Alessandro Blasetti - film director

Reputation tarnished by links with Mussolini

Alessandro Blasetti was one of the first directors
to use the techniques of neorealism in his films

Alessandro Blasetti, the film director sometimes referred to as ‘the father of Italian cinema’ for the part he played in reviving the film industry in Italy in the late 1920s and 30s, was born on this day in 1900 in Rome.

In his directing style, Blasetti was seen as ahead of his time, even in his early days.  His films were often shot on location, used many non-professional actors and had the characteristics of the neorealism that would make Italian cinema famous in the post-War years.

Yet he will forever be seen by some critics as an apologist for Fascism, a charge which stems mainly from his support for at least part of the ideology of Benito Mussolini, which led to a number of his films being interpreted as Fascist propaganda, although the evidence in some cases was rather thin.

The son of an oboe professor at Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Blasetti graduated in law from the Sapienza University of Rome.   Married in 1923, his first job was as a bank clerk but after a year he began to work as a journalist and wrote the first film column to appear in an Italian national newspaper.

He used his position to campaign for a revival of film production in Italy, which at that time had largely ground to a halt, despite Rome having been a major hub of the silent movie industry before the First World War.

Adriana Benetti and Gino Cervi in a scene from
Blasetti's 1942 film Quattro pasi fra le nuvole 

Blasetti helped begin the resurgence with his first movie, Sole – Sun – in 1929, with a storyline set against the real-life draining of the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, a project organised by Mussolini.

Mussolini applauded the end result, declaring it to be ‘the dawn of the Fascist film’. Financed through a co-operative, it was not a commercial success yet it was significant in that Mussolini saw film as a way of spreading his message and would later invest much state funding in the Italian film industry.

Blasetti’s early neorealism was clear in 1860, a film made in 1934 about Garibaldi’s campaign to unite Italy as seen through the eyes of two peasants, again with much location filming and imbued with the same kind of visual starkness that would be associated with Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and others in the post-War years.

It can be argued that several of Blasetti’s 1930s films are critical of the Fascist regimes. Vecchio guardia - The Old Guard - recounts Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome, which led to his ascension to power. Ironically, it was criticised by some in the Fascist government for having too few scenes of public enthusiasm for Il Duce.

Blasetti pictured in 1965

Blasetti, however, did not discourage Mussolini’s interest in his work and took every opportunity to lobby for state funding and support. One outcome was the construction of the large, state-of-the-art Cinecittà studios in Rome, which would give Italian filmmakers the resources to make a real impact.

A marked shift to neorealism came with Quattro pasi fra le nuvole – Four Steps in the Clouds – his 1942 story of a married salesman who agrees to save the honour of a pregnant girl he meets on a train by presenting himself to her family as her husband.

As well as his films, Blasetti’s notable contribution to Italian cinema was as founder of the school that was to become the Centro Sperimentale, Rome’s noted film study centre archive.  He died in Rome in 1987.

Coastal lakes or lagoons typify the Pontine Marshes

Travel tip:

The Pontine Marshes is a reclaimed area of land south of Rome, bordered roughly by the Alban Hills, the Lepini Mountains, and the Tyrrhenian Sea.  It was a marshy and malarial area that several emperors and popes tried unsuccessfully to drain and until the early part of the 20^th century it was inhabited by just a handful of shepherds. However, in 1928 the Fascist government drained the marshes, cleared the vegetation and built new towns, notably Littoria (now Latina) in 1932, Sabaudia in 1934, Pontinis in 1935, Aprilia in 1937, and Pomezia in 1939. By the Second World War the only untouched area was the Monte Circeo National Park. The area is now the most productive agricultural region in in Italy.

Travel tip:

The Centro sperimentale di cinematografia – the Italian national film school - was established in 1935. The oldest film school in Western Europe, it is still financed by the Italian government. It is located near Cinecittà, about 10km (6 miles) south-east of the centre of Rome along Via Tuscolana.

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Pierre Cardin - fashion designer

Star of Parisian haute couture was born in Italy

Pierre Cardin, pictured in 2009

Pierre Cardin, who has been described as the last survivor of the heyday of Parisian haute couture in the 50s and 60s, was born on this day in 1922 in the province of Treviso, north of Venice.

