1.
Genoa
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Genoa is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015,594,733 people lived within the administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of Genoa, over 1.5 million people live in the wider metropolitan area stretching along the Italian Riviera. Genoa has been nicknamed la Superba due to its glorious past, part of the old town of Genoa was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2006. The citys rich history in notably its art, music. It is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Niccolò Paganini, Giuseppe Mazzini, Genoa, which forms the southern corner of the Milan-Turin-Genoa industrial triangle of north-west Italy, is one of the countrys major economic centres. The city has hosted massive shipyards and steelworks since the 19th century, the Bank of Saint George, founded in 1407, is among the oldest in the world and has played an important role in the citys prosperity since the middle of the 15th century. Today a number of leading Italian companies are based in the city, including Fincantieri, Selex ES, Ansaldo Energia, Ansaldo STS, Edoardo Raffinerie Garrone, Piaggio Aerospace, the Genoa area has been inhabited since the fifth or fourth millennium BC. In ancient times this area was frequented and inhabited by Ligures, Phoenicians, Phocaeans, Greeks, and Etruscans. The city cemetery, dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC, testifies to the occupation of the site by the Greeks, but the fine harbour probably saw use much earlier, perhaps by the Etruscans. In the 5th century BC was founded the first oppidum at the foot of the today called the Castle Hill which now is inside the medieval old town. The ancient Ligurian city was known as Stalia, so referred to by Artemidorus Ephesius and Pomponius Mela, Ligurian Stalia was overshadowed by the powerful Marseille and Vada Sabatia, near modern Savona. Stalia had an alliance with Rome through a foedus aequum in the course of the Second Punic War, the Carthaginians accordingly destroyed it in 209 BC. The town was rebuilt and, after the Carthaginian Wars ended in 146 BC. it received municipal rights, the original castrum thenceforth expanded towards the current areas of Santa Maria di Castello and the San Lorenzo promontory. Trades included skins, wood, and honey, goods were shipped to the mainland, up to major cities like Tortona and Piacenza. Among the archeological remains from the Roman period, an amphitheatre was also found, another theory traces the name to the Etruscan word Kainua which means New City and still another from the Latin word ianua, related to the name of the God Janus, meaning door or passage. The latter is in reference to its position at the centre of the Ligurian coastal arch. The Latin name, oppidum Genua, is recorded by Pliny the Elder as part of the Augustean Regio IX Liguria, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Ostrogoths occupied Genoa
2.
Kingdom of Italy
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The state was founded as a result of the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which can be considered its legal predecessor state. Italy declared war on Austria in alliance with Prussia in 1866, Italian troops entered Rome in 1870, ending more than one thousand years of Papal temporal power. Italy entered into a Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1882, victory in the war gave Italy a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations. Fascist Italy is the era of National Fascist Party rule from 1922 to 1943 with Benito Mussolini as head of government, according to Payne, Fascist regime passed through several relatively distinct phases. The first phase was nominally a continuation of the parliamentary system, then came the second phase, the construction of the Fascist dictatorship proper from 1925 to 1929. The third phase, with activism, was 1929–34. The war itself was the phase with its disasters and defeats. Italy was allied with Nazi Germany in World War II until 1943 and it switched sides to the Allies after ousting Mussolini and shutting down the Fascist party in areas controlled by the Allied invaders. Shortly after the war, civil discontent led to the referendum of 1946 on whether Italy would remain a monarchy or become a republic. Italians decided to abandon the monarchy and form the Italian Republic, the Kingdom of Italy claimed all of the territory which is modern-day Italy. The development of the Kingdoms territory progressed under Italian re-unification until 1870, the state for a long period of time did not include Trieste or Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, which are in Italy today, and only annexed them in 1919. After the Second World War, the borders of present-day Italy were founded, the Kingdom of Italy was theoretically a constitutional monarchy. Executive power belonged to the monarch, as executed through appointed ministers, two chambers of parliament restricted the monarchs power—an appointive Senate and an elective Chamber of Deputies. The kingdoms constitution was the Statuto Albertino, the governing document of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In theory, ministers were responsible to the king. However, in practice, it was impossible for an Italian government to stay in office without the support of Parliament, members of the Chamber of Deputies were elected by plurality voting system elections in uninominal districts. A candidate needed the support of 50% of those voting, and of 25% of all enrolled voters, if not all seats were filled on the first ballot, a runoff was held shortly afterwards for the remaining vacancies. After a brief multinominal experimentation in 1882, proportional representation into large, regional, Socialists became the major party, but they were unable to form a government in a parliament split into three different factions, with Christian Populists and classical liberals
3.
Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence, several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
4.
Laurence Olivier
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Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM, was an English actor who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles, late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles. His family had no connections, but Oliviers father, a clergyman. After attending a school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Cowards Private Lives, in 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, there his most celebrated roles included Shakespeares Richard III and Sophocless Oedipus. From 1963 to 1973 he was the director of Britains National Theatre. His own parts there included the role in Othello and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Among Oliviers films are Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and a trilogy of Shakespeare films as actor-director, Henry V, Hamlet and his later films included Sleuth, Marathon Man, and The Boys from Brazil. His television appearances included an adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence, Long Days Journey into Night, Love Among the Ruins, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brideshead Revisited, Oliviers honours included a knighthood, a life peerage and the Order of Merit. For his on-screen work he received four Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, five Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. The National Theatres largest auditorium is named in his honour, and he is commemorated in the Laurence Olivier Awards, given annually by the Society of London Theatre. He was married three times, to the actresses Jill Esmond from 1930 to 1940, Vivien Leigh from 1940 to 1960, Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest of the three children of the Revd Gerard Kerr Olivier and his wife Agnes Louise, née Crookenden. Their elder children were Sybille and Gerard Dacres Dickie and his great-great-grandfather was of French Huguenot descent, and Olivier came from a long line of Protestant clergymen. Gerard Olivier had begun a career as a schoolmaster, but in his thirties he discovered a strong religious vocation and was ordained as a priest of the Church of England and he practised extremely high church, ritualist Anglicanism and liked to be addressed as Father Olivier. This made him unacceptable to most Anglican congregations, and the church posts he was offered were temporary. This meant a nomadic existence, and for Laurences first few years, in 1912, when Olivier was five, his father secured a permanent appointment as assistant priest at St Saviours, Pimlico. He held the post for six years, and a family life was at last possible
5.
Shelley Winters
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Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television, her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006. Winters won Academy Awards for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue and she also appeared in such films as The Big Knife, A Double Life, Lolita, The Night of the Hunter, Alfie, Next Stop, Greenwich Village, and Petes Dragon. Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Rose, a singer with the Muny, and Jonas Schrift and her parents were Jewish, her father emigrated from Austria, and her mother was born in St. Louis to Austrian immigrants. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was three years old and her sister Blanche Schrift later married George Boroff, who ran the Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Winters studied at the New School in New York City, as the New York Times obituary noted, A major movie presence for more than five decades, Shelley Winters turned herself into a widely respected actress who won two Oscars. Winters originally broke into Hollywood films as a Blonde Bombshell type, but quickly tired of the roles limitations. She claims to have washed off her makeup to audition for the role of Alice Tripp, the girl, in A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens. As the Associated Press reported, the public was unaware of how serious a craftswoman Winters was. Although she was in demand as an actress, Winters continued to study her craft. She attended Charles Laughtons Shakespeare classes and worked at the Actors Studio and she studied in the Hollywood Studio Club, and in the late 1940s, she shared an apartment with another newcomer, Marilyn Monroe. Her first movie was What a Woman, working in films through the 1940s, Winters first achieved stardom with her breakout performance as the victim of insane actor Ronald Colman in George Cukors A Double Life, in 1947. She quickly ascended in Hollywood with leading roles in The Great Gatsby with Alan Ladd and she also returned to the stage on various occasions during this time, including a Broadway run in A Hatful of Rain, in 1955–1956, opposite future husband Anthony Franciosa. She won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for The Diary of Anne Frank in 1960 and she donated her Oscar for The Diary of Anne Frank to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. In The Poseidon Adventure, she was the ill-fated Belle Rosen and she returned to the stage during the 1960s and 1970s, most notably in Tennessee Williams Night of the Iguana. She appeared in cult films as 1968s Wild in the Streets. She also starred in the 1970 Broadway musical Minnies Boys as Minnie Marx, the mother of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, as the Associated Press reported, During her 50 years as a widely known personality, Winters was rarely out of the news. Her stormy marriages, her romances with famous stars, her forays into politics and she delighted in giving provocative interviews and seemed to have an opinion on everything. That led to a career as a writer
6.
