Antonio Orlando, A Neapolitan actor — part II

Werner Schroeter wrote in his autobiography that Antonio’s heroin use – both through snorting and injecting –, affected Antonio in unexpected ways. Instead of the usual pattern of heightened awareness followed by a crash, Antonio found the drug energizing. It kept him sharp and focused, except when he overdosed, which he carefully avoided during work hours. Antonio showed impressive self-control in this regard.

Still, Schroeter watched this situation unfold with a heavy heart over time. He tried to maintain a fatherly and ethical stance without being preachy. He managed to convince Antonio to quit it briefly, but his sobriety didn’t last long. After that, Antonio turned to heavy drinking. When drunk, Antonio’s behavior took a nasty turn, becoming violent and confrontational.

During that period, Antonio worked steadily in mainstream cinema. Porca vacca!, a dramatic comedy set in World War I, began shooting in February 22 1982, in Rome, with Renato Pozzeto and Laura Antonelli playing the main characters.

The director of Porca vacca!, Pasquale Festa Campanile, was very prolific and commercial. There are some bizarre and unexpected moments in this otherwise «conventional» comedy. In one of those shocking scenes we see Pozzeto walking, dressed in women’s clothes, accross a corridor of naked young men. He is trying to avoid the draft, to no avail –he’s sent to the trenches, near the Austrian-Italian border.

In this film, Antonio plays a sad-looking ex-seminarian, now a soldier in WWI, who is forced to lose his virginity in a brothel, in a rather violent way, with an elderly, plump prostitute. His screen time in Porca vacca! amounts to about a minute and a half. We see Antonio completely naked, forcibly undressed by his fellow soldiers, but his scene is more tragic and violent than erotic.

The production of Der Rosenkönig (The Rose King) was profoundly shaped by the looming death of Magdalena Montezuma, Schroeter’s long-time friend and muse since the 1960s. Schroeter reflected, “The film’s lead roles are played by three people central to my life. At its heart is Magdalena Montezuma, alongside Antonio Orlando and Mostefa Djadjam. At the time, these three were my closest friends; our lives were intricately intertwined. The film's narrative isn't born from a surrealist dream, but from a genuine, existential one. It encapsulates everything they meant to me, both in life and art. […] The film’s core concept is this: day represents one life, night another, and death is the synthesis of the two”. Der Rosenkönig was shot in Sintra, Portugal, during the early months of 1984.

In his memoir, Schroeter recounted, “On the day Magdalena died, I called my friend Antonio Orlando in Naples, who had played one of the three main roles in The Rose King. I told him, 'Maddalena is gone.' His response was poignant: 'Dunque é nata una stella' (Thus, a star is born)”. Magdalena passed away in Berlin on July 15, 1984, and was laid to rest in the city’s Südstern cemetery.