One of Naples' favourite sons, the
late great comic and film director Massimo Troisi, on Monday
received a posthumous honorary degree from his home town
university.
Troisi, who died at 41 in 1994 a few days after wrapping his
last great film Il Postino-The Postman, for which he got two
Oscar nominations. graduated in "Discipline of Music and
Entertainment, History and Theory' at the Federico II University
in the southern Italian port city where he started out in
cabaret in the 1970s.
Troisi, born in nearby San Giorgio a Cremano, would have turned
70 Sunday and a special new Rai documentary on his life and work
was shown at the weekend.
Long-time friend and colleague Enzo Decaro said at the
graduation ceremony: "His dad, Don Alfredo, will be happy with
this degree, he was always asking us to help him in his studies.
"And today the top recognition possible has arrived".
Troisi's sister Rosaria took the parchment saying "I'm
extremely moved" after arts lecturer Anna Masecchia called her
brother "a complex artistic figure, rich in profundity".
Troisi moved from local theatre to TV before finding fame with
Ricomincio Da Tre in 1981 playing an awkward and child-like but
very funny Neapolitan Everyman, speaking in a quirky and
idiosyncratic mix of Italian and dialect.
He later acted with great director Ettore Scola before starring
opposite Philippe Noiret as the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and
Maria Grazia Cucinotta as his love interest in Michael Radford's
Il Postino, just days before dying from a longstanding heart
defect.
"He was one of our dearest children," said university dean
Matteo Lorito.
Neapolitan film director Mario Martone said "he was a Neapolitan
Chaplin".
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