Ignazio Silone – politician and author

Socialist leader became famous for anti-Fascist novels

Ignazio Silone was a founding member of
the Italian Communist Party in 1921

Writer and political leader Ignazio Silone was born Secondino Tranquilli on this day in 1900 in Pescina dei Marsi in the region of Abruzzo.

Tranquilli became famous under the pseudonym, Ignazio Silone, during World War II for his powerful anti-Fascist novels and he was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature ten times.

Silone’s father, Paolo Tranquilli, died when he was 11 and he lost his mother, Marianna, and other members of his family four years later in the Avezzano earthquake of 1915.

Two years afterwards he joined the Young Socialist group of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), eventually becoming their leader and editor of their newspaper Avanguardia.

He was a founding member of the breakaway Italian Communist Party (PCI) party in 1921 and became one of its covert leaders during the Fascist regime, editing their newspaper in Trieste, Il Lavoratore.

His brother, Romolo Tranquilli, was arrested in 1928 for being a member of the PCI and died in prison in 1931 as a result of the severe beatings he had received from the Fascist police.

Silone went to live in Switzerland in 1930 where he declared his opposition to Joseph Stalin and was expelled from the PCI.

Silone's Abruzzo Trilogy won
him acclaim as a novelist

He suffered from tuberculosis and clinical depression and spent nearly a year in Swiss clinics. While recovering, he began writing his first novel, Fontamara, under the pseudonym of Ignazio Silone, which was published in German in 1933.

After the English edition was published by Penguin Books in 1934, the Spanish Civil War and the events leading up to World War II increased the attention on the novel, which was about the exploitation of peasants in a southern Italian village and how they were brutally suppressed while they tried to obtain their rights. It became an international sensation and was published in 14 languages.

Silone’s later novels, Pane e vino (Bread and wine) and Il seme sotto la neve (The seed beneath the snow) portrayed socialist heroes who tried to help the peasants by sharing their sufferings in a Christian spirit.

The US army printed versions of Fontamara and Pane e vino and distributed them to the Italians during the liberation of Italy after 1943. Together with Il seme sotto la neve, they formed the Abruzzo Trilogy.

During World War II, Silone was the leader of a clandestine socialist organisation operating from Switzerland supporting resistance groups in German-occupied northern Italy. He also became an Office of Strategic Services agent.

A poster advertising the film made
of Silone's book, Fontamara

Silone returned to Italy in 1944 and was elected as a PSI member of the Italian parliament two years later.

In 1969 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, an award for writers who deal with the theme of individual freedom and society. In 1971 he received the Prix Mondial Cino del Duca, which recognises authors whose work sends out a message of modern humanism.

Silone wrote ten novels and six essays as well as plays and poetry. A film based on his novel, Fontamara, starring Michele Placido, was released in 1977.

Married to Irish journalist Darina Laracy, Silone died in Geneva in Switzerland in 1978.

In the 1990s, documents emerged that seemed to show Silone had acted as an informant for the Fascist police between 1919 and 1930, causing scholars and biographers to re-evaluate the writer’s political stands and literary work. It was believed he broke away from the police because of the torture they inflicted on his brother.

A plaque marks the birthplace of Ignazio Silone in
the Abruzzo town of Pescina dei Marsi

Travel tip:

Pescina dei Marsi, where the writer Ignazio Silone was born, is in the province of L’Aquila in the region of Abruzzo in central Italy. Pescina was badly damaged in the earthquake of Avezzano in 1915 in which Silone’s mother was killed. There were 5,000 victims in Pescina out of a population of 6,000. The oldest part of the town, which was built in the 14th century, was almost destroyed, with only the bell tower of the old church of San Berardo and a few other buildings surviving.

