Background
Mario was born on November 17, 1906, in Turin, Province of Turin, Italy.
director journalist politician screenwriter writer
Mario was born on November 17, 1906, in Turin, Province of Turin, Italy.
Soldati attended the Liceo Sociale, a Jesuit school, and finished secondary school at age 17. He then studied humanities at the University of Turin. He later studied History of Art at the University of Rome.
After receiving his degree from the University of Turin in 1927, Mario immigrated to the United States. There he taught at Columbia University and found plenty of inspiration for his writing in Times Square.
He started publishing novels in 1929. Also interested in film, Soldati began directing in 1938. The book America primo amore, based on his time in New York, brought him critical and popular acclaim. He returned to Italy with an American wife and began writing screenplays such as made nearly thirty films. Some, like La Provinciate, were successful, others were not, but it did not affect the amount of his offerings. He lived luxuriously in some of Rome’s best hotels but eventually moved to the Ligurian coast and continued writing there. Soldati was intrigued by television when it was new and became involved in documentaries filmed for that medium.
Soldati continued working and writing well into his eighties, even covering the 1982 World Cup in Spain. He last work, Un Viaggio a Lourdes, a study of faith, was published weeks before his death.
Mario Soldati is an Italian film director, screenwriter and author, whose work was prodigious in output. His most well-known films are Piccolo mondo antico (1941) and Malombra with Isa Miranda. Although he was well known in the cinema, his writing was his strongest suit. He regularly published articles in Italian newspapers, including Il Mondo, Il Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, Avanti, L'Unita and Il Giorno.
