Required viewing for anyone interested in the history of Italian cinema in the 1960s, ALFREDO BINI: UNEXPECTED GUEST also humanises one of its key figures.

The early 2000s, Montalto di Castro, near Rome: an old man, distinguished but clearly in financial distress, appeared at the motel of Giuseppe Simonelli. This was Alfredo Bini, a key movie producer during the 1960s — unarguably Italian cinema’s greatest decade — and despite not being able to pay for a room, he stayed on as Simonelli’s guest for the rest of his life. Simonelli, awed by Bini’s culture and humanity, went so far as to build him a small villa near the motel, and for his part Bini, as he neared death, left Simonelli all his possessions: memorabilia, unfinished scripts, awards and a profusion of photographs. It is this collection, along with the recollections of Simonelli himself, which give the film’s director Simone Isola the chance to tell the story of Alfredo Bini in such vivid detail.

Bini started with a bang with a trilogy of films by director Mauro Bolognini…

The backbone of the film is the series of conversations Isola has with Simonelli. These are interspersed with the conventional ingredients of a documentary biopic: film clips, talking heads, period interviews from Italian TV with Bini himself. Isola shows the personal nature of Simonell’s contribution by including the mechanics of the film-making process as part of it, and appearing as Simonelli’s on-camera interlocutor. This somewhat meta approach is echoed in the use of a very visible narrator filmed in the studio reading from Bini’s own memoirs.
The story the film tells is likely to be catnip to anyone interested in cinema in general, and Italian cinema in particular. Bini entered the Italian film industry by chance after the Second World War — when, despite being underage, he had fought in the Italian army. He was in the right place when a big, noisy film needed extras, and from then on found bit-part acting work. By the late 1950s, he was ready to start producing, and while his first attempt foundered when he was let down by Federico Fellini — who appears as Bini’s antagonist surprisingly often during the film — he started with a bang with a trilogy of films by Mauro Bolognini, a now little-known director whose reputation this film does much to burnish. The last of the trilogy, LA CORRUZIONE in 1963, starred the beautiful Italian actress Rosanna Schiaffino, whom Bini married in the same year.

Bini persuaded Pasolini not to kill himself after the first disastrous week of filming…

Naturally, the greatest emphasis in the film is given to Bini’s relationship with Pier Paolo Pasolini. The director Bernardo Bertolucci, assistant director on Pasolini’s first feature ACCATTONE tells how Bini persuaded the fledging director not to kill himself after the first disastrous week of filming, and then found a group of expert craftsmen to help Pasolini achieve his vision. Much is made of the differences between Pasolini and Bini — one small, dark and gay, the other tall, sandy-haired and very heterosexual — as well as the friendly atmosphere between the two men. It is interesting, too, to be reminded that, far from being progressive and permissive, Italian film censorship was still a constant headache at this time. As with most documentaries, facts are elided or omitted to favour the thesis of the film. UNEXPECTED GUEST implies that Bini’s career foundered with the breakdown, in quick succession, of his two most important partnerships: with Pasolini in his working life and with Schiaffino in his private life. In fact, OEDIPUS REX, his last film with Pasolini, was made in 1967, while his marriage to Schiaffino, despite many lapses on his part, lasted till 1980, and she appeared in a number of the films he produced after he parted ways with Pasolini. The documentary characterises these films en masse as worthless erotica, although some, such as THE SLAVE (SCACCO ALLA REGINA) – with Schiaffino on literally commanding form – have gone on to find a cult fame.
The tone of the film is set by Giuseppe Simonelli’s uncritical hero-worship of Bini, although there are glimpses of an obstreperous personality behind the friendly charm: his interviews include unflattering mimicry of Pasolini and Fellini, he is referred to as a ‘grumpy’ husband, and one surviving director, Ugo Gregoretti — the final ‘G’ of the portmanteau film ROGOPAG — fondly recalls the insults Bini constantly heaped on him. He also seems to have got into more fights than was entirely necessary. More damningly, his attitude to women proves out of tune with modern mores: not only was he regularly unfaithful to Schiaffino, but he kept both lists of his conquests and a ‘private’ stash of erotic photographs of many of these women.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGZ-SliRK8