Showing posts with label 1922. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1922. Show all posts

7 May 2019

Raimondo Vianello - actor and TV host

Big-screen star who conquered television too


For many years, RaimondoVianello was  host of Sunday night sports show Pressing
For many years, Raimondo Vianello was
host of Sunday night sports show Pressing
Raimondo Vianello, who enjoyed a career that brought success on the big screen and small screen in equal measure, was born on this day in 1922 in Rome. 

Vianello first rose to fame in the 1950s through a satirical TV show in which he starred with the great commedia all’Italiana actor Ugo Tognazzi, which was eventually banned.

From television he moved into movies, appearing in no fewer than 79 films in the space of just 21 years, between 1947 and 1968, some with Tognazzi, but also alongside other stars such as Totò and Virna Lisi.

His notable successes included his portrayal alongside Raffaella Carrà of a hopeless secret agent in Mariano Laurenti’s 1966 film Il vostro superagente Flit - a parody of Our Man Flint, an American production that was in itself a parody of the James Bond movies - and Michele Lupo’s comedy Sette volte sette (Seven Times Seven) in 1968, in which he portrayed an inmate in a London prison.

Vianello’s ban from television in 1954 followed a sketch on he and Tognazzi’s popular show Un due tre, broadcast by the Italian state network Rai, in which they sent up an incident at La Scala opera house in Milan the night before, when the Italian president Giovanni Gronchi suffered an unfortunate accident, lowering himself to sit in a chair next to the French president Charles de Gaulle without noticing the chair had been moved.

Vianello (left) with Ugo Tognazzi in a sketch from their 1950s satirical TV show Un due tre
Vianello (left) with Ugo Tognazzi in a sketch from their
1950s satirical TV show Un due tre
Gronchi was not amused, however, and ordered the show to be cancelled. All was forgiven in time, though, and by the late 1960s Vianello was back on the small screen, this time in the company of his wife, the actress Sandra Mondaini.

Together, they hosted a series of Saturday shows on Rai which made them an extremely popular couple.

The next time Vianello left Rai, it was of his own volition, lured away to work on the commercial networks, which had become major players with the involvement of entrepreneur and future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Vianello and Mondaini fronted quiz shows such as Zig Zag and Il gioco del 9 on Canale 5, and for eight years Raimondo was the host of Pressing, a Sunday night sports talk show on Italia 1. He also hosted the 1998 edition of the Sanremo Music Festival alongside Eva Herzigová and Veronica Pivetti.

But it was his best-known and longest-lasting TV programme, Casa Vianello, a sitcom which aired from 1988 to 2008 in Canale 5 and later Rete 4 in which he and Mondaini performed as fictionalised versions of themselves, based on light and never-vulgar humour. It became a show beloved among Italians of all ages.

Vianello and his wife Sandra Mondaini presented many different shows together, including a long-running sitcom
Vianello and his wife Sandra Mondaini presented many
different shows together, including a long-running sitcom
Born in Rome, the son of Guido Vianello, an Admiral in the Italian Navy of Venetian heritage, he was brought up in Pula in what is now Croatia but which then was in Italian-controlled Istria.

As a young man he joined Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic, the Fascist state established in northern Italy after the country’s surrender to the Allies in 1943. He served as a non-commissioned officer in the Bersaglieri corps. In 1945, he was captured by American troops and detained in the Coltano prison camp near Pisa.

After his long career, he died in 2010, a month short of what would have been his 88th birthday. His funeral took place at the in the Chiesa di Dio Padre in Milano Due, the new town within the Milan suburb of Segrate built by Berlusconi. After the funeral the body was transferred to Rome, to be buried in the family tomb at the Verano cemetery.

Pula's first century Colosseum is one of many Roman  relics in the former Italian city in Istria
Pula's first century Colosseum is one of many Roman
 relics in the former Italian city in Istria
Travel tip:

Pula is a seafront city on the tip of Croatia’s Istrian Peninsula, known for its protected harbour, beach-lined coast and some of the most impressive Roman ruins outside Italy, including a first-century Roman amphitheatre, whose imposing outer walls are the best preserved after Rome’s Colosseum, and the Temple of Augustus. The Colosseum hosts the centrepiece of Pula’s annual calendar, the glitzy two-week film festival. The streets of Pula’s historic centre contain a historical jumble of Byzantine chapels, weather-beaten Venetian townhouses and grand Hapsburg palaces.


Waterways are a feature of the environment created at Silvio Berlusconi's Milano Due complex
Waterways are a feature of the environment created at
Silvio Berlusconi's Milano Due complex
Travel tip:

The town of Milano Due was the project that launched Silvio Berlusconi as a media magnate. Built by Berlusconi's construction company Edilnord in the 1970s, it is a residential centre close to the Segrate area of suburban Milan conceived by Berlusconi as a place for families to live in a safe environment, a system of walkways ensuring that its residents could reach any part of the community without encountering any vehicular traffic.  The town features many parks and waterways and every house or apartment was connected to a cable television system run by another Berlusconi company,  TeleMilano, Italy's first private television channel. TeleMilano was the project from which the tycoon would eventually grow his national TV company, Mediaset.



