Italian Actor Face-Off: Mastroianni vs.Vittorio Gassman

There are many iconic actors, like Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Sordi, or Aldo Fabrizi, Ugo Tognazzi, Nino Manfredi, who were all great both in comedy and drama.

Between these two, I prefer Gassman, who has a stronger screen presence and a more powerful line delivery.

This is Castellitto who I mentioned in the first post - one of the great modern Italian actors we don't talk about much but we should.

A couple great films for each - The Organizer for Marcello, one of his most smartly conceived performances - a whole generation of American actors copied how he built this character from the ground up in their overall characterizations - particularly Dustin Hoffman who you could see in an English version.

Here's Gassman acting with Hoffman (!) in Sleepers which I thought he stole from some the heavy hitters in the cast. He's great in this scene in particular:

It's a straight drama - he plays a judge who gets assigned a case that goes against his views in the facts and on the way others see it .......it's a great role because he so often played men of authority and here he's playing that as a man of authority and great intellect which in a way works against him here.

It's a tour de force but a quiet one and unlike most of his earlier work too in how he plays it. themoviesinner may have seen it, I know he's a big fan of him from some posts on here. 

He said to add other names. Maybe he wants to do further polls.

Like cherry68 above, I also picked Gassman as he was quite versatile and capable of giving a darker, menacing edge to his characters. Still, Mastroianni was a fine and sensitive actor and one of my favourite performances from him, which is never discussed here, was in Ghost of Love, as a middle-aged man haunted by the memories of a past lover (a superb Romy Schneider in one of her final roles).

My all-time favourite Italian actors, both of whom made some of their best work in the '70s, would be Gian Maria Volonté and Giancarlo Giannini. From the current generation of working actors, I love Kim Rossi Stuart and Vinicio Marchioni.




Volonté in The Working Class Goes to Heaven.



Rossi Stuart in No Skin.