Franco Zeffirelli: biography of the director and his work

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Franco Zeffirelli is an iconic director, producer and artist whose work touches on many deep themes. The secrets of the director's biography and the mysteries of the director's work help to understand what events and beliefs became the basis for creating brilliant works. The article presents portraits of Franco Zeffirelli (photos of different ages). Diligent student Luchino Visconti illuminates phenomena that exist outside of time - beauty, love and art.

Franco Zeffirelli: biography

At birth, the future director was named Gianfranco Corsi. He was born on February 12, 1923. My father was a modest clothing merchant. His mother died when Franco was 6 years old. Passionate about art, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Florence.

The boy was brought up by his aunt, and later by his father's servant. This is explained by the fact that Franco Zeffirelli was born from a woman on the side.

When the war began, he went to the mountains, refusing to join Mussolini's army. Franco fought alongside the partisans. After the war, he moved to Rome, became an artist and actor. Since 1950, the director has staged a large number of operas and plays, visiting London, Milan, New York and many other major cities with them. The main feature of Franco's style is staged luxury.

Artist Gianfranco Corsi

Academic art education led Franco Zeffirelli to the Florentine theater, where he worked as a graphic designer. He immediately met his future teacher, Luchino Visconti.

The then well-known director and screenwriter offered Zeffirelli a role in a film based on Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. The acting debut was successful, and Luchino Visconti hired Franco Zeffirelli as an assistant for the film The Earth Trembles, which later won the Venice Film Festival award.

Later he works with other directors, but still remains an artist. Franco still collaborates with Luchino Visconti, not only as an assistant, but also as a designer. After a series of extraordinary and daring sets, the Zeffirellis are offered to work on the sets for Cinderella at La Scala. He agrees to this proposal, on the condition that he himself act as director. Cinderella was a resounding success, which allowed Zeffirelli to stage many successful performances.

Franco Zeffirelli: filmography

After successful work in the theater, the director decides to try his hand at cinema. His first films were: "Camping" and "The Taming of the Shrew", but the director himself called the work "theatrical" and even conservative. Critics called Zeffirelli too pretentious and extravagant. In fact, such feedback was due to the abundance of canonical dialogue and scenes.

However, Zeffirelli's next cinematic experience will not only bring him worldwide fame, but will make him one of the exemplary directors of cinema as such. This painting was an interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. Franco Zeffirelli not only revived the classics, he showed them in a new light.

In addition, he became the director of such works:

• "Tea with Mussolini".
• "Jane Eyre".
• "Sparrow".
• "Don Carlo".
• "Hamlet".
• "Endless love".
• "La Traviata".

And even in films he is not only a director, but above all an artist. He, like no one else, succeeded in the selection of actors who became legends. Not all the artists who worked with him gained fame. Many never went beyond the debut in the paintings of Zeffirelli. Franco himself treated his actors in a peculiar way. He perceived them as shades: with one, the whole picture will fail, and the other is able to bring masterpiece notes into it.

Eternal themes

An artist who wants to perpetuate himself in history sooner or later turns to immortal themes. Zeffirelli, as an extremely ambitious person, also keeps up with this tradition and decides to release two religious films: "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" and "Jesus of Nazareth".

The first tells about the youth of Francis of Assisi, who does not agree with the tenets of the Catholic Church. After a long struggle with the Pope himself, he decides to found his own school -Franciscanism.

"Jesus of Nazareth" is a description of Jesus' life journey. In the film, he is presented as a historical hero.

Prizes and awards

Franco was nominated for a 1996 Directors Guild of America Award. He also won the Best Director award for Romeo and Juliet. The same award was given to him after the release of the film "Brother Sun, Sister Moon". He subsequently received the David di Donatello Award.

In 1969, the director won an Oscar. And in 1982 he received the "Golden Raspberry" for art direction in the work "Endless Love". After 2 years, Franco receives an award in two nominations from the British Academy for his work on Triviata. In 1986, the director was awarded the Palme d'Or for Othello.

Private life

For a long time, Franco Zeffirelli did not tell reporters about the details of his personal life. This is due to the fact that he is a representative of homosexuals. In Europe, it is considered good form to keep silent about the details of your personal life.

However, in an interview, he stated that his first experience with girls happened at the age of 16. Subsequently, the homosexual nature became dominant. Same-sex love in Florence was common.

Director Franco Zeffirelli is distinguished by the fact that in each of his works he shows the strength of youth and the youthfulness of his convictions. Any of his paintings becomes a masterpiece, bribing the audience with an idealcombination of actors and discussion of eternal themes.