More reading:

How Ugo Tognazzi became a star of commedia all'Italiana

Virna Lisi, the screen siren who turned her back on glamour roles

Pippo Baudo, the TV presenter who became the record-breaking face of Sanremo

Also on this day:

1917: The birth of Sistine Chapel Choir director Domenico Bartolucci

1976: The birth of rugby star Andrea lo Cicero

1983: The birth of Olympic archery champion Marco Galiazzo



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5 March 2019

Pier Paolo Pasolini - writer and film director

Controversial figure who met violent death


Pier Paolo Pasolini courted controversy in his films, his private life and his politics
Pier Paolo Pasolini courted controversy in his films,
his private life and his politics
The novelist, writer and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini was born on this day in 1922 in Bologna.

Pasolini's best-known work included his portrayal of Jesus Christ in The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), his bawdy adaptations of such literary classics as Boccaccio’s Decameron (1971) and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1972), and and his brutal satire on Fascism entitled Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). 

He also wrote novels and poetry, made documentaries, directed for the theatre and was an outspoken columnist for the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, expressing political views that would regularly spark heated debate.

A former member of the Communist Party and openly homosexual, Pasolini died in violent circumstances in Ostia, near Rome, in November 1975, supposedly murdered by a young man he had picked up at the city’s Termini railway station, although there was some mystery around the incident and speculation over motives continues to this day.

The son of an army lieutenant, Pasolini lived in various northern Italian towns in his childhood, determined by his father’s postings. Family life was somewhat turbulent. His father spent time in prison over gambling debts but was also the man who detained Anteo Zamboni, a teenager suspected of attempting to assassinate Mussolini in 1926.

The house where Pasolini was born in Bologna - now an office of the Guardia di Finanzia, is marked with a plaque
The house where Pasolini was born in Bologna - now an
office of the Guardia di Finanzia, is marked with a plaque
Pasolini graduated from the University of Bologna and began to pursue an interest in writing poetry that he had nurtured since the age of seven, inspired by the beauty of Casarsa della Delizia, a town in Friuli and the home of his mother’s family. He published his first volume of poetry in 1942.

He attributed his mostly Marxist politics to his experience of the oppressed peasant communities around Casarsa. His 19-year-old brother Guido, a member of the anti-Fascist Partito d’Azione, was accidentally killed in by partisans in an ambush.

After 1945, Pasolini worked as a secondary school teacher in nearby Valvasone but his activities as a Communist Party member made him a controversial figure and he was eventually forced out of his job by the local Christian Democrats, whom he accused of manufacturing a scandal that saw him charged with the "corruption of minors and (committing) obscene acts in public places".

In January 1950, Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother Susanna to start a new life. He was later acquitted of both charges. They moved to the run-down suburb of Rebibbia, next to a prison, which provided the inspiration for his first novels, which dealt with the violent lives of poor proletarian immigrants living in often horrendous sanitary and social conditions, and his debut movie, Accattone (1961).

Pasolini taking part in a radio broadcast in Rome in 1975
Pasolini taking part in a radio broadcast
in Rome in 1975
Prior to that he had worked variously as a teacher in Ciampino and a writer for Italian state radio before making the acquaintance of the director Federico Fellini, who employed him to help with the Roman dialect in both Le notti di Cabiria and La Dolce Vita.

Pasolini was prepared to tackle controversial subjects. Mamma Roma (1962), featuring Anna Magnani, which told the story of a prostitute and her son, was considered an affront to morality and widely criticised.

The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964), which won awards at both the Venice Film Festival and BAFTA, also attracted criticism, portraying Christ as a revolutionary ‘Red Messiah’, but Pasolini vowed to direct it from the "believer's point of view" and the Catholic Church has since described it as “the best film ever made about Jesus Christ.”

He attracted criticism for different reasons with his sex-laden Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), and Il fiore delle mille e una notte (literally The Flower of 1001 Nights, released in English as Arabian Nights, 1974), his Trilogy of Life, which celebrated the human body while commenting on contemporary sexual and religious mores and hypocrisies. They were hugely popular, Decameron and The Canterbury Tales winning awards at the Berlin Film Festival, although Pasolini later regretted his association with them, because the many softcore imitations of the films made him uncomfortable about their success.

His final work, Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), exceeded what most viewers could accept at the time in its explicit scenes of intensely sadistic violence. A satire on Fascism - Salò being the name of the Fascist ‘republic’ Mussolini set up in northern Italy in a desperate attempt to cling to power - it is based on the novel 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade, and is considered Pasolini's most controversial film.

Willem Dafoe starred as Pasolini in the 2014 film about his life directed by Abel Ferrara
Willem Dafoe starred as Pasolini in the 2014
film about his life directed by Abel Ferrara
Despite evidence that more than one person was involved, only Giuseppe (Pino) Pelosi, the young man he supposedly picked up, was convicted of his murder. Pelosi was caught after police stopped him as he sped from the scene in Pasolini’s Alfa Romeo.

The autopsy indicated that the director had been run over by the car on the beach as Ostia, having first been severely beaten with blunt instruments. Pelosi confessed his guilt, claiming he attacked the director after refusing to be subjected to a particularly violent sexual act.

