The story of Alberto Sordi  as told by Giorgio Assumma

If you say “Alberto Sordi”, you imagine a face. It’s not just a face, it’s that face. The one that has laughed, cried, twisted its mouth, made jokes, and told Italy for as it is, uncompromising.  

Once an American man, once marquess, then doctor, or traffic officer, even lifelong bachelor. Behind all those masks there was a true man, an authentic man. A man who believed in words like respect, altruism, solidarity.  

Sordi, between a laugh and a joke, was well aware that life is not always a comedy. Sometimes it is drama, fragility, need, desire of care. Then you almost hear him say: «Let’s build a place where you feel fine when you don’t feel fine at all». A place where medicine does not watch the clock, but people, and where every old man is his own story, and where science becomes human.  

By his side in all of this there is Giorgio Assumma, the celebrities' lawyer, his lifelong friend. 
A man who still says, when he talks about Alberto: «If he saw the Campus today, he would be overjoyed». Because yes, even though the curtain has fallen and the spotlight has gone out, we can still feel the echo of some gestures. The generous donation of the first plot of land in Trigoria, on which the elderly center bearing his name was built, was an initial seed – an integral part of the vision of a Science for Humanity promoted by the Campus Bio-Medico with its university and hospital. Alberto Sordi’s ideas, his visions, his way of loving life, they’re still alive. Just as his beautiful movies are: you watch them again and again late at night and you feel the same thrill every time as the first.  

So there it is: some bonds do not die. They overstep time, space, and physical absence. Just like Sordi’s characters, they stick with you even when you turn the tv off. This is his true heritage: it’s not a monument but energy, and it multiplies every time that someone does good, even in silence, even without an audience. Because in the end, the most beautiful lives don’t come to an end — they burst into beauty.