Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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soon abandoned poetry and turned to film-making. The oedipal paradigm is in fact

particularly suited to an exploration of Bertolucci’s career, and how to relate to patriarchy

and tradition is one of the central issues raised by Bertolucci’s filmography, in both

artistic and personal terms. Bertolucci’s investment in psychoanalysis suffuses his films

and gives them a psychological density admirably enhanced by the use of symbolism.

It was probably Bertolucci’s first guide, Pier Paolo Pasolini, who inspired the young

film student to have faith in ‘the poetic world of his own vital experiences’, to borrow

Pasolini’s own words. It is to Pasolini indeed that Bertolucci owes both his first job as an

assistant on Accattone (1961) and the material for his first film, La commare secca (The

Grim Reaper) (1962). The subject of La commare secca, the Roman underworld, the

brutal murder of a prostitute in a park peopled with thieves and psychopaths, is very

Pasolinian and reminiscent of Accattone, but the treatment is already unmistakably

Bertoluccian in the smoothness of the shifts in point of view and the round elegance of

the images. La commare secca almost unwillingly kills off Bertolucci’s first cinematic

father, for it has nothing of the ‘sacrality’ of Pasolini’s imagery but rather all the slick

asymmetry to become typical of the Bertoluccian style.

With Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution) (1964), Bertolucci confirms his

commitment to political cinema and expresses his faith in Marxist ideology. A quote

from the French statesman Talleyrand is the premise of the film—‘Whoever has not

known life before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life’—an

acknowledgement that in the most revolutionary desire for radical change, there remains

an irrepressible nostalgia for the past. This is what Fabrizio, the film’s protagonist,

demonstrates in the dissolution of his short-lived commitment to Marxism. First rebelling

against the rigid bourgeoisie to which he belongs, Fabrizio ends up espousing the old

order by ultimately wedding the upper middle-class fiancée he had originally left behind.

Working on television documentaries and other short projects, Bertolucci waited four

years before making his next feature film, Partner. A free adaptation of Dostoievski’s

short story, ‘The Double,’ Partner echoes the 1968 movement in its reflection on life, art

and revolution. The film’s elitist aesthetics mark the unresolved influence of the French

New Wave on Bertolucci’s style, and more particularly of the French director Jean-Luc

Godard, Bertolucci’s second cinematic father.

In La strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem) (1970), Bertolucci turns to

psychoanalysis to interweave aesthetic and personal inquiries for the first time. A young

man visits the small town that made his father a hero of the Resistance. As he attempts to

elucidate the murder of his father at the request of the hero’s aged mistress, he is led to

question the integrity of the Resistance hero, until he chooses to rehabilitate him through

a personal understanding of the man’s betrayal.

After revisiting the aftermath of Fascism, Bertolucci explores ‘the heart of the beast’

with Il conformista (The Conformist) (1970), a penetrating investigation of the neuroses

that sustain fascist ideology. As always building upon literary references, the film is an

adaptation of Alberto Moravia’s 1951 novel, Il conformista. Thanks to the collaboration

of the gifted cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the film is a feat of technical virtuosity.

Distorted by long lenses, layered with screens, windows, mirrors or curtains, Bertolucci’s

images powerfully convey the mendacity of fascist rhetoric. The director’s own fear of

conformism is exorcized by the fascist protagonist’s descent into a monstrous ‘normality’

leading to murder and betrayal. The film culminates in a dazzling dance scene that leads

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to the protagonist’s loss of self and to the film’s ‘journey to the end of fascism’.

Bertolucci’s films almost always include a momentous dance scene, perhaps the film-

maker’s aesthetic signature.

Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris) certainly centres on a dance, but it is a

lethal one. Still stamped by the scandalous aura that surrounded the film when it came out

in 1972, Ultima tango is openly controversial, but certainly less so in the explicitness of

its sexual representations than in its aesthetic ambition to coin a new cinematic language.

Breaking with Jean-Luc Godard and the New Wave that it denounces as falsely radical, it

addresses the tragic failure of communication in a world neurotically entrapped in

preestablished identities and roles.

The controversy over Ultimo tango brought Bertolucci to the attention of Hollywood.

