Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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disquiet about the rapid and violent elimination of one of the most powerful politicians in

postwar Italy.

Further reading

Drake, R. (1995) The Aldo Moro Murder Case, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (the

best book on the Moro case in English; includes a biographical chapter as well as a close

examination of all the circumstances and documents).

Sciascia, L. (1987) The Moro Affair and the Mystery of Majorana, trans. S.Rabinovitch,

Manchester: Carcanet (an illuminating attempt by the famous Italian writer and essayist to

analyse the Moro affair soon after it occurred).

Wagner-Pacifici, R.E. (1986) The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as Social Drama, Chicago:

University of Chicago Press (the Moro case analysed within its complex social and political

context).

JAMES WALSTON

Morricone, Ennio

b. 10 November 1928, Trastevere, Rome

Composer

With an estimated 400 film scores to his credit, Morricone is the most prolific, respected

and renowned film composer of the twentieth century. In spite of such an overwhelming

identification with film music, Morricone received a thorough training in classical music

at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome, which he entered at the age of fourteen and

where he studied trumpet, orchestration, choral music and composition under Goffredo

Petrassi. In order to support himself in the 1950s and 1960s, he worked extensively as

arranger and conductor for a number of popular singers including Gianni Morandi,

Mina, Charles Aznavour and Mario Lanza. In the mid-1960s he was also part of Nuova

Consonanza (New Consonance), an avantgarde musical improvisation group formed in

Rome by Franco Evangelisti and strongly influenced by the ideas of American composer

John Cage.

Much in demand in Italy for his imaginative arrangements, Morricone came to

international prominence in 1964 with his boisterous and captivating score for Sergio

Leone’s first spaghetti western, For A Fistful of Dollars. He subsequently scored all of

Leone’s films, including the gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1983) as well

as working with all the major Italian directors from Gillo Pontecorvo and Marco

Bellocchio to Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci. As Bertolucci himself once

remarked in an interview, there was a period in the 1970s when practically every Italian

film, with the possible exception of those of Fellini, carried the Morricone name.

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Although Morricone had previously also worked with American and British directors

on films as different as John Boorman’s Exorcist II (1977) and Terence Malick’s Days of

Heaven (1978), for which he had received an Oscar nomination, he became especially

known in the USA for his haunting and moving soundtrack to Roland Joffe’s historical

epic, The Mission (1986), a score which was again nominated for an Oscar as well as

winning a Golden Globe. He went on to work on a multitude of other international films

including Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987), Roman Polanski’s Frantic (1988)

and Pedro Almodovar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! as well as contributing a very lyrical

touch to Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso (1988). All his scores

also became available on CD, leading to over twenty gold and five platinum albums as

well as a countless number of other prestigious awards.

Although he remains best-known for his film and television scores, Morricone has

continued to produce a considerable body of symphonic and chamber music which he

himself conducts, such as his Cantata for Europe (1988) or UT, a composition which he

later permitted to be used for a television tribute to mafia crime fighter, Giovanni

Falcone. As a sign of his pre-eminence in 1998 Morricone was commissioned by the

Vatican to compose the official hymn for the Holy Year 2000, the result being a choral

work for six choirs and fifty voices lasting ten minutes but using only the word ‘Amen’.

Further reading

Morricone, E. (1995) ‘Music at the Service of the Cinema: An Interview with Ennio Morricone’,

Cineaste 21 (1–2):76–80 (an extensive and revealing interview covering most aspects of

Morricone’s music).

GINO MOLITERNO

Morselli, Guido

b. 15 August 1912, Bologna; d. 31 July 1973, Varese

Novelist and essayist

A reclusive and solitary man, Morselli had written nine novels, four plays, three film

scripts and a large number of short stories, critical essays and a diary before he took his

own life at the age of fifty-one. Ironically, although his posthumously-published work

shows a novelist of rare talent and intellectual sophistication, during his lifetime his

manuscripts were invariably rejected for publication by all the major Italian publishers

and editors, amongst them writers of the calibre of Calvino and Moravia. Following his

death, three critical works and seven of his novels have been published, and several have

also been translated into English.

