Jimmy Fontana
Il Meglio

Ah... if I were a director, I would like to make a movie about this theme: a singer very much in vogue in the early '60s, played by Massimo Boldi, retraces his life in front of an imaginary biographer.

From his initial successes to international acclaim, to the gradual disappearance from the scene, except for sporadic appearances on TV shows and a discreet activity as a songwriter behind the scenes. The friendship with a clan formed by colleagues Gianni Meccia (played by Joe Pesci), Riccardo del Turco (Claudio Santamaria), and Nico Fidenco (Elio De Capitani). His passion for tennis takes him to the courts of half of the world and the competitive jet set (for example, a Borg played by Owen Wilson). The passion for weapons, the purchase of a submachine gun that, due to strange twists of fate, ends up in the hands of a series of terrorists who kill right and left in the confused Italy of the late '70s - early '80s. An artistic autumn lived, without clamoring, from the second half of the '90s to today, alternating with reunions on various Sunday TV programs. It would be a sort of counter-history of an Italian, and a nice way to revisit, in an atypical way, certain fundamental turning points of more or less recent news, seen from an extraordinary and, in some respects, poetic perspective.

Over everything, I would spread a soundtrack with the great hits of Jimmy Fontana, born Enrico Sbriccioli (b. 1934), from "Il mondo" to "Non te ne andare" or "L'amore non è bello (se non è litigarello)", passing by songs written by others, like "Che sarà" by Ricchi & Poveri.

Even Jimmy Fontana constitutes, following the directives of my presence on DeBaser, a "minor" singer, whose state of minority appears directly proportional, to this day, to the time elapsed from the peak of our star's career, recorded precisely in the early '60s and overwhelmed, as expected, by the advent of the beat generation and what we usually define as modernity in music.

Not that the Marche-native Jimmy was a bad singer, far from it, and much less a bad songwriter, as some of his pieces have neither lost impact nor modernity, still resulting evocative today - if not small melodic poetic masterpieces - like the already mentioned "Il mondo", even thanks to their jazzy undertones.

However, his figure appeared in the '60s as it does today, outdated, both in the way of being on stage and in the way of singing, embodying the epitome of a certain Italian song, the sublimation of the '40s-'50s style that had seen in Gino Latilla or Joe Sentieri, as well as in the early Claudio Villa, its champions.

It was a style already taken down by the first screamers (Mina, Celentano, Pavone, Dallara) and definitively buried by the psychedelic rock revolution of the late '60s. It was indeed melodic music that conceded little to the syncopated rhythm of the early Ludwig, as well as to the energetic jingle jangle of the guitars, telling us more about the times that were than about the future.

A style to which little has benefited from the relative success of the Sanremo song "Beguine" ('82), as well as the late '80s revivalism with lifelong friends, renamed "I superquattro", present on Fininvest networks in the years of decline.

In this, it is interesting to note how Fontana's life, even in its more dramatic implications, symbolically intersects with the degradation and reaction to the utopias of '68, making him a curious posthumous figure in life, an involuntary and unaware witness of the evolution of art, music, politics, youth tastes, and mentalities.

In this anthology, you will obviously find the best of Fontana, at least being able to imagine the feature film evoked by his notes, a past that will not return, an idyll trampled by history and life.

Cinematically Yours,

Il_Paolo