The verdict of the 1976 court hearing was that Pelosi “and unknown others” were guilty of the crime, although the “unknown others” did not appear in the wording when that verdict went to appeal.

Speculation about alternative motives began almost immediately and intensified when, 29 years later, Pelosi retracted his confession. He said he had made it under the threat of violence to his family and claimed that the crime had been committed by three people regularly seen at the Tiburtina branch of the neo-fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement).

The conspiracy theorists discussed extortion following the theft of a number of reels of film from Salò as one explanation, while others suspected a political motive.

Franca Rame, who married the playwright Dario Fo and became a political activist
Franca Rame, who married the playwright
Dario Fo and became a political activist
In his columns in the Corriere della Sera, long before the Tangentopoli enquiry led to the collapse of Italy’s then deeply-corrupt political establishment, Pasolini said that the leadership of the ruling Christian Democratic party should stand trial, not only for corruption and links with the Mafia, but for association with neo-fascist terrorism, such as the bombing of trains and a demonstration in Milan.

Also, at the time of his death, Pasolini was working on a novel, Petrolio, that was clearly based on the mysterious death of Enrico Mattei, the former president of the state oil company ENI, which suggested that the scandal went to the heart of power via the involvement of the illegal masonic lodge Propaganda Due.

Attacks on left-wing activists were relatively common in the 1970s. For example, Franca Rame, the actress wife of the playwright Dario Fo and a prominent member of the Italian Communist Party, was kidnapped and raped by a group of neo-Fascists in 1973.

However, though the Pasolini case was reopened in 2005, no new conclusions were reached.

In 2014 the director Abel Ferrara made a biopic about Pasolini, with Willem Dafoe in the lead role, which was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival.

The ruins of the Roman city of Ostia Antica are better  preserved than Pompei yet are much less well known
The ruins of the Roman city of Ostia Antica are better
preserved than Pompei yet are much less well known
Travel tip:

The seaside resort of Ostia, where Pasolini’s life ended so tragically, lies 30km (19 miles) to the southwest of Rome, situated just across the Tiber river from Fiumicino, home of Rome’s largest international airport. It  adjoins the remains of the ancient Roman city of Ostia Antica, a much-better preserved site than volcano-ravaged Pompei occupying around 10,000 square metres, radiating from a mile-long main street.  There are many houses and apartment blocks, plus warehouses and public buildings, and an impressive amphitheatre.. Many Romans spend their summer holidays in the modern town, swelling a population of about 85,000.

Hotels in Ostia Antica by Booking.com



The church of Santa Croce and San Rocco, where the funeral for Pier Paolo Pasolina took place in 1975
The church of Santa Croce and San Rocco, where the
funeral for Pier Paolo Pasolina took place in 1975
Travel tip:

Casarsa della Delizia is a town in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, about 40km (25 miles) west of Udine and about 18km (11 miles) from Pordenone. It is today an important agricultural centre, particularly for wine production, and an important rail hub. Until the end of the Cold War saw numbers reduced, it hosted a large number of Italian military personnel. Pasolini’s funeral took place in the parish church of Santa Croce and San Rocco, before his body was buried in the municipal emetery. The church of Santa Croce and San Rocci contains a cycle of 16th century frescoes by Pomponio Amalteo or by Pordenone.

14 December 2018

Luciano Bianciardi - novelist and translator

Writer who brought contemporary American literature to Italian audiences


Luciano Bianciardi devoted much of his life to literature
Luciano Bianciardi devoted
much of his life to literature
The journalist, novelist and translator Luciano Bianciardi, who was responsible for putting the work of most of the outstanding American authors of the 20th century into Italian, was born on this day in 1922 in Grosseto in Tuscany.

Bianciardi translated novels by such writers as Saul Bellow, Henry Miller, William Faulkner and Norman Mailer, who were read in the Italian language for the first time thanks to his understanding of the nuances of their style.

He also wrote novels of his own, the most successful of which was La vita agra (1962; published in English as It’s a Hard Life), which was made into a film, directed by Carlo Lizzani and starring Ugo Tognazzi.

Bianciardi, whose father, Atide, was a bank cashier, developed an appreciation for learning from his mother, Adele, who was an elementary school teacher.

At the same time he acquired a lifelong fascination with Garibaldi and the Risorgimento, after his father gave him a book by a local author, Giuseppe Bandi, about Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand.

Bianciardi struggled to control his drinking late in his life
Bianciardi struggled to control
his drinking late in his life
Bianciardi’s university education was interrupted by the Second World War. He witnessed the bombing of Foggia, where the army unit to which he was assigned had the grim task of tending to the wounded and recovering the bodies of the dead. It was not long afterwards that Italy negotiated the 1943 armistice with the Allies, for whom he then worked as an interpreter.

He resumed his education at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he graduated in philosophy. His circle of friends were mainly writers with liberal socialist political leanings and he was briefly a member of Il Partito d’Azione - the Action Party - until it folded in 1947. The following year he married his first wife, Adria, with whom he would have two children.

His entry into the literary world came at the invitation of the municipality of Grosseto, who asked him to reorganise their civic library, which had been badly damaged by the bombings of 1943 and the floods of the following year. Later he became the library director and a passionate promoter of cultural initiatives such as the bibliobus, a van that took books into the hamlets and and scattered farms around the town.