Morselli’s carefully-crafted novels are generally concerned with either the

investigation of society, as in Roma senza Papa (Rome Without a Pope) (1974) or of the

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mind, as in Un dramma borghese (A Bourgeois Drama) (1978). While in Roma,

Morselli’s witty imagination allows him to take a close look at the Catholic Church and

its function in contemporary society, in Un Dramma borghese he dissects the complex

and incestuous relationship between a man and his eighteen-year-old daughter. Relentless

psychological analysis, combined with subtle irony and an original representation of time

and memory, renders Morselli’s novels compelling and yet resistant to simplistic literary

categorization.

Further reading

Morselli, G (1986) Divertimento 1889, trans. H. Shankland, London: Chatto & Windus (one of

Morselli’s few translated novels, preceded by a brief but useful biography).

PAOLO BARTOLONI

Moschino

‘Warning: fashion shows can be dangerous to your health’, was just one of the many

provocative Moschino slogans that suggested the fashion designer’s anti-fashion industry

attitude. Committed to social issues such as the environment and human rights, Moschino

warned his audience about media manipulation and the potentially homogenizing effect

of fashion on culture. Franco Moschino started out as an illustrator for Gianni Versace

and struck out on his own in 1983 in the jeans and casual wear line, followed by shoes,

lingerie, evening wear and finally a perfume. Examples of the Moschino touch are the

fried egg and plastic windmill buttons adorning his classical jackets, or the winter hat

made up of a mass of cuddly teddy bears. He was also known for his bright vests, purses,

T-shirts and black satin evening gowns. Moschino died in 1994 at the age of forty-three,

provoking a sense of loss in Italy’s fashion world.

BERNADETTE LUCIANO

motor car industry

A sector of outstanding importance in postwar Italy, the motor car industry grew at a

tremendous pace from the 1950s onwards and became a major symbol of the Italian

‘economic miracle’. Car production, which had amounted to only 100,000 cars a year in

1952, had gone beyond one million per year just ten years later, while exports had also

increased considerably. This phenomenon not only had important economic effects, but it

was also epoch-making in terms of social and cultural change. In being able to buy a

car—such as Fiat 500 or 600—at an affordable price, alongside other durable consumer

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goods such as refrigerators or motorbikes—the latter a very Italian specialization with a

worldwide success (see motorscooters)—a number of Italians experienced for the first

time the potential benefits of industrial growth on their own living standards. Individual

mobility increased enormously, as did geographical and social integration.

Fiat played an undeniable leading role in that process, since it won a high standing

among European producers, effectively boosted the domestic market and succeeded in

keeping leadership of it even in 1970s and 1980s, when foreign car makers won ever

larger market shares. The Turin group ultimately monopolized national production by

taking over most of the other Italian automobile producers such as Lancia (an old family-

owned company which was specialized in high-powered luxury cars, but proved unable

to enter mass production), Autobianchi and finally Alfa Romeo (a competing company

controlled by IRI, with very successful models such as the Giulietta and Alfetta). Fiat

also retained its traditionally close links with Ferrari, the famous racing car maker. The

company also benefited from strong political support whereby high custom duties made

foreign cars more expensive and foreign producers were prevented from either opening

plants in Italy or gaining control over Italian companies: in 1986, in fact, political

pressures led IRI to sell Alfa Romeo to Fiat, although Ford had offered to take over the

company at very favourable conditions.

However, the economic crisis of 1970s and early 1980s marked a real turning point.

Market growth slowed and then reached saturation point in all developed countries, thus

forcing the American and European motor car industries to restructure. As a

consequence, during the 1980s and 1990s Fiat periodically reduced its labour force,

introduced technological innovations and renewed its models. Focusing mainly on the

domestic market, it won back a strong leading position in Italy, in spite of market

maturity (with a structural low demand), the full market liberalization of 1992 and the

gradual penetration of new competitors such as the Japanese producers. In particular, Fiat

strengthened its advantage in low segments of the market (small utility cars), even if it

continued to suffer competition for its high-powered cars in Italy and, even more, in the

rest of Europe.

