Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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1992 (2.8 per cent, 16 seats in the Lower House and 4 in the Senate), in 1994 (2.7 per
cent and 9 seats) and in 1996 (2.5 per cent and 14 seats in co-operation with parties like
the PDS). Their share of seats in the Senate was 7 out of 325 in 1994 and 14 out of 325 in
1996.
In the 1989, European elections the Liste Verdi achieved 3.8 per cent of the vote and a
coalition of Green associations, Verdi Arcobaleno (Rainbow Greens), gained a further 2.4
per cent. The latter represented and reflected the connection between environmental
issues and left-wing groups, and included several ‘red-red’ groups as well as Green
groups with left leanings. In fact, many activists and local groups of Verdi Arcobaleno
came directly from Democrazia Proletaria and were without any ecological experience
whatsoever. In the next elections to the European Parliament held in 1994, the Liste
Verdi attracted over a million votes (3.2 per cent of the ballot) and secured 3 out of 87
seats.
As in many other European countries, supporters of Green groups have tended to be
young, welleducated and affluent. A key issue that contributed to the rise of Italian Green
groups was a plan, announced in 1975, to establish numerous nuclear power stations in
Italy The plan drew strong opposition from prominent scientists and intellectuals, and
was challenged by organizations like Friends of the Earth (Amici della Terra) and by the
PCI. In the wake of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, Italian
environmental groups initiated a campaign in 1987 for a referendum in which a majority
voted against plans by the government to develop nuclear power and for decisions to be
made at the local level.
In terms of programmes, the various Green political organizations have experienced
difficulty in agreeing on a common approach. Some, like the Liste Verdi, have tended to
focus on purely environmental issues, while others include a broader programme of
social justice, peace and disarmament and the rights of minorities. The reform of the
electoral system, away from proportional representation, has presented further difficulties
and forced the Liste Verdi to join in coalitions of left-wing and socialist groups like the
Progressive Alliance.
See also: environmental movement; environmental policy
Further reading
Diani, M. (1989) ‘Italy: the “Liste Verdi”’, in F. Müller-Rommel (ed.), New Politics in Western
Europe: The Rise and Success of Green Parties and Alternative Lists, Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 113–22 (a survey of the early development of ‘Green Lists’ including electoral bases and
organizational structure).
O’Neill, M. (1997) Green Parties and Political Change in Contemporary Europe: New Politics,
Old Predicaments, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate (a wide-ranging comparative analysis, but
see especially pp. 215–36 for a very up-to-date analysis of the Italian situation).
Rhodes, M. (1995) ‘Italy: Greens in an Overcrowded Political System’, in D. Richardson and C.
Rootes (eds), The Green Challenge: The development of Green parties in Europe, London and
New York: Routledge, 168–192 (an analysis of the Greens in the context of the Italian political
system).
ELIM PAPADAKIS
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Verdone, Carlo
b. 17 November 1950, Rome
Actor and director
Son of film historian Mario Verdone, Carlo studied at the Centro Sperimentale di
Cinematografia in Rome, worked as a theatre and television actor until his directorial
debut with Un sacco hello (Really Cool) (1979), a film produced by director Sergio
Leone, for which Verdone wrote the script and played leading role. He continued to score
popular success in his following films, which include Bianco, rosso e verdone (White,
Red and Verdone) (1984), Troppo forte (Too Much) (1986), Io e mia sorella (My Sister
and I) (1987), Perdiamoci di vista (Let’s Not Keep in Touch) (1994) and Sono pazzo di
Iris Blonde (I am Crazy about Iris Blonde) (1996). Role playing characterizes most of
Verdone’s films as he transforms himself into a series of similar comic characters who
function as obnoxious, though not wholly unsympathetic ‘types’, whose merciless
portrayal is always more important than the stories. Verdone’s films are a parodic
representation of reality permeated by a cynicism that never quite becomes satire.