Alessandro Gassmann
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Alessandro Gassmann is an Italian actor. Born in Rome, he is the son of Italian actor Vittorio Gassman and he debuted at 17 in the autobiographical film Di padre in figlio, written and directed with his father, under whose tutoring he later studied in the Theatre Workshop of Florence. Among his theatrical activity, he was noted for his playing in Pier Paolo Pasolinis Affabulazione, in 1997 he imposed internationally with Ferzan Özpeteks Hamam. He was subsequently chosen by Yves Saint Laurent as testimonial for his perfume Opium and he also became a testimonial for Lancia of Musa, as well as appearing in an ad for the Glen Grant liquor. As an actor, he worked for several TV miniseries and, in France, in the action movie Transporter 2, in 2006, Gassmann appeared in the comedy Non prendere impegni stasera. In 2008 he acted in the film Caos calmo as the brother of the main lead, interpreted by Nanni Moretti. For this role, he was honoured by many awards, the David di Donatello award for an actor, the Ciak doro, the Nastro dArgento. He is acting Tutor in Cinecittà at ACT MULTIMEDIA, Gassmann is reportedly 1.90 m tall. He has been married to Sabrina Knaflitz since 1998, who gave birth to their son Leo the same year, alessandro Gassmann at the Internet Movie Database
7.
Scent of a Woman (1974 film)
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Scent of a Woman is a 1974 Commedia allitaliana film directed by Dino Risi, based on Il buio e il miele, a story by Giovanni Arpino. Both Risi and the leading actor Vittorio Gassman won important Italian, there is also an American remake, Scent of a Woman. Unknown to his aide, the Captain means to fulfill a suicide pact there, while they journey, the Captain asks Ciccio to help him spot beautiful women. Unsatisfied with the descriptions, he uses his nose instead. During their journey, he carries with him a picture of his beloved Sara, the suicide pact is eventually thwarted once Sara enters the picture, and the boy Ciccio does some much-needed growing up. escrevercinema. com/Risi_PerfumedeMulher. htm
8.
Grand Cross
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Grand Cross is the highest class in many orders, and manifested in its insignia. Exceptionally, the highest class may be referred to as Grand Cordon or equivalent, in other cases, the rank of Grand Cross may come after another even higher rank, e. g. In rare cases, solely the actual insignia is referred to as the grand cross, in international relations, in many times the class of Grand Cross is typically reserved for royalty, heads of state and equivalent. Sometimes a holder of the highest class or grade are referred to as Commander Grand Cross and this stands in contrast to the typical practice in other countries where knighthood is conferred at the initial, lowest rank of the order, typically Knight
9.
Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
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The Order of Merit of the Italian Republic was founded as the senior order of knighthood by the second President of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi in 1951. The post-nominal letters for the order are OMRI, investiture takes place biannually on 2 June, anniversary of the foundation of the Republic and on 27 December, anniversary of the promulgation of the Italian Constitution. However, those awards on Presidential motu proprio, related to termination of service or granted to foreigners may be made at any time, except in exceptional circumstances, no one can be awarded for the first time a rank higher than Knight. The minimum age requirement is normally 35
10.
Italians
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Italians are a nation and ethnic group native to Italy who share a common culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a native tongue. The majority of Italian nationals are speakers of Standard Italian. Italians have greatly influenced and contributed to the arts and music, science, technology, cuisine, sports, fashion, jurisprudence, banking, Italian people are generally known for their localism and their attention to clothing and family values. The term Italian is at least 3,000 years old and has a history that goes back to pre-Roman Italy. According to one of the common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The Etruscan civilization reached its peak about the 7th century BC, but by 509 BC, when the Romans overthrew their Etruscan monarchs, its control in Italy was on the wane. By 350 BC, after a series of wars between Greeks and Etruscans, the Latins, with Rome as their capital, gained the ascendancy by 272 BC, and they managed to unite the entire Italian peninsula. This period of unification was followed by one of conquest in the Mediterranean, in the course of the century-long struggle against Carthage, the Romans conquered Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Finally, in 146 BC, at the conclusion of the Third Punic War, with Carthage completely destroyed and its inhabitants enslaved, octavian, the final victor, was accorded the title of Augustus by the Senate and thereby became the first Roman emperor. After two centuries of rule, in the 3rd century AD, Rome was threatened by internal discord and menaced by Germanic and Asian invaders. Emperor Diocletians administrative division of the empire into two parts in 285 provided only temporary relief, it became permanent in 395, in 313, Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity, and churches thereafter rose throughout the empire. However, he moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople. The last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in 476 by a Germanic foederati general in Italy and his defeat marked the end of the western part of the Roman Empire. During most of the period from the fall of Rome until the Kingdom of Italy was established in 1861, Odoacer ruled well for 13 years after gaining control of Italy in 476. Then he was attacked and defeated by Theodoric, the king of another Germanic tribe, Theodoric and Odoacer ruled jointly until 493, when Theodoric murdered Odoacer. Theodoric continued to rule Italy with an army of Ostrogoths and a government that was mostly Italian, after the death of Theodoric in 526, the kingdom began to grow weak
11.
Pisa
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Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its tower, the city of over 90,834 residents contains more than 20 other historic churches, several medieval palaces. Much of the architecture was financed from its history as one of the Italian maritime republics. The origin of the name, Pisa, is a mystery, while the origin of the city had remained unknown for centuries, the Pelasgi, the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Ligurians had variously been proposed as founders of the city. Archaeological remains from the 5th century BC confirmed the existence of a city at the sea, trading with Greeks, the presence of an Etruscan necropolis, discovered during excavations in the Arena Garibaldi in 1991, confirmed its Etruscan origins. Ancient Roman authors referred to Pisa as an old city, strabo referred Pisas origins to the mythical Nestor, king of Pylos, after the fall of Troy. Virgil, in his Aeneid, states that Pisa was already a center by the times described. The Virgilian commentator Servius wrote that the Teuti, or Pelops, the maritime role of Pisa should have been already prominent if the ancient authorities ascribed to it the invention of the naval ram. Pisa took advantage of being the port along the western coast from Genoa to Ostia. Pisa served as a base for Roman naval expeditions against Ligurians, Gauls, in 180 BC, it became a Roman colony under Roman law, as Portus Pisanus. In 89 BC, Portus Pisanus became a municipium, Emperor Augustus fortified the colony into an important port and changed the name in Colonia Iulia obsequens. It is supposed that Pisa was founded on the shore, however, due to the alluvial sediments from the Arno and the Serchio, whose mouth lies about 11 kilometres north of the Arnos, the shore moved west. Strabo states that the city was 4.0 kilometres away from the coast, currently, it is located 9.7 kilometres from the coast. However it was a city, with ships sailing up the Arno. In the 90s AD, a complex was built in the city. During the later years of the Roman Empire, Pisa did not decline as much as the cities of Italy, probably thanks to the complexity of its river system. After Charlemagne had defeated the Lombards under the command of Desiderius in 774, Pisa went through a crisis, politically it became part of the duchy of Lucca
12.
Milan
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Milan is a city in Italy, capital of the Lombardy region, and the most populous metropolitan area and the second most populous comune in Italy. The population of the city proper is 1,351,000, Milan has a population of about 8,500,000 people. It is the industrial and financial centre of Italy and one of global significance. In terms of GDP, it has the largest economy among European non-capital cities, Milan is considered part of the Blue Banana and lies at the heart of one of the Four Motors for Europe. Milan is an Alpha leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, services, research, and tourism. Its business district hosts Italys Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the largest national and international banks, the city is a major world fashion and design capital, well known for several international events and fairs, including Milan Fashion Week and the Milan Furniture Fair. The city hosts numerous cultural institutions, academies and universities, with 11% of the national total enrolled students, Milans museums, theatres and landmarks attract over 9 million visitors annually. Milan – after Naples – is the second Italian city with the highest number of accredited stars from the Michelin Guide, the city hosted the Universal Exposition in 1906 and 2015. Milan is home to two of Europes major football teams, A. C. Milan and F. C. Internazionale, the etymology of Milan is uncertain. One theory holds that the Latin name Mediolanum comes from the Latin words medio, however, some scholars believe lanum comes from the Celtic root lan, meaning an enclosure or demarcated territory in which Celtic communities used to build shrines. Hence, Mediolanum could signify the central town or sanctuary of a Celtic tribe, indeed, the name Mediolanum is borne by about sixty Gallo-Roman sites in France, e. g. Saintes and Évreux. Alciato credits Ambrose for his account, around 400 BC, the Celtic Insubres settled Milan and the surrounding region. In 222 BC, the Romans conquered the settlement, renaming it Mediolanum, Milan was eventually declared the capital of the Western Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian in 286 AD. Diocletian chose to stay in the Eastern Roman Empire and his colleague Maximianus ruled the Western one, immediately Maximian built several monuments, such as a large circus 470 m ×85 m, the Thermae Herculeae, a large complex of imperial palaces and several other buildings. With the Edict of Milan of 313, Emperor Constantine I guaranteed freedom of religion for Christians, after the city was besieged by the Visigoths in 402, the imperial residence was moved to Ravenna. In 452, the Huns overran the city, in 539, the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan during the Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. In the summer of 569, a Teutonic tribe, the Lombards, conquered Milan, some Roman structures remained in use in Milan under Lombard rule. Milan surrendered to the Franks in 774 when Charlemagne took the title of King of the Lombards, the Iron Crown of Lombardy dates from this period
13.
