The Last Colony

Interview with filmmaker Parvin Ansary

Don't miss part one of the interview with Parvin Ansary

Q: Tell me about the latest film you are working on now?

A: "Beatrice Cenci!" It takes place at the end of the 16th century. She lived near Piazza Navona in Rome and the same house is still there. I went to see the house and spent a lot of time studying its aspects. The times were atrocious in Rome of that day. People criticize Islam but the Islamic world was much more advanced and civilized than Europe of the1500's. Italy became a modern nation only in the 1860's.

I am trying to capture how difficult this period was in my film. The Roman Catholic Church helped to end the Italian Renaissance because of its fear of the Protestant Reformation and of the spirit of scientific inquiry that characterized the Renaissance which put man at the center of the universe rather than God. Also Napoleon contributed to this demotion of the church and monarchies by exporting the French Revolution to Italy.

Q: Why did Italian cinema die?

A: Italian cinema is dead because none of the young directors are great like the 5 or 6 great directors of that time. There were lots of bad films then, too, but there was a core of good directors. There are no films like the "Dolce Vita" today. Italians have a live and let live attitude. Mussolini tried to militarize and organize them but it couldn't last. The Italians are not militant. The Italians have a great sense of humor. They are also cynical and don't expect the best. In general they are not profound. They are superficial. They like people. They like to talk about food.

_{Parvin Ansary and Gian Maria Volonte}

Really, I have encountered Italian travelers upon their return from places like India and Hawaii and all they talk about is the food, the cuisine they experienced. Italians eat a lot of food, take a lot of holidays and have more parties than most other societies. I mean there are obviously lots of intellectuals and artists in Italy but in general Italians are more political and not very sincere. Nobody talks about communism or fascism anymore. Not like their films from that time of the 40's and '50's. Communism is silent now and not a big factor. The culture is still socialist. Russian film was an important influence for its melodrama. How many times have we all seen that scene of the empty baby carriage going down the steps over and over and over from "Potemkin?"

The labor party is still alive in Italy. Italians went from fascism to socialism. There was a stalemate between the church and communism. Even the Italian communist leaders were not of the proletariat but were the radical chic, wearing Yves St. Laurent clothes and Ferragamo shoes. My neighbor the communist film director Carlo Lizzani ("Celluloid," 1996 and "Mussolini, The Last Act.") was very bourgeois and used to drive around in a Ferrari. It's not like this anymore.

Q: What about the rise of feminism in Italy?

A: Feminism was very strong in Italy in 1972 and 73. Divorce was legalized. The Minister of Education was a woman and there were women judges, congressmen and professors. They changed many the laws to help women. We women are more direct and more honest than men. It is harder for a woman to be a crook than a man or to start a war for that matter.

In the days when I became a film director, it was considered scandalous. There were not many women directors at all back then. The only other Italian woman director I knew at that time was Liliana Cavani ("Night Porter," 1973) and she dressed very soberly, like a man. I was too showy for that time and was resented by a lot of male directors.

Now women are wearing make up and following fashion trends but for centuries women were denied education, married off young. Women had brains and lots of potential which was denied in the past. Many women in Italy for centuries were sent to convents by their own fathers who wanted to save the inheritance for their eldest sons rather than spend it on wedding dowries to the benefit of some son in law outsider. Now many convents are empty. Religion has now become fashionable; no longer really spiritual, with role models like Richard Gere (with his flirtations with Buddhism and the Dalai Lama.)

America sets trends and fashions. Europe looks to the USA as a role model. TV is replacing social life. Family life is not like before as it was portrayed in Fellini's "Amarcord" with the family members all together and full of passion and affection. Modern technology has separated people from each other.

Q: So what are your past times?

A: Well for one, I don't like to gossip or watch soap operas. But at least the virtual gossip of soaps is better than real gossip in the sense that actual gossip can really hurt and ruin people. A lot of people these days read romance novels and pulp fiction; throw away books to escape from their problems. I myself like to reread the great novels to see how my impressions have changed from reading them, say ten years earlier. I don't want to lose time on stuff that doesn't make me think!