CRISTINA DEGLI-ESPOSTI REINERT
il verri
Founded in Milan in 1956 by Luciano Anceschi, and thereafter published quarterly under
his direction, il verri became the most influential literary and cultural journal of the 1960s
and 1970s, with most members of the neoavantgarde passing through its pages. Hosting
theoretical and critical articles, experimental writing and literary and cultural reviews, the
journal promoted both aesthetic and cultural reflection and active artistic
experimentation, thus becoming a major focus for serious cultural discussion in Italy. As
well as regularly presenting a mixture of both creative and critical texts, the journal also
published special issues dedicated to particular themes such as phenomenology, the new
poetry, engagement and the avantgarde, and linguistic and literary structuralism. The
journal survived the death of its founder in 1995 and is still published regularly,
continuing to offer a creative mixture of critical reflection and cultural practice.
GINO MOLITERNO
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Versace
Later to become known as both ‘Lorenzo de Versace’ and a ‘bourgeois prince’, Gianni
Versace was first exposed to the world of fashion in his mother’s atelier in Reggio
Calabria in the early postwar period. Puzzled by the fact that southern women had to
conceal their sexuality behind black clothing and heavy shawls, in a land where garments
of silk chiffon and velvet more accurately represented the warmth and sensuality of the
Mediterranean, Versace left his homeland in search of greater freedom. He moved north
to Milan, and in 1978 the first collection bearing his name appeared on the fashion scene.
He was not alone in his venture. His sister Donatella, after graduating in languages from
the University of Florence, joined him in Milan and soon became his indispensable muse
and adviser. His brother was later to become the managerial mind behind the Versace
label.
Gianni’s American dream began in 1979 when he was asked to design a line of
sportswear for men. Although it did not succeed, Gianni continued to pursue the
American market, where he soon became visible because of his unique ability to unite
European taste and the American spirit. Soon, GV boutiques and perfumes emerged. In
1982 he was crowned best fashion designer for his collection of that year, which
displayed the famous metal garments which became a Versace trademark. His miniskirt
suits with wide shouldered jackets were even more successful. Eventually the Versace
label expanded beyond clothing to include glasses, watches and perfume. Not only did
Gianni revolutionize design, but he transformed the dynamics of the fashion show by
having his models parade not alone on the catwalk but in the company of other models,
constantly crossing paths and interweaving.
Gianni’s artistic sense spilled over from fashion into a passion for the arts. He
collaborated with internationally renowned photographers and held a number of museum
shows all over the world. In addition, he designed costumes for numerous ballets and
operas. His love for art overflowed into his homes in New York and Miami, which he
filled with Picassos, Andy Warhols and Murano glass, as well as commissioned art which
included a two-ton bronze bed.
Versace’s life came to a tragic premature end with his murder on 15 July 1997.
Eyewitnesses report that the killer approached Versace on the doorstep of his Miami
Beach villa, uttered a few words, and shot him twice in the head. The man responsible
was thought to be Andrew Cunanan, a serial killer who had murdered several other men
but who committed suicide only days after Versace’s death. The brutal murder came on
the heels of several other dark moments in the Versace fairy tale. A few years previously
Versace, together with a number of other fashion houses including Krizia and Ferrè, had
been found guilty of paying off the Finance Ministry. In 1994 he had been linked to the
Calabrian mafia, and in 1995 a rare tumour had been discovered in his right ear. The
illness took its toll on Gianni, who prepared himself for death and rumours spread that the
gay designer had contracted AIDS.
It was during his illness that Donatella assumed control of the business. As advisor,
Donatella’s influence had always been strong. She maintained the Versace image while
he occupied himself with his passion for theatre, art and music. While he designed his
costumes she vacationed with Sting, had lunch with Elton John, and went to the party
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celebrating the birth of Madonna’s child. As art director, she was in charge of the
publicity campaigns and the publication of the lavish books issued under the symbol of
the Medusa, the symbol that Gianni had selected for the company because, like the
Versace style, it seduces on sight.
Since her brother’s death, Donatella has maintained the strongly sexual and colourful
style that recalls Gianni. Versace’s seductive woman remains the opposite of the Armani
androgynous business type. In the new millennium, the Versace woman will continue to
dress provocatively in low-cut blouses, slit skirts, spiked heels and transparent evening
gowns. The sensuality which Gianni first sensed in his mother’s atelier led him finally to
Miami, a town whose eroticism was both a source of inspiration and the occasion of his
death. Ironically he did not die serenely, as he had hoped, but as a victim of a violence all
too reminiscent of his native city from which he had escaped twenty years earlier.
