Showing posts with label Cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cinema. Show all posts

27 February 2024

Chiara Iezzi - singer and actress

One half of popular duo Paola e Chiara

Chiara Iezzi has enjoyed success both as a singer and in tv and film roles
Chiara Iezzi has enjoyed success both
as a singer and in tv and film roles
The actress and singer Chiara Iezzi, who with sister Paola forms half of the top-selling Paola e Chiara pop duo, was born on this day in 1973 in Milan.

The sisters performed together for seven years between 1996 and 2013, selling more than five million records, before breaking up, Chiara deciding to focus increasingly on acting and enjoying some success in the United States.

The duo were reunited in 2023, when they took part in the Sanremo Music Festival for the sixth time, having made their debut at the celebrated Italian song contest 26 years earlier.

Interested in music, acting and fashion since she was in her teens, Chiara graduated in fashion design, simultaneously taking acting lessons, but it was music that initially provided her with a career.

After seeing her perform in jazz and funk groups, in 1994 the record producer and television presenter Claudio Cecchetto hired her together with Paola to join singer Max Pezzali as backing vocalists in a group called 883, who were popular in Milan in the 1990s.

Paola (left) and Chiara with the trophy they won at the Sanremo Music Festival in 1997
Paola (left) and Chiara with the trophy they won
at the Sanremo Music Festival in 1997
Two years later, the sisters began to perform as Paola e Chiara, signing a recording contract with Sony Music Italia. Aged 21 and 22 respectively, they made their debut at the 1996 edition of Sanremo Giovani - a special contest for young artists, held separately from the main event - making the final with their song, In viaggio.

The following year, they entered Sanremo proper, performing the song Amici come prima, with which they won the New Proposals category.

The song featured on their debut studio album for Sony, Ciriamo Bambine, which would be the first of eight studio albums. They also released three collections of hits and 35 singles, the most successful of which was Vamos a bailar (Esta vida nueva), sung in Spanish and released in 2000.

Performing Vamos a bailar, which featured on their album Television, they won two song contests, Festivalbar and Un disco per l'estate. The single contributed substantially to their more than five million records sold.

Alongside her career with Paola, Chiara released a number of singles and EPs as a solo performer before turning her attention increasingly to acting, her ambitions not at all harmed by being invited in 2010 to collaborate on the soundtrack of the film Maledimiele, directed by Marco Pozzi, for which she sang the main theme, L'altra parte di me. 

Chiara Iezzi starred in the Disney Channel  television series Alex & Co in 2015
Chiara Iezzi starred in the Disney Channel 
television series Alex & Co in 2015
It prompted her to resume her study of acting, for which she spent increasing amounts of time in America, attending seminars in New York and Los Angeles. After the break-up of the Paola e Chiara partnership, she announced her intention to limit her singing career to projects connected to the film industry.

She had a number of successes in acting, notably playing the role of Victoria Williams in the 2015 TV series Alex & Co, produced by Disney Channel.

In 2016, she landed a role in the film Il ragazzo della Giudecca (The Boy from the Giudecca), directed by Alfonso Bergamo and starring Giancarlo Giannini and Franco Nero, and in 2017 was picked for Louis Nero's film The Broken Key alongside Rutger Hauer, William Baldwin, Geraldine Chaplin and Michael Madsen.

The possibility that she and her sister might reform their partnership arose in 2022. Chiara appeared at a DJ set hosted by her sister, for whom deejaying had become the focus of her career, and they surprised the audience by performing a number of their songs together. The clip of their performance was downloaded so many times it became a viral hit, after which they agreed to make an appearance as guests at a concert in Bibione, on the Adriatic coast of the Veneto, which was part of a Max Pezzali tour, and alongside Jovanotti at Fermo, further down the Adriatic in Marche. 

They were so well received by the audiences that talk of a Paola e Chiara revival soon gathered pace. In December of the same year it was announced that they would participate in the 2023 edition of the Sanremo Festival, their first appearance there for 15 years.

Their song, Furore, finished only 17th, yet was a hit nonetheless, prompting them to embark on a first tour in 12 years and to release their first album since 2015, a reworked collection of their best work entitled Per Sempre (Forever).

The duo returned to Sanremo in 2024 as guests, reprising Furore on the third evening and performing alongside veteran entrants Ricchi e Poveri on the fourth evening, as well as presenting some of the accompanying broadcasts as national TV channel Rai dedicated hours of airtime to the festival and peripheral activities.

Bibione's wide expanse of golden, sandy beach makes it an attraction for thousands of tourists
Bibione's wide expanse of golden, sandy beach
makes it an attraction for thousands of tourists
Travel tip:

Bibione, where Paola e Chiara reunited alongside former professional partner Max Pezzali at a 2022 concert, is a seaside resort in the Veneto region of northern Italy, about 50km (31 miles) from Venice as the crow flies, although about twice that distance by road. It is a popular destination for tourists from Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, as well as Italy, who enjoy its golden sand beach, pine wood, and water park. The area used to be uninhabited marshland until land reclamation work began in the early part of the 20th century and it was not until the 1950s that the first holiday accommodation was built. Nowadays, in the summer months, Bibione can offer up to 100,000 beds for tourists, yet in the winter is largely deserted, with many shops and beach facilities closed.