Bitter Rice
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Bitter Rice is a 1949 Italian film made by Lux Film, written and directed by Giuseppe De Santis. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone, Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman, Bitter Rice was a success in Europe. It was a product of the Italian neorealism style, the Italian title of the film is based on a pun, since the Italian word riso can mean either rice or laughter, riso amaro can be taken to mean either bitter laughter or bitter rice. Although Bitter Rice did not win any awards, it was nominated for the 1950 Academy Award for Best Story, the film begins at the start of the rice-planting season in northern Italy. In an effort to escape the law, two thieves, Francesca and Walter, hide amongst the crowds of female workers heading to the rice fields of the Po Valley. While attempting to board the train for the fields, the pair runs into Silvana, Francesca boards the train with Silvana, who introduces her to the planters way of life. Francesca does not have a permit, and struggles with the other illegals to find a place on the rice fields. After initial resistance from documented workers and bosses, the scabs are allowed a place in the fields, at the fields, Silvana and Francesca meet a soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco, who unsuccessfully tries to attract Silvanas interest. Toward the end of the season, Walter arrives at the fields. Excited by his lifestyle, Silvana becomes attracted to Walter. She causes a diversion to help him out the heist. Francesca and Silvana face each other, armed with pistols, Francesca confronts Silvana, in response, Silvana turns her gun toward Walter and murders him. Soon afterward, her guilt leads her to commit suicide, as the other rice workers depart, they pay tribute to her by sprinkling rice upon her body. Her downfall shows director Giuseppe De Santiss condemnation of these products of American capitalism, in addition, Silvana was considered by many audiences to be overly-sexualized. This sexualization and the presence of death and suicide in the film cause it to diverge from typical Italian neorealism. Bitter Rice was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival, the film was nominated for Best Story in the 1950 Academy Awards. The film was selected as one of 100 Italian films to be saved. The collection was established by the Venice Film Festival in collaboration with Cinecittà and curated by Fabio Ferzetti, with input from Gianni Amelio, many of the films selected represent the Golden Age of Italian cinema, which was manifested in the neorealist movement
14.
Luchino Visconti
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Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo, was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti was born into a prominent noble family in Milan, one of seven children of Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone, Duke of Grazzano Visconti and Count of Lonate Pozzolo, and his wife Carla. He was formally known as Count don Luchino Visconti di Modrone, during World War II, Visconti joined the Italian Communist Party. Visconti made no secret of his homosexuality and his last partner was the Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who played Martin in Viscontis film The Damned. Berger also appeared in Viscontis Ludwig in 1972 and Conversation Piece in 1974, Visconti suffered a stroke in 1972, but continued to smoke heavily. He died in Rome of another stroke at the age of 69, there is a museum dedicated to the directors work in Ischia. He began his career as an assistant director on Jean Renoirs Toni and Partie de campagne, thanks to the intercession of their common friend. Together with Roberto Rossellini, Visconti joined the salotto of Vittorio Mussolini, here he presumably also met Federico Fellini. In 1948, he wrote and directed La terra trema, based on the novel I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga, Visconti continued working throughout the 1950s, although he veered away from the neorealist path with his 1954 film, Senso, shot in colour. Based on the novella by Camillo Boito, it is set in Austrian-occupied Venice in 1866, in this film, Visconti combines realism and romanticism as a way to break away from neorealism. However, as one biographer notes, Visconti without neorealism is like Lang without expressionism and he describes the film as the most Viscontian of all Viscontis films. Visconti returned to once more with Rocco e i suoi fratelli. In 1961, he was a member of the jury at the 2nd Moscow International Film Festival, throughout the 1960s, Viscontis films became more personal. Il Gattopardo, is based on Lampedusas novel of the name about the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy at the time of the Risorgimento. It starred American actor Burt Lancaster in the role of Prince Don Fabrizio and this film was distributed in America and Britain by Twentieth-Century Fox, which deleted important scenes. Visconti repudiated the Twentieth-Century Fox version and it was not until The Damned that Visconti received a nomination for an Academy Award, for Best Screenplay. The film, one of Viscontis best-known works, concerns a German industrialists family which slowly begins to disintegrate during the Nazi consolidation of power in the 30s and its decadence and lavish beauty are characteristic of Viscontis aesthetic. Viscontis final film was The Innocent, in which he returns to his recurring interest in infidelity, Visconti was also a celebrated theatre and opera director
15.
Paola Borboni
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Paola Borboni was an Italian film actress whose career spanned nine decades of cinema. She also made a contribution to theatre. She entered film in 1916 in the silent picture Jacobo Ortis directed by Giuseppe Sterni, appearing in several silent films before 1921 she was absent from cinema for some 14 years during which time she made numerous stage appearances. She gained notoriety in 1925 when she appeared in a show as a mermaid exposing her breasts which she saw as natural in the role and she returned to the silver screen in 1936 in the Mario Mattoli film L Uomo che sorride. She died of a stroke aged 95 on 9 April 1995, paola Borboni at the Internet Movie Database
16.
Stanley Kowalski
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Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire. Stanley lives in the working-class Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans with his wife, Stella and he was an Army engineer in World War II, having served as a Master Sergeant. He has a temper, and fights often with his wife. Near the beginning of the play, Stanley announces that Stella is pregnant, Stanleys life becomes more complicated when Stellas sister Blanche shows up at their door for a seemingly indefinite visit. He resents the aristocratic Blanche, who derides him as an ape and his resentment intensifies when Blanche starts dating his friend, Mitch, and lets Stella briefly take refuge with her after an argument in which he hits her. He also learns that she was paid to leave Mississippi to quell gossip about her affairs, which she began after her husband. Overjoyed to have the hand, Stanley tells Mitch about Blanches past. The night that Stella gives birth to their son, Stanley goes out and gets drunk in celebration and he makes a crude, drunken pass at her, which she rebuffs. Enraged, Stanley overpowers and rapes her and this final assault on what she had left of her dignity sends Blanche over the edge into a nervous breakdown. Weeks later, Stella has Blanche committed to an institution at Stanleys insistence. In the original play, Stella refuses to believe Blanche and stays with Stanley, in the 1951 film adaptation and many stagings of the play, however, she leaves him and takes their child. He was most famously portrayed by Marlon Brando in the plays initial Broadway performance as well as the 1951 film adaptation, since then, he has been played by Treat Williams and Alec Baldwin in, respectively, the 1984 and 1995 telefilm adaptations
17.
Tennessee Williams
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Thomas Lanier Tennessee Williams III was an American playwright. Along with Eugene ONeill and Arthur Miller he is considered among the three foremost playwrights in 20th-century American drama, after years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with The Glass Menagerie, closely reflecting his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and his later work attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences, and alcohol and drug dependence further inhibited his creative output. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on the short list of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Long Days Journey into Night, much of Williams most acclaimed work was adapted for the cinema. He also wrote stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Columbus, Mississippi, of English, Welsh, and Huguenot ancestry and his father was an alcoholic traveling shoe salesman who spent much of his time away from home. Williams early childhood was spent in the parsonage there, Williams had two siblings, sister Rose Isabel Williams and brother Walter Dakin Williams. As a small child Williams suffered from a case of diphtheria which nearly ended his life, leaving him weak, at least in part as a result of his illness, he was less robust as a child than his father wished. Cornelius Williams, a descendant of hearty East Tennessee pioneer stock, had a violent temper and was a man prone to use his fists. He regarded his sons effeminacy with disdain, and his mother Edwina, locked in an unhappy marriage, many critics and historians note that Williams found inspiration for much of his writing in his own dysfunctional family. When Williams was eight years old, his father was promoted to a job at the office of the International Shoe Company in St. Louis. He attended Soldan High School, a setting he referred to in his play The Glass Menagerie, Later he studied at University City High School. At age 16, Williams won third prize for an essay published in Smart Set entitled, a year later, his short story The Vengeance of Nitocris was published in the August 1928 issue of the magazine Weird Tales. That same year he first visited Europe with his grandfather, from 1929 to 1931, he attended the University of Missouri, in Columbia, where he enrolled in journalism classes. Williams found his classes boring, however, and was distracted by his love for a girl. He was soon entering his poetry, essays, stories, and plays in writing contests and his first submitted play was Beauty Is the Word, followed by Hot Milk at Three in the Morning. As recognition for Beauty, a play about rebellion against religious upbringing, at University of Missouri, Williams joined the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, but he did not fit in well with his fraternity brothers
18.
