Woody Allen: “To Rome With Love'”

During the premiere, Allen stated that Italy is considered by Americans as a warm and colored country where people enjoy life.

The four-times Academy Award winning director underlined his profound admiration for the Italian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, and declared that the works of  Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini deeply influenced his professional formation.

The movie was written, directed and played by Allen, not appearing in movies since 2006. “To Rome With Love” has an exceptional international cast: the Italian Academy Award Winner Roberto Benigni, Ornella Muti, Antonio Albanese, Alesandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi,  Flavio Parenti, Alison Pill, Riccardo Scamarcio, Fabio Armiliato, Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, July Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Page.

As  Allen underlined, the comedy aims not at narrating the Italian current cultural and political scenario, but rather wants to tell entertaining stories of common people. “When I come to a place to make a movie, I give you my own impression of it, the things that strike me as dramatic or comic, that would be fun to see...in Rome it is easy to find stories,” Washington Post reported.

“To Rome with love” is a combination of adventures and misadventures of everyday people, such as Benigni’s character, Leopoldo Pasaniello, a common employee that suddenly and with no apparent reason becomes a celebrity and is stalked by paparazzi, or  Penelope Cruz’s character, a high-class call girl who accidentally enters the wrong hotel room and is involved in a series of mishaps after that.

Commenting on Allen’s visit to Rome, Benigni told the Italian journalists attending the premiere: “His presence here in Rome is like a summer snow storm: absolutely amazing.”
Benigni jokingly added: “ I believe Woody picked me because I am obviously the most handsome men on the set! I am sorry for  Mr Baldwin and Mr Eisenberg.”

Italian journalists were the only invited press to today’s screening, as the movie was shown in its Italian version. The film will be released in Italy next Friday and on June 22 in the United States.