The tomb of Ignazio Silone sits under the bell tower of
San Berardo in Pescina dei Marsi

Travel tip:

Ignazio Silone used the old part of Pescina dei Marsi as the setting for his novel Fontamara. Today, visitors can go to the partially restored old town where Silone’s tomb lies below the medieval bell tower of San Berardo.  His birthplace, one of the few houses to survive the earthquake, is now a museum dedicated to the writer and has some of his manuscripts and original letters.

Also on this day:

1908: The birth of author Giovanni Guareschi 

1927: The birth of actress and jazz singer Laura Betti

1947: The Porto della Ginestra Massacre

1957: The birth of film director Uberto Pasolini


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Laura Antonelli - actress

Pin-up star of 1970s sex-comedies

Laura Antonelli first moved to Rome
to be a gymnastics teacher

The actress Laura Antonelli, whose career was at its peak while Italian cinema audiences were indulging a taste for sex-comedies during the 1970s, was born on this day in 1941 in Pula, a port city now part of Croatia but then known as Pola, capital of the Italian territory of Istria.

A curvaceous brunette who posed for both the Italian and French editions of Playboy magazine in the early 1980s, although Antonelli was mostly remembered for appearing scantily clad opposite male stars such as Marcello Mastroianni and Michele Placido, she was a talented actress, winning a Nastro d’Argento - awarded by Italian film journalists - as best actress in Salvatore Samperi’s 1974 comedy-drama Malizia (Malice).

She also worked on several occasions for Luchino Visconti, one of Italy’s greatest directors. Indeed, she starred in 1976 as the wife of a 19th century Roman aristocrat in Visconti’s last film, L’Innocente (The Innocent), based on the novel The Intruder by Gabriele d'Annunzio.

However, the success of her career was largely built on roles in films such as Devil in the Flesh (1969), The Divine Nymph (1975) and Tigers in Lipstick (1979), the content of which outraged Italy’s fledgling feminist movement and shocked the Catholic Church.

Devil in the Flesh, also known as Venus in Furs and based on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s erotic novel of the latter name, was released in Germany in 1969 but immediately banned upon its first showing in Italy in 1973, with all copies of the film confiscated by the authorities on the grounds of indecency.  It was re-released two years later, but in a heavily-censored version.

Antonelli was most frequently cast as a sultry
temptress in 1970s sex-comedies and dramas

Malizia was her breakthrough film, but even that had a plot that was sexually highly-charged as Antonelli portrayed a widower’s young housekeeper who battles the advances of both her employer and his teenage sons. The film was a box-office hit and Antonelli became Italy’s newest sex symbol.

She was seldom out of the gossip magazines and in 1972 began a long and sometimes tempestuous relationship with the French playboy actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, her co-star in The Scoundrel (1971) and Docteur Popaul (1972), whose previous girlfriends included Ursula Andress and Brigitte Bardot.  They had met in Paris.

Antonelli was born Laura Antonaz in Pola. Her family was displaced during the Second World War and lived in refugee camps before moving to Naples, where her father found work as a hospital administrator.

As a teenager, her parents regarded her as ugly and clumsy and pressed her to take up gymnastics, in her words, “in the hope I would at least develop some grace.” She became proficient, excelling in rhythmic gymnastics and eventually qualified as a gymnastics instructor.

She moved to Rome and began a career as a high-school gym teacher. Her social life in Rome enabled her to meet people in the entertainment industry, who helped her first find modelling work and then some small parts in films.  She made her big-screen debut in 1966.

Antonelli had a long relationship with
the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo

Antonelli, who had been married to a publisher, Enrico Piacentini, broke up with Belmondo in 1980.

She had another major success in 1981 opposite the French actor Bernard Giraudeau in Ettore Scola’s drama Passione d’amore (Passion of Love), in which she played the beautiful married mistress of an army captain. The film was later the inspiration for a Stephen Sondheim musical Passion.

Thereafter, Antonelli career began to slip into decline and after a 1991 sequel to Malizia bombed, she began a retirement that saw her eventually become a recluse, her well-being not helped by a 10-year battle to overturn a conviction for dealing cocaine after the drug was discovered by police in a raid on her home. She protested her innocence and finally won €108,000 (£76,000) in compensation.