There are differing versions of the story of Cardin’s Italian origins.

One says that his parents were French but had a holiday home in Italy and that he was born in the village of Sant’ Andrea di Barbarana, on the Piave river, where his parents had a house.

Another says that his father was Italian, a labourer, that he was born in another small town in the province, San Biagio di Callalta and that he was the last of 11 children. This version suggests his father was in his 60s when Pierre – christened Pietro – was born.

What is agreed is that the family left Italy for France in 1924, possibly because of his father’s unease at the rise of Mussolini and his opposition to Fascism.

They settled in the industrial city of Saint-Etienne, where Pierre began his career in the clothing industry in 1936 when he was taken on as a tailor’s apprentice.

He moved to Vichy in 1939 and worked during the Second World War for the Red Cross before relocating to Paris in 1945, determined to make his name in the fashion world.

The trademark Pierre Cardin
bubble dress of the 1950s

At first, he worked with the Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli and designed costumes for the film director Jean Cocteau. before joining Christian Dior.  His talent shone through from an early stage and in 1950 he started his own fashion house.

The first Pierre Cardin dresses were unveiled at a lavish masquerade ball in 1953 – dubbed ‘the party of the century’ – in a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice.

Cardin’s first boutique, Eve, opened in Paris in 1954, the same year that his so-called ‘bubble dress’ – a loose-fitting dress tightened near the waistline and brought in at the hem to create a ‘bubble’ effect – brought him international success.

He became known for his avant-garde designs, inspired often by things he had seen in travelling around the world.  His clothes for a while showed a Japanese influence after he had visited Tokyo in 1957 to open Japan’s first high fashion store.

Later, after he had visited NASA headquarters in Washington, his designs began to have a futuristic space-age look.

Cardin was one of the first designers to realise the potential of ready-to-wear as haute couture began to decline in the 1960s. Indeed, he was expelled from the snooty Chambre Syndicale – the guardian of fashion standards – for launching a ready-to-wear line in the department store Printemps, although he was quickly reinstated.

He was also a pioneer of the designer label culture, launching a collection during the late 1960s that was the first to include the designer’s logo stitched on each garment.  He became something of an iconic figure of the Swinging Sixties era, designing clothes for both The Beatles – the collarless jackets were his idea – and The Rolling Stones.

The Pierre Cardin logo is known the world over

In 1971 he turned a former theatre in Paris into Espace Cardin, where he would not only show his clothes but would also promote rising artistic talents – in music and theatre – by offering them the chance to perform on his stage.

In time, much to the disapproval of some of his contemporaries in the Paris fashion world, the Pierre Cardin name began to appear on all manner of products – from baseball caps to cars – as the company sought to exploit the brand.  Some critics condemned him for ‘cheapening’ the company’s image; others applauded his entrepreneurialism.

The company bought Maxim’s in Paris in 1981 and from it developed a worldwide chain of exclusive restaurants and hotels.

In 2011, the business was valued at around $1 billion. Cardin’s proud boast was that he built the business from scratch, without ever having to borrow money.

Cardin, now in his 90s and, until recently, still designing clothes personally in his studio, owns among other homes a castle at Lacoste, Vaucluse once owned by the Marquis de Sade and a palazzo in Venice that he claims once belonged to Giacomo Casanova, although history shows that its historical owner was Giovanni Bragadin di San Cassian, Bishop of Verona and Patriarch of Venice.

The Ca' d'Oro is one of the most famous palaces
on the Grand Canal in Venice

Travel tip:

The buildings that line the Grand Canal in Venice, of which there are about 170, were mostly built between the 13th and the 18th century, when noble Venetian families wanted to show off their wealth in suitable palaces. Among the most famous are the Palazzo Barbaro, Ca' Rezzonico, Ca' d'Oro, Palazzo Dario, Ca' Foscari, Palazzo Barbarigo and the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which today houses the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

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Gino Meneghetti - career burglar

Pisa-born criminal became legend in Brazil

Brazilian police mugshots of Meneghetti in two of
the many disguises he used while on the run

Gino Amleto Meneghetti, a small-time thief in Italy who became a romanticised figure for his criminal exploits after emigrating to Brazil, was born on this day in 1878 in Pisa.