A Streetcar Named Desire
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A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams that received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3,1947, and closed on December 17,1949, the Broadway production was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter. The London production opened in 1949 with Bonar Colleano, Vivien Leigh, the drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often regarded as among the finest plays of the 20th century, and is considered by many to be one of Williams greatest. Blanche is in her thirties, and with no money, she has nowhere else to go, Blanche tells Stella that she has taken a leave of absence from her English teaching position because of her nerves. Blanche laments the shabbiness of her sister’s two-room flat and she finds Stanley loud and rough, eventually referring to him as common. Stanley, in return, does not care for Blanches manners, Stanley later questions Blanche about her earlier marriage. Blanche had married when she was young, but her husband died, leaving her widowed. The memory of her dead husband causes Blanche some obvious distress, Stanley, worried that he has been cheated out of an inheritance, demands to know what happened to Belle Reve, once a large plantation and the DuBois family home. Blanche hands over all the documents pertaining to Belle Reve, while looking at the papers, Stanley notices a bundle of letters that Blanche emotionally proclaims are personal love letters from her dead husband. For a moment, Stanley seems caught off guard over her proclaimed feelings, afterwards, he informs Blanche that Stella is going to have a baby. The night after Blanche’s arrival, during one of Stanley’s poker parties, Blanche meets Mitch and his courteous manner sets him apart from the other men. Their chat becomes flirtatious and friendly, and Blanche easily charms him, suddenly becoming upset over multiple interruptions, Stanley explodes in a drunken rage and strikes Stella. Blanche and Stella take refuge with the neighbor, Eunice. When Stanley recovers, he cries out from the courtyard below for Stella to come back by calling her name until she comes down. After Stella returns to Stanley, Blanche and Mitch sit at the bottom of the steps in the courtyard, Blanche is bewildered that Stella would go back with him after such violence. The next morning, Blanche rushes to Stella and describes Stanley as an animal, though Stella assures Blanche that she. Stanley overhears the conversation but keeps silent, when Stanley comes in, Stella hugs and kisses him, letting Blanche know that her low opinion of Stanley does not matter. As the weeks pass, Blanche and Stanley continue to not get along, Blanche has hope in Mitch, and tells Stella that she wants to go away with him and not be anyone’s problem
19.
As You Like It
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As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio,1623. The plays first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility. As You Like It follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncles court, accompanied by her cousin Celia to find safety and, eventually, love, in the Forest of Arden. In the forest, they encounter a variety of memorable characters, Jaques provides a sharp contrast to the other characters in the play, always observing and disputing the hardships of life in the country. Historically, critical response has varied, with critics finding the work of lesser quality than other Shakespearean works. The play remains a favourite among audiences and has adapted for radio, film. The play is set in a duchy in France, but most of the takes place in a location called the Forest of Arden. Frederick has usurped the Duchy and exiled his brother, Duke Senior. Duke Seniors daughter, Rosalind, has permitted to remain at court because she is the closest friend and cousin of Fredericks only child. Orlando, a gentleman of the kingdom who at first sight has fallen in love with Rosalind, is forced to flee his home after being persecuted by his older brother, Oliver. Frederick becomes angry and banishes Rosalind from court, Celia and Rosalind decide to flee together accompanied by the court fool, Touchstone, with Rosalind disguised as a young man and Celia disguised as a poor lady. Ganymede and Aliena do not immediately encounter the Duke and his companions, instead, they meet Corin, an impoverished tenant, and offer to buy his masters crude cottage. Orlando and his servant Adam, meanwhile, find the Duke and his men and are living with them. Rosalind, also in love with Orlando, meets him as Ganymede, Ganymede says that he will take Rosalinds place and that he and Orlando can act out their relationship. The shepherdess, Phoebe, with whom Silvius is in love, has fallen in love with Ganymede, Touchstone, meanwhile, has fallen in love with the dull-witted shepherdess, Audrey, and tries to woo her, but eventually is forced to be married first. William, another shepherd, attempts to marry Audrey as well, but is stopped by Touchstone, finally, Silvius, Phoebe, Ganymede, and Orlando are brought together in an argument with each other over who will get whom. Ganymede says he will solve the problem, having Orlando promise to marry Rosalind, Orlando sees Oliver in the forest and rescues him from a lioness, causing Oliver to repent for mistreating Orlando. Oliver meets Aliena and falls in love with her, and they agree to marry, Jaques, ever melancholic, declines their invitation to return to the court preferring to stay in the forest and to adopt a religious life as well
20.
Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called Englands national poet, and the Bard of Avon and his extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright, Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a career in London as an actor, writer. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, which are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, in his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and it was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as not of an age, but for all time. In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship. His plays remain highly popular and are studied, performed. William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden and he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholars mistake, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and he was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, the consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaways neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage, twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596, after the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the bill of a law case before the Queens Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589
21.
Vittorio Alfieri
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Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist and poet, considered the founder of Italian tragedy. Alfieri was born at Asti, Kingdom of Sardinia, now in Piedmont. His father died when he was young, and he was brought up by his mother. After a year at the academy, he went on a visit to a relative at Coni. During his stay there he composed a sonnet chiefly borrowed from lines in Ariosto and Metastasio, at thirteen, Alfieri began the study of civil and canonical law, but this only made him more interested in literature, particularly French romances. The death of his uncle, who had charge of his education and conduct, left him free, at the age of fourteen, to enjoy his paternal inheritance. He began to attend a riding-school, where he acquired an enthusiasm for horses, having obtained permission from the king to travel abroad, he departed in 1766, under the care of an English preceptor. In the Netherlands he fell in love with a married woman, Alfieri, depressed by the incident, returned home and again began studying literature. Plutarchs Lives inspired him with a passion for freedom and independence, in search of an ideal world, Alfieri passed quickly through various countries. During a journey to London he engaged in an intrigue with Lady Penelope Ligonier, the affair became a widely publicised scandal and ended in a divorce that ruined Lady Ligonier and forced Alfieri to leave the country. He then visited Spain and Portugal, where he acquainted with the Abbe Caluso. In 1772, Alfieri returned to Turin and this time he fell for the Marchesa Turinetti di Prie, but it was another doomed affair. When she fell ill, he spent his time dancing attendance on her, and one day wrote a dialogue or scene of a drama, which he left at her house. When the couple quarreled, the piece was returned to him, from this moment Alfieri was seized with an insatiable thirst for theatrical fame, to which he devoted the remainder of his life. His first two tragedies, Filippo and Polinice, were written in French prose. When he came to them in Italian, he found that, because of many dealings with foreigners. With the view of improving his Italian, he went to Tuscany and, during a residence at Florence and Siena, he completed Filippo and Polinice. While thus employed, he acquainted with Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, also known as the Countess of Albany
22.
Massimo Girotti
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Massimo Girotti was an Italian film actor whose career spanned seven decades. Born in Mogliano, in the province of Macerata, Girotti developed his athletic physique by swimming and playing polo, the film marked, in a sense, the birth of Italian neo-realism. Some of his notable films include Caccia tragica by Giuseppe De Santis. In 1950, he starred opposite Lucia Bosé in Michelangelo Antonionis first full-length feature, Cronaca di un amore. In 1953, he played Spartacus in an Italian epic film known in the US as Sins of Rome and then, returned to again for Visconti, in Senso. Two years later, Pasolini cast him as Creonte opposite Maria Callas in his Medea, in 1972, he was in Bernardo Bertoluccis Last Tango in Paris. That same year he made a appearance in a horror film when he agreed to a supporting role in Baron Blood as a favor to its director Mario Bava. He continued to act in roles for the next thirty years. Some of the films he appeared in have been notable, including Joseph Loseys Monsieur Klein with Alain Delon and Jeanne Moreau and he died in Rome of a heart attack after having just completed his last film, Ferzan Özpeteks La Finestra di fronte
23.