Putting the capitalist dream machine at the service of his ideology, Bertolucci made

Novecento (1900) in 1976, a magnificently photographed two-act epic encapsulating the

history of the twentieth century in four seasons from 1900 to 1945. Set near Parma, the

film documents the revival of the peasantry’s political consciousness in the long

confrontation between fascism and communism in Italy. Overlong (originally over 300

minutes, it was reduced to 240 minutes for commercial distribution) and excessively

romantic, the film was visually stunning but on the whole failed to live up to its original

conception.

The failure of Novecento led Bertolucci to reconsider the present. With La luna (Luna)

in 1978, the incest taboo is revisited on an intimate mode. The patent Freudian

academism of the film fortunately does not undermine the authenticity of the explored

relationships. La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man) (1981), on

the other hand, marks Bertolucci’s return to politics. La tragedia furthers the film-

maker’s ongoing examination of power relations through a reflection on the incongruities

that plague the contemporary Italian body politic, including terrorism.

L’ultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor) (1987) is perhaps the most impressive

manifestation of Bertolucci’s meditation on power. Portraying the end of the Manchu

dynasty, The Last Emperor is a political parable with the dimensions of an epic. In spite

of its historical setting, it can be regarded as the metaphorical continuation of

Bertolucci’s reflection on the sociopolitical problems uncovered in La tragedia di un

uomo ridicolo.

Staying with the epic genre, once The Last Emperor had definitively conquered

Hollywood, Bertolucci adapted a novel by Paul Bowles in The Sheltering Sky, a 1990

film that marks a departure from the director’s commitment to the present and its

problems. Bertolucci’s own ‘stay in the desert’ (the film takes place in North Africa), The

Sheltering Sky is an existential meditation on death which exudes a certain nihilism. It

was followed by Piccolo Buddha (Little Buddha) Bertolucci’s 1992 quest for spiritual

solutions, though the technical brilliance and the stylistic enthusiasm of the film do not

camouflage its essential emptiness and Bertolucci’s creative anxieties.

It is perhaps this fear of aesthetic impotence that Io ballo da sola (Stolen Beauty) best

assesses in 1995. However intrusive Bertolucci’s camera tries to be, it never captures nor

penetrates the beauty on the screen. As such, the film is an admission of the paradox that

representing beauty necessarily deflowers it.

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Further reading

Michalczyk, J. (1986) The Italian Political Filmmakers, London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson

University Press (see especially ch. 3: ‘Bernardo Bertolucci: The Strategy of a Freudian

Marxist’).

Pasolini, P.P. (1988) Heretical Empiricism, trans. B.Lawton and L.K.Barnett, Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press, 167–86 (see ‘The Cinema of Poetry’ (1965) and more particularly

Pasolini’s visionary discussion of Bertolucci’s Prima delta rivoluzione, 180–1).

DOROTHÉE BONNIGAL

Bertolucci, Giuseppe

b. 27 February 1947, Parma

Film director

Son of poet Attilio Bertolucci and younger and less well-known than his more famous

brother Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuseppe Bertolucci has nevertheless carved out a

successful career for himself as one of the directors of the so-called New Italian

Cinema. After collaborating with Bernardo on the scripts of both Last Tango in Paris

(1972) and Novecento (1976), and some work for television, Giuseppe directed

Berlinguer ti voglio bene (I Love You Berlinguer) (1977), the feature that launched the

film career of the popular comedian and later director Roberto Benigni. Bertolucci

continued to work with Benigni, directing Tuttobenigni (All of Benigni) for RAI

television in 1986. There have followed a number of interesting films, including a zany

road movie I cammelli (Camels) (1989) which featured the talents of another of the most

popular new Italian comics, Paolo Rossi.

GINO MOLITERNO

Betocchi, Carlo

b. 23 January 1899, Turin; d. 25 May 1986, Florence

Poet and editor

Athough born in Turin, Betocchi grew up and spent most of his long life in Florence.

With Piero Bargellini he directed Il Frontespizio, the Fascist era’s most influential Italian

Catholic journal, in which he published his first poems. Completely immune to the

influence of ermetismo (formally elegant poetry, enigmatic in meaning but often tinged

with existential pessimism), Betocchi’s poetry celebrates man’s daily interaction with

God’s creation in the Tuscan landscape through language that is at once precise and

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humble, concrete and spiritual. His later work, from Estate di San Martino (Indian

Summer) (1961) to Prime e ultimissime (First and Latest Ones) (1974), while formally

more experimental, continues in its thankful praise of God and earned Betocchi numerous

accolades as the bard of contented old age.