Further reading

Enrietti, A. et al. (1980) La ristrutturazione dell’industria metalmeccanica: il caso dell’auto e dei

componenti (The Restructuring of the Metalwork Industry: A Case Study of Automobile and

Components), Milan: Angeli (a study of restructuring strategies of the Italian motor car industry

after the 1970 crisis).

Laux, J.M. (1992) The European Automobile Industry, New York: Maxwell Macmillan

International (a description of the main European car makers and their position on the

international markets).

STEFANO BATTILOSSI

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motor racing

Italian car makers such as Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Maserati and Fiat were among the

pioneers of motor racing. Alfa Romeo was very successful in the period before the

Second World War, but since the late 1950s Ferrari has been the catalyst for the passion

Italians display for motor racing. Several television programmes are dedicated to pre- and

post-race analysis; a victory by Ferrari often prompts dancing in the streets and the front

page of La Gazzetta dello Sport will relegate even football to secondary status. The Mille

Miglia (One Thousand Mile) race—until 1957—and the Monza and San Marino Formula

One Grand Prix are amongst the most awaited events of the sports season.

Alfa Romeo’s achievements continued after the Second World War. In 1947, Alfa

Romeo took the Mille Miglia. In 1950 the Alfetta won all eleven races it had entered,

clinching the second manufacturer’s world title and making Giuseppe (Nino) Farina the

first Formula One world champion. The next year, racing great Manuel Fangio repeated

the exploit, taking the world title for himself and for Alfa Romeo. However, at the end of

the 1951 season Alfa Romeo announced its withdrawal from Formula One and in 1957

Maserati also abandoned Grand Prix competitions, although for some years it continued

to provide engines for other teams.

The time was now ripe for Enzo Ferrari and his team to take centre stage. Ferrari, in

fact, was responsible for the creation of what has become the ultimate dream car and a

cultural icon. He started his career as a driver and then directed racing operations for Alfa

Romeo, where he established the first Scuderia Ferrari. After the Second World War, he

began manufacturing his own cars at the Maranello plant outside Modena. On 11 May

1947, the first car carrying the Ferrari logo participated in an official competition. That

first car never completed the race, but in 1948–9 Ferrari cars won the Mille Miglia and

the Targa Florio (the most prestigious uphill race, held in Sicily). 1949 also brought the

first victory at Le Mans (the world’s best known twenty-four-hour endurance contest),

thus firmly establishing Ferrari’s reputation outside Italy.

Among the sport events that were reinstated after the war was the now legendary Mille

Miglia, a race of roughly one thousand miles, run only on public roads. Large crowds

gathered on the sides of the roads to cheer their favourite drivers. However, the engines

were now more powerful (and the cars much faster) than those of pre-1945, but no

greater safety measures had been taken. In 1957, Marquis Alfonso de Portago lost control

of his Ferrari during the final miles of the race, killing himself, the navigator and eleven

roadside spectators. An official investigation followed and Enzo Ferrari was charged with

manslaughter (even the Vatican issued a denunciation against him). The race was

suspended and although Ferrari was acquitted after a long trial, the Mille Miglia was

considered too dangerous and discontinued.

At that point, Monza’s Formula One Grand Prix (already a hugely popular race)

became the main event of Italian car racing. The Monza autodrome, among the world’s

oldest and most challenging, is situated in the former royal park just outside of Milan.

Every year, thousands of people arrive days before the race, camp in the park and wait in

long lines or pay scalpers ten times the face value of a ticket. Others choose more

creative ways to view the Grand Prix and build their own (often precarious) stands or sit

in the trees that line the course. The drivers usually reward this show of enthusiasm with

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fierce competition, knowing that a victory at Monza in front of the home crowd will

guarantee a lifetime of adulation.

