Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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Sandrelli, Stefania

b. 5 June 1946, Viareggio

Film actress

Stefania Sandrelli started her career in the 1960s in two films by Pietro Germi, Divorzio

all’italiana (Divorce, Italian Style) (1961), starring Marcello Mastroianni, and Sedotta e

abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned) (1964), both comic depictions of Sicilian

society. In 1968, she met Bernardo Bertolucci for the film Partner, an encounter which

was decisive for her career. With Bertolucci, she made three further films: Il conformista

(The Conformist) (1970), in which she portrayed the giddy upper-class wife of a fascist

agent, Novecento (1900) (1976), in which she was a socialist teacher, and Io ballo da sola

(Stolen Beauty) (1996), where she embodied a mature specimen of upper-class

decadence. In the 1970s and 1980s, she also collaborated with Ettore Scola, to whom she

owes some of her greatest roles, as in C’eravamo tanto amati (We Loved Each Other So

Much) (1974) and La famiglia (The Family) (1987). Even though she has often been cast

as the average Italian bourgeois wife in both comedies and dramas, Sandrelli also

explored more transgressive aspects of her femininity, as in Giovanni Soldati’s The Lie

(1984), or Bigas Luna’s Jamon Jamon (1992).

DOROTHÉE BONNIGAL

Sanguineti, Edoardo

b. 9 December 1930, Genoa

Poet, novelist, critic and translator

A leading representative of the postwar literary avantgarde, Sanguineti had already

published his first collection of poetry and several extended critical studies of Dante,

Gozzano and Moravia before achieving renown as one of the five poets included in the

landmark I novissimi anthology of 1961. He was subsequently a prominent member of

the Gruppo 63, publishing, amongst other things, arguably the most interesting

experimental novel to emerge from the movement Capriccio Italiano (Italian Caprice) in

1963. He also began writing theatrical works, and in 1969 adapted the Renaissance epic

Orlando Furioso for the legendary production by Luca Ronconi. In the 1970s, while

continuing to exert a strong cultural presence, he also took part in mainstream politics

and was elected a deputy for the PCI in 1979. A prolific and militant literary critic and

historian, Sanguineti has also published translations of Petronius, Aeschylus, Sophocles

and Seneca as well as composing lyrics for music by Luciano Berio and others.

GINO MOLITERNO

Entries A–Z 741

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Sanremo Festival

For one week every February since 1951, the Italian media dedicate much time and space

to a song competition which is held annually in the Ligurian city of San Remo. The songs

themselves arouse little interest or enthusiasm today and, with relatively few exceptions,

the singers who participate are ageing has-beens or young unknowns. However, the

Festival keeps alive the mythology of Italy as the land of song, and a victory by anyone

other than a melodic singer is regarded as a matter of some controversy

The Festival began as a publicity exercise for the municipal casino of San Remo, but

thanks to radio and television interest it grew to be an event of national importance. In the

conservative climate of the 1950s it offered an important forum for reassertion of the

national melodic tradition (whichdraws from both opera and from Neapolitan popular

song) after the intrusion of jazz and swing during the immediate postwar years. Although

Italy was changing rapidly, bland nostalgic tunes praising village life, motherly love and

chaste romance found a ready audience. It was ‘the triumph of nothing, framed by violins

and rose petals’, as Gianfranco Baldazzi has written (Baldazzi, 1989:77) Singers of

humble origins, like the Bolognese Nilla Pizzi and Claudio Villa, a Roman from

Trastevere who dominated the Festival in its early years, achieved great national

popularity. Thanks to their remarkable voices and forceful personalities, they contributed

to a revival of the Italian melody as a core component of a shared culture.

Domenico Modugn’s international hit ‘Nel blu dipinto di blu’ (also known as

‘Volare’) brought a breath of fresh air to the Festival in 1958, and in the following years

domestic rock’n’roll and pop singers did battle with the old guard. Instead of slightly

different executions of the same song, the public was presented with alternative versions:

up-tempo and melodic. However, the emergence of committed singer-songwriters (see

cantautori) and beat groups produced more diversity than the festival could handle. The

suicide of Luigi Tenco in 1967 following the exclusion of his song from the final at the

expense of one entitled ‘You, Me and the Roses’ marked a watershed. In the 1970s the

festival declined in popularity, and in 1973 RAI television only broadcast the final

evening.

The successful revival of the Sanremo Festival in the 1980s owed everything to a

coincidence of interests between RAI and the record companies. However, the Festival

ultimately failed to harness the talents of the best-selling Italian artists, though it did

contribute to the success of some significant new performers, amongst them Eros

Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini, two young singers from the melodic mould who achieved

popularity abroad as well as at home. The Festival achieved renewed popularity with

television audiences in the 1990s and its status as an innocuous, if slightly onanistic,

national event was underscored in 1997 when it came to be presented again, for the tenth

time in his career, by no less an éminence grise of Italian television than Mike

Bongiorno.