Peer Gynt
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Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Written in Danish—the common written language of Denmark and Norway in Ibsens lifetime—it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays and he was also generally inspired by Peter Christen Asbjørnsens collection of Norwegian fairy tales, published in 1845. Peer Gynt chronicles the journey of its character from the Norwegian mountains to the North African desert. Peer Gynt has also described as the story of a life based on procrastination. The play was written in Italy and a first edition of 1,250 copies was published on 14 November 1867 by the Danish publisher Gyldendal in Copenhagen. Although the first edition sold out, a reprint of two thousand copies, which followed after only fourteen days, didnt sell out until seven years later. Enraged by Petersens criticisms in particular, Ibsen defended his work by arguing that it is poetry, the conception of poetry in our country, in Norway, shall shape itself according to this book. Despite this defense of his achievement in Peer Gynt, the play was his last to employ verse, from The League of Youth onwards. Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt in deliberate disregard of the limitations that the conventional stagecraft of the 19th century imposed on drama and its forty scenes move uninhibitedly in time and space and between consciousness and the unconscious, blending folkloric fantasy and unsentimental realism. It was published in German translation in 1881, in English in 1892, the contemporary influence of the play continues into the twenty-first century. Peer Gynt was written in Danish, the written language of Denmark and Norway since the Dano-Norwegian union. The language was referred to as Danish in Denmark and as Norwegian in Norway, although it was essentially the same written language. Due to its basis in Norwegian folktales, the uses a few Norwegianisms in its vocabulary and idiom. Peer Gynt was originally published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal in Copenhagen, Peer Gynt is the son of the once highly regarded Jon Gynt. Jon Gynt spent all his money on feasting and living lavishly, Åse, the mother, wished to raise her son to restore the lost fortune of his father, but Peer is soon to be considered useless. He is a poet and a braggart, not unlike the youngest son from Norwegian fairy tales, as the play opens, Peer gives an account of a reindeer hunt that went awry, a famous theatrical scene generally known as the Buckride. His mother scorns him for his imagination, and taunts him because he spoiled his chances with Ingrid. Peer leaves for Ingrids wedding, scheduled for the following day and his mother follows quickly to stop him from shaming himself completely
24.
Henrik Ibsen
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Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as the father of realism and is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre and he is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Dolls House became the worlds most performed play by the early 20th century. Several of his dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era. Ibsens later work examined the realities that lay behind many façades and it utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. The poetic and cinematic early play Peer Gynt, however, has strong surreal elements, Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most distinguished playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as a profound poetic dramatist—the best since Shakespeare and he is widely regarded as the most important playwright since Shakespeare. He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James Joyce, Eugene ONeill, Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902,1903, and 1904. Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal, born into a merchant family connected to the patriciate of Skien, Ibsen shaped his dramas according to his family background. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen, Ibsens dramas continue in their influence upon contemporary culture and film with notable film productions including A Dolls House featuring Jane Fonda and A Master Builder featuring Wallace Shawn. Ibsen was born to Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg, in a merchant family, in the small port town of Skien in Telemark county. Ibsens grandfather, ship captain Henrich Ibsen, had died at sea in 1797, Knud Ibsens paternal ancestors were ship captains of Danish origin, but he decided to become a merchant, having initial success. His marriage to Marichen Altenburg, a daughter of ship-owner Johan Andreas Altenburg, theodore Jorgenson points out that Henriks ancestry reached back into the important Telemark family of Paus both on the fathers and on the mothers side. Hedvig Paus must have well known to the young dramatist. Henrik Ibsen was fascinated by his parents strange, almost incestuous marriage, Henriks sister Hedvig would write about their mother, She was a quiet, lovable woman, the soul of the house, everything to her husband and children. She sacrificed herself time and time again, There was no bitterness or reproach in her. The Ibsen family eventually moved to a city house, Snipetorp, owned by Knud Ibsens half-brother, Ibsen would both model and name characters in his plays after his own family. At fifteen, Ibsen was forced to leave school and he moved to the small town of Grimstad to become an apprentice pharmacist and began writing plays. In 1846, when Ibsen was age 18, a liaison with a servant produced a child, whose upbringing Ibsen had to pay for until the boy was in his teens
25.
Hamlet
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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlets father, Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brothers widow. It has inspired many other writers—from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and he almost certainly wrote his version of the title role for his fellow actor, Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeares time. In the 400 years since its inception, the role has been performed by highly acclaimed actors in each successive century. Three different early versions of the play are extant, the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, each version includes lines and entire scenes missing from the others. The plays structure and depth of characterisation have inspired much critical scrutiny, the protagonist of Hamlet is Prince Hamlet of Denmark, son of the recently deceased King Hamlet, and nephew of King Claudius, his fathers brother and successor. Claudius hastily married King Hamlets widow, Gertrude, Hamlets mother, Denmark has a long-standing feud with neighboring Norway, which culminated when King Hamlet slew King Fortinbras of Norway in a battle years ago. Although Denmark defeated Norway, and the Norwegian throne fell to King Fortinbrass infirm brother, Denmark fears that an invasion led by the dead Norwegian kings son, Prince Fortinbras, is imminent. On a cold night on the ramparts of Elsinore, the Danish royal castle and they vow to tell Prince Hamlet what they have witnessed. As the court gathers the next day, while King Claudius and Queen Gertrude discuss affairs of state with their elderly adviser Polonius, after the court exits, Hamlet despairs of his fathers death and his mothers hasty remarriage. Learning of the ghost from Horatio, Hamlet resolves to see it himself, as Poloniuss son Laertes prepares to depart for a visit to France, Polonius gives him contradictory advice that culminates in the ironic maxim to thine own self be true. Poloniuss daughter, Ophelia, admits her interest in Hamlet, and that night on the rampart, the ghost appears to Hamlet, telling the prince that he was murdered by Claudius and demanding that Hamlet avenge him. Hamlet agrees and the ghost vanishes, the prince confides to Horatio and the sentries that from now on he plans to put an antic disposition on and forces them to swear to keep his plans for revenge secret. Privately, however, he remains uncertain of the ghosts reliability, soon thereafter, Ophelia rushes to her father, telling him that Hamlet arrived at her door the prior night half-undressed and behaving crazily. Polonius blames love for Hamlets madness and resolves to inform Claudius, as he enters to do so, the king and queen finish welcoming Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two student acquaintances of Hamlet, to Elsinore. The royal couple has requested that the students investigate the cause of Hamlets mood, additional news requires that Polonius wait to be heard, messengers from Norway inform Claudius that the King of Norway has rebuked Prince Fortinbras for attempting to re-fight his fathers battles. The forces that Fortinbras conscripted to march against Denmark will instead be sent against Poland, Polonius tells Claudius and Gertrude his theory regarding Hamlets behavior, and speaks to Hamlet in a hall of the castle to try to uncover more information. Hamlet feigns madness but subtly insults Polonius all the while, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, Hamlet greets his friends warmly, but quickly discerns that they are spies
26.
Seneca the Younger
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Seneca the Younger, fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca and also known simply as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and—in one work—humorist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea and Thyestes and he was a tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, however, some sources state that he may have been innocent. His father was Seneca the Elder, his brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus. Seneca was born in Cordoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, griffin also infers from the ancient sources that Seneca was born in either 8,4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was a resident in Rome by AD5, Seneca says that he was carried to Rome in the arms of his mothers stepsister. Griffin says that, allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, means it is fair to conclude that Seneca was in Rome as a small boy. Be that as it may, it is clear that he was in Rome at an early stage in his life. Caligula and Fabius were critics of his works, and Columella, Pliny, Tacitus, from AD54 to 62, Seneca acted as Neros advisor, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus. One byproduct of his influence was that Seneca was appointed consul in 56. Senecas influence was said to have especially strong in the first year. Tacitus and Dio suggest that Neros early rule, during which time he listened to Seneca, however, the ancient sources suggest, over time, Seneca and Burrus lost their influence over the emperor. In 59 they had agreed to Agrippinas murder, and afterward. This may have contributed as well to his own downfall, following Burrus death in 62, Seneca became the subject of criticism by what Tacitus describes as Neros more disreputable advisers. Charges included allegations of excessive wealth, the grandeur of his property, Seneca requested an audience with Nero in which he sought permission to retire from public duties, pleading age and infirmity. The two then parted on apparently warm terms, Seneca subsequently adopted a quiet lifestyle on his country estates, concentrating on his studies and seldom visiting Rome. In AD65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, although it is unlikely that Seneca conspired, Nero ordered him to kill himself. Seneca followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death, a generation after the Julio-Claudian emperors, Tacitus wrote an account of the suicide, which in view of his Republican sympathies is perhaps somewhat romanticized
27.
