museum and Angels and Demons.
(Translated from Italian)
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