Alberto Lattuada – film director

Versatility and eye for talent made him leading figure

Alberto Lattuada helped launch many
careers in Italian cinema

A leading figure in the Italian cinema, Alberto Lattuada was born on this day in 1914 in Vaprio d’Adda in Lombardy.

Lattuada was the son of the composer Felice Lattuada, who made him complete his studies as an architect before allowing him to enter the film business.

As a student, Lattuada was a member of the editorial staff of the antifascist publication Camminare and also of Corrente di Vita, an independent newspaper. Corrente di Vita was closed by the Fascist regime just before Italy entered the Second World War.

Lattuada, who is said to have detested fascism, helped to organise a screening of a banned anti-war film at about this time, which got him into trouble with the police.

In 1940 Lattuada started his cinema career as a screenwriter and assistant director on Mario Soldati’s Piccolo mondo antico (Old-Fashioned World).

He directed his own first movie, Giacomo l’idealista (Giacomo the Idealist) in 1942.

Lattuada with Federico Fellini (left) on the set of the
latter's first movie in 1950

In 1950 he co-directed Luci del Varietà with Federico Fellini. This was the first film directed by Fellini.

In the 1960s his best film is considered to be Il Mafioso, in which he helped Alberto Sordi give one of his best performances as a miserable desk clerk who in return for a family favour finds himself obliged to become a hit man for a mafia killing in New York.

Lattuada’s film La Steppa, made in 1962, was entered at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival. And in 1970 he was a member of the jury at the 20th Berlin International Film Festival.

His work as a director spanned almost every genre and he helped launch the careers of many film stars, whose talent he had recognised.

Lattuada married the actress Carla del Poggio in 1945 and they had two sons, Francesco and Alessandro. The couple were still together when he died in 2005 at the age of 90. He is buried in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.

The ferry boast designed by Leonardo da Vinci

Travel tip:

Vaprio d’Adda, where Alberto Lattuada was born is about 30km (18 miles) northeast of Milan in Lombardy. One of the main sights is the Villa Melzi, where Leonardo da Vinci stayed when studying channelling of waters in the area. The villa has a fresco of the Madonna with Child that has been attributed to him or his school. A ferry boat designed by Da Vinci still operates on the river, linking Villa d'Adda with Imbersago.

Lake Como was formed by the waters of the Adda

Travel tip:

The Adda river, which rises in the Alps close to the Swiss border, initially flows from east to west, which is unusual for a river in Italy, before turning south to join the Po river just upstream from Cremona.  Some 313km (194 miles) in length, it passes through several important towns and cities such as Bormio, Sondrio, Lecco and Lodi, as well as some smaller historic towns such as Trezzo, Crespina and Cassano.  The waters from the Adda were responsible for forming Lake Como.

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Treaty of Rapallo 1920

Agreement solves dispute over former Austrian territory

Members of the German and Russian delegations meet
at the Rapallo negotiations

The Treaty of Rapallo between Italy and the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was signed on this day in 1920 in Rapallo near Genoa in Liguria.

It was drawn up to solve the dispute over territories formerly controlled by Austria in the upper Adriatic and Dalmatia, which were known as the Austrian Littoral.

There had been tension between Italy and the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes since the end of the First World War when the Austro-Hungarian empire was dissolved.

Italy had claimed the territories assigned to it by the secret London Pact of 1915 between Italy and the Triple Entente.

The Pact, signed on 26 April 2015, stipulated that in the event of victory in the First World War, Italy was to gain territory formerly controlled by Austria in northern Dalmatia.

A dinner menu from the Grand Hotel in Genoa signed by
members of the Russian and German delegations

These territories had a mixed population but Slovenes and Croats accounted for more than half.

The London Pact was nullified by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the war after pressure from American President Woodrow Wilson. Therefore the objective of the Treaty of Rapallo two years later was to find a compromise.

At the end of discussions, Italy was granted parts of Carniola, the whole of the former Austrian Littoral, which included the important city of Trieste, the former Dalmatian capital of Zadar, known as Zara in Italian, and two small Dalmatian islands.

The city of Rijeka, known as Fiume in Italian, was to become an independent free state, ending the military occupation of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s troops. He was forced to evacuate Fiume after Italian forces bombed the city on December 27, 1920.

The Castle at Rapallo

Travel tip:

Rapallo, which gives its name to the important 1920 treaty, is a seaside resort on the Riviera di Levante near Portofino and Genoa in Liguria. It has a castle overlooking the sea built in 1551 to repel pirate attacks, a 12th century church, the Basilica of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, two historic towers and a ruined monastery. Max Beerbohm, Ezra Pound and Jean Sibelius all chose to live in Rapallo for part of their lives.

The Piazza dell'Unita in Trieste looking out towards the sea

Travel tip:

The beautiful seaport of Trieste officially became part of the Italian Republic in 1954 and is now the capital of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, one of the most prosperous areas of Italy. The city lies towards the end of a narrow strip of land situated between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia and is also just 30 kilometres north of Croatia. Trieste had been disputed territory for thousands of years and after it was granted to Italy in 1920, thousands of the resident Slovenians left. The final border with Yugoslavia was settled in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo. This is now the present day border between Italy and Slovenia. Today Trieste is a lively, cosmopolitan city and a major centre for trade and ship building.

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Germano Mosconi – sports writer and presenter

Short-tempered journalist who became the news

Broadcaster became an unintentional
internet phenomenon

Germano Mosconi, who became a well-known television personality, was born on this day in 1932 in San Bonifacio in the Veneto.