Another Formula One Grand Prix takes place in Italy, at Imola, though its official

denomination is Grand Prix of San Marino (a tiny independent republic completely

surrounded by Italian territory). During the trials for the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994,

Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger lost control of his car and died. The next day, a

similar fate befell three-time world champion Ayrton Senna. The accidents were

eventually attributed to mechanical failure, and the FIA (Federation Internationale de

l’Automobile) imposed a series of regulations aimed at limiting the power of Formula

One cars.

Italian motor racing had a number of famous drivers, though none greater than Tazio

Nuvolari. This extraordinary driver (also known as ‘the flying Mantuan’ and ‘the red

devil’), had worked for Alfa Romeo’s Scuderia Ferrari before the war, and returned under

the direction of Enzo Ferrari in July 1947. Unlike that of his impeccable companion and

rival Achille Varzi, Nuvolari’s driving style was very unorthodox and he took more risks

than anyone else, which is what made him a legend in the eyes of the public.

Furthermore, experts like Enzo Ferrari and his technicians also saw that Nuvolari could

push cars to their limits without destroying them and could thus offer precious technical

information on how to improve them. Nuvolari retired in 1950.

Lorenzo Bandini, Andrea de Cesaris, Vittorio Brambilla, Michele Alboreto, Riccardo

Patrese, Alessandro Nannini and Elio De Angelis are among the drivers who tried,

without much fortune, to repeat the successes of Ascari and Nuvolari. The foreign drivers

who have won world titles for the Italian colours are Manuel Fangio (who triumphed on

Alfa Romeo and Ferrari), Mike Hawthorn (also a world champion in motorcycle racing

for Italian-made MV-Agusta), Phil Hill, John Surtees, Niki Lauda and Jody Scheckter,

the last driver to win a world title on a Ferrari, in 1979. All these world champions won

titles for Enzo Ferrari, who died in 1988 at the age of ninety-one. However, the name and

the legend he created lived on, though under the control of Fiat and the Agnelli family.

Italy’s most successful make in rally racing has been Lancia. It won the

manufacturer’s title in 1972 and 1974–6. In 1977–8 and 1980, the title was secured by

Fiat but Lancia won again in 1983 and also from 1987 to 1992, a period which included

two world titles for best driver to M. Biasion, 1988–9.

In motorcycle racing, Nello Pagani, Tarquinio Provini, Carlo Ubbiali and Umberto

Masetti were amongst the first Italian champions, but Giacomo Agostini and Renzo

Pasolini were the ones who ensured the sport’s success in Italy. Agostini won fifteen

world championships: 1968–74 in the 350cc category, and 1966–72 and 1975 in the

500cc. He won a total of 122 races, most on an MV-Agusta. Agostini was the only man

to win world titles in separate categories in five consecutive years. Renzo Pasolini raced

in the same years as Agostini and their duels were regarded by Italian sports fans as true

epics. In fact however, due to MV-Agusta’s superiority, Pasolini never posed a serious

challenge to Agostini. Pasolini’s tragic death on 20 May 1973 at the Monza track placed

him forever among the modern heroes of Italian sport. In following years, Marco

Lucchinelli won the world title in the 500cc in 1981 and Franco Uncini repeated in 1982.

Italian bike maker Aprilia and world champions Loris Capirossi (the youngest world

champion in the history of the sport at the time he won his first title in the 125cc in 1991),

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Luca Cadalora and Max Biaggi (250 cc, 1994) continue the winning tradition originated

by their predecessors.

Further reading

Raffaelli, F. (1994) Emilia-Romagna e Marche: terra di piloti e di motori, Modena: Artioli

(Emilia-Romagna and Marche: a land of cars and pilots - a book dedicated to the motor racing

industry and pilots of these two bordering regions of Italy).