Q: What did you think about 9-11?

A: I think that many Americans don't know about the pain of others and don't believe in the suffering of others, of non-Americans. Revenge is not good because it only generates more violence. The USA is not going to fix Iran by invasion.

Q: What do you think about Islam?

A: Did you know that historically many cities in Iran resisted Islam for 400 years. They had to pay much more tax for being non Moslem to their conquerors. Despite the negative propaganda of today, Islam actually helped to create a renaissance in Iran producing great scholars like Avicenna and Ferdowsi and many others from 1200 to 1400.

It was really a two way street. Islam benefited greatly from its exposure to Persian culture and the encounter of the Islamic Empire with all its many cultural influences from Spain, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, the Balkans and Hungary, gave a lot of culture to Persia influencing the likes of Razzi, Farabi and Ferdowsi. You know there are 1 billion 400 million Moslems in the world, the vast majority of whom are peace loving. The fanatics represent a very small minority. Propaganda is creating a lot of anti Islamic sentiment these days and persecution of Moslems in Europe and the United States which I find personally very upsetting.

I don't want to see Iran bombed by anyone. I can't stand Persians who want to see Iran invaded by the USA. They forget that the USA and Europe sold Iraq all the weapons. Many of the soldiers in the Iran Iraq war on both sides went into the military to feed their families.

_{Parvin and De Sica}

You can't recreate a situation in Iran of 20 years ago! After bombing it, then what? Nothing stays the same. Stagnant water stinks! Nobody wants to think about or act upon political ideals anymore. I think however that Bush has finally understood after Iraq that he can't go it alone and needs the U.N.

Remember that history is written by the victors. The vanquished even a great civilization like the Carthaginians have been completely forgotten. The historic greatness of Iran has been forgotten. Do you know that I still hate Alexander The Great for attacking Persia and burning Persepolis? He attacked my country! Besides Alexander was not really a Greek, he was a Macedonian and not really the heir of classical Greece. Napoleon copied Hamurabi. Alexander copied Cyrus and Darius.

In the West, Alexander is considered a big conqueror but in reality he usurped the Empire that Cyrus and Darius had already set up. The Greeks didn't want empire, they wanted a republic and they didn't want Alexander to be emperor of Persia.

That imbecile Dino De Laurentis produced the film:" Alexander" in which he cast Leonardo De Caprio as Alexander. It was based on a book called "Alexander" by Manfreddi which itself was good. The book was full of humanity showing everyday occurrences, arguments and also about Roxanna falling completely in love with Alexander. Alexander had married both daughters of Darius and Roxanna ended up killing them both. Manfreddi was independent and not influenced by anyone else's opinions or prejudiced by the burning of Persepolis.

The Persians civilized the Mongols and the Timurids. No one ever conquered the Zagros Mountains. The Greeks eventually left Iran and moved to Syria. Iran has a long complicated history.

Q: Let us go back to the discussion of Italian cinema.

A: Italian cinema invented Neo-Realism after the War. They didn't have a lot of resources at that time. They made great and beautiful films out of collective sadness, fear and poverty, especially fear. These conditions created great films not the times of plenty. Mussolini's fascism left the Italians hated after WW II. Rome became the open city and liked the Marshall Plan. Italian films were created out of extreme poverty. People didn't want war anymore. Italy got lots of benefits from their film industry.

There were about 10 directors of which 4 or 5 were truly great at that time. It was the era of Neo Realism. Visconti had his own "other" politics. Fellini dealt in fantasy. Fellini never left Cinecitta. He never filmed on location. He did everything in the studio. He created his own fantasy world. He loved Cinecitta... Rossellini got pissed off at Italy and went to France. And there was Pier Paolo Passolini, who was first a poet and then a director.

When prosperity returned to Italy, the era of "Italian Comedy" arose. At the time it was considered 2nd rate but now intellectuals consider it 1st rate. Then after that, it was "Spaghetti Westerns" and Cecil Demille type films about Hercules and the like. Now only a few good films are being made. Everyone watches TV now, not cinema. No one goes out anymore. People are afraid of crime, traffic hassles, etc...no one goes out.