Unwilling to be seen in public in her later years after botched cosmetic surgery, she become the beneficiary of a law passed in Italy that provides financial assistance for artists who have fallen on hard times.  She died in June 2015 from a heart attack, aged 73, at her villa in Ladispoli, a modest seaside resort about 35km (22 miles) from Rome.

The Croatian port city of Rovinj on the Istrian peninsula,
 which was part of Italy between 1920 and 1945

Travel tip:

The Istrian peninsula, which includes a number of beautiful towns and cities such as Pula, Rovinj, Perec and Vrsar, was partitioned to Italy in the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920 after the dissolution of the Austria-Hungary empire following the First World War. In the Second World War it became a battleground for rival ethnic groups and political groups. It was occupied by Germany but with their withdrawal in 1945  Yugoslav partisans gained the upper hand and Istria was eventually ceded to Yugoslavia. It was divided between Croatia and Slovenia following the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991. Nowadays, only the small town of Muggia, near Trieste, remains part of Italy.

The remains of the Roman villa of Pompeo at Ladispoli,
the seaside resort near Rome, where Antonelli died

Travel tip:

Modern Ladispoli is a somewhat characterless seaside resort made up of hotels and apartment buildings built on a grid of criss-crossing parallel streets. Ladispoli occupies the area of the ancient Alsium, the port of the Etruscan city of Cerveteri and later a Roman colony.  Remains of both ancient civilisations are visible in the Etruscan necropolis of Monteroni and Vaccina and the Roman Villa of Pompeo.  There is also a castle, the Castle of Palo, built in the 12th century and rebuilt 400 years later.

Also on this day:

1873: The death of astronomer Caterina Scarpellini

1907: The birth of novelist Alberto Moravia

1913: The birth of film music composer Mario Nascimbene

1977: The birth of World Cup hero Fabio Grosso


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Damiano Damiani – screenwriter and director

Film maker behind the hit Mafia drama series La piovra

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

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

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

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

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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Simonetta Stefanelli – actress

Godfather star now designs bags and shoes

Simonetta Stefanelli, in a scene from Dino Risi's 1971
movie, In the Name of the Italian People

Simonetta Stefanelli, the actress and fashion designer, was born on this day in 1954 in Rome.

Stefanelli is perhaps best-known for her performance as Apollonia Vitelli-Corleone in the 1972 film The Godfather directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

She also made several films with her former husband, the actor and director Michele Placido.

The couple had three children together, Michelangelo, Brenno and Violante Placido, who is also an actress.

They divorced in 1994 and Stefanelli and her three children went to live in London for a short time.

Before appearing in The Godfather, Stefanelli had small roles in films guided by some of the top Italian directors, such as Gian Luigi Polidoro, Giulio Petroni, Marco Vicario and Dino Risi.

In 1972 she appeared in a German film for television, Di Sonne angreifen, 'The Sun Attack'.

Then came her role in The Godfather alongside Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan and Diane Keaton.  Her character is the first wife of Pacino's character, Michael Corleone, a local girl Michael marries while in hiding in Sicily, but is then murdered in a bomb attack of which her husband was the intended victim.

Apollonia also featured in the 1977 mini series The Godfather: A Novel for Television.

Stefanelli with her then-husband Michele Placido
in a scene from the 1975 film Scandal in the Family

Stefanelli once explained during an interview that she had refused a career in Hollywood to avoid being typecast and chose instead to continue her career in Italy.

She appeared in Peccati in famiglia ('Scandal in the Family'), an erotic drama in which she starred opposite her husband Michele Placido, and in Francesco Rosi’s Tre Fratelli ('Three Brothers).

She made her final appearance in Michele Placido’s film Le Amiche del cuore, ('Close friends') before ending her acting career in 1992.