The cover of the Feltrinelli edition of his most famous book, La vita agra
The cover of the Feltrinelli edition of
his most famous book, La vita agra
He began to write for newspapers and, in 1956, published his first book, The Miners of the Maremma, which followed an investigation he launched with his friend and political ally, the writer Carlo Cassola, for the newspaper L’Avanti into the harsh conditions in which the miners in this Tuscan coastal territory worked and the poverty in which their families lived, which he encountered at first hand through his bibliobus scheme.

Bianciardi over time became a prolific writer for newspapers and magazines on all manner of subjects, on political matters but also cultural topics.  He was a film and television critic, and at times wrote about sport for magazines such as Guerin Sportivo.

He forged his reputation as a translator after moving to Milan to work for the Feltrinelli publishing house, developing a relationship that continued even after the company, frustrated with his poor timekeeping and clashes over their editorial policy, decided they could no longer employ him on a permanent, formal basis.

He worked his way through most of the major American writers. Among more than 100 texts that he translated into Italian were Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent and Travels with Charley, Jack London's John Barleycorn, J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man and William Faulkner's A Fable and The Mansion.

At the same time, he began to write novels of his own, his stories often having a theme of rebellion against the cultural establishment, or else the lives of ordinary Italians during the so-called ‘economic miracle’ years of the 1950s and '60s.

Ugo Tognazzi in a scene from the movie based on Luciano Bianciardi's book, La vita agra
Ugo Tognazzi in a scene from the movie based on
Luciano Bianciardi's book, La vita agra
La vita agra is considered his finest work, published by Rizzoli in 1962.  Acclaimed by the critics, it sold 5,000 copies with a couple of weeks of its appearance in the book shops. It brought Bianciardi fame almost overnight.

His other works include Il lavoro culturale - Cultural Work; L’integrazione - Integration; La battaglia soda - The Soda-Water Battle; and Aprire il fuoco - Setting the Fire.

Bianciardi, who had a third child by Maria Jatosti, with whom he worked at Feltrinelli, bought a house at Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera in Liguria about 30km (19 miles) east of Genoa, while keeping his home in the Brera district of Milan.

A heavy drinker through much of his life, he died at the age of just 49 in 1971, suffering from liver disease.  His last book, a comprehensive biography of Garibaldi, was published posthumously in 1972.

Grosseto's Romanesque cathedral, viewed from the Via Daniele Manin
Grosseto's Romanesque cathedral, viewed
from the Via Daniele Manin
Travel tip:

Bianciardi’s home town of Grosseto is the largest town of the Maremma region of Tuscany, with approximately 65,000 inhabitants. Located in the alluvial plain of the Ombrone river, about 14km from the Tyrrhenian sea, the town grew in importance several centuries ago because of the trade in salt, that was obtained in salt pans in the now reclaimed lagoon that covered most of the area between Grosseto and the sea.  By 1328, the silting up of the lagoon robbed Grosseto of its salt revenues, after which is became largely depopulated, vulnerable to outbreaks of malaria caused by the mosquitos that thrived in the marshy areas surrounding the town. It began to expand again in the 19th century. Tourists today are drawn to visit by the walls begun by Francesco I de Medici in 1574, and by the Romanesque cathedral, dedicated to St. Lawrence.

Search tripadvisor for a hotel in Grosseto

Rapallo's Castello sul Mare was built in 1551 to deter pirates from attacking the Ligurian coastal town
Rapallo's Castello sul Mare was built in 1551 to deter pirates
from attacking the Ligurian coastal town
Travel tip: 

Rapallo, while somewhat overshadowed by its exclusive neighbour Portofino, is an attractive seaside town of the eastern Italian Riviera, known as the Riviera di Levante. The town developed around a harbour guarded by a small castle – Il Castello sul Mare – built in 1551 to repel pirate attacks, which sits right on the water’s edge.  Look out also for the 12th century Basilica of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, two historic towers and a ruined monastery, along with a network of narrow streets to explore. There are boat services to Portofino, as well as Santa Margherita Ligure and Camogli, while the main Genoa to Pisa railway line passes through the town.


More reading:

How Cesare Pavesi introduced foreign writers to Fascist Italy

Why novelist Leonardo Sciascia was the scourge of corrupt politicians

The comic genius of La Cage aux Folles star Ugo Tognazzi

Also on this day:

1784: The birth of Neapolitan princess Maria Antonia

1853: The birth of anarchist Errico Malatesta

1966: The birth of racing driver Fabrizio Giovanardi


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1 September 2018

Vittorio Gassman - actor

Stage and screen star once dubbed ‘Italy’s Olivier’


Vittorio Gassman in the 1948 movie Riso amaro, which provided him with his breakthrough as a screen actor
Vittorio Gassman in the 1948 movie Riso amaro, which
provided him with his breakthrough as a screen actor
Vittorio Gassman, who is regarded as one of the finest actors in the history of Italian theatre and cinema, was born on this day in 1922 in Genoa.

Tall, dark and handsome in a way that made him a Hollywood producer’s dream, Gassman appeared in almost 150 movies but he was no mere matinée idol.