Further reading

Betocchi, C. (1964) Poems, New York: Clarke and Way (selected poems in English).

(1996) Tutte le poesie (Complete Poems), Milan: Garzanti (includes a bibliography of Betocchi’s

work).

VALERIO FERME

Betti, Ugo

b. 4 February 1892, Camerino (Macerata); d. 9 June 1953, Rome

Magistrate, playwright

The most prominent Italian playwright in the immediate postwar years and, according to

many, second only to Pirandello, Betti centred his works on one major theme; the nature

of evil and the ambiguous attitude that men have towards it. His experience as a

magistrate gave him a particular insight into the nature of human relationships, around

which the plot of his plays often revolved. Many of the issues investigated in his works,

like predestination, free will and sexual morality, represented the same beliefs that drew

him away from organized religion. However, they are also symbolic of his hunger for a

justice which was above human fallibility, a search which would eventually reconcile

him with the Catholic Church.

Although he began his career as a dramatist in the mid-1920s with La Padrona (The

Mistress of the House) (1926) and wrote several plays during the Fascist period, which he

never rejected, his most famous works were written in the 1940s. Ispezione (Inspection)

(1947), and Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia (Corruption in the Palace of Justice)

(1949) are among his best.

Further reading

Betti, U. (1964) Three Plays on Justice, trans, with introduction by G.H. Mc William, San

Francisco: Chandler (comprehensive introduction and translation of Frana allo Scalo Nord,

Lotta fino all’alba and La fuggitiva).

FEDERICA STURANI

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Bettiza, Enzo

b. 1927, Spalato, Croatia

Journalist, essayist and novelist

A journalist who has covered the recent historical events in Eastern Europe, Bettiza has

also developed a marked personal style which reflects his disbelief in a clearcut

distinction between chronicle and fiction and all his writing strives for a prose that

contains the complexities of a novel. Discovered by Guido Piovene in the 1950s and

strongly influenced by the Russian novelist tradition, Bettiza could be located in the

neorealist milieu, although his ideological position is complicated by moral and

existential issues. Amongst his best novels are La campagna elettorale (The Electoral

Campaign) (1953), Il fantasma di Trieste (The Ghost of Trieste) (1958) and I fantasmi di

Mosca (The Ghosts of Moscow) (1993). One of his finest essays is Mito e realtà di

Trieste (Myth and Reality in Trieste) (1966).

ANDREA RICCI

Bevilacqua, Alberto

b. 27 June 1934, Parma

Novelist, poet and film-maker

While Bevilacqua’s first collection of short stories, entitled La polvere sull’erba (Dust on

the Grass) (1955), reflected his early idyllic years in Parma, the author soon turned to

more penetrating themes after he moved to Rome. Responding to the tumultuous cultural

changes taking place in Italy in the 1960s, Bevilacqua used the novel as a way of

exploring the psychological and philosophical crises facing contemporary society. His

numerous works, which received both critical acclaim and public recognition, include

Questa specie d’amore (This Kind of Love), which won the Campiello Prize in 1966, and

L’occhio del gatto (Cat’s Eye), which was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize in 1968.

Bevilacqua’s style is noted for its lyrical blend of linguistic experimentation and

autobiographical elements. His poetry has been anthologized in two volumes, Immagine e

somiglianza (Images and Similarities) (1982) and Vita mia (My Life) (1985). He has also

successfully directed several films adapted from his own books, among them La califfa

(The Female Caliph) (1970) and Gialloparma (Crime in Parma) (1998).

LAURA SALSINI LAURA A.SALSINI

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Biagi, Enzo

b. 9 August 1920, Lizzano, Bologna

Journalist

One of the most popular journalists in Italy, Biagi, unlike Giorgio Bocca, is more loved

by the public than respected by his colleagues. His productivity is comparable to that of a

successful small business of his native Emilia-Romagna: he has been a columnist for Il

Corriere delta sera and then for La Repubblica (‘Strettamente personale’, Strictly

Personal), a travel writer with books on Russia, China and America, a biographer of

Gianni Agnelli (see Agnelli family), an autobiographer (Disonora il padre) (Dishonour

Thy Father) (1975), a newspaper editor (Il Resto del Carlino) and television presenter.