Stay in Bibione with Booking.com


Fermo sits atop the Sabulo hill, the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Cielo at its highest point
Fermo sits atop the Sabulo hill, the cathedral of
Santa Maria Assunta in Cielo at its highest point
Travel tip:

Fermo, where Paola e Chaira performed at a Jovanotti concert in 2022, is a charming and lively town in the Marche region, with a population of about 37,000. It is located on a hill, the Sabulo, some 319m (1,050ft) above sea level, about 7km (4.34 miles) inland from the Adriatic resort of Porto San Giorgio. A former Roman colony, it was owned by a succession of prince-bishops and powerful families, including the Visconti and Sforza, before becoming part of the Papal States in 1550, all of whom contributed to its impressive monuments, buildings and fortifications. The Roman cisterns, the 13th century cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Cielo, the Palazzo dei Priori, built between the 13th and 16th centuries, the Pinacoteca Civica and the Teatro dell’Aquila are among its noteworthy attractions. The town hosts diverse cultural events, from an August palio (horse race) and festival of mediaeval games, the Cavalcata dell’Assunta, to an annual film festival.  The town is also famed for its culinary specialities, which include a type of lasagna with meat sauce, olives, and cheese, called vincisgrassi, a fish soup with tomatoes, saffron, and vinegar known as brodetto, and frustingo, a cake made with dried fruits, nuts, honey, and chocolate.

Find accommodation in Fermo with Booking.com

More reading:

The history of the Sanremo Music Festival

The singer whose Sanremo disqualification produced his biggest hit

The tenor who became known as ‘the King of Sanremo’

Also on this day:

1950: The birth of fashion designer Franco Moschino

1935: The birth of opera singer Mirella Freni

1964: Italy appeals for help to save Pisa’s leaning tower

1978: The birth of dancer Simone Di Pasquale

(Picture credits: Bibione beach by Tiesse; Fermo skyline by Daniele Pieroni; via Wikimedia Commons)


Home


11 February 2024

Giuseppe De Santis - film director

Former Resistance fighter famous for neorealist classic Bitter Rice

Giuseppe De Santis used his films to highlight social problems in postwar Italy
Giuseppe De Santis used his films to highlight
social problems in postwar Italy
The writer and film director Giuseppe De Santis, who is best remembered for the 1949 neorealist film Bitter Rice - screened as Riso Amaro for Italian audiences - was born on this day in 1917 in Fondi, a small city in Lazio about 130km (81 miles) south of Rome.

De Santis is sometimes described as an idealist of the neorealism genre, which flourished in the years immediately after World War Two, yet it can also be argued that he moved away from the documentary style that characterised some of neorealism’s early output towards films with more traditional storylines.

Bitter Rice, for example, while highlighting the harsh working conditions in the rice fields around Vercelli in the Po Valley and the exploitation of labourers by wealthy landowners, is also a tale of plotting, jealousy and treachery among thieves.

Nonetheless, De Santis, a staunch opponent of Mussolini and Fascism, an Italian Communist Party member who fought against the Germans with the Italian Resistance, inevitably underpinned his work with a strong social message.

The son of a surveyor, De Santis wrote stories from an early age, drawing on the day-to-day lives of the people around him in Fondi and the surrounding countryside. He enrolled to study literature and philosophy at university in Rome, making friends among the city’s young intellectuals, meeting poets, writers and artists who shared his vision. The Osteria Fratelli Menghi in Via Flaminia was a popular hang-out.

Luchino Visconti, with whom De Santis worked on Ossessione
Luchino Visconti, with whom De
Santis worked on Ossessione
He identified cinema as the art form in which he would most like to work and began to attend Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a cinema school established under Mussolini - who at one time banned all foreign films from Italian cinemas - to encourage the development of a thriving Italian film industry.

Despite their opposition to Fascism, De Santis and other anti-Fascists in the industry did not turn down the chance to take advantage of the facilities available at the CSC. At the same time, aware that a group of talented young directors could achieve his aims for the industry, Mussolini turned a blind eye to their political views, which some of the articles De Santis and others - including fellow future directors Antonio Pietrangeli, Luchino Visconti and Michelangelo Antonioni - wrote for the fortnightly Cinema magazine did not disguise.

While working for Cinema magazine, De Santis met the screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, under whose influence he became proponent of early neorealist filmmakers such as Visconti, who sought to make films that mirrored the reality of life for working-class Italians in the tough years of post-war rebuilding, shooting on location and giving parts to ordinary people with no acting experience.

De Santis, in fact, worked with Visconti on scripting the latter’s 1943 film Ossessione, a crime drama based loosely on the James M Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, which the Fascists initially banned as morally corrupting.

His own directing debut came in 1947 with Caccia Tragica (Tragic Hunt), the first of three films protesting about conditions for working people that culminated in Riso Amaro, which starred the already-established Vittorio Gassman and the American actress Doris Dowling in the headline roles, with former footballer and journalist Raf Vallone making his debut.

It is remembered largely for the performance of Silvana Mangano, a voluptuous 19-year-old in her first credited part, who conveyed a combination of physical strength and earthy beauty that audiences and critics found entirely convincing in the role of a peasant worker accustomed to hours of slog in the rice fields, but still with the energy to dance the night away to her beloved boogie-woogie music.  Mangano ultimately married the film’s producer, Dino De Laurentiis.

De Santis's Bitter Rice turned the previously  unknown actress Silvana Mangano into a star
De Santis's Bitter Rice turned the previously 
unknown actress Silvana Mangano into a star
The film, which premiered at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival and was a finalist for the Palme d'Or, was a box office success in Italy and the United States. The film was nominated for Best Story in the 1950 Academy Awards.

De Santis made another important neorealist film three years later entitled Roma, ora 11 (Rome, 11 o’clock), a dramatic reconstruction of a real-life event in the Italian capital the previous year when a staircase collapsed under the weight of women queuing for job interviews, causing one death and multiple injuries.

In 1959 he won a Golden Globe with La strada lunga un anno (The Road a Year Long), which gained him another Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

However, none of his subsequent work really had the same impact as Riso Amaro, which has been included on several subsequent lists of the best films in Italian cinema history.

