Il Postino - The Postman Trailer - Original

FILM; A Postman, a Poet, an Actor's Farewell

By MARIA LAURINO
Published: June 11, 1995

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IN "IL POSTINO" ("THE POST-man"), Massimo Troisi, one of Italy's most beloved comic actors, plays a simple postman who steers his bicycle along the sandy terrain of the Italian Mediterranean coast to deliver mail to his sole client, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda.

The film, directed by Michael Radford, is the first work of Troisi's to be distributed in America. And this bittersweet fictional tale has a real-life tragic ending: Troisi, 41, born with congenital heart problems, fell gravely ill during the filming of the movie, enabling him to work for only an hour a day. He died of a heart attack last June, the day after "Il Postino" was finished shooting.

The film, which opens on Friday, was a project so dear to Troisi that he risked his life to make it. Several years ago, after reading the Chilean novel "Burning Patience," the story of a postman's gradual awakening to the poetry of Neruda, the actor approached his English friend Michael Radford about turning the book into a movie.

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