Giorgio Verdelli
Enzo Jannacci, vengo anch'io

They screened it at the cinema for only three days, this docufilm about Enzo Jannacci.

Released in Venice and not well-loved by critics, partly because of the somewhat predictable subtitle, the film is made up of testimonies and anecdotes, snippets of theater and TV, memories from his friends and colleagues and from his son Paolo, and even some unpublished material.

Not a true biography but an exploration of his artistic and personal world.

For those who love him, it is an unmissable kaleidoscope of songs, duets, jokes, glances, and his being unique and inimitable. But I am biased, and it can't be helped.

It is true that Verdelli, the director, is Neapolitan, and this made some people turn up their noses. Not me.

Jannacci's Milan is not just the Milan of the old tram with which he takes us around, it is also the rest of the world, with its miseries and joys, with the irony and disillusionment that his genius combined with his humanity was and is able to convey.

Perhaps some didn't like the presence of Vasco Rossi, to whom Enzo wrote a funny letter, but, all in all, with the retrospective complicity of a Jannacci who narrates himself, the director also manages to touch his most intimate strings, giving us a glimpse of the inseparable man from the artist, the one who tells the stories of the marginalized, the excluded, the different. He does it with characters now famous like Vincenzina, Armando, the pole of Ortica, or Quelli che…, characters that move with him, between popular song and cabaret, rock 'n' roll and jazz, cinema and theater.

But what stands out the most is his constant musical and linguistic inventiveness, having been able to innovate popular song also through collaboration with people like Gaber, Fo, Strehler, and all his friends from Zelig intended as a cabaret, and I won't list them all as you already know them.

In short, I'll keep it brief. For me, a beautifully made and enjoyable memory. A must-watch.