De Santis directed his last feature film in 1972. He returned to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in the 1980s and ‘90s, this time in the role of lecturer. In 1995 he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival and came out of retirement to direct, jointly with Bruno Bigon, a documentary called Oggi è un altro giorno (Today is Another Day) - Milano 1945-1995, a documentary about the Resistance in Milan.  

He died in Rome in 1997 at the age of 80, suffering a heart attack. A day of mourning was declared in Italy. His widow, Gordana Miletic, joined friends in establishing the Giuseppe De Santis Foundation, which gives an annual award in his memory to an emerging young film-maker. 

The Castello Baronale, parts of which date back to the 12th century, stands proudly over Fondi
The Castello Baronale, parts of which date back
to the 12th century, stands proudly over Fondi
Travel tip:

Situated on the Via Appia, the former Roman road that was once the main route from Rome to much of southern Italy, the city of Fondi rarely features on tourist itineraries, yet travel guides often include the word charming, even enchanting, in their description. Situated on a small plain - il Piano di Fondi - between the Ausoni and Aurunci mountain ranges and the Tyrrhenian Sea, it was founded by the ancient Romans, it became an important commercial centre in mediaeval times, when the powerful Caetani family built the impressive Castello Baronale, which still dominates the skyline. Subsequently the home of the literary court of Giulia Gonzaga, in more recent times it has housed a museum. The Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta,a beautiful Gothic-style church, is another attraction. The plain also benefits from a fine stretch of natural beach and Fondi has a tradition of excellent seafood.

Find accommodation in Fondi with Booking.com

An arch over the original Via Flaminia in Umbria
An arch over the original
Via Flaminia in Umbria
Travel tip:

The Osteria Fratelli Menghi, the historic tavern in Rome where De Santis would hang out with painters, actors, musicians and writers, was located in Via Flaminia on the site today occupied by the Caffè dei Pittori. The osteria was just 300m on foot from Piazza del Popolo, one of the major squares in the heart of Rome, yet there is much more to the Via Flaminia than simply a street in central Rome. It follows the route of the ancient Roman Via Flaminia, which was built by Gaius Flaminius in around 220 BC, going due north to cross the Tiber by way of the Ponte Milvio and continuing via a course over the Apennine Mountains to Ariminum (Rimini) on the coast of the Adriatic, a distance by the more recent of two routes of 328km (204 miles). The modern route from Rimini to Rome still follows closely the path of the original Roman road, a distance of 341km (), tracking the Adriatic coast to Fano, turning inland to pass close to Urbino, Perugia and Assisi and onwards towards the capital.

Rome hotels by Booking.com

More reading:

Luchino Visconti - the aristocrat of Italian film

The enigmatic ‘last great’ of Italian cinema

The director known as the ‘father of neorealism’

Also on this day:

1791: The birth of architect Louis Visconti

1881: The birth of painter Carlo Carrà

1929: The Lateran Treaty gives independence to The Vatican

1948: The birth of footballer Carlo Sartori

1995: The birth of singer Gianluca Ginoble

(Picture credits: Via Flaminia by Imcarthur via Wikimedia Commons)



Home



30 December 2023

For a Few Dollars More released in Italy

Second in Spaghetti Western trilogy

The poncho-wearing Clint Eastwood became one of the Western genre's most famous characters
The poncho-wearing Clint Eastwood became one
of the Western genre's most famous characters
The movie For a Few Dollars More, the second in what became known as the Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns, was released for public viewing in Italy on this day in 1965.

Directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name, the film followed the unexpected success of the low-budget feature A Fistful of Dollars, released 15 months earlier, which overcame poor initial reviews to become, for a time, the biggest-grossing movie in Italian cinema history.

Released for Italian audiences as Per Qualche Dollaro in Più, the follow-up proved even more commercially successful than its predecessor. By 1967, it had displaced A Fistful of Dollars as the highest-grossing Italian production, generating 3.1 billion lire ($5 million) in ticket sales from more than 14 and a half million admissions.

Eastwood, who had been little known outside America before A Fistful of Dollars catapulted him to international fame, had been paid a reputed sum of just $15,000 for his role in the original film, from a production budget of only $200,000.

This time Leone had more money at his disposal after teaming up with Italian producer Alberto Grimaldi and Eastwood received $50,000, although co-star Lee Van Cleef, given the part of a rival bounty hunter after Charles Bronson turned the role down, was paid a rather more modest $17,000.

One of the original posters advertising the film in Italy
One of the original posters
advertising the film in Italy
As with A Fistful of Dollars, the lead villain in For a Few Dollars More was played by Gian Maria Volonté, who was to become one of Italy’s most celebrated movie actors, famous for portraying memorable but neurotic characters in high-profile social dramas, usually with a political message. Volonté always insisted he took the Dollars roles only for the money.

Some critics were again derisive, dismissing the theme as corny, others accusing the director of glorifying violence and murder, yet For a Few Dollars More transfixed audiences with a gripping storyline, stunning cinematography, and powerful performances, as well as another brilliant musical score by Leone’s former school friend, the great Ennio Morricone.

The central plotline revolves around the rivalry between Eastwood’s character, on this occasion known as Manco, and Van Cleef’s former army officer, Colonel Douglas Mortimer, a fellow bounty hunter, with Volonté as a cold-blooded bank robber known as El Indio, who is just out of prison with a price on his head.

In common with the original, the film was shot on location in Spain rather than Italy. The original takes were all recorded without sound. Voices, sound effects and the musical score were all added later.

Leone completed the trilogy the following year with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which teamed Eastwood again with Lee Van Cleef but with Eli Wallach taking over from Volonté as the chief villain.