Aeschylus
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Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is often described as the father of tragedy, academics knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in theater allowing conflict among them, fragments of some other plays have survived in quotes and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy, at least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians second invasion of Greece. This work, The Persians, is the surviving classical Greek tragedy concerned with contemporary events. Despite this, Aeschylus work – particularly the Oresteia – is generally acclaimed by modern critics and scholars. As soon as he woke from the dream, the young Aeschylus began to write a tragedy, and his first performance took place in 499 BC and he won his first victory at the City Dionysia in 484 BC. In 510 BC, when Aeschylus was 15 years old, Cleomenes I expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, Cleisthenes reforms included a system of registration that emphasized the importance of the deme over family tradition. In the last decade of the 6th century, Aeschylus and his family were living in the deme of Eleusis, the Persian Wars played a large role in the playwrights life and career. In 490 BC, Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus fought to defend Athens against the army of Darius I of Persia at the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians emerged triumphant, a victory celebrated across the city-states of Greece, Cynegeirus, however, died in the battle, receiving a mortal wound while trying to prevent a Persian ship retreating from the shore, for which his countrymen extolled him as a hero. In 480, Aeschylus was called into service again, this time against Xerxes Is invading forces at the Battle of Salamis. Ion of Chios was a witness for Aeschyluss war record and his contribution in Salamis, Salamis holds a prominent place in The Persians, his oldest surviving play, which was performed in 472 BC and won first prize at the Dionysia. Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, initiates gained secret knowledge through these rites, likely concerning the afterlife. Firm details of specific rites are sparse, as members were sworn under the penalty of not to reveal anything about the Mysteries to non-initiates. Nevertheless, according to Aristotle, Aeschylus was accused of revealing some of the secrets on stage. Other sources claim that a mob tried to kill Aeschylus on the spot. Heracleides of Pontus asserts that the tried to stone Aeschylus
28.
Othello
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Othello is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603. It is based on the story Un Capitano Moro by Cinthio, Roderigo is upset because he loves Desdemona and had asked her father for her hand in marriage. Iago hates Othello for promoting a younger man named Cassio above him, whom Iago considers less capable a soldier than himself, Iago convinces Roderigo to wake Brabantio and tell him about his daughters elopement. Meanwhile, Iago sneaks away to find Othello and warns him that Brabantio is coming for him. Brabantio, provoked by Roderigo, is enraged and will not rest until he has beheaded Othello, but he finds Othellos residence full of the Duke of Venices guards, who prevent violence. News has arrived in Venice that the Turks are going to attack Cyprus, Brabantio has no option but to accompany Othello to the Dukes residence, where he accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona by witchcraft. Othello defends himself before the Duke of Venice, Brabantios kinsmen Lodovico and Gratiano, Othello explains that Desdemona became enamoured of him for the sad and compelling stories he told of his life before Venice, not because of any witchcraft. Iago, still in the room, takes note of Brabantios remark, the party arrives in Cyprus to find that a storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet. Othello orders a celebration and leaves to consummate his marriage with Desdemona. In his absence, Iago gets Cassio drunk, and then persuades Roderigo to draw Cassio into a fight, Montano tries to calm an angry and drunk Cassio down, but end up fighting one another. Montano is injured in the fight, Othello reenters and questions the men as to what happened. Othello blames Cassio for the disturbance and strips him of his rank, Iago persuades Cassio to importune Desdemona to convince her husband to reinstate Cassio. Iago now persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona, when Desdemona drops a handkerchief, Emilia finds it, and gives it to her husband Iago, at his request, unaware of what he plans to do with it. Othello reenters and vows with Iago for the death of Desdemona and Cassio, after which he makes Iago his lieutenant. Act III, scene iii, is considered to be the point of the play as it is the scene in which Iago successfully sows the seeds of doubt in Othellos mind. Iago plants the handkerchief in Cassios lodgings, then tells Othello to watch Cassios reactions while Iago questions him. Iago goads Cassio on to talk about his affair with Bianca, a local courtesan, later, Bianca accuses Cassio of giving her a second-hand gift which he had received from another lover. Othello sees this, and Iago convinces him that Cassio received the handkerchief from Desdemona, enraged and hurt, Othello resolves to kill his wife and asks Iago to kill Cassio
29.
Commedia all'italiana
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Commedia allitaliana or Italian-style comedy is an Italian film genre. It is widely considered to have started with Mario Monicellis I soliti ignoti in 1958, as he said in an interview with the director Mario Monicelli, the Italian comedy is something very simple, which is closely tied to popular culture of Italy. It is a tangle of stories of poor and unfortunate in an unfortunate and negative, i. e. the period of poverty that followed in Europe. In any plot of the films of this genre, there is a group of thieves, however each has its problems and its difficulties, attibutable to ignorance, incompetence, inadequate means, unrequited love and many other mishaps. Whoever comes out best the story is always the most powerful, what makes the viewer laugh are the jokes about the repeated blunders of the actors that would make them famous during the preparation of their shots. Just think of the situation or the end of the film Il sorpasso or the melancholy end of the film I soliti ignoti in which thieves have fail in their coup. What breaks this feeling is a typical Italian clumsiness or a fall, the protagonist is at once sentimentally duped. In the sixties and seventies such plots merged with the satire, even in these stories, such as in Signore e signori buonanotte, as it denotes skill in manifesting Italian taste satirical scenes is exaggerated and extremely scratchy. The characters are targeted by people or satire inept people, extremely rude, bad, almost animalistic. With the Americanized transformation of this genre in Italy, the kind of Commedia allitaliana finally died. The last film that famous still strongly reflects the characters of the Italian comedy is Il marchese del Grillo, alberto Sordi plays the role of a spoiled rich Marquis of Rome who is bored by the day. For this he designs jokes on the poor and the helpless for no particular end and his joker cynicism is not stopped even by the power of Pope Pius VII. This film still strongly reflects the character of the average prankster kid of the sixties, cynicism is the main theme of this film, based on a true story. In 1961, Dino Risi directed Il sorpasso, now a cult-movie, then Una vita difficile, I mostri, In nome del Popolo Italiano, Monicellis works include La grande guerra, I compagni, Larmata Brancaleone, Vogliamo i colonnelli, Romanzo popolare and Amici miei. Other notable film makers of the genre were Pasquale Festa Campanile, Ettore Scola, Luigi Comencini, Steno, Antonio Pietrangeli, Nanni Loy and Lina Wertmüller. And the script writers Age & Scarpelli, Leo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Rodolfo Sonego, Suso Cecchi dAmico, Sergio Amidei Lanzoni, comedy Italian Style, The Golden Age of Italian Film Comedies. La Comédie à litalienne sur le site Comedie Italienne La Comédie à litalienne sur le site du ciné-club de Caen La Commedia allitaliana sur le site de la RAI Centro Studi Commedia allitaliana
30.
Mario Monicelli
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Mario Monicelli was a six times-Oscar nominated Italian director and screenwriter and one of the masters of the Commedia allItaliana. Monicelli was born in Viareggio in Tuscany and was the youngest son of the journalist Tommaso Monicelli and his older brother Giorgio worked as writer and translator. Another older brother, Franco, was a journalist, Monicelli lived a carefree youth, and many of the cinematic jokes he later shot in Amici Miei were inspired from his own experience. Monicelli made his first short in 1934, in collaboration with his friend Alberto Mondadori and he followed this work up with the silent film I ragazzi della Via Paal, which was an award-winner in the Venice Film Festival. His first feature length work was made in 1937, in the years 1939–1942 Monicelli also produced numerous screenplays, and worked as an assistant director. Monicelli made his debut as a director in 1949, with Totò cerca casa. From the very beginning of his career Monicellis cinematic style had a flow to it. The duo produced eight successful movies in four years, including Guardie e ladri, from 1953 onwards Monicelli worked alone, without leaving his role as a writer of screenplays. Monicellis career include some of the masterpieces of Italian cinema, while better known in the English-speaking world under the title Big Deal on Madonna Street, the actual translation from the Italian is the usual unknown perpetrators. The film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 31st Academy Awards, the film, featuring Gassman and the other superstar of Italian comedy, Alberto Sordi, excelled in the absence of rhetorical accents and for its sharp, tragicomical sense of history. Monicelli received two more Academy Award nominations with I compagni and The Girl with the Pistol, larmata Brancaleone is another masterpiece of Italian cinema. The film tells the tale of a Middle Age Italian knight, of uncertain nobility and few means. The film was popular to the point that some lines are turned into well established idiomatic expression. His 1976 film Caro Michele won him the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 26th Berlin International Film Festival, both films featured Alberto Sordi at his best, the latter leading Monicelli to his third Silver Bear for Best Director award at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival. Among the final works by Monicelli are Speriamo che sia femmina, Parenti serpenti and Cari fottutissimi amici, the latter won an Honourable Mention at the 44th Berlin International Film Festival. His 1999 film Dirty Linen was entered into the 21st Moscow International Film Festival and his last feature film was The Roses of the Desert, which he directed when he was 91 years old. In 1991 he received the Golden Lion for Career of the Venice Film Festival, a documentary made by Roberto Salinas and Marina Catucci, Una storia da ridere, breve biografia di Mario Monicelli, appeared in 2008. Monicelli worked also for television and theatre, occasionally as an actor, Monicelli died on 29 November 2010 at the age of 95
31.
