In September 1996, Mastroianni was in Portugal, busy on the set of Viagem ao principio do mundo. During a pause in the shooting, with small group of friends the actor shot his Mi ricordo. In front of the camera there is only him: Mastoianni remembering, recounting, reflecting, performing, portraying himself. With an exceptional past behind him, Mastroianni knows all too well that “memories are a sort of destination; and perhaps they are the only thing that is truly ours”. Nevertheless, more than ever he is hungry for new experiences, new journeys. He expresses this splendidly: “According to Proust, the ‘greatest paradises are lost paradises’”. […] At seventy-two years of age, three months before his death, Marcello conserves this “nostalgia for the future” with the obstinate curiosity of a young boy – and he transmits this to the viewer of Mi ricordo, sì, io mi ricordo with moving vitality.

Francesco Tatò, La materia di cui sono fatti i sogni. I film di Marcello Mastroianni, Centro Marcello Mastroianni/Cinecittà Holding, Rome 2001

Marcello liked the idea of this ‘self-portrait’ in the mountains of Portugal, in one of those unlikely places to which only the ‘cinematograph’ can take you. Above all, he liked the idea of making it while he was shooting another film: a situation which would add authenticity to our work, because the deepest passion in his life was precisely that which made it special – the vocation of acting. Marcello considered it a marvellous privilege (“They pay you to play”) and he never got tired of working, right up until the end. During the shooting, the clapper-board read “M.M. AUTORITRATTO” (self-portrait). This title lasted until Marcello saw, together with the rest of the rushes, the sequence of brief, freewheeling memories that would become the film’s prologue. In that moment, he repeated the final phrase of the sequence: “I remember, yes, I remember. Why not? I like this title. ‘Self-portrait’ is too rigid, almost presumptuous; it makes you think of something linear, well-structured; it insists on an almost chronological respect for the stages in life. A title like I remember, on the other hand, is like an open space, it allows greater freedom, even to forget important things. Yes, because memory is strange – strange like love”.

Anna Maria Tatò, La materia di cui sono fatti i sogni. I film di Marcello Mastroianni, Centro Marcello Mastroianni/ Cinecittà Holding, Rome 2001