Dino De Laurentis went to America and remade: "King Kong" and Carlo Ponti went to the USA and produced Doctor Zhivago and never came back to Italy. When they left they took away a lot of Italy's production capacity. There had also been a real synergy between Ponte and script writers like Cesare Zavattini,( "Il Tetto,"1956 and "I Misteri Di Roma," 1963.) The producers and script writers needed each other to produce such works like:" Miracle in Milan" and "The Bicycle Thief." When these producers left for Hollywood, the great works in Italian cinema ended.

The rest of the Italian producers who made little films were not great. They were not educated. They were ex butchers with nothing to say; no more genius left, nothing riveting. There was a lack of energy. Film takes a lot of money and resources which are more available in the USA. The US films went for comedy to cover over the war. Musicals like Carmen Miranda and the like were made to cover over the sadness of World War II.

Q: What do you think about Hollywood?

A: Hollywood films are well made. I love American cinema. In childhood I only saw American movies. In those days of the '50's people had manners, politeness. Men were courtly. They bought women presents, pulled out their chairs, opened car doors for them. During the time of Roosevelt and Truman there was racial discrimination and there were no black Americans in films except as waiters.

The films portrayed houses as always very well furnished and in imitation of England or New England. Everything was portrayed as perfect, ideal; children were always beautiful. This made an impression on me in my childhood. US films today show lots of people kissing and hugging but for real romance it is only the old American films....I loved Katherine Hepburn for her feminism and her great comical dialogue with actors like Cary Grant. I loved Hitchcock's "Rear Window." Those are jewels that we don't see anymore. That film kept you riveted in your seat for 2 hours.

I like French and English film too and they have their charm but they are different from that golden era of American film also.

Q: So what do you think about cinema today and about the contemporary era?

A: There is too much sound, too much computer graphics. The youth like it...all the computer games. The internet replaces family and extended family. In their free time they go to technology. It is their generation...computers. But I say that as long as we can think that we are relevant and not passé. The brain is everything! You can be relevant at whatever age you reach as long as your brain is working. I pray not to go senile.

_{Parvin and Alberto Sordi}

I am not opposed to change. I think it is marvelous that things change. Yesterday there was a massive power failure through out Italy and it made me think about how wonderful electricity is and what it must have been like to get electricity for the first time back at the beginning of the Industrial Age. There is always newness with each generation. This is life; life goes on.

There are today some profound American producers and directors in America like Copolla and Scorcese. Scorcese claims that Rossellini taught him. Anyway I love their films! The latest technology and capabilities are new and need time to be digested, to become normal and more selective and sophisticated.

Q: That reminds me of the early privatization of TV in Italy when after decades of repression by the church and ownership by the state they went crazy with pornography.

A: Exactly!

Q: Parvin, if you permit me, did I ever tell you the story about my own grandfather who invented water softeners? He used to visit us in Italy from time to time when he was in Genoa to work on the water desalinization systems for the Italian cruise ship line on vessels like the "Michel Angelo" and the "Leonardo Da Vinci."

A: Did you inherit his fortune?

Q: No, unfortunately he divorced my grandmother when my dad was only 14 and invested all his emotions, time and resources in his step children and his step grandchildren. So in a sense I was disinherited decades before I was even born.

A: We are all ripped off in one way or another, every single one of us human beings....don't worry, you are not alone....

Q: Well let's get back to cinema. I think this is a very interesting theme about adversity creating great art while prosperity creates decadence. I found a similar theme in the book:" Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi when she talks about Nabakov, postulating that when an idea like communism or Islamic fundamentalism is forced upon reality then reality as you knew it or want it to be becomes an idea. That is a situation in which, horrible as it is, a lot of great artistic achievement can be produced.

A: I agree. However I do not mean to suggest that there are no current great Italian directors. There was: "Intolerance: The Story of Griffith" by the Taviani Brothers and there are Oscar winning films by Giuseppe Tornatore like "Cinema Paradiso," "Everybody's Fine" and "The Star Maker" and Bertolucci has won Oscars too.