PAOLO VILLA

motorscooters

In the immediate postwar period Italy’s great leap forward into modernization came to be

both effected and symbolized by the motorscooter, a vehicle which provided cheap and

easy transportation as well as exhibiting a penchant for style that would henceforth be

associated with the ‘Made in Italy’ label. As the economic miracle bore its fruits in the

1950s, providing Italians with more spending power, loyalties divided fiercely between

two major rivals: the Vespa (so-called because its sound and shape suggested a wasp),

1946, and the Lambretta (named after the Lambro river near Milan where it was first

assembled), launched in 1947 by the Innocenti Company. More innovative and stylish in

terms of design, the Vespa conquered a greater share of the market and by the late 1990s

had sold over 15 million worldwide. The Lambretta, less sophisticated in its design,

nevertheless also had its enthusiasts and by 1998 had sold more than 3.5 million. Already

immortalized by Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in the film Roman Holiday (1953),

the Vespa was also more recently celebrated by Nanni Moretti in his 1993 film, Caro

Diario (Dear Diary).

GINO MOLITERNO

Moussa Ba, Saidou

b. 1964, Senegal

Writer and actor

Saidou Moussa Ba migrated to Italy from Senegal in the late 1980s. His first book in

Italian, La promessa di Hamadi (Hamadi’s Promise) (1991), written in collaboration with

Alessandro Micheletti, is a fictional autobiographical narrative which recounts the

experiences of two Senegalese brothers in Italy, their encounter with Italian organized

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crime and the death of the older brother. Ba’s second book, La memoria di A. (The

Memory of A.) (1995), also written in collaboration with Micheletti, deals with

discrimination and racism, focusing on anti-Semitism as seen by a young Italian man who

moves to Germany.

Teacher, writer and actor, Ba has worked on films such as Waalo Fendo (Where the

Earth Freezes) (1997) and his play, Nessuno può coprire l’ombra (No One can Cover the

Shadow), was staged by the group Ravenna Teatro (Ravenna Theatre). Ba has also

collaborated with Ravenna Teatro in establishing a performing centre in Dakar.

Further reading

Moussa Ba, S. (1991) La promessa di Hamadi, Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini.

GRAZIELLA PARATI

Movimento di Comunità

The Movimento di Comunità (Community Movement) began as a cultural initiative,

accompanied by an eponymous journal and publishing house, established by Adriano

Olivetti. Responding to the social tensions created by the rapid industrialization of the

early 1950s, Olivetti attempted to apply sociological expertise to humanize relations

within his firm and to shape its impact on local society. Among the intellectuals closely

associated with Olivetti’s effort to modernize simultaneously industry and culture were

the literary critic Pampaloni, the novelists Volponi and Ottieri, and the sociologist

Ferrarrotti. Olivetti’s communitarian ambitions led Comunità into politics; but in its only

electoral contest (1958), the Movement won just 173,257 votes (0.6 per cent) and elected

a single MP (Olivetti himself, who subsequently resigned in favour of Ferrarrotti). That

failure, and Olivetti’s subsequent early death, ensured the Movement’s disappearance.

Further reading

Olivetti, A. (1960) Le città dell’uomo (Man’s Cities), Milan: Comunità.

DAVID MOSS

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Movimento Nucleare

The Movimento Nucleare (The Nuclear Movement) was a group of artists founded in

1951 by Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo. The first manifesto expressed opposition to the

rules and traditions of academic art and to the then prevailing avantgarde style, geometric

abstraction. Instead, the participants favoured gestural and abstract expressionist art

(similar concerns to L’lnformale group), and the use of chance and automatism as had

been practised by some of the surrealists. Early works were characterized by the

technique of spilling paint.

In 1957, Piero Manzoni published his manifesto ‘Towards an Organic Painting’,

which called for a move beyond impression and memory to a free painting which

continuously reinvented itself. These were similar ideas to the Movimento Nucleare, and

in the same year Manzoni, along with Giò Pomodoro and Yves Klein, was a signatory to

the group’s manifesto ‘Contro lo stile’ (Against Style), which denounced style and

argued for a painting that was always new, without conventions or repetition, a presence

rather than a representation.

