Remembering Aldo Lado

Aldo Lado (photo: A. C. Cappi)

Today, december 5th 2024, would have been his 90th birthday, but writer-director-producer Aldo Lado left us a ltittle more than one year ago, on november 25th, 2023. The first time I knew about his movies was in the pages of a magazine where my uncle's brother used to write; it was in the early 70's and he was already considered as one of the masters of Italian. thrillers. The only trouble was they were classified for an audience "over 18" and I was way under that age.

I had to wait for his thrillers to reappear in dvd to see them; meanwhile he had made several different movies, because he didn't like "to do the same thing twice". We met years later at Milan's famous shop "Bloodbuster", specialized in all about movies, and then at a festival, where we became friends. I gave him a book of mine called Malastrana (which had been the working title of his film The Short Night of the Glass Dolls) and we started reading each other. I had the pleasure of having in my hands the first draft of his brilliant suspense novel Il mastino and he had nice words for my noir novel Black and Blue.

Aldo Lado (photo: A. C. Cappi)

I shared with him dinners, drinks (with my fiancée, whom he friendly scolded whenever she said I was having one too many) or meetings with his fans (along with late friends Andrea G. Pinketts and Stefano Di Marino), and had him as the main guest at the 2021 Torre Crawford Festival. During that weekend he mentioned a controversy about the fatherhood (or rather, co-fatherhood according to him) of the original script for The Bird with the Crystal Plumage by another Italian master, Dario Argento. I wrote an article about it here, taking the chance for reviewing Aldo's career both as director and novelist.

Since he was not much into social network, I used to give him a call on his birthday and have a little chat about his writing projects and enjoy his humour. That's something I really miss.

Aldo Lado (photo: A. C. Cappi)