A highly respected stage actor, he possessed a mellifluous speaking voice, a magisterial presence and such range and versatility in his acting talent that the Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham once called him ‘the Lawrence Olivier of Italy’.

He enjoyed a career that spanned five decades. Inevitably, he is best remembered for his screen roles, although by the time he made his movie debut in 1945, he had appeared in more than 40 productions of classic plays by Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, and others.

On screen, his major successes included his portrayal of the handsome scoundrel Walter opposite Silvana Mangano in Giuseppe De Santis's neorealist melodrama Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, 1948), and several Commedia all’Italiana classics, including Mario Monicelli’s I soliti ignoti (Big Deal On Madonna Street, 1958), La grande guerra (The Great War, 1959) and L'armata brancaleone (1965), and Dino Risi's Il sorpasso (1962).

With Silvana Mangano and Alberto Sordi (right), his co-stars in the comedy classic La grande guerra (1959)
With Silvana Mangano and Alberto Sordi (right), his co-stars
in the comedy classic La grande guerra (1959)
At this time, his popularity was rivalled only by Alberto Sordi, his co-star in La grande guerra, which shared the Golden Lion prize at Venice in 1959 with a Rossellini film.

Gassman’s portrayal of a blind military man in Risi’s 1974 film Profumo di donna received the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. Al Pacino played the same part and won an Oscar in the 1992 remake, Scent of a Woman.

His flirtation with Hollywood came after he met and fell in love with the American actress Shelley Winters while she was touring Europe.

When Winters returned to Hollywood because of contractual obligations, he followed her there and married her. With his natural charisma and fluency in English he landed a number of roles in Hollywood, including Charles Vidor’s Rhapsody opposite Elizabeth Taylor, and with Gloria Grahame in Maxwell Shane’s film noir The Glass Wall.

He was the only Italian star in the cast of King Vidor's epic War And Peace (1956), produced by Dino De Laurentiis in Rome and for which the Italian composer Nino Rota wrote the music score. Later, Gassman gave distinguished performances in the Robert Altman films A Wedding (1978) and Quintet (1979).

Gassman was the only Italian cast in the 1956 epic War and Peace, in which he is pictured with Audrey Hepburn
Gassman was the only Italian cast in the 1956 epic War and
Peace,
in which he is pictured with Audrey Hepburn
Born to a German father and a Jewish Italian mother, Gassman had aspirations to be a lawyer. But his mother encouraged him to pursue his interest in acting and he remained devoted to his first love, theatre, throughout his career.

A student at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica in Rome, he made his stage debut in Milan in 1942 before moving back to Rome to work at the Teatro Eliseo.

Even after his film debut in 1946 was followed by his breakthrough role in Bitter Rice two years later, he devoted much energy to Luchino Visconti's theatre company in productions such as Tennessee Williams' Un tram che si chiama desiderio (A Streetcar Named Desire) and Come vi piace (As You Like It) by Shakespeare.

In 1952 he co-founded and co-directed the Teatro d'Arte Italiano, which produced the first complete version of Hamlet in Italy.  Later in his career, he created his own company, Teatro Popolare Itinerante, with which he toured Italy staging the works of 20th century authors and playwrights as well as the classics of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky and the Greek tragicians. He also founded a theatre school in Florence.

For a while he was the star of a popular TV series, Il Mattatore, which was later turned into a movie.

Married three times - to actresses Nora Ricci, Shelley Winters and Diletta D'Andrea - he also had numerous affairs.  The father of two daughters and two sons - one of whom, Alessandro, became a film actor - Gassman died in June 2000, in Rome, following a heart attack.

The Piazza de Ferrari in the centre of Genoa
The Piazza de Ferrari in the centre of Genoa
Travel tip:

Gassman’s home city of Genoa boasts Italy's largest sea port, its maritime power going back to the 12th and 13th centuries, when the Republic of Genoa ruled the Mediterranean. The old city is fascinating for its large maze of narrow caruggi (streets), opening out occasionally into grand squares such as Piazza de Ferrari, site of an iconic bronze fountain and Teatro Carlo Felice opera house. There is a Romanesque duomo, the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, recognisable for its black-and-white-striped facade and frescoed interior.

The Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatic in Rome
The Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatic in Rome
Travel tip:

The Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica "Silvio d'Amico", the dramatic arts academy where Gassman trained as an actor, can be found in Via Bellini, between Villa Borghese and the Parioli district, in an elegant four-storey building. Founded in 1936 by the critic and theatrical theorist Silvio D'Amico, in addition to Gassman it has seen students such as Rossella Falk, Anna Magnani, Paolo Stoppa, Nino Manfredi, Gian Maria Volonté, Monica Vitti, Michele Placido, Nicoletta Braschi and Luca Zingaretti attend lectures and workshops there.

More reading:

Mario Monicelli - the father of Commedia all'Italiana

The genius of Alberto Sordi

How Silvano Mangano's acting talents overcame her critics

Also on this day:

1878: The birth of conductor Tullio Serafin

1886: The birth of vaudeville star Guido Deiro


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15 August 2018

Carlo Cipolla - economic historian

Professor famous for treatise on ‘stupidity’


Carlo Cipolla's tongue-in-cheek book about human stupidity became a bestseller in Italy
Carlo Cipolla's tongue-in-cheek book about human stupidity
became a bestseller in Italy
Carlo Maria Cipolla, an economic historian who for many years was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and taught at several Italian universities, was born on this day in 1922 in Pavia.

