Lando Buzzanca

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Gerlando Buzzanca (born August 24, 1935) is an Italian comedy actor.

He left high school in his native Palermo when he was 16 years old, and moved to Rome to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. In order to survive, he took many jobs: waiter, furniture mover, and a brief appearance as a slave in the film Ben-Hur.

In his long career he often interpreted the role of the average Italian immigrant from southern Italy, who slowly began to enjoy moderate success during the years of the Italian economic miracle. His films showcased all the freshness of the 1960s, the 1970s and the heavier transition to the 1980s, focusing on the common life in several Italian cities such as Rome, Verona or Milan, balanced between personal happiness and professional achievement.

Buzzanca often interpreted roles of a subordinate white collar worker, with a heavy vein of machismo, as a frustrated employee who tries to redeem his dull existence with his virility. He became famous for his role in the unforgettable film Il Merlo Maschio, (The Male Blackbird), where in a provincial environment of cultural importance, like it is the philharmonic orchestra of the Arena di Verona, he vents out his own frustrations, indulging into candaulism when he induces his bride to expose her naked body in the middle of a bridge in Verona.

Some critics, in a lighter vein, has defined Buzzanca as an "Homo Eroticus": a human being halfway between Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens, who risked extinction in the 1970s, because of the harsh struggle with feminism activists. Today, even if fortunately much less important, this human type is still very present between the Italian male.

We should recognize that Buzzanca's fame is greater in foreign countries that in his native land, and in countries as France, Japan, Greece, Israel, Spain and Switzerland, he is a renowned international stereotype of the Italianprovincialotto, elegant, naif, always causing mischief, and not obtaining anything from it.

[edit] Partial filmography

Incidenti (2005, by Toni Trupia, Ramón Alós Sánchez, Miloje Popovic).
Mio Figlio (2005, filmftor RAI television by Luciano Odorisio).
Come inguaiammo il cinema italiano (2004, by Daniele Ciprì e Franco Maresco).
Il segreto del giaguaro (2000)
Il popolo degli uccelli (1999)
Tutti gli anni una volta all'anno (1988, by Gianfrancesco Lazotti).
Secondo Ponzio Pilato (1988, by Luigi Magni).
Vado a vivere da solo (1982, by Marco Risi).
Travolto dagli affetti familiari (1978 by Mauro Severino)
San Pasquale Baylonne protettore delle donne (1976)
Il gatto mammone (1975)
Bello come un arcangelo (1974)
L'arbitro (1973 by Luigi Filippo D'Amico)
La schiava io ce l’ho e tu no (1972 by Giorgio Capitani)
All'onorevole piacciono le donne, (1972 by Lucio Fulci), with Laura Antonelli.
Jus primae noctis, (1972 by Pasquale Festa Campanile)
Il vichingo venuto dal Sud (1971)
Homo Eroticus (1971)
Il Merlo Maschio (1971, by Pasquale Festa Campanile), with Laura Antonelli.
Fermate il mondo…voglio scendere (1970)
La Prima notte del Dottor Danieli, industriale col complesso del... giocattolo (1970, by Gianni Grimaldi, with Katia Christina and Françoise Prévost)
Puro siccome un angelo papà mi fece monaco…di Monza (1969)
After the Fox (1966)
James Tont Operazione D.U.E. (1966)
Le Corniaud (1965)
James Tont Operazione U.N.O. (1965)
Il magnifico cornuto (1964 by Antonio Pietrangeli) with Claudia Cardinale ed Ugo Tognazzi.
Divorzio all'italiana (1961 by Pietro Germi) winner of an Oscar prize for the copyplay).