The actor, director, playwright and poet Gianfrancesco Guarnieri was born in Milan , in Italy, and arrived in Brazil at the age of two, to mark the history of theater and cinema in the country. A typical example of a man with Italian blood who was adopted by his new country and returned the affection with an enormous contribution to national arts.
Gianfrancesco Sigfrido Benedetto Martinenghi De Guarnieri was born in the capital of Lombardy on August 6, 1934. Son of the conductor Edoardo Guarnieri and the harpist Elsa Martinenghi, arrived in Brazil as a child with his family, who decided to move to the country in 1936, settling first in Rio de Janeiro.
Since he was a teenager, Guarnieri was already demonstrating the two vocations he would pursue for the rest of his life: , and political activism. At just 13 years old, she began writing for the newspaper Communist Youth.
Expulsion from school
The first attempt to write a play came at the Santo Antônio Maria Zacharias school of priests. With the name of Shadows from the past, the play had as one of the characters a boastful vice-rector, played by Gianfreancesco Guarnieri himself.
The students immediately recognized in the character the vice-rector of the college, despite the theme of the montage having nothing to do with the institution. They started shouting his name during the show and applauded a lot at the end, but Guarnieri ended up being expelled.
At the beginning of decade 1950, the family moved to São Paulo, where Guarnieri began doing amateur theater with Oduvaldo Vianna Filho (Vianninha) and a group of students.
Guarnieri and the Arena Theater
In 1955, the group created the Paulista Student Theater, under the guidance of Ruggero Jacobbi. In the same year, he won his first acting award as the protagonist of the play There's an Inspector Outside, by Priestley.
The following year, in 1956, the TPE joined the Arena Theater, founded and directed by Jose Renato. It was at Teatro de Arena that Guarnieri won one of the most coveted awards of the time, the APCA for best new actor in the role of George in the play of mice and men, by Steinbeck, directed by Augusto Boal.
At the same time he was called by the director Roberto Santos to make his first film performance, in the film The Big Moment, which kicked off the movement New Cinema.
They Don't Wear Black Tie
His first play as a playwright was They Don't Wear Black Tie, staged in 1958 by Teatro de Arena. In the text, he combined his vocations as an actor and playwright with the vein of political activist, inaugurating a new path of investigation into Brazilian reality in theater.
The play, which explored the working relationships from the point of view of a workers strike, was directed by José Renato and the cast included talents that were beginning to emerge in Brazilian theater, such as Guarnieri himself, Lelia Abramo, in his professional debut, Flavio Migliaccio and Milton Gonçalves.
The work put the workers' strike under discussion on the Brazilian scene for the first time and earned him several awards, including the State Governor Award of author disclosure and the APCA Actor Award.
Success in cinema
The success would be repeated more than 20 years later, with the adaptation of the play for the cinema, released in 1981, directed by Leon Hirszman. The film received six national and ten international awards, including the Golden Lion No. Venice International Film Festival, for Leon and Guarnieri.
If in the theatrical production Guarnieri played the son Tião strikebreaker, who betrays collective interests in search of an individual solution, in the film he assumed the role of otavio, the father, a worker and union leader with a vast history of struggles and arrests.
In several interviews, the author credited the maid Daisy, who took care of him in childhood and adolescence, the “learning” of popular culture, of life on the streets and in Rio’s favelas.
It was Margarida's mother, who was illiterate, lived on the hill and had great wisdom, that Guarnieri was inspired to create Romana, the matriarch played by Lelia Abramo in the theater and Fernanda Montenegro at the movies.
Guarnieri pieces
In the years following the resounding success of his debut as a playwright, Guarnieri continued writing plays, such as Gimba, The seed, Starting Point, Son of the Dog, Marta Saré, Castro Alves Asks for Passage, Arena Conta Zumbi e Arena Conta Tiradentes – these two in partnership with Boal – and A Scream in the Air.
A Semente debuted in 1961, at Brazilian Comedy Theater, with direction from Flávio Rangel. The play, which was openly political and entirely outside of TBC standards, bluntly addressed the communist militancy, criticizing both the methods of the right and the left.
Although it featured renowned actors, such as Leonardo Villar, Cleyde Yáconis, Stênio Garcia and Natália Timberg, in addition to Guarnieri himself, the play had many problems with censorship, which ended up cooling the interest of those who frequented the so-called Bourgeois Temple of Teatro Paulista.
“The text constitutes a clear and bold incitement to subversion of public order, aiming to undermine its bases and the structure of the democratic regime in force in the country”, said the censor's opinion. The military coup had not even broken out and Guarnieri already had problems with censorship.
The curious thing is that in the text he criticized the rigidity of the Communist party and the excessive determination of left-wing leaders, which bordered on indifference with the “human side” of political causes. The play ended up being performed, but went out of print quickly.
Guarnieri at the cinema
In cinema, in addition to starring The Big Moment, Gianfrancesco Guarnieri also participated in films such as The Game of Life (1976), by Maurice Capovilla, Gaijin – The Paths of Freedom (1980), by Tizuka Yamasaki, They Don't Wear Black Ties (1981), by Leon Hirszman, The Next Victim (1983), by João Batista de Andrade, Kiss 2348/72 (1990), by Walter Rogério and The Quatrilho (1995), Fábio Barreto.
His last film was Contos de Lygia, from 1998, in which he starred alongside Natália Thimberg under the direction of Del Rangel.
Television
On television, Guarnieri helped the vehicle take its first steps, whether in Grand Tupi Theater or in the first soap operas. One of his unforgettable characters was Tonho da Lua, the crazy guy in the soap opera Sand women, shown on TV Tupi between 1973 and 1974. The role would be played by Marcos Frota in the re-recording of Rede Globo, in 1993.
Another unforgettable character was Jejê, nickname of Jerônimo Machado, the con man in the soap opera Scam, shown by Rede Globo in 1986, in which he starred, once again, with his friend Fernanda Montenegro.
He made a special appearance in the soap opera Terra Nostra (1999), as Giuliana’s “Italian father”, a character played by Ana Paulo Arósio.
Gianfrancesco Guarnieri acted in several other global soap operas, such as Vereda Tropical (1984-85), by Carlos Lombardi, Mandala (1987-88), by Dias Gomes and Which King Am I? (1989), in addition to miniseries such as Rebel Years (1992), and Incident at Antares (1994).
He also played the role of affectionate and fun grandfather Orlando Silva, from the youth series Moon World (1991-92), shown on TV Cultura.
Guarnieri's personal life
His first marriage was in 1958, to the journalist Cecilia Thompson, with whom he had two children, Paulo and Flavio Guarnieri, also actors.
With his companion of the last 40 years, the sociologist Vanya Sant'Anna, he had three more children, Cláudio (Cacau) and Mariana, who also pursued a theatrical career, and his youngest, Fernando Guarnieri.
Gianfrancesco Guarnieri recorded the soap opera at Teatro Oficina Wonderful, from Rede Globo, in which he played the Pepe character, on June 2, 2006, when he felt unwell and was admitted to the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital.
He died of chronic kidney failure fifty days later, on July 22, at the age of 71. He was buried in the Jardim da Serra cemetery, in the city of Mairiporã, where he lived.
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