He was one of the leading economic historians of the 20th century and wrote more than 20 academic books on economic and social history but also on such diverse subjects as clocks, guns and faith, reason and the plague in 17th century Italy.

Yet it was for his humorous treatise, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, that he became famous. The book, written very much tongue in cheek, became a bestseller in Italy after it was published in 1976.

In it, Cipolla produced a graph that divided the human species into four types, each sharing one characteristic of another type.

He proposed that there are (a) bandits, whose actions bring benefits for themselves but losses for others; (b) intelligent people, whose actions bring benefits for themselves and for others; (c) naive or helpless people, whose actions bring benefits for others but who tend to be exploited and therefore incur losses for themselves; and (d) stupid people, whose actions result not only in losses for themselves but for others too.

His Five Laws of Human Stupidity argued that everyone underestimates the number of stupid people in society, that certain people had a strong likelihood of being stupid irrespective of other characteristics, that a stupid person inevitably causes losses to other people while deriving no gain from his or her actions, that non-stupid people repeatedly underestimate the damage likely to result from dealing or associating with stupid people, and that because of the lack of predictability and logic in a stupid person’s behaviour, a stupid person was more dangerous than a bandit.

The matrix that Cipolla included in his Basic Laws  of Human Stupidity was something like this
The matrix that Cipolla included in his Basic Laws
of Human Stupidity
was something like this
Growing up, Cipolla’s ambition was to teach history and philosophy in an Italian high school.

He studied political science at Pavia University but thanks to one of his professors he discovered his passion for economic history, which he subsequently studied at the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics.

After obtaining his first teaching post in economic history in Catania in Sicily at the age of 27, he embarked on an academic career that would see him appointed to positions at the universities of Venice, Turin and Pavia, the European Institute in Florence and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.

He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959 and, for more than 30 years, Cipolla and his American-born wife Ora divided their year between Berkeley, where they would spend the late summer and autumn, and Pavia, to which they returned for spring and early summer.

Cipolla was a member of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain, the British Academy, the Accademia dei Lincei, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. He was awarded the Premio della Presidente della Repubblica in Italy, and the Premio Balzan, as well as honorary degrees in Italy and Zurich, Switzerland.

His wide range of interests was evident in his passion for collecting as well as academic study. His homes were filled with impressive collections of ancient coins, old clocks, 18th century Italian paintings and Roman surgical instruments among other things.

Cipolla died in Pavia in 2000 at the age of 78, having for many years suffered from Parkinson’s Disease.

The Certosa di Pavia, which dates back to 1396
The Certosa di Pavia, which dates back to 1396
Travel tip:

Pavia is a city in Lombardy, about 46km (30 miles) south of Milan. Its university was founded in 1361 and was the sole university in the Duchy of Milan until the 19th century. Its alumni include explorer Christopher Columbus, physicist Alessandro Volta and the poet and revolutionary Ugo Foscolo. Pavia is also famous for its Certosa, a magnificent Renaissance monastery complex north of the city that dates back to 1396 and includes a number of important sculptures and frescoes. A pretty covered bridge over the River Ticino leads to Borgo Ticino, where the inhabitants claim to be the true people of Pavia.

The Palazzo dei Cavalieri, main seat of the Scuola  Normale Superiore in Pisa
The Palazzo dei Cavalieri, main seat of the Scuola
Normale Superiore in Pisa
Travel tip:

The Scuola Normale Superiore - known and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa until it was expanded to include faculties in Florence in 2014 - is often known in Italy simply as the Normale. Opened in 1810, its origins are in the Napoleonic era, when it was the equivalent of France’s École normale supérieure. The adjective "normal" was used in the sense of teaching societal “norms". In the 19th century, teachers' training schools were called "normal" schools for this reason.  Many scientists, researchers and intellectuals, as well as prominent public figures, including two Presidents of Italy, were students there. It admits only a relatively small number of students per year and is seen as one of the most prestigious universities in Italy.

More reading:

The University of Pavia professor known as the 'father of criminology'

Alessandro Volta - the scientist who invented the first electric battery

Ugo Foscolo - poet and revolutionary

Also on this day:

1702: The birth of landscape painter Francesco Zuccarelli

1944: The birth of fashion designer Gianfranco Ferré


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28 July 2018

San Marino’s liberation from Fascism

The day the people demonstrated against their government


The leader of San Marino's Fascists was the wealthy Giuliano Gozi
The leader of San Marino's Fascists was
the wealthy Giuliano Gozi
San Marino residents celebrate the anniversary of their liberation from Fascism on this day every year.

The Sammarinese Fascist Party had been founded in 1922 by Giuliano Gozi, a veteran of the First World War who came from a rich and powerful family.

The party was modelled on the Fascist party of Italy and used violence and intimidation against its opponents.

Gozi took the roles of both foreign minister and interior minister, which gave him control over the military and the police. He continued to serve as foreign minister, leading the cabinet, until 1943.