Big Deal on Madonna Street
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Big Deal on Madonna Street is a 1958 Italian criminal-comedy film, directed by Mario Monicelli, and considered to be among the masterpieces of Italian cinema. Its original title translates as the unknown persons, a journalistic and bureaucratic euphemism for unidentified criminals. The film is a comedy about a group of small-time thieves, the five hapless would-be burglars are played by Vittorio Gassman, Renato Salvatori, Carlo Pisacane, Tiberio Murgia and Marcello Mastroianni. The careers of both Gassman and Mastroianni were considerably helped by the success of the film, Gassman in particular, claudia Cardinale featured in a minor role, she would later rise to fame for other work. The film is distributed in Region 1 by The Criterion Collection, a Roman small-time crook, Cosimo, is arrested for the attempted theft of a car. After he is convicted and put in prison, he starts haranguing his girlfriend and former accomplices by telling them that he has a plan for a heist but that he needs their help to be freed. In order to assure his release, they find an acquaintance named Peppe with a criminal record to take the blame for the theft in the hope that the police will release Cosimo. They instead have both of them jailed, while Peppe is in jail, Cosimo tells him the plans for the heist of a safe in a pawnshop. Peppe then reveals that he got off merely with probation, leaving him free to pursue the heist without Cosimo, much to his chagrin. To accomplish this, they enlist the help of another local thief that is an expert on safes who tells them of a plan to silence the alarm of the safe that they may break into it safely. While everything is planned, they discover that the vacant apartment has just become occupied by two spinsters and their young, attractive maid. After arranging a date with the girl on this day, the group is distressed to learn that she has quit her job. Despite this, they proceed with the plan anyway after learning that the women not be in the apartment. Notwithstanding a number of bumbling entries, they gain entry into the apartment, after first boring a hole through a water pipe, they are forced to staunch the flow of water while remaining quiet after a night porter enters the apartment to make a call. After they realize their plan was miscalculated, they leave the apartment dejected - albeit as free men, Peppe then decides to find legitimate work, much to the surprise of an elderly member of the group. The film ends with an article recounting a robbery by unknown persons of an apartment for food. A sequel directed by Nanni Loy followed in 1960, reuniting the entire cast aside from Totò and Mastroianni, a further sequel was directed by Amanzio Todini titled I Soliti ignoti ventanni dopo. It was released on DVD in the United States as Big Deal On Madonna Street -20 Years Later by Koch Lorber
32.
Il Sorpasso
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Il Sorpasso is a 1962 Italian cult movie comedy film co-written and directed by Dino Risi and starring Vittorio Gassman, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Catherine Spaak. It is considered Risis masterpiece and one of the famous examples of Commedia allitaliana film genre. The film starts in a hazy, sun-baked and seemingly empty Rome on an August morning during Ferragosto holiday, the young man tells him to come up and make the call himself. Tired of studying for the day and falling prey to Brunos enthusiasm, thus begins a cruise along the Via Aurelia, the Roman road that also gives the name to Brunos beloved car. Roberto is unwilling or unable to part from this casual acquaintance despite having almost nothing in common with him, Bruno is loud, brash, risk taking, a bit coarse and a braggart, to boot. He drives recklessly, speeding and constantly attempting il Sorpasso — the impatient, but he is also charming and likable. And Roberto, being his complete opposite, feels drawn to Brunos impulsive, over two days of highs and lows across the coasts of Lazio and Tuscany, the two men fall into various adventures while gradually managing to learn something of each other. When, for example, the duo spontaneously drops in on Robertos relatives, en route, and later he finds out about Brunos failed marriage and young daughter, revealing a life not nearly as carefree as Bruno pretends to lead. When this free-wheeling road-trip movie crescendos to its ending, the bonding and emerging friendship between the two men is cut short. Spurred on by a seemingly transformed Roberto, Bruno speeds while attempting to overtake another car on the curve of a cliffside road. This risky maneuver results in a fatal accident, the younger man goes over a rocky cliff in the car, leaving a bloodied and shocked Bruno on the curves edge. When a motorway cop arrives and asks Bruno for Robertos last name, the movie is considered as one of the best examples of Commedia allItaliana. The Roman customizer crew Emporio Elaborazioni Meccaniche dedicated a customized bike to the movie and they named a MotoGuzzi V11 cafe racer, Sorpasso
33.
The Great War (1959 film)
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The Great War is a 1959 Italian film directed by Mario Monicelli. It tells the story of an odd couple of army buddies in World War I, starring Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Its crew also included Danilo Donati and Mario Garbuglia and it was an Academy Award nominee as Best Foreign Film. In 1999 the critics of Ciak magazine chose it as one of the 100 most important films in history and it won huge success outside Italy, especially in France. Oreste Jacovacci from Rome and Giovanni Busacca from Milan meet each other during the call to arms at the start of World War I. Although completely different in character, they are united in their lack of idealism and their desire to avoid any danger and they and a varied group of civilians and fellow soldiers go through many ups and downs during their training, battles and rare moments of leave. They are considered inefficient due to their limited military valour and so are made message-runners to the staff and they are accused of espionage and condemned to be shot by firing squad. Overcome with fear, they let slip that they are in possession of information crucial to the success of the battle, the battle then ends in an Italian victory, without anyone knowing of the pairs sacrifice. It is narrated in a simultaneously neorealist and romantic idiom, combining features of Italian comedy with attention to historical detail. Another review stated Italian comedy was getting to grips with grand cinema, a master of cinematography and the course of history, but also. Who taught us things we remember for a lifetime. Perhaps this was not cowardice, but simply love for life, the reconstruction of wartime life is, from a historical point of view, one of the best contributions by Italian cinema to the study of the First World War. Until then Italian soldiers had always been portrayed as courageous and willing men sacrificing themselves for their country, the film was born out of an idea by Luciano Vincenzoni, influenced by Two friends, a story by Guy de Maupassant. Initially thought of as a vehicle just for Gassman, it was the producer De Laurentiis who decided to add another character. The screenplay combined characters and situations from two famous books - A Year on the Plateau by Emilio Lussu and “Con me e con gli alpini” by Piero Jahier, in an interview, the director himself stated, Lussu and Jahier are considered as the films two screenwriters. Other scenes were filmed in Campania at San Pietro Infine
34.
I mostri
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I mostri is a 1963 commedia allitaliana film by Italian director Dino Risi. The film was a success in Italy. In 1977 an Academy Award nominee sequel was filmed, entitled I nuovi mostri, the film features several episodes in which actors Ugo Tognazzi and Vittorio Gassman are the greatest performers. The themes of the stories are intended to offer a clear picture of the habits, vices, of cheating. The satire of the episodes affects people of noble origins of poor people, both political and police officers who abuse their power and, last but not least the middle classes. To remember are the episodes as The Monster in which a man who has killed the family and has barricaded himself in the house was arrested by two policemen and photographed with the present. However, although the man is a murderer, the two cops are real monsters of ugliness and he instructs his son in beating their classmates who do not want him to copy the tasks and lie age when he went to the fair to not pay the ticket. When the child grows, the first thing it will do is make amends for his teachings repaying his father with a pistol, the original version is composed of 20 episodes, all starred by Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi
35.
L'armata Brancaleone
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Larmata Brancaleone is an Italian comedy movie released in 1966, written by the famous duo Age & Scarpelli and directed by Mario Monicelli. It features Vittorio Gassman in the main role and it was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. The term Armata Brancaleone is still used today in Italian to define a group of badly assembled, Brancaleone is an actual historical name, meaning the paw of lions in heraldry jargon. Brancaleone degli Andalò was a governor of Rome in the Middle Ages, the movie opens with a small Italian village being stormed by a band of Hungarian pillagers. When the murders and rapes are over, a German knight arrives, however, as he is healing his wounds he is attacked by two of the surviving villagers and one of the thieves. They throw the wounded knight into a river, the parchment is torn at the lower end, which refers to a condition the knight must fulfill to enjoy the donation. The Hungarian bandit comes up with the idea to propose a partnership to a nobleman, so the group can take possession of the aforementioned fief. The knight they find is the poor and incompetent, yet well-meaning, Brancaleone da Norcia, giving in to Teofilattos plan the army arrives at his fathers castle to demand a ransom. Brancaleone designs a cartoonish Rube Goldberesque trap to defeat the Saracens, as the band is about to be executed by impalement, it is saved by the knight of the opening scenes, the rightful owner of the fief, thirsty for vengeance against his attackers. Brancaleone and his army are about to be burned alive when the mad monk arrives out of the blue and saves them from the knight, being deprived of his dreams of richness, Brancaleone-Gassman and his band agree to go along with the monk and his followers, saving themselves. Albeit sad, when he finds his horse, Brancaleone mounts and regains his confidence. The story is continued in a film, Brancaleone alle Crociate. The plot is structured as a series of revolving around different parodies of the Middle Ages world. Age and Scarpelli devised for the characters a striking, mocking form of a mixture of Italian and Latin languages, gassmans overbearing and pompous recitation was also perfect for the role. The main musical theme of the film was also a great success, according to Monicelli, the idea for the movie was spurred by a simple scene written by Age and Scarpelli, about two mediaeval peasants talking about women. Monicelli suggested that they shoot a movie which avoids the stereotypes of the usual Hollywood Middle Ages movies and it would instead show the other face of the era, poor people, underdogs, ignorance, mud, cold, misery. Underdogs and humiliated people were present in Monicellis art. Another important theme of the film is male friendship, which was also an important element in such as La grande guerra
36.
