Fumo di Londra

Dante Fontana, a modest antique dealer of Perugia, manages to make his dream come true: he has to leave to England in order to auction a fragment of an Etruscan statue off. A hopeless Anglophile, Fontana doesn’t waste any time and once he gets in London he goes buy himself a typical gentleman’s outfit: suit, bowler hat and umbrella. But that is not enough to hide his original country. He then goes to the auction and sells his piece to a noblewoman, who invites him at his castle to haunt foxes. Fontana connects with the England of his dreams: green fields, red jackets, golf players and Victorian gentlemen and ladies. He also meets the noblewoman’s granddaughter, who takes him to visit a college... and that’s where he gets in trouble. He discovers the nonconformist and objector students, he gets involved in a fight between rival gangs and he is caught during a police raid. He will have to leave from an England that is extremely different from the one in his dreams.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

First of all, I want to point out that before being an actor, I consider myself an author. My first cinematographic works were my texts, my characters. Later I wrote plots and screenplays. Anyway, I have never made a film without co-working on the script. For this reason, the director often comes after the film has already been made. You thought about a suitable director and you called him. You would choose among the most available ones and most of them had the same features: for example Giorgio Bianchi, who never reached an high level in cinema but was an excellent artisan. I needed this kind of directors, because I was making one film per month. Steno was another one of them. Anyway it happened quite naturally that I started to direct some of my own films, but basically I was making them all. I just needed to meet someone with a peculiar feature and I would start to imagine the whole story around this character. Starting right there, Rodolfo Sonego and I used to write a screenplay and make a film. Naturally, there was an ordinary director, but I was the one guiding him, everything was set up around my character. That is how many films came out, Il seduttore (Rossi), Lo scapolo (Pietrangeli), Il marito (Loy, Puccini), Il moralista (Bianchi), Il vigile (Zampa) etc. I was too busy to direct: directing a film means making two a year, but I used to make twelve, thirteen. When I started to slow things down, I began directing a few of my screenplays. Why giving to someone else an idea that I had? It was not about the wish of directing myself, but the desire not to waste any time explaining an idea to someone who may not agree and that could have wanted to add his personal mark to it. So to avoid fighting and risking doing something different from my original vision, I started making films all by myself.
I was in England working for Fox on Quei temerari sulle macchine volanti, a film with characters who represented all the countries in the world in an air raid and I played the part of an Italian Count. England is a dream for Italian people: the typical grey atmosphere, the grey suit, the bowler hat, the umbrella... I was looking around and I started to understand that England was changing, the traditional one was dying: there were boys with long hair, the Beatles and their new trends. Once I got back to Italy, I found a producer who believed in me and so I went to London with a small troupe. I started to shoot leading my character around the city, properly dressed up. It took place in a small village, he was an antique dealer and because of his work, an auction, he had to go to London. And soon I made Fumo di Londra, as I made Un italiano in America in twenty-five days.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

Director: Alberto Sordi.
Soggetto e sceneggiatura: Sergio Amidei, Alberto Sordi.
Fotografia (technospes, technoscope): Benito Frattari.
Scenografia e ambientazione: Elio Costanzi.
Editor: Antonietta Zita.
Music: Piero Piccioni.
Cast and characters: Alberto Sordi (Dante Forte, antiquario), Fiona Lewis (Elisabetta), Army Balby (la duchessa), Alfredo Marchetti (il conte Bolla), Clara Bindi (la moglic), Michael Trubshawe (il colonnello), Massimo Ungaretti (un amico), Romano Giomini (un viaggiatore), Kin Ella, Caroline Hunro, Lucy Hill, Elisabeth Rupper, Ann Hackett.
Production company: Giorgio Bianchi, per la Fono Roma.
Italian distribution: Rank.