Fernando Ghia; film producer
Hyfler/Rosner
Co-producer of 'The Mission'
09 June 2005
Fernando Ghia, film producer: born Rome 22 July 1935; (one
son); died Rome 1 June 2005.
Fernando Ghia was one of the leading lights of the Italian
film and television industry. At his funeral in the packed
church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, as friends,
colleagues and family gathered to pay their last respects,
there was a roll of drums, and then, into the silence, came
a distinctive, plaintive oboe line - and down the nave
poured Ennio Morricone's incredible score for The Mission, a
fitting and moving tribute to the film's producer.
He was best known for that Oscar- and Golden Globe-
nominated Palme d'Or-winner, which he produced in 1986 with
David Puttnam. Made on location in the Colombian jungle, The
Mission tells the story of a Spanish Jesuit, Father Gabriel
(played by Jeremy Irons), who has a dream to take
Christianity to South American "savages" and convert them by
building a mission in the jungle. This tale, which Ghia
dreamt up years before Robert Bolt and Roland Joffé's
efforts brought it to the screen, epitomises the man who
produced it: bold, powerful and passionate.
Fernando Ghia's career in the film industry began in the
late 1950s. After a brief period as an actor and a stint at
the William Morris Agency (where he befriended one of their
leading young stars, Albert Finney, who went on to teach him
English), Ghia forged a working partnership with the
legendary Italian producer Franco Cristaldi, his mentor.
His experience with Cristaldi eventually led to Ghia's
association with the playwright and screenwriter Robert
Bolt. They developed several projects together, notably
Bolt's directing début, Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), and
finally The Mission. Throughout his career Ghia also
collaborated regularly with the great Italian film composer
Ennio Morricone, whose remarkable music for The Mission is
one of the most memorable film scores of our generation.
Despite a lifelong love affair with English stories and
talent, and a seemingly permanent home-from-home suite at
the Dorchester Hotel in London, Ghia spent over a decade in
Hollywood before returning in glory to Rome in the late
1980s, city of his birth and home of his beloved Roma
football team. There he founded Pixit Productions, making
film and television drama, including two major UK
co-productions for television, The Endless Game in 1990 and,
in 1997, the mini- series Nostromo. In the last year, he had
reinvigorated the company, lining up an impressive
development slate, including new feature films from the
English screenwriters Andrew Davies and Nick Dear.
Ghia's filmography is short but his ambitions were
enormous - unlike many film producers, who flit like
butterflies from one project to another, he would make a
commitment to material and stick to it. His loyalty,
tenacity and vision meant he would find one or two projects
and work tirelessly, with a meticulous focus, until they
were made. "I love the work," he once said.
The greatest story of his life was the unexpected and happy
arrival when Ghia was 61 years old of his son, Sebastiano.
He told me once that you had to love a film to fruition, no
matter what it took - a lesson which, as a young producer
new to the industry, I drank in and have tried to put into
practice. Fernando Ghia stayed alive for far longer than any
doctor thought possible, for the simple reason that he
wanted to love his son to fruition.
"You can do anything," he would always say. "If you have a
dream you must follow it, or you will have regrets - and who
wants those?" Without fanfare or fuss, his primary dream in
recent years was to stay ahead of "the bloody bastard
cancer" for as long as possible. I am sure that his one
regret was that he would not live to see his son grow up.
Ghia made films with a sense of adventure and meaning, and
lived a life filled with both.
Eileen Quinn
Garrett
by his then-wife, Italian actress Gaia De Laurentiis. (Not sure if she
ever went by her married name of Gaia Ghia).