His early days were spent in a fishing village outside Pisa, but his father could find only low-paid work and moved the family to a different neighbourhood so he could take a job in a ceramics factory.

It was there that Gino fell in with a gang of boys who regularly engaged in petty crime, stealing fruit or chickens or other objects of minimal worth.  The young Meneghetti was arrested for the first time at 11 years of age.

After teenage years spent largely thieving, he made an attempt to change his life, going back to the classroom to learn to be a mechanic and a locksmith.  He found work and saved money, but then decided to move to Marseilles in France to live with an uncle, who owned a restaurant.  

It was not a wise move. Like most large commercial ports, there was a seamier side to Marseilles and Meneghetti again fell into bad company.  His next arrest was for a more serious offence - illegal possession of weapons.  Found guilty, he spent some time in prison before being deported to Italy.

To avoid compulsory military service, Meneghetti feigned madness, an act so convincing he spent the next five years in various asylums.  After eventually returning to normal society, he decided to emigrate to Brazil in 1913, knowing there were relatives in São Paulo who would put him up.

Meneghetti's hiding place in São Paulo

Briefly, Meneghetti worked as a bricklayer. He also met and married the daughter, Concetta, of the owner of a restaurant he used to frequent, but it was not long before he was tempted to put the Brazilian police to the test.  He broke into a gun store and stole many weapons, planning to sell them on the black market.

In the event, he was caught quickly, sent to trial and, in 1914, sentenced to eight years in jail, with hard labour. But far from being the end of his criminal career his subsequent escape marked the beginning of the Meneghetti legend.

Consigned to solitary confinement in a disused well, he managed to find a way out via a manhole, forced open the heavy iron cover and found himself emerging in a city street. He ran away and was able to find a hiding place far from the prison before it was noticed he had even gone.

For the next few years, he lived a life on the run, assuming many identities and disguises, moving from city to city to stay ahead of the police.  After stealing some jewellery in the city of Juiz de Fora he was caught in Rio de Janeiro but, falling back on his earlier ploy of pretending to be insane, he was confined to a hospital, from which he easily escaped.

He made his way back to São Paulo, making his home in the district of Bixiga, an Italian community, with his wife and two children. Soon a series of high-profile burglaries, always committed at the homes of wealthy individuals in the swankiest part of the city, became a big story, with the newspapers convinced they were the work of the mysterious Meneghetti.

Each robbery brought new headlines and the press began to portray Meneghetti as almost an heroic figure – “the good thief” – because he targeted only the wealthy and because he broke in to homes only when they were empty and therefore no one was ever hurt.

But the pressure on the police to capture him only intensified. Eventually, in April 1926, they pinpointed his home in Bixiga and arrived to search the premises, where a stash of jewellery and weapons was found, only for Meneghetti to give them the slip.  They arrested Concetta and put his children into care.

The stash of equipment used by Meneghetti that was
discovered by police after he was arrested 

He taunted police via a series of letters to the newspapers after they failed to find his new hiding place, in an apartment only a few minutes from the centre of São Paulo.  Eventually, they set a trap for him, luring him to an address where he was tricked into believing he would be able to see his children.

Instead, once he was inside, the police laid siege to the building in the biggest operation the city had scene.  Even so, it was only after he had spent a whole afternoon and evening jumping from rooftop to rooftop, that he was eventually caught. According to witnesses, at point he was seen on a roof, shouting to police: “I am Meneghetti, Caesar, the Nero of São Paulo.”

This time his jail sentence was 43 years.  Meneghetti was blamed for the death of a senior police commander, who failed to recover from a gunshot would suffered during the siege, although the bullet that killed him did not match any of the weapons in Meneghetti’s possession.

He was released after 19 years, yet was unrepentant, continuing to break into houses.  Extraordinarily, he had passed his 90^th birthday when, arrested again after climbing on to the roof of a house, he finally told a court he was calling it a day. Charges were dropped and he was released.

Meneghetti died in 1976, aged almost 98. His life story has been the subject of numerous books and a documentary film.