BERNADETTE LUCIANO
Vespa, Bruno
b. 25 May 1944, L’Aquila
Journalist and television anchorman
Working for the national broadcaster, the RAI, since 1968, Vespa has successfully
weathered different seasons of television journalism. His ability to explain in simple
terms the complicated games of Italian politics has always drawn him an audience as he
progressed from rank and file journalist to executive producer of the RAI’s main news
presentation on its first channel (1989 to 1992). Vespa’s greatest individual scoop was in
1978 when he was the first journalist on the scene of Aldo Moro’s kidnapping by the
Red Brigades. Ever obsequious to the powerful and generally linked to the Christian
Democrats, he nevertheless presented the current affairs programme Porta a porta (Door
Against Door) in the early 1990s, documenting the troubled path of the Tangentopoli
investigations and the end of the so-called First Republic. With his talk show technique
and his ability to simplify, he democratized politics for the average spectator. He is
known also as a writer of ‘instant’ political books like Il duello (The Duel) (1995) or La
svolta (The Turn) (1996).
RICCARDO VENTRELLA
Videomusic
MTV came to Italy in 1984 when Rete Quattro screened the first programme of
videoclips. Subsequently the Marcucci group, through their company Beta Television, set
up Videomusic, a channel targeted at the 20–30 age group and screening videoclips in
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rotation twenty-four hours a day, interspersed with music specials and live concerts. In
1991 the channel inaugurated its first regular programme, Roxy Bar, conducted by Red
Ronnie, which mixed live music and entertainment. The programme was a great success,
but by the mid-1990s the channel came to face serious challenges to its musical
monopoly. In 1995 Telepiù3 (and then Rete A) began to relay the signal of MTV Europe
into Italy. In the same year the film producer, Cecchi Gori, who had also bought
Telemontecarlo, purchased Videomusic and changed both its name to TMC2 and its
style of programming to less music and videoclips and more movies and sports. Red
Ronnie remained in the team with Roxy Bar and a new daily programme, Help! but the
channel’s overall popularity with the younger audience was never the same.
RICCARDO VENTRELLA
Viganò, Vittoriano
b. 14 December 1919, Milan; d. 5 January 1996, Milan
Architect, teacher, urban and industrial designer
After graduating from the Milan Politecnico in 1944, Viganò became involved in the
postwar reconstruction of Milan. His work includes residential, sports, educational and
healthcare buildings as well as Milan’s Parco Sempione. However, Viganò is best known
for his youthful project, the Marchiondi Spagliardi Institute in Milan-Baggio (1957)
which, with its emphasized structure, heavy massing, and exposed and untreated
reinforced concrete, is considered the paradigm of the Italian variation of brutalism. From
the early 1960s Viganò taught in the Faculty of Architecture of the Milan Politecnico, for
which he also designed the campus in 1974. In his teaching, he stressed the ethical side of
design and its relation to aesthetics and fine art.
Further reading
A come architettura: Vittoriano Viganò (A as in Architecture: Vittoriano Viganò) (1992), Milan:
Electa (exhibition catalogue presenting a good comprehensive review of his work).
GORDANA KOSTICH \
Villa, Claudio
b. 1 January 1926, Rome; d. 7 January 1987, Padua
Singer
Entries A–Z 885
Born Claudio Pica, the son of a shoemaker in the poorer Roman quarter of Trastevere,
Villa went on to become one of the most renowned and financially successful singers of
postwar Italy, coming to be known simply as il reuccio (the little king) and il fenomeno
(the phenomenon). Having only partially recovered from tuberculosis contracted during
the war years, Villa began singing on the radio in 1945; by the mid-1950s he had become
a household name. During a dazzling career he was awarded literally hundreds of prizes,
trophies, medals and diplomas. He sold more than 42 million records, and won the
Sanremo Festival four times and the Canzonissima twice. His overwhelming success
was due in large part to his fine tenor voice and his ability to sing traditional melodies,
but it was also aided by astute marketing and self-promotion through an extended
network of American-style fan clubs.
