Lucidity, humanity, poetry
by Alessandro Anderloni

In the fall of 2007, I spent a few hours with Urs Frey in his house in Guarda, with its antique scent, where he had decided to live, some years earlier, with his beloved Doris. Urs welcomed me in that town that reminded me instantly – with its alleyways winding among the frescoed houses, and a certain atmosphere of melancholy abandonment – of his other, muchloved village, Soglio, whose story he told in one of his finest films, La Scola da Soi. With his usual calm and steady tone of voice, that never betrayed doubt or uncertainty, he told me that he was working on a new film. “An ugly film. No, a really ugly film,” he said. He said he knew it would be an ugly film, and that he wanted it to be that way. He was going to film it in St. Moritz; the protagonist was to be a young man. Everything had been thought out and put down on paper. Urs told me that, for him, a film could be considered finished when he finished writing it. When the time came for filming, he knew exactly what he wanted to extract from his characters and how the narrative would proceed during editing. Such was the lucidity of his work as author and director, that he considered no more, or less, important that that of researcher, writer, or homebody.

Urs approached people on tip-toe, with strides as delicate and velvety as his smooth, deep voice. Above all, he listened. And his eyes seemed to read beyond what his interlocutors said or concealed. The people in front of him, or in front of the camera, remained people. His humanity put the protagonists of his films at ease and allowed them to be consistent with the gestures they used while being interviewed. And even if Urs Frey seemed to disappear behind the camera, the people whose stories he told seemed bewitched by his presence, almost hypnotized and guided by the force of the person they perceived to have before them. One must only think of the interviews in Chaus e muntognas, where children, young people, and adults are surprisingly natural and spontaneous, or of the protagonists of Revoluziun, Urs Frey’s last film – in spite of the title, the least revolutionary.

It is completely consistent with Urs Frey’s unwavering personality that his beginnings in the world of television and film were not more or less successful attempts, but rather perfectly formed works. In fact, the early films reveal the sensitivity of a soul who was, for us, first and foremost an unforgettable friend, as well as a great man and great director. Everyone became aware of his poetic vision with the film, L’è uscìa, in that scene in which Renzo Maroli goes up to the pasture to brush and cut the nails of his cows, to stroke them, and kiss them. The portrait of this shepherd was the first, and most memorable, of those left to us by Urs Frey. Then came Dumeng Secchi, in the film Aria, with its multicolour juxtaposition of sounds and images, to give us a portrait of peace; and later Marcella Maier, the elderly protagonist of Duonna Marcella, in which Urs showed that each one of us has an extraordinary story to tell – in fact, because it is ordinary.

All of Urs Frey is in those words that Renzo Maroli pronounces, seated next to the fireplace in his house: “L’è uscìa, è così”. This is the beginning and the end of everything. This phrase was the last footage shot and is the last of the film. After that, the shepherd of the Val Bregaglia does not want to say anything else. He has already said all there was to say.