Q: By the way, what did the Italians think about the Nobel Peace Prize going to Shirin Ebadi?

A: Many Italians were mad that the Pope didn't get it but I say, the Pope is supposed to make peace his business and he doesn't need a prize for that. The Italian leftwing were very happy for her! I think that there will come a day when the President of Iran will be a woman!

Q: So let's talk for a few minutes about some of the film celebrities whom you have known personally?

A: I came into lots of contact with Vittorio De Sica when he was still mostly acting at Cine Citta. Whenever he saw me he would always call out: "Long Live Persia!" De Sica was very polite. While he was making:" Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" he introduced me to Marcello Mastroiani who was a wonderful human being. De Sica's son Manuel was a musician and a good friend of mine. He always went with me to see Horror films to get the chills esp. in the summer heat.

Q: You're kidding! I never realized that you liked Horror films!

A: Oh Yes. I love Horror films...all of Hitchcock. My all time favorite Horror film is "Shining" with Jack Nicholson.

Q: No way!

A: Yes! I have seen "Shining" at least 15 times and it still scares me every time. I have to cover my eyes. I never stop being scared by this film. I love the end of the film with the old photos from the '20's. I love "Vertigo" also with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart!

Q: Did you know that that was filmed right near where I live in Northern California? There were scenes from San Francisco but the mission with the tower was San Juan Bautista, which is about 45 minutes south from where I live. That tunnel of Eucalyptus trees they kept showing in the movie is still there on Highway 101 and in fact I love driving through it because it smells like cough drops. Hitchcock use to live in the Bay Area. His "Birds" was shot north of here at a town on the ocean called "Bodega Bay." So how did you develop this passion for Horror films?

A: When I was six years old I went to see: "The Wizard of Oz!" with Judy Garland. That was my first scary film. I don't know why but I have always liked them from the time I was a little girl.

I would like to make a Horror film around here where I live. You should see the woods around me when they become filled with fog! And there is an old castle on the top of a mountain peak you can see from my window...

Q: Well if you do decide to make that Horror film then I definitely want a part in it!

A: Surely! Well let's see...as far as greats that I knew there was Gian Maria Volonte who made all those Spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood and there was Alberto Sordi. Sordi really made me laugh. I loved his sense of humor. You know when Sordi died they made it a national holiday and closed down everything in Italy. There was a huge parade that went right through Piazza Del Popolo complete with airplanes trailing banners over head.

 I was a very close friend of Anna Maria Pier Angeli and I was very sad when she died (Suicide in Hollywood.) She was my neighbor in Rome and in the evening she would come over to my house for cocktails and tell me the story of her life. She had been married to the singer Vic Demone at one point. She had debuted in a French film called:" Tomorrow is Too Late" which gained her enough recognition to be picked up by a 7 year contract with Hollywood.

_{Parvin and Anna Maria PierAngeli on the left.}

She went there with her mother who was very bourgeois and a "stage mom..." There she shortened her stage name to Pier Angeli to make it easier for the Americans and she acted in films with Paul Newman and also she fell in love with James Dean. Her mother did not like James Dean. She thought he was a slob. When he came over to their house in Hollywood, he would always wear the same dirty jeans, put his feet up on the furniture and go into the refrigerator uninvited and help himself to their food and drink milk out of the carton. Her mom did not like Dean's bad manners and she was the one who put a stop to the romance.

All these people lived in Rome in those days and we use to see each other at parties all the time. Anthony Quinn and Elizabeth Taylor lived in Rome then too. It's not like that anymore. I don't want to know any of the new players. It is not that I think I am better than anyone else. We are not better than others and in fact it is we who become worse, not the others. We were just more social when we were younger; it's human nature.

Q: I would like to mention here that not only was Hitchcock living and filming around Northern California but John Steinbeck lived in Salinas, 45 minutes south of me and it was during the filming of either the Steinbeck story:" East of Eden" or "Grapes of Wrath" on location that James Dean died in a car crash near Salinas. So back to the interview: What do you do to pass your time now?