GINO MOLITERNO
Villaggio, Paolo
b. 31 December 1932, Genoa
Actor and writer
A popular comic actor better known to Italian audiences in the guise of his fictional
persona, Ugo Fantozzi, Villaggio abandoned his job at the Italsider steel mill to try show
business. While doing comic monologues on stage in Milan in 1968 he was noticed by
Maurizio Costanzo, who invited him to Rome and eventually to appear on the RAI’s
variety show Quelli delta domenica, where Villaggio created the first version of what
would eventually become the grotesque figure of Fantozzi. Servile, eternally flustered
and a born loser, Fantozzi was a perceptive caricature of major common defects in the
Italian character, and he became an immediate hit both on television and in print. There
followed a number of Fantozzi films, most of which were also huge box office successes,
thus firmly establishing the character in the Italian imagination.
In spite of being overwhelmingly identified with this tragicomic persona, Villaggio
has given proof of great versatility in his acting talent by playing leading roles both on
stage (for example, in Strehler’s production of Molière’s L’Avare) and on screen
(Fellini’s La voce delta luna in 1990 and Olmi’s Il segreto del bosco vecchio in 1993). In
1992, he was awarded a Golden Lion at Venice in recognition of his career.
GINO MOLITERNO
Visconti, Luchino
b. 2 November 1906, Milan; d. 17 March 1976, Rome
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Film director and opera producer
Visconti’s early years were marked by an upperclass upbringing during which he
developed an intense interest in music, something to which he would return in his later
films and in his work in opera. In his late twenties, his interest in film saw him move to
Paris where, after being in the French film-makers’ circle for some years, he assisted Jean
Renoir on Une Partie de campagne (A Day in the Country) in 1936. They collaborated
again in Rome when he worked with Renoir on La Tosca in 1940, a production which
had been arranged under the invitation of Mussolini despite the previous banning in Italy
of Renoir’s Grande Illusion (1937). In the event, La Tosca proved not to be a successful
project and, due to the increased German presence in Italy, Renoir abandoned Rome,
leaving Visconti to finish the film with the help of assistant director Carl Koch.
After a short visit to Hollywood, Visconti returned to Rome and became one of the
group around the film journal Cinema, who were developing theoretical foundations for a
new film realism evolved from verismo, the style of many nineteenth-century novels,
particularly those of Giovanni Verga. Indeed, for his first film Visconti turned directly to
Verga’s L’amante di Gramigna (Gramigna’s Lover), but his script was rejected by the
Fascists, and so in 1942 he made Ossessione, an adaptation of James Cain’s novel The
Postman Always Rings Twice. The film, using locations in the Po valley and naturalistic
depictions of character, made his reputation among the neo-realists. The success of the
film, however, was not helped by his anti-fascist politics and he found himself detained
by the Gestapo in 1944.
A short postwar period in the theatre was followed by a return to cinema. The Italian
Communist Party (see PCI) commissioned three films on the Sicilian working class, but
only the one concerning fishermen was released, as La terra trema (The Earth Trembles)
in 1948. This was also based on a Verga novel, I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar
Tree), and, with its use of location shooting and non-professional actors, became a classic
of neorealism. Indeed the local fishermen who appeared in the film spoke such a strong
dialect (see dialects) that Visconti was obliged to add a voiceover in standard Italian to
make the dialogue comprehensible to non-Sicilians. Such critical purity met with box
office failure, and Visconti was forced to turn to apparently more mundane fare for his
next film, Bellissima, in 1951. From a script by Cesare Zavattini, which he disliked, and
with Anna Magnani as the star, he created a fine satirical attack on Cinecittà itself.
Like most of the neorealist directors, Visconti had to this point avoided shooting in
colour, preferring the stylish crispness and verité effects of black and white. However,
with Senso in 1954, he not only embraced colour but seemed to some to abandon all of
the values of neorealism. The film was a lavish historical recreation of the Italian
aristocracy during the period of the Risorgimento and even exploited the star system by
featuring guaranteed box office stars Farley Granger and Alida Valli. Both in Senso and
in the 1963 adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il gattopardo (The
Leopard), which explored the same historical setting and starred Burt Lancaster, the
broad sweeping plots and the opulent, spectacular settings seem at odds with Visconti’s
earlier style, and more in keeping with his own patrician background. Nevertheless, some
critics defended this apparent shift as an evolution of Visconti’s interest in critical
realism. Indeed it might be argued that, rather than wallowing in a superficial aesthetic
beauty, Visconti’s meticulous counterpoising of setting and narrative demonstrates the
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disjunction between the apparent tastes of the patrician class and their spiritual and
political failures.
