In spring of ’71 Allende was promoting an event called Operación verdad, operation truth. He had invited important people from around the world to Santiago for them to experience firsthand the Chilean reality and the socialist developments through democracy in Chile. My son Renzo went for the occasion, and I begged him to do me a favor: I really wanted to meet Allende and interview him. Allende made it known that he would be happy to meet me, and so I set off for Chile at the beginning of May.
My meetings with him always took place at his private home. He lived in Thomas More street, and one night at dinner I talked with him about the actual Thomas More and the idea in general of a utopia. Allende was very interested; he knew of Thomas More but had not read all of his works nor had reflected on the matter. He called one of his secretaries and asked him to get everything he could find on Thomas More. It was important to him to know what the author of Utopia had actually written.
That was the type of man he was – great intellectual curiosity, never sated. One could easily tell that he was not showing off, but rather it was a genuine expression of the underlying principles of his thinking and his view on humanity; man is important for his intelligence and his abilities to understand and to be totally conscious: hence the endeavor to move beyond pure emotions. Let’s take, for example, his manner of dress: he was always well-groomed, he wore nice shirts and ties. What we call a balanced man. In my opinion, the way a man dresses ends up letting his passion shine through: a man dresses up as a revolutionary, as an observer, as a gentleman – in other words a type of camouflage. Allende’s way of following a purely traditional fashion code represented obliterating fantasy to convey everything that is and can be rational.

Roberto Rossellini, Un vero uomo, “Paese sera”, September 16, 1973