As
Luciano De Crescenzo admits himself, he "has
lived two lives, that of an engineer and that
of the writer", saying he "reincarnated
at the wonderful age of 47 ".
In 1976 he was the director of IBM Italia, but
as he "had a lot of free time", he started
to write imitating "the style of how Giuseppe
Marotta described Naples".
So he wrote his first novel "Così
parlò Bellavista" , which was published
by in the BUR series of Mondadori and it gained
respectable success.
If De Crescenzo had not met Maurizio Costanzo
by chance, he would never have become the person
he is today. He was invited for the show 'Bontà
loro' and he was so charming and so much a "napoletano"
that the public loved him and increased the sales
of his book.
Later he became interested also in the cinema.
He worked with Arbore in "Papocchio"
and in "FFSS". He became director of
four movies made from his books.
The first two movies, about the character of Bellavista,
a retired philosophy teacher, have a subtle narrative
plot which gives ample occasion to insert a series
of little scenes on what it is to be "napoletano".
Weaker is the "Mistero di Bellavista",
where De Crescenzo chooses a detective plot for
humor. The aim in "32 dicembre" is different
and ambitious: the subjectivity of time. In Naples
only, with the inhabitants' way of being "napoletano",
the relativity of time can be found. And in Naples
the curious feeling can often be experienced that
life is "larger than long".
His latest movie is entitled "Croce e Delizia"
and it is made from one of his novels.
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