His recipe is a mild populism stuffed with anecdotes reminiscent of Fellini’s Amarcord.

He speaks for the common man, spicing his stories with personal experiences, and he has

consistently shown scepticism towards the political class, something that perhaps dates

back to his involvement with the Partito d’Azione (Action Party) in the Resistance. He

takes pride in writing straightforward prose with a humorous touch.

Further reading

Biagi, E. (1984) Diciamoci tutto (Let’s Tell Each Other Everything), Milan: Mondadori.

ROBERT LUMLEY

Biagiotti, Laura

b. 4 August 1943, Rome

Fashion designer

Later renowned as the ‘Queen of Cashmere’, Biagiotti began her career in fashion design

in her mother’s dressmaking business. Her personal brand of women’s ready-to-wear

clothes was launched in 1972 with a soft and loose Biagiotti line, which typically sought

to strike a balance between elegance and practicality. Biagiotti expanded from women’s

clothing into a men’s line in 1987 and then into a large women’s line (Laura Più) as well

as one for children (Biagiotti Junior). Among the Biagiotti licences are her well-known

sunglasses. In a crowded and competitive environment, Biagiotti managed to achieve

some remarkable ‘firsts’: she was the first Italian designer to present a collection in China

and also the first to stage a fashion show inside the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow,

where Biagiotti clothes seem to be very popular in a climate that welcomes the warm and

elegant embrace of cashmere. The distinctive Biagiotti logo features the towers of the

Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 96

fifteenth-century medieval fortress outside Rome which Biagiotti restored and turned into

her headquarters.

BERNADETTE LUCIANO

Bigongiari, Piero

b. 15 October 1914, Navacchio, Pisa; d. October 1998, Florence

Poet and essayist

Professor of contemporary literature at the University of Florence, Bigongiari wrote a

number of influential critical works on modern Italian poetry and in particular on

Giacomo Leopardi. As an expression of Florentine ermetismo (see also Mario Luzi),

Bigongiari’s early poetry, collected in the 1968 anthology Stato di cose (The State of

Things), is linguistically polished but revolves almost obsessively around the hermetic

themes of absence and expectation. In the 1970s, Bigongiari abandoned the formal

rigidity of his early verse and reduced its lyrical introspection. His later work, from

Antimateria (Anti-Matter) onward, juxtaposes rational and fantastical elements to become

an open meditation on the process of writing as the only reality truly accessible to the

poet.

Further reading

Bigongiari, R. (1994) Tutte le poesie (Complete Poems), Florence: Le Lettere (with bibliographical

references).

Macrì, O. (1988) Studi sull’ermetismo: l’enigma della poesia di Bigongiari (Studies on

Hermeticism: The Enigma of the Poetry of Bigongiari), Lecce: Milella (a comprehensive study

of Bigongiari’s poetry covering his entire career).

VALERIO FERME

Bilenchi, Romano

b. 9 November 1909, Colle Val d’Elsa, Siena; d. 17 November 1989, Florence

Journalist and novelist

Although Bilenchi began his career as a journalist by working for early proto-fascist

periodicals in Tuscany, he soon rejected all allegiance to right-wing politics. As the

Fascist regime became more repressive, Bilenchi’s political philosophy turned to the

Left, and he not only joined the Italian Communist Party (see PCI) but also took part in

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Resistance activities in Florence during the Second World War. After the war he founded

the daily newspaper Il Nuovo Corriere (The New Courier), and remained its editor until

1956. Bilenchi’s novels, which manifest his view of literature as a psychological

evocation of memory and lived events, often focus on the psychic development of young

characters as they confront conservatorio di Santa Teresa (The Conservatory of adult

expectations. His works include the novels // Santa Theresa) (1940) and Il bottom di

Stalingrado (The Stalingrad Button), which was awarded the 1972 Viareggio Prize;

several long stories including La siccità (Drought) (1941) and Il Gelo (The Frost) (1982)

and a memoir, Amid (Friends) (1976), recalling twentieth-century intellectual life.