Manifesting his interest in the development of the modern nation state, Visconti’s
focus on the late nineteenth century as a time of ideological crisis merely shifts his
commitment to realism from a neorealist contemporary setting to its historical
antecedents, with all their attendant spectacle. The detail and scope of the film frame is
still precise, although the subject matter’s surface has changed. The spectacular
decadence of an aristocracy confronting its own ideological crises and its imminent
demise is the subject in varying degrees of his major internationally acclaimed films, La
caduta degli dei (The Damned) (1969) a narrative of the Krupp family’s support for the
Third Reich, and Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice) (1972), an adaptation of Thomas
Mann’s novella which stars British actor Dirk Bogarde as the aristocratic von
Aschenbach in a story which allegorizes the denials, crises and decline of the patrician
class in Europe. Both Ludwig (1972), the story of the mad Bavarian king (the 1980 re-
release is longer and truer to the director’s intent) and Gruppo di famiglia in un interno
(Conversation Piece) (1974), again starring Burt Lancaster, also explore the sense of a
generation out of touch with its ideological foundations.
Illness had intervened in many of these films, and Visconti’s output was never
prodigious due to the extended production effort involved and time diverted to other
interests in opera and theatre. His last film, an adaptation of another realist novel,
D’Annunzio’s L’innocente (The Innocent) (1976), continues the theme of the aristocratic
class losing its reasons for social and political existence.
Regarded as one of the most important of all Italian film-makers, Visconti’s influence
can be seen in the work of Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Zeffirelli, Liliana Cavani and
Stanley Kubrick.
Further reading
Bacon, H. (1998) Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press (an essential critical and biographical study of the entire output which focuses on
Visconti’s narrative continuity with nineteenth-century verismo).
Bondanella, P. (1990) Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, New York: Continuum,
2nd revised edn (a survey of postwar film in Italy placing Visconti, among others, in a national
context).
Micciché, L. (1996) Luchino Visconti. Un profilo critico, Venice: Marsilio Editori (one of the
essential critical responses).
Sorlin, P. (1996) Italian National Cinema 1896–1996, London and New York: Routledge (another
survey with a strong emphasis on a cultural studies reading of nationalism).
Stirling, M. (1979) A Screen of Time: A Study of Luchino Visconti, New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich (an important early study).
JEFF DOYLE
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Vitti, Monica
b. 3 November 1931, Rome
Film actress
Under the pseudonym of Monica Vitti, Maria Louisa Ceciarelli started her career as a
film actress in the 1960s thanks to her association, both professionally and personally,
with Michelangelo Antonioni. Her singular beauty, at once sophisticated and abstract,
suited the originality of Antonioni’s vision, as epitomized in his famous 1960 trilogy,
L’avventura (The Adventure), La notte (The Night), L’eclisse (The Eclipse) and then in
Deserto rosso (Red Desert) (1964), which all starred Vitti. In the 1970s, thanks to films
such as Scola’s Dramma delta gelosia (Jealousy, Italian Style) (1970) and Sordi’s
Polvere di stelle (Stardust) (1973), she became a popular figure of the commedia
all’Italiana (comedy, Italian style) while pursuing an international career, collaborating
with Luis Bunuel (The Phantom of Liberty, 1974) and appearing in American productions
like An Almost Perfect Affair (1979). In 1983, she received a Silver Bear in Berlin for her
outstanding performance in Flirt (1983), a film she co-wrote with the director Roberto
Russo and Silvia Napolitano. An accomplished actress and a writer, Vitti also directed
her first film, Scandalo segreto (Secret Scandal) in 1989. In 1995, she was awarded a
Golden Lion in Venice for her life achievement.
