Rome, 18 December 2022, (Corrieredellasera) – There was a time when Gerlando, known as Lando, Buzzanca from Palermo was the most popular and sought-after actor in Italian cinema. Interpreting the figure of the Sicilian male, in a grotesque key, as in a degeneration of Italian comedy complete with many double meanings, Buzzanca had become in the 70s, while on TV he was a successful bourgeois couple with Delia Scala in «Signore e Signora», the audience reference of winks and vulgar jokes.
He was the king of heated sensuality, the export-type Italian male, always ready, therefore also the prototype of an antisocial character, snubbed by the critical left and taken under his protection by the right in search of darlings. Here are titles of billionaire receipts directed by highly skilled directors such as Steno, Vicario, Fulci, Grimaldi, D’Amico: “The Viking from the South”, “When women had tails”, “Homo eroticus”, “The married priest” alongside to the most sensual women of the screen, three times la Podestà, la Bouchet, Senta Berger.
Titles which, however, keep repeating themselves, trivializing themselves, vulgarizing themselves: «The referee», «The mammon cat», «The servant» and then other stories of slaves and industrialists with a complex of toys, even «Me and him» by Salce, from Moravia , because that “he” was at the center of the popularity of an actor who had demonstrated other talents, a pupil of Sharoff’s theater school and in theater rehearsals, from the musical “Cinderella” to a Molière in 90, a Sam Benelli and others a “Liolà” in ’94. In the list of his tops, the exception is «Il merlo Maschio» by Festa Campanile, based on a story by Bianciardi, a witty comedy that is never vulgar in which a cellist Buzzanca discovers that wonder of Laura Antonelli.
A strange career that begins as an author (and includes some variety in the theater) when Pietro Germi discovers him and, already identifying him with the healthy bearer of Sicilian sensuality, entrusts him with roles in the historic diptych of «Divorzio all’italiana» (boyfriend of his sister by Baron Cefalù-Mastroianni) and «Seduced and Abandoned» (brother of Sandrelli). Then Pietrangeli chooses him and he is very good as the clumsy, clumsy sergeant of «La Parmigiana» with Spaak and arrives at «Don Giovanni in Sicilia» by Lattuada which also marks his fateful and inevitable encounter with Vitaliano Brancati, the great Sicilian writer of the “Bella Antonio”.
In the meantime, Buzzanca pays a pledge to the cinema parody of 007 with his series of «James Tont» but does not enter the Italian-style scollacciato, but when he has to change genre he returns to TV («My son» story of a father with a gay son) and he affirms himself, still really good, in the «Viceroy» of Faenza, from the novel by De Roberto, for which he wins the Golden Globe. Nothing is missing in his curriculum: the series “The Restorer”, an edition of “Dancing with the Stars” and also, in the end, a melancholy film with Delle Piane about two homosexuals, “Who will save the roses?”, while the His last appearance is in the TV movie «W the bride and groom». (Corriere della Sera)
Goodbye to Lando Buzzanca: he was one of the most popular actors of the 70s