Marina di Pisa from the air

Travel tip:

As well as the city with its famous Leaning Tower, the Pisa area can also offer tourists the attraction of Marina di Pisa, a seaside town located 12km (7 miles) from Pisa that began to develop in the early 17^th century when Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, decided to move the mouth of the Arno river in a bid to reduce the effect of silting up, which he believed caused flooding in Pisa. On the left bank, a new customs building was erected and fishermen began to build houses around this structure. The official foundation of the town was in 1872. In June1892 a steam railway line from Pisa to the Marina was opened, contributing to its rapid growth as a tourist destination, which saw the opening of restaurants, hotels and beach resorts and the construction of many beautiful Art Nouveau and neo-medieval villas. Many celebrities chose to buy a house there, including Gabriele D’Annunzio, the writer, poet and journalist.

Piazza dei Cavalieri in Pisa's medieval centre

Travel tip:

Although it was the world-famous Leaning Tower that undoubtedly put Pisa on the map, the city has much more to offer. The city centre has a wealth of well-preserved Romanesque buildings, Gothic churches and Renaissance piazzas and has a lively charm enhanced by the city’s reputation as a centre of education. The University of Pisa, founded in 1343, now has elite status, rivalling Rome’s Sapienza University as the best in Italy, and a student population of around 50,000 makes for a vibrant cafe and bar scene.

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Allegra Versace – heiress

‘Favourite niece’ who inherited Gianni fortune

Allegra Versace at a show in Milan
with her mother, Donatella

The heiress Allegra Versace, owner of half the Versace fashion empire, was born on this day in 1986 in Milan.

The daughter of Donatella Versace, the company’s chief designer and vice-president, she was the favourite niece of Gianni Versace, who founded the fashion house in 1978.

When Gianni was shot dead outside his mansion in Miami in July 1997, Allegra was just 11 years old but could look forward to becoming immensely rich after it was announced that her uncle had willed his share of the business, amounting to 50 per cent, when she reached her 18^th birthday.

By the most recent valuation of the Versace group, this means Allegra – now 30 – has a personal fortune worth $800 million. The remainder of the empire is owned by her mother, who has 20 per cent, and Gianni’s older brother, Santo Versace, who has 30 per cent.

Yet the promise of wealth and privilege did not bring her happiness as a young woman.  The daughter of Paul Beck, a former Versace model to whom Donatella was briefly married, Allegra enjoyed a contented childhood in which she read books and played the piano given to her as a gift by Sir Elton John, a family friend, but her world was shattered when her uncle was killed.

A regular visitor to his home in Miami, she reportedly found out about his death watching a television news bulletin before her mother had a chance to break the news to her.  She is said to have been inconsolable at the funeral and though her mother sought counselling for her it did not stop Allegra sliding towards depression.

Donatella Versace 

By the time she reached adulthood and the riches she had been promised became real, she had become almost reclusive, rejecting the family name and, after studying French and art history at the University of California in Los Angeles, attempting to live in anonymity in New York, where she worked as a theatre dresser.

She developed anorexia nervosa, telling friends that she wished she were not a Versace, that she wanted to be no one, but that she could not escape.

It took until 2011 for Donatella to persuade her daughter to return to Italy and take up the role her uncle wanted her to fulfil, as a Versace director, although she still shuns the spotlight and has spent time working with a designer friend from outside the company, helping to organise shows and publicity without ever taking centre stage herself.

The Villa Fontanelle on Lake Como

Travel tip:

Gianni Versace’s homes included the Villa Le Fontanelle, a stunning waterfront property on Lake Como, where Allegra often visited him while he was in Italy. The grounds were designed by the art historian and landscape architect Sir Roy Strong and inside were a collection of 18th century paintings, red marble baths and a crystal chandelier that once hung in the Russian imperial palace in St Petersburg.  As well as 50 per cent of the company, the house was bequeathed to Allegra in Gianni’s will.

Travel tip:

The headquarters of the Versace empire in Milan is the Palazzo Versace in Via Gesù, which adjoins the five-star Four Seasons Hotel and stretches from the main entrance at No 10 towards Via della Spiga.  Via Gesù is off Via Montenapoleone, which is generally recognised as the centre of the Italian high fashion district of Milan, with virtually every top name having a presence there.  The Versace shop is at No 11.

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