The budget this time was $1.2 million and box office revenue worldwide was almost as much as the first two parts of the trilogy combined.  Eastwood and Leone’s careers went in opposite directions but both enjoyed considerable success.

Leone scored another huge western hit with Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968 and, despite turning down the chance to direct The Godfather, directed a great gangster epic of his own in 1984, with Once Upon a Time in America. Sadly, he died of a heart attack in 1989 at the age of 60.

Eastwood went on to enjoy countless box office successes as an actor before becoming an Oscar-winning director, remaining active even into his 90s.

The arches of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana echo those of the Colosseum
The arches of the Palazzo della Civiltà
Italiana echo those of the Colosseum 
Travel tip:

Sergio Leone, born in Rome, died there in 1989 when he suffered a fatal heart attack in the villa he used to entertain friends in the city’s EUR district, the complex to the south of central Rome that was originally developed to host the 1942 World's Fair - the Esposizione Universale Roma - which was cancelled because of the Second World War.  Mussolini’s modern city within a city was designed by a team of prominent architects, headed by Marcello Piacentini and including Giovanni Michelucci. The designs combined classical Roman elements with Italian Rationalism in a simplified neoclassicism that came to be known as Fascist architecture.  The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, which has become known as the “square colosseum”, is regarded as the building which is the most symbolic of EUR. Designed by Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto La Padula, and Mario Romano, it draws inspiration from the Colosseum with its rows of arches, while its square shape and stark whiteness are reminiscent of metaphysical art.



The historic entrance to the Cinecitta film studios in Rome, in its heyday the largest in Europe
The historic entrance to the Cinecitta film studios
in Rome, in its heyday the largest in Europe
Travel tip:

The Italian film industry for many years revolved around Cinecittà, the Rome film studio that is the largest in Europe, spreading over an area of 100 acres with  22 stages and 300 dressing rooms. Situated six miles south of the city centre, like EUR it was built during the Fascist era under the personal direction of Mussolini. The studios were bombed by the Allies in the Second World War but were rebuilt and used again in the 1950s for large productions, such as Ben Hur. These days a range of productions, from television drama to music videos, are filmed there. The complex contains a permanent exhibition about the history of the studio, within which a special hall is devoted to the work of Sergio Leone, who worked at Cinecittà in the early stage of his career as an assistant director on several large-scale international productions, notably Quo Vadis (1951) and Ben-Hur (1959).

Also on this day: 

39: The birth of Roman emperor Titus

1572: The death of architect Galeazzo Alessi 

1962: The birth of politician Alessandra Mussolini

1991: The birth of tennis star Camila Georgi


Home


3 December 2023

Nino Martoglio - writer, theatre and film director

Journalist and playwright whose movies inspired post-war neorealism 

Nino Martoglio is considered by some as the founder of Sicilian theatre
Nino Martoglio is considered by some
as the founder of Sicilian theatre
The journalist, playwright and theatre and film director Nino Martoglio was born in Belpasso, a town in the foothills of volcanic Mount Etna in eastern Sicily, on this day in 1870.

Martoglio is widely considered to be Sicily’s finest dialect playwright and by some to be the founder of Sicilian theatre.  He was also an acclaimed poet, basing a good deal of his verse on the everyday conversations of working class Sicilians, written to amuse. His collection, Centona, is still sold today.

Later in a career that was ended abruptly by his death in an accident, Martoglio directed a number of silent films, the style of some of which prompted critics to describe them as forerunners of the post-war neorealism movement.

The son of a journalist and a school teacher, Martoglio studied sailing as a young man and obtained a captain’s licence. Yet he sought a career in journalism and joined the editorial staff of La Gazzetta di Catania, a daily newspaper founded by his father, Luigi.

In 1889, he launched a weekly magazine, D’Artagnan, a Sicilian language periodical devoted to art, literature and theatre, sharp political satire and the plight of the people of Civita, a poor neighbourhood in Catania which suffered particular deprivation. It also proved to be a useful vehicle for the poems that would eventually be gathered together in the Centona collection.

Theatre began to occupy most of Martoglio's attention from around the turn of the century. In 1901, he created the Sicilian Dramatic Company, which thanks to the talents of actors such as Angelo Musco, Giovanni Grasso, Virginia Balistrieri and others enjoyed success with Sicilian language productions even in Milan, where they performed at the Teatro Manzoni in 1903. The company’s productions of comedies written by a young Sicilian playwright, Pier Maria Rosso di San Secondo, were especially popular, among them San Giovanni Decapitato - Saint John the Beheaded - which he later turned into a film.

Martoglio staged the first theatrical works of Luigi Pirandello (above)
Martoglio staged the first theatrical
works of Luigi Pirandello (above)
Martoglio’s work became still more widely known after he moved to Rome in 1904, having become unhappy with the political climate in Sicily, where he had been elected a municipal councillor in Catania. In the capital, he met and married Elvira Schiavazzi, the sister of Piero Schiavazzi, a Sardinian tenor. They would go on to have four children. 

In 1910, he founded the first "Teatro Minimo" in Rome at the Teatro Metastasio. He staged one-act plays from the Italian and foreign repertoire, as well as bringing to the stage the first theatrical works of Luigi Pirandello, by then famous as a novelist and a future Nobel Prize winner. Their collaborations included A vilanza (la bilancia) and Cappidazzu pava tutu.

Martoglio’s venture into cinema spanned two years from 1913-14. He directed the actress Pina Menichelli, one of the so-called ‘three divas’ of Italian silent movies, in Il romanzo and followed it with Capitan Blanco, Sperduti nel buio, for which he wrote the screenplay and directed in collaboration with Roberto Danesi, and Teresa Raquin.  