Further reading

Celant, G. (1994) The Italian Metamorphosis 1943–1968, New York: Guggenheim Museum, 718-

19 (English translation of some of the group’s manifestos).

MAX STAPLES

MSI

The MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano, or Italian Social Movement) was a neo-fascist

party (see fascism and neo-fascism) occupying the far right of politics for most of the

postwar period. Founded in 1946, the party became the MSI-DN (National Right) in 1972

and, reflecting the ambiguities of fascism itself, included both legally oriented ultra-

conservatives as well as anti-constitutional radicals. Considered illegitimate by most of

the other political parties which had cooperated to found the Republic on the basis of

anti-fascism, the MSI was permanently excluded from government during the ‘First’

Republic. However in 1995, under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini, it dissolved itself

into the AN (National Alliance), having already formed, under the AN flag, part of the

Berlusconi government in 1994.

The MSI’s original inspiration was the Italian Social Republic (RSI), a puppet fascist

mini-state set up and supported by the occupying German forces from 1943–5 and

centred on the northern town of Said. Republican fascism was critical of the Fascist

regime established after 1924, harking back to earlier forms of fascism with their anti-

monarchist, anti-bourgeois and socialistic dimensions. Even within the MSI, however,

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these radical aspects were rapidly subordinated to the more legal tendency, in part

because otherwise the party risked being made illegal and in part because its electoral

successes were largely concentrated in the conservative south. In 1948, all six of its MPs

were elected there and, accordingly, the party’s leadership shifted to the moderates.

Under Augusto De Marsanich (1949–54) and Arturo Michelini (1954–69), the

parliamentary electoral approach to politics was reinforced. Hostility to NATO, the

epitome of the western liberal capitalism which had humiliated Italy, was abandoned and

the party sought to ally itself with the DC, the monarchists and the Liberals (PLI), all

previous enemies. This strategy almost worked until the Tambroni crisis demonstrated

the impracticability of right-wing governments. In 1963, in fact, the DC turned away and

initiated an opening to the Left.

The new centre-left government formula marginalized the right-wing parties,

rendering the MSI’s conservative strategy of seeking cooperation with the DC irrelevant.

This reinforced the radical wing of the party, and the growing social tensions of the 1960s

strengthened this shift. When De Marsanich died in 1969, the leadership returned to

Giorgio Almirante, one of the party’s ex-RSI founding fathers, who led the party until

1987 when Gianfranco Fini took over. Almirante revamped the conservative strategy of

seeking to unite the country’s divided parliamentary Right and attempting to draw the DC

away from cooperation with the Left. He thus formed the National Right (MSI-DN),

opening the party to prestigious conservative candidates. For the sake of party unity,

however, Almirante maintained links with the radical—and, in this period, violent and

subversive—Right. This fatally undermined the National Right strategy. The collapse of

terrorism in 1982 and the subsequently transformed political climate led to political

depolarization which embraced even the MSI. The party, however, was not prepared for

this and reconfirmed its fascist identity. Its anachronistic irrelevance was now marked,

but the party avoided the lacerating identity crisis which, on the Left, engulfed the PCI

(see also PDS). Fini’s able exploitation of the opportunities opened up by the collapse of

the ‘First’ Republic meant that the rebaptised party made considerable progress towards

finally achieving full legitimacy. The orientation of the new political context of the

‘Second’ Republic was towards the future, not the past, and to the practical governing

capacities of parties rather than their outmoded ideological histories.

Further reading

Chiarini, R. (1991) ‘The “Movimento Sociale Italiano”: A Historical Profile’, in L.Cheles,

R.Ferguson and M.Vaughan (eds), Neofascism in Europe, London: Longman.

Ferraresi, F. (1996) Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy after the War, Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

Ignazi, P. (1993) ‘The Changing Profile of the Italian Social Movement’, in P.H. Merkl and L.

Weinberg (eds), Encounters with the Contemporary Right, Boulder, CO: Westwood Press.

MARK DONOVAN

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