LAURA A. SALSINI

Blasetti, Alessandro

b. 3 July 1900; d. 2 February 1987, Rome

Film director

Blasetti began as a film critic. In 1927, together with a number of other young

enthusiasts, he founded the film company Augustus through which, in 1929, with no real

directing experience, he produced and directed his first film Sole (Sun), based on the

reclaiming of the Pontine Marshes. The film received a very mixed response and

Augustus folded, but Blasetti moved on to direct films for the Cines company. A

grandiose monumental style, borrowed from successful epics of the 191 0s, became a

characteristic of his films which conformed, more on the formal level than on the level of

subject matter, to the policy of the Fascist regime. Although he remained somewhat

tainted by his Fascist associations, Vecchia guardia (The Old Guard) (1934) was the only

film which explicitly expressed Fascist ideology; his other films relied mainly on literary

sources, like Ettore Fieramosca (1938), adapted from a novel by Massimo D’Azeglio, or

mythic situations that hover between history and legend like La corona di ferro (The Iron

Crown) (1941). He made several films in collaboration with Zavattini, beginning with

Quattro passi fra le nuvole (A Walk through the Clouds) (1942) and then continued to

produce popular well-made films into the late 1970s, including two films starring Sophia

Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. His best works remain 1860 (1934) and Il cappello a

tre punte (The Three-Cornered Hat) (1935).

CRISTINA DEGLI-ESPOSTI REINERT

Bo, Carlo

b. 25 January 1911, Sestri Levante, Genoa

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Literary critic and academic

While pursuing a successful academic career as professor of French literature, and since

1947 as rettore (vice-chancellor) at the University of Urbino, Carlo Bo actively

participated in the cultural life of prewar and postwar Italy. Originating from the

existential notion of literature as he described it in the 1930s essay Letteratura come vita

(Literature as Life), Bo’s critical discourse focused mainly on the significance of ethical

and religious motifs in contemporary poetry and narrative. In addition to countless

articles published in literary journals, newspapers and magazines, Bo wrote seminal

essays on hermeticism, surrealism and neorealism and on such authors as Giacomo

Leopardi, Renato Serra, Massimo Bontempelli and Tommaso Landolfi. Highly respected

as an academic and intellectual, he has presided over several committees for literary

prizes, and in 1984 he was nominated life senator by the then President of the Republic,

Sandro Pertini.

FRANCESCA PARMEGGIANI

Bobbio, Norberto

b. 18 October 1909, Turin

Political and legal philosopher

A liberal philosopher and one of the foremost public intellectuals of the First Republic,

Bobbio is a keen analyst, critic and defender of the civil state. He has held chairs of

jurisprudence at the Universities of Siena, Padua and Turin and has shown an enduring

concern with the role of philosophy in relation to religion and to science. A public figure

of note, he has used the mass media to expound his insight that the growth of democracy

in Italy has been matched by an apparent vocation on the part of the intellectual class for

the antidemocratic and the irrational, a strong parallel, he has suggested, to the

undermining of the achievements of the ‘liberal age’ of Giolitti by fascism.

Chief amongst the figures to whom he publicly paid tribute in 1984, when he was

made a life senator, was Benedetto Croce, valued for his individualistic and determined

anti-fascism. Bobbio’s autobiography was published in 1997.

Further reading

Bobbio, N. (1995) Ideological Profile of Twentieth-Century Italy, trans. L.G. Cochrane, Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press.

SUZANNE KIERNAN

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Bocca, Giorgio

b. 18 August 1920, Cuneo

Journalist

A leading member of the generation that fought in the Resistance as young men, Bocca

began his journalistic apprenticeship with the party paper of Giustizia e Liberià Justice

and Liberty). After an initial sojourn in Turin he moved to Milan, where he remained. His

investigative articles for Il Giorno in the early 1960s established his reputation as a new

breed of journalist bent on discovering the real Italy of unbridled capitalism and social

malaise. He became a regular columnist for L’Europeo and then for La Repubblica and

’

Espresso. His politics made him an uncomfortable figure for both the ruling Christian

Democrats (see DC) and for the Italian Communist Party (see PCI). His Palmiro

Togliatti (1973) stressed the Stalinism of this leader, while his Il caso 7 aprile (1980)

attacked the distortions of the Italian system of justice resulting from its battle against

terrorism. Freedom of speech and opinion remained Bocca’s watchwords. His Il

provincial (1991) provides autobiographical insights, but his books tend to be extended

versions of his more succinct newspaper articles.