A: Now I must have periods of intellectual solitude rather than gregariousness. I spend time alone in Rome seeking out evidence of the Renaissance in architecture and artifacts. Today's actors are superficial and undignified. I knew Luchino Visconti from a distance. He was serious and aloof... a count. He was influenced by the German romantics, Expressionists and authors like Thomas Mann with his struggle between the timeless spiritual, mythological, mystical and artistic perceptions versus the contemporary reality, comfort and familiarity of day to day bourgeois life. ("Death in Venice," 1971 adapted from Mann's novella.)

I also knew Antonioni quite well. These days Michelangelo Antonioni ("The Passenger" 1975) due to strokes can now no longer even speak and he directs films by writing. I know a lot of people still but everything has changed. Rome used to be like a living room. It was personal and comfortable. Remember when we would go to Rosati's Bar in Piazza Del Popolo? We would always see someone like Alberto Moravia there or Pier Paolo Passolini. There were always a minimum of 2 or 3 important film directors in there. Now it is crowded with strangers and only the nouveau riche and it is all about politics.

The world changes yes but we are too crowded now. Everyone is "more important" than you. No more limits or boundaries. People know everything but not profoundly, only superficially and everything is political; not as before.... I hate trends and fashion. Trends exist to make money for the producers. Trends are not profound.

There are a few of the new generation of Italian directors who have won many prizes like: Nanni Moretti and Gabriele Salvatores who have had their works nominated for Oscars 8 or 9 times. Salvatores's "Mediterraneo" was sent to the Oscar committee... I keep up with my old friends. I think it is superficial to know too many people. Fewer is better.

The American Director Paul Bartel was a very close friend to me in film school. I went to visit him in New York City one time when he was making a film with Krzysztof Zanussi ("A Year in the Quiet Sun," 1985.) Paul showed me all around NYC and took me to movie theatres in Harlem where we could see all the little street urchins making all kinds of noise in the audience when they got carried away by the film, which reminded me of Tehran. Paul had me over to his house for dinner in New Jersey at that time and he cooked everything himself. He was a good chef!

He died 3 or 4 years ago under mysterious circumstances. He was gay. One time I remember he came to see me in Rome at twelve o'clock midnight. Paul Bartel made a lot of movies in Hollywood too like "Escape from L.A."

Q: I know. I loved his first film which was really low budget and dark humor: "Eating Raoul!" in which he directed and acted. He was a very funny man. He had a lot of Cameo appearances in movies too like "Caddy Shack II." He was great! He made about 50 independent films.

A: You know in all these years I have only had two really close American friends and that would be Paul Bartel and You!

Q: I am honored. So what ever became of our friend Romina Power? (Tyrone Power and Linda Christians older daughter.)

A: Romina left that rock singer Al Bano whom we Persians nick named "Albaloo!" and for a time she became a painter. She had a daughter who at age 22 ran away to the USA and disappeared. The daughter went to live with some drug addicts in New Orleans for a time and then she disappeared.

Q: I am sorry to hear it. It seems a far cry from those innocent days when she and I and her sister Taryn would meet at that club: Helio Cabala outside Rome for the tea dances. Do you remember how Anthony Quinn was always there swimming in that ice cold stream fed pool? The water was so cold that he and I were usually the only ones in the pool. Also I never forget that when I was 17 you taught me how to dance the Cha Cha and the Bosa Nova at Helio Kabala.

Well Parvin, I want to thank you for this interview. It has been a real education for me in the history of cinema, in antiquity, in modern politics, about the IRI and in the issues of the times we now live in. I know that the readers of "The Iranian.com" are going to be very excited to read this long awaited interview. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I hope to see "Pietro Della Valle" entered in the next Iranian Film Festival in NYC.

A: It is I who must thank you! I have enjoyed talking to you as always. I send you and your family a big hug.

By Brian Appleton

Part one of the interview with Parvin Ansary continues here...