Umberto Tozzi is still one of the kings of Italian music in cinema
For better, for worse and everything in between, Umberto Tozzi remains one of the kings of Italian music in international audiovisual production. Maybe it’s Andrea Bocelli who grabs the title of standard bearer of bel canto to be consulted for the big events that require the mark of Italianness, maybe it’s Måneskin who are the last to have really broken through in the US market or on social media around the world, but when there is an Italian song (or a full stop song) to be placed in an international film, Umberto Tozzi remains one of the priority choicessometimes the only one possible.
The IMDb page dedicated to the artist and the use of his hits in series and films speaks for itself: 87 credits thatsurprisingly, they are in large part concentrated in international productions, also of some importance. There isn’t a year in which at least a couple of directors haven’t thought “here we put a nice song by Tozzi, and we’ve solved the problem”.
Yes, but which songs? Two in particular. One obviously is “Gloria”, thanks to the resounding success of the 1982 English version sung by Laura Branigan. However, here we talk about the times in which it is the original and Italian version of Tozzi that is used. The other is “Ti amo”, a 1977 hit that anticipates in every way the romantic pop sounds and feelings of the following decade.
That’s right this song to be played over the end credits of the first episode of “Disclaimer”the series directed by Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón arriving right now on Apple TV+. Apparently it is a lazy, stereotyped use. A bit like when in 2019 Marvel decided to place “Stella Stai” in “Spider-Man: Far from Home”. An Italian song was needed to describe in music the arrival of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker in Italy and, more precisely, in Venice. Tozzi’s music only served to underline the most stereotyped of Italian images, starting with the Guardia di Finanza protesting a banana (!?) in the superhero’s luggage.
“Disclaimer” seems to follow the same path and arrives in Venice a few decades ago. They are here too two young English people in love taking a holiday in Italy, carefree and romantic. They are so in love that, when the Italian conductor catches them naked in the bunk while making love, they don’t bat an eyelid and, without getting upset or covering themselves, they hand him the ticket.
The protagonists of the series are not the two young English lovers who travel up and down Italy on the Intercity. The first episode though ends with a self-portrait of them in Venice, outside the train station. On the fade to black, “Ti amo” by Umberto Tozzi starts, which accompanies the closing credits of the pilot episode. It seems like yet another postcard use of Tozzi’s music, but instead it is the most intriguing example of a much more tantalizing evolution of his romantic ballads in films.
To understand it you have to go back to a few weeks ago, when it arrived in theaters the horror “Speak no Evil”, an Anglophone remake of the Danish title of the same name. Here too we find foreigners on holiday in Italy. Two families of very different social backgrounds and characters bond over a glass of good wine and a plate of orecchiette. In the background there can only be “Gloria”, which however punctuates what will turn out to be the background to an insidious, diabolical plan.
Also in “Disclaimer” the use of Umberto Tozzi’s quintessential love song will prove to be much more sinistercrueler than we would expect. To understand this, however, you need to see the whole series and understand what the two young English boys in love have to do with the war photojournalist protagonist of the story, played by Cate Blanchett. Watching “Disclaimer” is more than recommended, because it is one of the best series of 2024. In its central phases it almost seems like we are witnessing a new “Tár”, in which Blanchett once again embodies a serious, esteemed professional overwhelmed by defamatory accusations, which destroy her career and family.
This time though the fall of the character she plays is orchestrated by an elderly man whose life was in turn overwhelmed and destroyed by a tragic accident. Initially the protagonist seems only a witness to the tragic event. However, some photos – bitterly ironic, considering her work – and a novel point to her direct involvement.
The series is the adaptation of Renée Knight’s novel, a cautionary tale about how the meaning of apparently objective elements – a photographic shot – can distort and tip over when manipulated from different points of view. In the series, two off-screen voices alternate: one in the first person, one in the second, in the slow development of a revenge that seems to bring the persecutor and his victim ever closer. The identities of the two are often interchangeable, they are both victims and executioners, as Tozzi himself said (the text is by Giancarlo Bigazzi) in “The others are us”.
The elderly widower and the photojournalist are united by the same way of reasoning, by the same analytical, icy and brutal vision of the people around them.
Except that the answer doesn’t even lie there, in the victim/perpetrator duality of when someone tries to retaliate for a wrong suffered. “Disclaimer” goes further, perfectly intercepts a certain change in cultural sensitivity, in collective mentality. A change that has also changed the nuances of meaning of certain musical hits, certain films, certain books from the 80s and 90s. In the final episode of the season there is a chilling scene that clarifies the meaning of the entire series. It’s difficult not to think of that initial “I love you”, that line: “after all, a good man, who isn’t cold in his heart and in bed I’m in charge!”. How this verse sounded in 1977, how it sounds today. The beauty of Umberto Tozzi’s used and sometimes abused hits is that over time they begin to bring a different and, perhaps, even more powerful meaning to the soundtracks of films and series.
“Disclaimer” is available exclusively on Apple TV+ starting October 11, 2024.