In 1923 Gozi was elected as San Marino’s Captain Regent. The Fascists retained this post for 20 years as they banned all other political parties, although some independent politicians continued to serve in the Grand and General Council of the Republic.

But in the early 1940s a group of Socialists started up a clandestine anti-fascist movement and the opposition to the Fascist regime grew stronger in the republic.

On July 28, 1943 the Socialists held a successful political demonstration against Fascism and as a result new elections were called.

The symbol of the Sammarinese Fascist Party
The symbol of the Sammarinese
Fascist Party
When Mussolini was freed by the Germans and Fascism was restored in Italy, the new Government of San Marino managed to negotiate a peace treaty allowing it to remain neutral between the two opposing forces.

During the war San Marino became a safe shelter for more than 100,000 refugees and many Jews were saved from being sent to concentration camps.

At the end of the Second World War, British and American troops supervised the slow return of these refugees to their homes.

A public holiday and festival is held in San Marino on July 28 every year in celebration of the day the Republic finally got rid of the Fascists.

San Marino's Fortress of Guaita is one of the republic's most photographed spectacles
San Marino's Fortress of Guaita is one of the republic's
most photographed spectacles
Travel tip:

San Marino, which is on the border between Emilia-Romagna and Marche, still exists as an independent state within Italy, situated on the north east side of the Apennine mountains. The republic’s romantic battlements and towers can be seen from miles away against the skyline. San Marino claims to be the oldest surviving sovereign state and constitutional republic in the world. It covers an area of just 61 square kilometres, or 24 square miles.

The Palazzo Pubblico
The Palazzo Pubblico
Travel tip:

San Marino’s official government building, the Palazzo Pubblico, is similar in design to the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence but is on a much smaller scale. It is in the heart of the Città di San Marino in Contrada del Pianello. Designed by the architect Francesco Azzurri it was built between 1884 and 1894.

More reading:

How the Allies bombed San Marino by accident

The founding of San Marino

The anarchist who tried to kill Mussolini

Also on this day:

1883: The birth of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini

1924: The birth of racing driver Luigi Musso


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27 July 2018

Adolfo Celi – actor and director

Successful career of a Sicilian who was typecast as a baddy


Adolfo Celi in his most famous role as the villain Emilio Largo in the 1965 Bond film Thunderball
Adolfo Celi in his most famous role as the villain
Emilio Largo in the 1965 Bond film Thunderball
An actor who specialised in playing the role of the villain in films, Adolfo Celi, was born on this day in 1922 in Curcuraci, a hamlet in the province of Messina in Sicily.

Celi was already prominent in Italian cinema, but he became internationally famous for his portrayal of Emilio Largo, James Bond’s adversary with the eye patch, in the 1965 film Thunderball.

He had made his film debut after the Second World War in A Yank in Rome (Un americano in vacanza), in 1946.

In the 1950s he moved to Brazil, where he co-founded the Teatro Brasiliero de Comedia.  He was successful as a stage actor in Brazil and Argentina and also directed three films.

Celi’s big break came when he played the villain in Philippe de Broca’s That Man from Rio. Afterwards he was cast as the camp commandant in the escape drama, Von Ryan’s Express, in which Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard played prisoners of war.

After appearing in Thunderball, Celi was offered scores of big parts as a villain.

Celi (left) in a scene from the 1975 comedy-drama  Amici miei (My Friends), directed by Mario Monicelli
Celi (left) in a scene from the 1975 comedy-drama
Amici miei (My Friends), directed by Mario Monicelli
He later made a spoof of Thunderball in the film, OK Connery, in which he played opposite Sean Connery’s brother, Neil.

Despite being fluent in several languages, Celi’s heavy Sicilian accent meant he was always dubbed when he appeared in English language films.

But he was allowed to speak for himself when he appeared as the Spanish pope, Alexander VI, formerly Rodrigo Borgia, in the 1981 BBC series, The Borgias.

Celi was married three times. His son, Leonardo Celi, is a director and his daughter, Alessandra Celi, is an actress.

Celi (right) played Pope Alexander VI in The Borgias
Celi (right) played Pope
Alexander VI in The Borgias
In his later years, Celi worked mainly in the theatre. In February 1986, when he was 64, he was in Siena directing and acting in I misteri di Pietroburgo, a theatrical version of Dostoevsky’s work, The Mysteries of St Petersburg.

He suddenly became ill and his friend, the great Italian theatre and film actor Vittorio Gassman, had to take his place on the stage for the premiere of the play on the evening of February 19.

Adolfo Celi died a few hours later in hospital after suffering a heart attack. He was buried in the Cimitero Monumentale in Messina.

The church of Santa Maria dei Bianchi in Curcuraci was rebuilt by residents
The church of Santa Maria dei Bianchi
in Curcuraci was rebuilt by residents
Travel tip:

Curcuraci, where Adolfo Celi was born, is about 7km (4 miles) north of the town of Messina. The Church of Santa Maria dei Bianchi in the village had been built in a place where, according to tradition, the Madonna had appeared in 1347. The church was destroyed in an earthquake in 1908 but the local people worked together to rebuild it, completing the reconstruction by 1926. There is a statue of the patron saint of Curcuraci by the entrance gate and the residents hold a celebration for the saint every year on the first Sunday in September.