Mosconi became notorious for his short temper and swearing on air and was regarded as a bit of a character on local television. But he became known all over Italy and throughout the world after a video of him someone posted anonymously on the internet went viral.

In the 1980s Mosconi delivered sports reports on Telenuovo in Verona and in 1982 he received the Cesare d’Oro international award for journalistic merit.

But he later became known for his excessive swearing and blaspheming. The anonymous video showed his irate reactions to various problems he encountered while broadcasting, such as people unexpectedly entering the studio, background noises and illegible writing on the news sheets he received.

His use of swearwords, blasphemy and insults in both Italian and Venetian dialect and his other humorous antics made the video compulsive viewing all over the world.

Internet forums discussing Mosconi appeared and Mosconi fan clubs were set up.

However, the sports journalist did not relish his notoriety and declined every request for an interview related to the video.

Away from television, he edited the German-language magazine Gardasee Zeitung, dedicated to tourists visiting Lake Garda, and worked for the newspapers Il Gazzettino and L’Arena in Verona.

Mosconi died in Verona in 2012 at the age of 79, following a long illness. He left a wife, Elsa, and one daughter, Margherita.

The cathedral in San Bonifacio

Travel tip:

San Bonifacio, where Mosconi was born, is a town in the province of Verona about 25 kilometres to the east of the city of Verona. It borders the municipality of Soave, where the famous white wine is produced. San Bonifacio’s main sights are the seventh century Abbey of St Peter with its imposing 12th century bell tower and the 12th century cathedral.

Travel tip:

Verona is famous as the city of Romeo and Juliet and for opera. Mosconi worked as a broadcaster there and also as a journalist on L’Arena, which was founded in 1866, before the Veneto became part of the Kingdom of Italy, and is one of the oldest newspapers in Italy. Named after the Roman amphitheatre in Piazza Bra, which hosts concerts and operas every summer, the newspaper is now based in San Martino Buon Albergo, a suburb of Verona.

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Gaetano Bresci - assassin

Anarchist who gunned down a king

Gaetano Bresci plotted to kill Umberto I while
working as a silk weaver in New Jersey

Gaetano Bresci, the man who assassinated the Italian king Umberto I, was born on this day in 1869 in Coiano, a small village near Prato in Tuscany.

He murdered Umberto in Monza, north of Milan, on July 29, 1900, while the monarch was handing out prizes at an athletics event.  Bresci mingled with the crowd but then sprang forward and shot Umberto three or four times with a .32 revolver.

Often unpopular with his subjects despite being nicknamed Il Buono (the good), Umberto had survived two previous attempts on his life, in 1878 and 1897.

Bresci was immediately overpowered and after standing trial in Milan he was given a life sentence of hard labour on Santo Stefano island, a prison notorious for its anarchist and socialist inmates.

He had been closely involved with anarchist groups and had served a brief jail term earlier for anarchist activity but had a motive for killing Umberto.

A silk weaver by profession, he was living in the United States, where he had emigrated in the 1890s and had settled in New Jersey with his Irish-born wife. 

Working as a weaver in a mill in Paterson, New Jersey, Bresci and others set about propagating anarchist ideas among the large local Italian immigrant population, eventually setting up a newspaper, La Questione Social.

An artist's idea of the scene in Monza as Bresci is
overpowered after shooting the king

Bresci became one of the main contributors to the paper, devoting much of his free time to writing and organising fellow anarchists, when he heard about a horrific event in Milan on May 6, 1898 that would determine the course of the rest of his life.

Following the so-called ‘bread riots’ - a prolonged campaign of strikes and demonstrations across Italy to protest against the rising cost of living - a mass demonstration of workers had taken place in Milan on that day.

There were outbreaks of violence and the Italian army were positioned to protect key buildings. The march took an increasingly threatening nature and, fearing an attack upon the Royal Palace, General Florenzo Bava-Beccaris ordered troops to fire on the crowd.

The shootings, known as the Bava-Beccaris massacre, officially left 80 people dead, although the true number was possibly double that.

Bresci was so incensed he vowed to avenge the workers who had been cut down on the streets of Milan that day and hatched his plot to kill the king.

He kept it a secret even from those fellow anarchists with whom he had worked so closely in Paterson. In May 1900, with no explanation, he asked for the return of a $150 loan he had made to set up La Questione, a move that left some of his comrades deeply bitter towards him.

Bresci set sail for Italy on May 17, 1900 and carried out his plan two months later.  His sentence was pronounced on August 29 and his friends and family consoled themselves with the knowledge that at least he was still alive.

However, only a year later he was dead, in mysterious circumstances, discovered hanged in his cell. His death was recorded as suicide but there were strong suspicions that he was kicked to death by prison guards, who attempted to conceal evidence from investigators by throwing his body into the sea.

How the abandoned prison on Santa Stefano looks today

Travel tip:

Santo Stefano is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy, part of the Pontine Islands.  The prison built by the Bourbons in 1797 remained in use until 1965. It was one of the prisons used extensively by the Fascists to imprison opponents of Benito Mussolini’s regime.  The future president of the republic, Sandro Pertini, was incarcerated there for a while.  These days, the island is uninhabited but for the tourists who visit each day.

The church of Saints Peter and Paul in Coiano

Travel tip:

The small hamlet of Coiano, where Bresci was born, can be found on the hills bordering the Elsa and the Elba valleys, near Castelfiorentino, about midway between Florence and Livorno, not far from Empoli. It is known for its monumental Romanesque church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul in Via Francigena. It is a typical example of Romanesque12th century Pisa-Volterra architecture with a façade made of half sandstone and half brick, probably due to a collapse of the upper part.

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