All his screen work emphasised the gulf in Italian society between wealth and poverty and Sperduti nel buio - Lost in the Dark - which starred Grasso and Balistrieri - veterans of Martoglio’s original company in Catania - came to be regarded as a classic of the silent film era, representative of a small number of films that made up the realismo movement in Italian cinema. 

In the 1930s, the film critic and lecturer Umberto Barbaro enthusiastically showed Sperduti nel buio in his classes at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, where his students included Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti, who would go on to become leading figures in the neorealism film movement after the Second World War.

The bust of Martoglio in the Bellini Gardens
The bust of Martoglio
in the Bellini Gardens
Martoglio’s death at the age of 50 remains something of a mystery.  After visiting the Vittorio Emanuele II Hospital in Catania on the evening of 15 September, 1921, to see one of his sons, who was being treated there, Martoglio’s body was found the following morning at the bottom of an elevator shaft in part of the hospital that was under construction.  Although there were no witnesses, the assumption was that he had suffered a tragic accident, perhaps after getting lost as he tried to find the way out. 

His body was laid to rest at the Campo Verano monumental cemetery in the Tiburtino quarter in Rome, not far from the Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le mura. The cemetery is notable as the burial place of hundreds of illustrious figures from the artistic, historical, literary, musical and cinematographic world.  

Although his films were lost, presumably stolen or destroyed during World War Two, Martoglio’s nieces, Vincenza and Angela, took steps to preserve their uncle’s manuscripts.  There is a monumental bust of him in the Bellini Gardens in Catania, a short distance from the Teatro Metropolitan. 



The Teatro Comunale Nino Martoglio in Belpasso
The Teatro Comunale Nino
Martoglio in Belpasso
Travel tip:

The town of Belpasso, where Martoglio was born, has a population of 28,000. Located about 10km (six miles) northwest of the city of Catania, it has something of a chequered history, having twice been destroyed by the forces of nature and repositioned in consequence. In 1669, it was buried in lava following an eruption of the Mount Etna volcano which looms over Catania. Rebuilt in another location at a lower level, it was then badly damaged by an earthquake in 1693 and abandoned. The current settlement was founded two years later at a third site. Today, it is best known as the home of Condorelli, one of Sicily’s most famous brands of confectionary, biscuits and cakes. Nino Martoglio’s name is preserved in the Teatro Comunale Nino Martoglio, the town’s municipal theatre, in Via XII Traversa.

The port city of Catania, the second largest city in Sicily, with a snow-capped Etna in the distance
The port city of Catania, the second largest city
in Sicily, with a snow-capped Etna in the distance
Travel tip:

The city of Catania, which is located on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, is one of the ten biggest cities in Italy, and the seventh largest metropolitan area in the country, with a population including the environs of 1.12 million. Twice destroyed by earthquakes, in 1169 and 1693, it can be compared in some respects with Naples, which sits in the shadow of Vesuvius, in that it lives with the constant threat of a natural catastrophe.  As such it has always been a city for living life to the full. In the Renaissance, it was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres and enjoys a rich cultural legacy today, with numerous museums and churches, theatres and parks and many restaurants.  It is also notable for many fine examples of the Sicilian Baroque style of architecture, including the beautiful Basilica della Collegiata, with its six stone columns and the concave curve of its façade.

Also on this day:

1596: The birth of violin maker Nicolò Amati 

1779: The birth of Tuscan painter Matilde Malenchini

1911: The birth of composer Nino Rota

1917: The death in WW1 of champion cyclist Carlo Oriani

1937: The birth of actress Angela Luce

1947: The birth of controversial politician Mario Borghezio


Home





20 September 2023

Asia Argento - actress and director

Twice winner of Italian ‘Oscar’ with turbulent private life

Asia Argento pictured with her father, the celebrated horror film director, Dario Argento, at Cannes in 2012
Asia Argento pictured with her father, the celebrated
horror film director, Dario Argento, at Cannes in 2012
The actress and director Asia Argento, whose father is the influential horror movie director Dario Argento, was born on this day in 1975 in Rome.

Argento’s mother was the actress Daria Nicolodi, granddaughter of the composer Alfredo Casella. She appeared in her first movie at the age of nine and turned out to have such a talent for acting she had won two David di Donatello best actress awards - the Italian equivalent of an Oscar - by the time she was 21.

As well as appearing in around 50 movies, some of which she also wrote and directed, and a number of television productions, Argento’s artistic talents have ranged to writing short stories and novels and recording solo albums as a singer.

Her private life has been somewhat turbulent. Married for five years to the director Michele Civetta, she was previously in a long-term relationship with the Italian rock musician Morgan, and later became romantically involved with the celebrity chef and documentary maker Anthony Bourdain, who took his own life at the age of 61.

Argento was a key figure in the film industry's #MeToo movement
Argento was a key figure in the
film industry's #MeToo movement
After alleging in 2017 that she had been raped by the since-jailed producer Harvey Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival at the age of 21, Argento became a central figure in the #MeToo movement.

In 2018 she found herself at the heart of another sexual scandal, this time as the alleged perpetrator, when the New York Times reported claims from Jimmy Bennett, who had worked with Argento as a child actor, that he had been assaulted by her in a hotel room in California at the age of 17, below that state’s age of consent. Argento denied the allegation, although later reached a financial settlement with Bennett.

Argento’s first name appears in the records of the Rome register office as Aria after “Asia” was deemed inappropriate by officials at the time, although she has never been known as anything else. She claimed she took up acting in an attempt to grab her father’s attention during a childhood in which she said he was often absent because of work.

It worked. Two of her first three parts were in films produced by her father, who then directed her in a starring role in his 1993 horror-mystery Trauma.

Within a year, Argento had landed the first of her David di Donatello awards as best actress for her portrayal of a paraplegic in Perdiamoci di vista - roughly translated as 'Let’s Not Keep in Touch' - a bittersweet comedy directed by Carlo Verdone, who also co-stars.