The Teatro dei Rinnovati, reopened in 1950, is the most famous of several theatres in the city of Siena
The Teatro dei Rinnovati, reopened in 1950, is the most
famous of several theatres in the city of Siena
Travel tip:

The most important theatre in Siena, the city where Celi died, is the Teatro dei Rinnovati right in the centre of the city in Piazza del Campo. Built in the 17th century to a design by the architect Carlo Fontana, the theatre opened in 1670 with a performance of the opera, L’Argia.  The theatre fell into disrepair in the early part of the 20th century and closed in 1927 but with the support of the famous Siena bank Monte dei Paschi, the municipal administration embarked on a programme of renovations designed to make it safe to use. Work was interrupted by the Second World War but the theatre was finally reopened in 1950.

More reading:

Why Mario Monicelli was called 'the father of Commedia all'Italiana'

The comic genius of Alberto Sordi

How Messina was all but destroyed in Italy's worst earthquake

Also on this day:

1835: The birth of poet and Nobel Prize winner Giosuè Carducci

1915: The birth of opera singer Mario del Monaco

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23 July 2018

Damiano Damiani – screenwriter and director

Film maker behind the hit Mafia drama series La piovra


Damiano Damiani directed a number of 'spaghetti westerns'
Damiano Damiani directed a number
of so-called 'spaghetti westerns'
Damiano Damiani, who directed the famous Italian television series La piovra, which was about the Mafia and its involvement in Italian politics, was born on this day in 1922 in Pasiano di Pordenone in Friuli.

Damiani also made a number of Mafia-themed films and he was particularly acclaimed for his 1966 film, A Bullet for the General, starring Gian Maria Volontè, which came at the beginning of the golden age of Italian westerns.

Damiani studied at the Accademia di Brera in Milan and made his debut in 1947 with the documentary, La banda d’affari. After working as a screenwriter, he directed his first feature film, Il rossetto, in 1960.

His 1962 film, Arturo’s Island, won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian International film festival.

During the 1960s, Damiani was praised by the critics and his films were box office successes.

A Bullet for the General is regarded as one of the first, and one of the most notable, political, spaghetti westerns. Its theme was the radicalisation of bandits and other criminals into revolutionaries.

Michele Placido starred in Damiani's La piovra
Michele Placido starred in
Damiani's La piovra
Damiani’s 1968 film, Il giorno della civetta - The Day of the Owl - starring Claudia Cardinale, Franco Nero and Lee J Cobb, started a series of films in which social criticism, often related to the connections between politics and crime, was mixed with spectacular plots.

Damiani’s 1971 film, Confessions of a Police Captain, which again starred Franco Nero, won the Golden Prize at the 7th Moscow International film festival.

He made his debut as an actor in 1973, playing Giovanni Amendola in Florestano Vancini’s The Matteotti Murder, about the assassination in 1924 of the Socialist leader, Giacomo Matteotti, allegedly by Fascist thugs.

He became known to cult horror film fans in 1982 for directing Amityville II: The Possession.

Damiani was still directing in his mid-70s
Damiani was still directing in his mid-70s
In 1984, Damiani directed one of Italy’s most famous television series, La piovra, which put the spotlight on the power of the contemporary Italian Mafia and its involvement in Italian politics.

Starring Michele Placido in the role of the police inspector, Corrado Cattani, it was hugely popular on television in the 1980s and the first three series were shown in the UK on Channel Four. One of the minor characters in the drama was played by Luca Zingaretti, who would later become famous as Inspector Montalbano in the series based on Andrea Camilleri's books.

Damiani won a David di Donatello award for his film, L’Inchiesta, in 1986.

His last feature film was Assassini dei giorni di festa, which he directed in 2002.

Damiani died at his home in Rome in 2013, having reached the age of 90.

Pordenone's elegant town hall, Palazzo Communale
Pordenone's elegant town hall, Palazzo Communale
Travel tip:

Friuli is an area of northeast Italy with its own strong, cultural and historical identity. It comprises the major part of the region Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The towns of Udine, Pordenone and Gorizia are part of Friuli. Pordenone has Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque buildings. The Gothic town hall, Palazzo Communale, in the main street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, was built between 1291 and 1365.

The Villa Saccomani is one of five Venetian villas around the small town of Pasiano di Pordenone
The Villa Saccomani is one of five Venetian villas around
the small town of Pasiano di Pordenone
Travel tip:

Damiano Damiani is probably the most famous person to come from Pasiano di Pordenone, a small comune - municipality - about 90 km (56 miles) northwest of Trieste and about 13 km (8 miles) south of Pordenone. The comune has no fewer than five Venetian villas worth seeing, which were built between the 15th and the 18th centuries. They are Villa Salvi, Villa Saccomani, Villa Gozzi, Villa Querini and Villa Tiepolo.

More reading:

The role that turned Michele Placido into a star

The brilliance and versatility of the character actor Gian Maria Volontè

How Montalbano turned Luca Zingaretti into a star

Also on this day:

1866: The birth of composer Francesco Cilea

1941: The birth of the Italian president, Sergio Matarella

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