Stefanelli continues to live in Rome and now owns a fashion store in the city, Simo Bloom, for which she designs bags and shoes.

Michele Placido, who is now 70, is well-known for playing the role of Corrado Cattani in the TV series La Piovra, which means 'The Octopus' in English, a reference to the many tentacles of the Mafia.

The actress Violante Placido, who is now 40, has many film and television credits to her name and is also a singer and song writer.

The 18th century Temple of Aesculapius is an attraction
in the Villa Borghese gardens in Rome

Travel tip:

Stefanelli’s shop, Simo Bloom, is in Via Chiana in Rome to the north east of the Villa Borghese and its gardens on the Pincian Hill. The beautiful gardens were developed for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, starting in 1605. They were bought by the city of Rome and opened to the public in 1903.


Travel tip:

The Godfather's location scenes in Sicily were filmed in the towns of Savoca and Forza d’Agro near Taormina because the town of Corleone was considered too developed to be suitable. In Savoca you can see the church in which Michael and Apollonia (played by Stefanelli) were married and walk the route they took to the Bar Vitelli in the village’s main square where they went to celebrate afterwards in the film.



More reading:

How playing an anti-Mafia police inspector Michele Placido into a TV star

Nino Rota - the brilliant composer behind the music of The Godfather

The wonderful cinema legacy of Francesco Rosi

Also on this day:

1466: The birth of navy commander Andrea Doria

1485: The birth of writer and stateswoman Veronica Gambara

1957: The death of the great tenor Beniamino Gigli


(Picture credits: Simonetta Stefanelli by Cavarrone; Temple of Aesculapius by Jean-Christophe Benoist; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Michele Placido – actor and director

Role of anti-Mafia police inspector turned actor into a TV star

Michele Placido pictured with his wife, Federica Vincenti

Actor and director Michele Placido is celebrating his 70th birthday, having been born on this day in 1946 in Ascoli Satriano in Puglia.

Placido is best known for his portrayal of the character, Corrado Cattani, in the Italian television series, La piovra.

Cattani, a police inspector investigating the Mafia, was the lead character in the first four series of La piovra (meaning The Octopus, a name that referred to the Mafia). It was popular on television in the 1980s and the first three series were shown in the UK on Channel Four.

Placido’s family were originally from Rionero in Vulture in Basilicata and he is a descendant of the folk hero, Carmine Crocco, sometimes also known as Donatello. Crocco had fought in the service of Garibaldi but, after Italian unification, he became disappointed with the new Government and formed his own army to fight on behalf of the deposed King of the Two Sicilies, Francis II.

Placido moved to Rome to study acting and then began working in films. His first success came with his portrayal of soldier Paolo Passeri in Marcia Trionfale in 1976, directed by Marco Bellocchio, a role for which Placido won an award.

Placido in a scene from his first movie hit, Marcia Trionfale

He became a popular television actor in 1983 after appearing in the first series of La piovra. He played the part of the police inspector for four series until his character was assassinated.

Afterwards he played the part of Giovanni Falcone, the anti-Mafia crusader, in the 1993 film of the same name directed by Giuseppe Ferrara.

Placido’s daughter from his first marriage, Violante Placido, is an actress. Placido is now married to the actress, Federica Vincenti.

Travel tip

Ascoli Satriano, the birthplace of Michele Placido, is a town in the province of Foggia in Apulia. It was the location of two famous battles in Roman times but came under Norman control in the 11th century. One of the main sights is its 12th century Romanesque Gothic Cathedral.

Travel tip:

Rionero in Vulture, where Placido’s family came from originally, is a town in the province of Potenza in Basilicata, situated on the slopes of Monte Vulture in the middle of lush, green countryside.

More reading:

Rudolph Valentino - a tale of fame and tragedy

Terence Hill - a Venetian raised in Germany who found fame under an English name

(Photo of Michele Placido and Federica Vincenti by Elena Torre CC BY-SA 2.0)

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