DOROTHÉE BONNIGAL
Vittorini, Elio
b. 23 July 1908, Siracusa; d. 12 February 1966, Milan
Novelist, essayist, editor and journalist
The son of a Sicilian railway worker, Vittorini had become at the time of his death one of
the most influential Italian writers of the twentieth century, not only for his contributions
to Italian literature but also for his active participation in the political and cultural life of
the nation. Indeed, his ability to bring together the worlds of politics and of literature set
an example for the generation of literati that became politically active in the 1960s (see
Gruppo 63).
After running away from home several times and working in a variety of jobs, in 1927
the self-taught Vittorini married Quasimodo’s sister, Rosa, and began his literary career
by contributing articles on art and literary criticism to Il Mattino, La Stampa and Il Resto
del Carlino. Concurrently, he openly embraced fascism (see fascism and neo-fascism),
drawn by its trade unionist and populist propaganda. However, refusing to accept the
autarchic provincialism of the Fascist intelligentsia, in 1929 Vittorini joined the editorial
staff of Solaria, a Florentine journal that embraced European literary developments such
as those proposed by Proust and Joyce. In Solaria, Vittorini published his first volume of
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short stories, Piccola borghesia (Small Bourgeoisie), where he discarded the prevailing
realism of the time for a lyrical and allegorical type of narration. Also in Solaria,
Vittorini first published in instalments Il garofano rosso (The Red Carnation), a work that
caused the suppression of the journal by the Fascist censorship in 1934, ostensibly
because of the plot’s sexually explicit themes but more probably because of Vittorini’s
emerging socialist and populist beliefs. Meanwhile, Vittorini had been studying English
and when, in 1934, he was forced to abandon his typesetting activity following a case of
lead poisoning, he began a productive career as a translator and editor of literary
anthologies.
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Vittorini realized there existed a conflict
between his personal beliefs and Fascist policy. In 1937, an article he wrote condemning
fascism’s involvement on the side of the anti-republican army led to his expulsion from
the Fascist party. He then moved to Milan to work as an editor for Bompiani, all the
while continuing to oppose fascism and increasing his literary activity of implicit and
explicit subversion. Between 1938 and 1940, he translated widely from American
literature—Poe, Faulkner, Steinbeck and Saroyan—because he was convinced, like
Cesare Pavese, that contemporary American literature could offer useful models for—as
he was later to put it on the front page of Il Politecnico—a culture that would protect the
weak from the abuses of the powerful rather than simply console them. During this time
he also wrote his most accomplished novel, Conversazione in Sicilia (Conversation in
Sicily). First published in instalments between 1938 and 1939, Conversazione is an
allegorical rendition of the struggle to awaken a political reaction to fascism which relies
on the combination of myth and history in a Sicilian landscape to represent the suffering
and outrage of the lower strata of the Italian population under fascism. The book caused a
sensation when it appeared, and elevated Vittorini to a position of prominence among
anti-fascist writers although, inexplicably, it was not actually censored until 1942. What
was immediately censored, however, was the anthology Americana (1942), a historical
overview of American writing edited by Vittorini and for which he had written the
introductory notes to each author. The anthology, even with Vittorini’s original
comments expunged and replaced by a negative evaluation of American culture by
Emilio Cecchi, documents the interest and fascination of an entire generation of Italians
for the youthful and exuberant culture of the United States.
During the war Vittorini was arrested for his participation in the clandestine
Communist Party (see PCI). Once freed, he joined the Resistance in Milan as editor of
its underground press and, in 1944, he wrote Uomini e no (Men and Not Men), a book
inspired by the partisan resistance and often considered—though, perhaps, too
restrictively—as one of the best examples of literary neorealism. With the liberation of
Italy, Vittorini first took over the Milanese branch of L’Unità, then began an intense
activity as an editor. His most important project was the editorship of Il Politecnico, a
broadly literary and cultural journal in which Vittorini wished to continue in his project
of approaching culture from a humanistic viewpoint that would bridge the gap between
intellectuals and the masses. Initially approved by the Communist Party, Vittorini’s
weekly eventually fell foul of the party’s official line when, in reply to an article by party
intellectual Mario Alicata in Rinascita, Vittorini initiated a very public debate with
Palmiro Togliatti about the relationship between politics and culture. Vittorini strongly
resisted Togliatti’s suggestion that the weekly should toe the party line and publish only
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