Three years later, a second David di Donatello for best actress came her way after she starred in American director Peter del Monte’s drama Compagna di Viaggio - Travelling Companion - as a waitress who is asked by a friend to shadow her father, who has memory problems.

Argento has combined her  acting career with music
Argento has combined her 
acting career with music
In 2000, Argento moved into directing with Scarlet Diva, which she also wrote and her father co-produced. The film was well received by the critics. She directed Bennett, who was seven at the time, in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things four years later, herself playing a drug-addicted prostitute single mother, with Bennett cast as her son.

She won a Nastro d’Argento award - the prestigious award made by Italian film journalists - for the 2014 production, Incompresa - Misunderstood - which she directed and co-wrote.

A fluent English speaker, she became known to wider cinema audiences through starring in the 2002 Hollywood blockbuster, xXx, directed by Rob Cohen, in which she played an undercover spy, appearing alongside Vin Diesel and Samuel L Jackson, and landed a number of Hollywood roles as a consequence, before returning to the European cinema scene.

Alongside her film career, she is heavily involved with music. A singer with a deep, intense voice, she collaborated with a number of musicians in different genres, from traditional ballads to experimental new wave and techno rock. So far, she has released eight singles and two studio albums as well as appearing as a guest performer with other artists.

Her many TV appearances include participation in the 11th edition of Ballando con le Stelle - the Italian equivalent of America’s Dancing with the Stars and the UK’s Strictly Come Dancing - in which she was eliminated in week eight.

Argento published an autobiography, Anatomia di un cuore selvaggio (Anatomy of a Wild Heart), in 2021. She has two children, a daughter from her relationship with Morgan and a son by Michele Civetta, with whom she reportedly lives in the Vigna Clara neighbourhood to the north of Rome’s city centre.

In 2022, after taking a step back from films for a number of years, Argento made a comeback, again directed by her father, in Dark Glasses, a dark thriller in which she plays the guardian of a blind woman being hunted by a psychotic killer.

Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso store in Rome also houses his Museum of Horror
Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso store in Rome
also houses his Museum of Horror
Travel tip:

Dario Argento’s standing among horror movie fans is such that, in 1989, he opened a memorabilia shop in Via dei Gracchi, a short distance from the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo in the heart of Rome. Named Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) after the title of one of Argento’s most popular films, which starred David Hemmings and Argento’s wife, Daria Nicolodi, it is a small premises crammed to the rafters with rubber masks, costumes, props, posters and model figures. It is also the home of Argento’s Museum of Horror, a red-painted basement accessed via a door next to the till, containing model reconstructions of famously gory scenes from his extensive back catalogue.

The historic Ponte Milvio is one of the Rome attractions accessible on foot from Vigna Clara
The historic Ponte Milvio is one of the Rome
attractions accessible on foot from Vigna Clara
Travel tip:

Vigna Clara, where Asia Argento has a home, is a pleasant neighbourhood to the north of the historical centre of Rome, reached by crossing the Tiber via the Ponte Flaminio and proceeding north about 1.5km (1 mile). It has a lively commercial centre with good amenities and several public parks, while the residential streets comprise elegant buildings and upmarket villas. It offers access on foot to tourist attractions such as the historic Ponte Milvio, the Stadio Olimpico and the Auditorium Parco della Musica.  It is a 15-minute train ride from the Vatican, while the main city centre attractions are about 40 minutes away by train and metro.  The neighbourhood's church of Santa Chiara a Vigna Clara, designed by Alberto Ressa and opened in 1962, is unusual for having a circular layout.

Also on this day:

1378: Election of Pope Clement VII

1870: Rome’s walls breached in final act of unification

1934: The birth of actress Sophia Loren


Home



6 September 2023

Nino Castelnuovo - actor

Starred in sumptuous French musical and TV adaptation of literary classic

Nino Castelnuovo worked with some of Italy's  most famous 'golden age' directors
Nino Castelnuovo worked with some of Italy's
 most famous 'golden age' directors
The actor Nino Castelnuovo, best known for playing opposite a young Catherine Deneuve in a Palme d’Or-winning French musical and as the star of a celebrated TV adaptation of Alessandro Manzoni’s classic novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), died on this day in 2021 at the age of 84.

Castelnuovo’s talent came to the fore during a golden age of Italian cinema, working with leading directors such as Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, Pietro Germi, Luigi Comencini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and starring opposite such luminaries as Alberto Sordi, Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale.

Yet it was the visually beautiful, deeply sentimental French musical, Le parapluies de Cherbourg - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - that catapulted him to fame in 1964, five years after his screen debut.

Directed by Jacques Demy, the musical, in which the dialogue is entirely sung (although by voice dubbers rather than the actors appearing on screen), Castelnuovo played the handsome Guy, a mechanic, who is in love with Deneuve’s character, Geneviève, who works in her mother’s umbrella shop.

Their romance is interrupted when Guy is called up to serve in the Algerian War. Geneviève gives birth to their child while Guy is away but they lose touch. When they meet again, six years later, they are both married to other people, their lives having taken very different courses. An affecting tale, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was nominated for five Academy Awards.

Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo arrive at a promotional event for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo arrive at a
promotional event for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Born in the lakeside town of Lecco, in Lombardy, Castelnuovo was christened as Francesco. His mother, Emilia Paola, a maid, was married to Camillo Castelnuovo, who worked in a button factory. 

Nino worked at different times as a mechanic and a painter. An enthusiastic cinema-goer, he idolised Fred Astaire, which prompted him to take lessons in gymnastics and dancing.  After moving to Milan at the age of 19, he studied drama at the Piccolo Teatro, presided over by the director Giorgio Strehler.

His first screen appearance came via a bit part in a film titled The Virtuous Bigamist in 1956, but his first credited role was in the 1959 thriller Un maledetto imbroglio, directed by Germi, based on Carlo Emilio Gadda’s crime novel, which was titled in English as That Awful Mess on Via Merulana. The film was shown in America as The Facts of Murder.

The following year he starred with Alain Delon in Visconti’s acclaimed drama Rocco and His Brothers and alongside the actor-director Pasolini in The Hunchback of Rome. 

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg won him gushing reviews, yet where Deneuve’s career took off internationally after the film’s release, Castelnuovo fared less well.  He was never short of parts, going on to make more than 50 films, yet Italian cinema audiences in particular were slow to warm to him.

Castelnuovo with Claudia Cardinale in a scene from his first credited movie, Un maledetto imbroglio
Castelnuovo with Claudia Cardinale in a scene from
his first credited movie, Un maledetto imbroglio
In the event, it was the small screen that provided him with his second, career-defining part, as Renzo, the principal male character in a television adaptation of Manzoni’s epic I promessi sposi, first published in three volumes in 1827.

The revised, definitive version published in 1842 has become the most widely-read novel in the Italian language, studied by virtually every Italian secondary school student and regarded by Italian scholars as a literary masterpiece on a par with Dante’s Divine Comedy.

By coincidence, Manzoni places Renzo and Lucia, the couple at the centre of the novel’s storyline, in a village just outside Lecco, where their story begins.  The novel is notable for its description of 17th century Milan during a major outbreak of plague. Rai’s adaptation won much praise from critics and Castelnuovo enjoyed a surge of popularity that won him an audience with Pope Paul VI, among other things.

Thereafter, Castelnuovo became a familiar face in TV dramas both in Italy and in other European countries, although he continued to make films and was keen to work in theatre, too. He performed in several stage productions of the works of Carlo Goldoni, the 18th century Venetian playwright, and returned to the cinema in 1996 when director Anthony Minghella cast him as an archaeologist in the Oscar-winning The English Patient.

Despite suffering problems with his eyesight due to glaucoma, Castelnuovo continued working, mainly on television, into his late 70s.  He suffered two personal tragedies, losing both his brothers. In 1976, Pierantonio died after being beaten up by a group of revellers at a festival, while Clemente was killed in a car accident in 1994.

Nino himself died in hospital in Rome after a long period of ill health. He was survived by his wife, the actress Maria Cristina Di Nicola, and a son, Lorenzo, from a previous relationship.

Piazza XX Settembre in the Lombardy town of Lecco, looking towards the Basilica di San Nicolò
Piazza XX Settembre in the Lombardy town of
Lecco, looking towards the Basilica di San Nicolò
Travel tip:

Lecco, where Nino Castelnuovo was born, lies at the end of the south eastern branch of Lago di Como, which is known as Lago di Lecco. The town is surrounded by mountains including Monte Resegone, which has cable-car access to the Piani d’Erna lookout point, and Monte Barro, a regional park area that contains the remains of a fifth-century settlement and the Costa Perla birdwatching station. In the centre of Lecco, the Basilica di San Nicolò, with its neo-Gothic bell tower, is a notable attraction, while the town makes much of it being the childhood home of Alessandro Manzoni, who chose it as the home of his betrothed lovers, Renzo and Lucia, in I promessi sposi. The historic fishermen’s quarter of Pescarenico, which features in the book, has a number of restaurants that make it well worth a visit.

Bellagio is one of many pretty towns dotted around the shores of Lago di Como
Bellagio is one of many pretty towns dotted
around the shores of Lago di Como
Travel tip:

Lago di Como - Lake Como - the third largest lake in Italy after Garda and Maggiore, has been a popular retreat for aristocrats and the wealthy since Roman times, and remains a popular tourist destination. Its many lakeside villas include the Villa Carlotta, overlooking the lake at Tremezzo, built in the late 18th century as a holiday home for the Clerici family, successful silk merchants, the Villa Olmo in Como, built for the marquis Innocenzo Odescalchi, and  Villa d'Este, in Cernobbio, now a luxury hotel and, between 1816 and 1817, home to Caroline of Brunswick, estranged wife of the Prince of Wales and later Queen Consort of King George IV of the United Kingdom.  Numerous pretty towns along the shores of the lake, which covers an area of 146 sq km (56 sq miles), include Bellagio, Menaggio and Varenna. 

Also on this day:

1610: The birth of Francesco I d’Este, Duke of Modena

1620: The birth of composer Isabella Leonarda

1825: The birth of painter Giovanni Fattori

1925: The birth of novelist and screenwriter Andrea Camilleri


Home



3 August 2023

Omero Antonutti - actor and voice dubber

Narrator of Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful enjoyed long and successul career

Omero Antonutti had success on screen and as a stage actor
Omero Antonutti had success on
screen and as a stage actor
The actor Omero Antonutti, who acted in around 60 films and was the Italian voice of many international stars, was born on this day in 1935 in Basiliano, a village about 13km (eight miles) west of the city of Udine in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy.

His most acclaimed performance came in Padre padrone, a 1977 film directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, a Palme d’Or winner at Cannes that was considered by many critics to be the co-directing brothers’ finest work.

Antonutti worked with the Taviani brothers again on La notte di San Lorenzo (1982), which won the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes, and Kaos (1984) in which he took the part of the playwright Luigi Pirandello in a film based on some of Pirandello’s own short stories.

He was often asked to portray significant figures in dramatisations of real-life events. For example, he took the part of Roberto Calvi, the ill-fated chairman of the Banco Ambrosiano in the Giuseppe Ferrara’s 2002 feature The Bankers of God: The Calvi Affair, and played the shady Sicilian banker Michele Sindona in Michele Placido’s 1995 film Un eroe borghese - A Bourgeois Hero. In Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy, directed by Marco Tullio Giordano in 2012, Antonutti was cast as the Italian president, Giuseppe Saragat.

At the same time, his strong, deep voice meant his skills were in big demand as a voice dubber, with Italian cinema and television audiences preferring international productions to be voiced over by Italian actors, rather than have the visual experience spoiled by subtitles.

Antonutti was the Italian voice of Christopher Lee in the Lord of the Rings series, Sleepy Hollow, The Hobbit and other films. He voiced over Michael Gambon in The King’s Speech, Christopher Plummer in The Mystery of the Templars - National Treasure and Millennium - The Girl with the Hatred, and John Hurt in V for Vendetta. Omar Sharif, Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland and Rutger Hauer were others whose words were interpreted by Antonutti.

Antonutti's voice can be heard as the narrator in Life is Beautiful
Antonutti's voice can be heard as
the narrator in Life is Beautiful
Robert Benigni chose him to narrate Life is Beautiful in 1997, the film going on to win Oscars for Best Foreign Film, Best Leading Actor for Benigni himself and Best Soundtrack for Nicola Piovani.

As a young man, Antonutti lived in Trieste, the port city on the border of Italy and Slovenia. He found work in the shipyards but acted in his spare time, in the late 1950s appearing in the shows of the Silvio D’Amico Acting School before joining the company of the Teatro Stabile di Trieste.

His first film part came in 1966, when he appeared in Le piacevoli notte - Pleasant Nights, a trilogy of comedic tales set in the Middle Ages directed by Luciano Lucignani, acting in the illustrious company of Ugo Tognazzi, Gina Lollobrigida and Vittorio Gassman.

But it was not until the 1970s that his big screen career began in earnest. After landing a part in La donna della domenica (1975), the dramatisation of a popular murder mystery starring Marcello Mastroianni and Jacqueline Bisset and directed by Luigi Comencini, it was only two years before the Taviani brothers cast him as Efisio Ledda, the despotic father of Gavino Ledda in Padre Padrone, based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same title by Gavino Ledda, which describes the way Efisio refused to let his son attend elementary school in the 1940s and forced him instead to work on the family sheep farm in Sardinia, which meant he grew up illiterate.

The acclaim Antonutti received for the dramatic intensity of his portrayal of Efisio set him up for a long career in the cinema, part of which he spent in Spain, where his life is commemorated at the Valencia Film Festival.

Antonutti (left) played opposite Saverio Marconi in the Taviani brothers' Padre Padrone
Antonutti (left) played opposite Saverio Marconi
in the Taviani brothers' Padre Padrone
The last important movie in which he appeared was Gianna Amelio’s Hammamet, released in 2020, a story about the last years in Tunisia of the controversial former prime minister, Bettino Craxi, who went into voluntary exile there to escape jail after being prosecuted as part of the Tangentopoli bribes scandal that rocked Italian politics in the 1990s. Antonutti, by then in his 80s, played Craxi’s father.

In his 50-plus years as a movie and television actor, Antonutti never forgot his theatrical roots. He often returned to the Teatro Stabile in Trieste, taking part whenever a milestone was celebrated in the theatre’s history and occasionally even accepting a part in a play, such was his love of acting in its purest form, on stage in front of a live audience.

Sadly, he did not live long enough to witness the release of his final film. In declining health for a number of years, he died from cancer in November 2019 at the Ospedale Civile in Udine where he was receiving treatment.

Antonutti had spent the final 10 years of his life with his wife, Graziella, whom he married in 2009. His funeral took place at the Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Nuovo in Trieste.

The Loggia del Lionello is one of the architectural features of Udine's Piazza della Libertà
The Loggia del Lionello is one of the architectural
features of Udine's Piazza della Libertà
Travel tip:

Udine, the nearest city to Antonutti’s home village of Basiliano, is an attractive and wealthy provincial city, known as the gastronomic capital of Friuli. Udine's most attractive area lies within the mediaeval centre, which has Venetian, Greek and Roman influences. The main square, Piazza della Libertà, features the town hall, the Loggia del Lionello, built in 1448–1457 in the Venetian-Gothic style, and a clock tower, the Torre dell’Orologio, which is similar to the clock tower in Piazza San Marco - St Mark's Square - in Venice. Long regarded as something of a hidden gem, Udine does not attract the tourist traffic of other, better-known Italian cities, yet with its upmarket coffee shops, artisan boutiques and warm, traditional eating places in an elegant setting, it has much to commend it.



Trieste's Canal Grande is overlooked by the  Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Nuovo
Trieste's Canal Grande is overlooked by the 
Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Nuovo
Travel tip:

The port of Trieste, tucked away in a bay at the top of the Adriatic sea, is the capital of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. Within only a few kilometres of the border with Slovenia to its east and south and less than 30km (19 miles) from the northern border of Croatia, Trieste had been disputed territory for thousands of years and officially became part of the Italian Republic only as recently as 1954. Previously it had been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and then Yugoslavia, who disputed the border until the Treaty of Osimo in 1975.  The area today is one of the most prosperous in Italy and Trieste is a lively, cosmopolitan city and a major centre for trade and ship building.  The city has a coffee house culture that dates back to the Hapsburg era.  Caffè Tommaseo, in Piazza Nicolò Tommaseo, near the grand open space of the Piazza Unità d’Italia, is the oldest in the city, dating back to 1830.

Also on this day:

1486: The birth of celebrated courtesan Imperia Cognati

1530: The death of Florentine military leader Francesco Ferruccio

1546: The death of architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger

1778: The inauguration of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala


Home