We All Loved Each Other So Much
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We All Loved Each Other So Much is a 1974 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Ettore Scola and written by Scola and the famous screenwriter duo of Age & Scarpelli. It stars Stefania Sandrelli, Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi, Stefano Satta Flores and Aldo Fabrizi, in the first part the friends Gianni, Antonio and Nicola are partisans who fight for the liberation of Italy from the yoke of Nazi occupation and the fascist collaborationists aiding in it. After the end of World War II, the three go for different lives, Nicola in Nocera Inferiore, Antonio in Rome and Gianni in Pavia. Later, both Antonio and Gianni fall in love with young Luciana, and through their relationships go back to the history of post-war Italy, along with the related hopes and disappointments. His wife, resenting her inadequacy, tries to turn into the woman he longs for but ultimately fails, Antonio, worker in a hospital, has instead remained loyal to the ideals of their youth, and is now a fervent communist activist. Nicola, the most intellectual of the trio, leaves Nocera and his family and moves to Rome, too, after his failure, he leads an economically troubled life writing occasional articles for newspapers, increasingly turning himself into a caricature of an intellectual, lost in futile polemics. After several decades the three meet again in the trattoria where they spent their last evening together, commenting bitterly on their lives. Antonio, the orderly has less to complain about and tells his friends that Luciana has become his wife. Later in the evening Nicola argues with him on ideological questions, in the fray, Gianni loses his driving license and the following day Antonio, Nicola and Luciana try to deliver it back to him. They see his villa and realize the affluent lifestyle hes leading but they understand that, having to sacrifice his ideals for his wealth. It also won two Silver Ribbons and the Golden Prize in the 9th Moscow International Film Festival in 1975, ceravamo tanto amati at the Internet Movie Database
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Alessandro Manzoni
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Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni was an Italian poet and novelist. He is famous for the novel The Betrothed, generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature, the novel is also a symbol of the Italian Risorgimento, both for its patriotic message and because it was a fundamental milestone in the development of the modern, unified Italian language. Manzoni was born in Milan, Italy, on 7 March 1785, pietro, his father, aged about fifty, belonged to an old family of Lecco, originally feudal lords of Barzio, in the Valsassina. The poets maternal grandfather, Cesare Beccaria, was an author and philosopher. The young Alessandro spent his first two years of life in cascina Costa in Galbiate and he was wet-nursed by Caterina Panzeri, in 1792 his parents broke their marriage and his mother began a relationship with the highbrow Carlo Imbonati, moving to England and later to Paris. For this reason, their son was brought up in religious institutes. Manzoni was a developer, and at the various colleges he attended he was considered a dunce. At fifteen, however, he developed a passion for poetry, there too he imbibed the anti-Catholic creed of Voltairianism. In 1808, Manzoni married Henriette Blondel, daughter of a Genevese banker and she came from a Calvinist family, but in 1810 she became a Roman Catholic. Her conversion profoundly influenced her husband and that same year he experienced a religious crisis which led him from Jansenism to an austere form of Catholicism. Manzonis marriage proved a most happy one, and he led for many years a retired domestic life, in 1818 he had to sell his paternal inheritance, as his money had been lost to a dishonest agent. His characteristic generosity was shown at this time in his dealings with his peasants and he not only cancelled on the spot the record of all sums owed to him, but bade them keep for themselves the whole of the coming maize harvest. In 1819, Manzoni published his first tragedy, Il Conte di Carmagnola and it was severely criticized in a Quarterly Review article to which Goethe replied in its defence, one genius, as Count de Gubernatis remarks, having divined the other. The death of Napoleon in 1821 inspired Manzonis powerful stanzas Il Cinque maggio, round the episode of the Innominato, historically identified with Bernardino Visconti, the first manuscript of the novel The Betrothed began to grow into shape, and was completed in September 1823. The work was published, after being deeply reshaped by the author and revised by friends in 1825–1827, at the rate of a volume a year and it is generally agreed to be his greatest work, and the paradigm of modern Italian language. In 1822, Manzoni published his tragedy, Adelchi, turning on the overthrow by Charlemagne of the Lombard domination in Italy. With these works Manzonis literary career was practically closed and he also wrote a small treatise on the Italian language. The death of Manzonis wife in 1833 was preceded and followed by those of several of his children, and of his mother
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Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
39.
Farley Granger
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Farley Earle Granger, Jr. was an American actor, best known for his two collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, Rope in 1948 and Strangers on a Train in 1951. Another war film, The Purple Heart, followed, before Grangers naval service in Honolulu, here he made useful contacts, including Bob Hope, Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. It was also where he began exploring his bisexuality, which he said he never felt any need to conceal. In 1948, Hitchcock cast him in Rope, an account of the Leopold and Loeb murder case, which earned mixed reviews. Hitchcock then cast him again in Strangers on a Train, as a tennis star drawn into a murder plot by a wealthy psychopath. Granger described this as his happiest film-making experience, though he was affected by his friend Walkers death from an accidental drug overdose soon afterwards. Granger continued to appear on stage, film and television well into his 70s and his work ranged from classical drama on Broadway to several Italian-language films and major documentaries about Hollywood. He tended to fault with his directors and scriptwriters, however. Granger was born in San Jose, California, the son of Eva and Farley Earle Granger and he lived at 1185 Hanchett Avenue in the Hanchett Residence Park neighborhood. His wealthy father owned a Willys-Overland automobile dealership, and the family spent time at their beach house in Capitola. As a result of this setback and the loss of their social status. The family settled in an apartment in a seedy part of Hollywood. Their drinking increased, and the couple frequently fought, hoping he might become a tap dancer, Grangers mother enrolled him at Ethel Meglins, the dance and drama instruction studio where Judy Garland and Shirley Temple had started. Grangers use of a Cockney accent impressed the director, and he was cast in multiple roles, Granger auditioned for producer Goldwyn, screenwriter Lillian Hellman and director Lewis Milestone. Hellman was trying to convince Montgomery Clift to leave the Broadway play in which he was appearing, and when her efforts proved to be futile, Goldwyn signed him to a seven-year contract for $100 per week. The studio publicity department was concerned audiences would confuse Granger with British actor Stewart Granger, so they suggested he change his name, the names were all interchangeable, like Gordon Gregory and Gregory Gordon. I didnt want to change my name, Granger later recalled and it was my fathers name, and his grandfathers name. They kept bringing me new combinations, and finally I offered to change it to Kent Clark, I was the only one who thought it was funny
40.
Rhapsody (film)
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Rhapsody is a 1954 American musical romance drama film directed by Charles Vidor and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Vittorio Gassman, John Ericson, and Louis Calhern. There she meets a student who falls madly in love with her. She must then choose between this man who loves her more than his music, and the violinist who loves his music more than anything else, rhapsody features music by Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Felix Mendelssohn, and Claude Debussy. Rhapsody was filmed on location in Florhofgasse, Zürich and Pontresina, according to MGM records the film earned $1,291,000 in the US and Canada and $2,001,000 overseas, resulting in a loss of $217,000
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Elizabeth Taylor
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Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian. She began as an actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well known figure for the rest of her life. The American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend in 1999, Born in London to wealthy, socially prominent American parents, Taylor moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1939, and she soon was given a film contract by Universal Pictures. Her screen debut was in a role in Theres One Born Every Minute. Taylor was then signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and had her breakthrough role in National Velvet, becoming one of the studios most popular teenaged stars. She made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s, despite being one of MGMs most bankable stars, Taylor wished to end her career in the early 1950s, as she resented the studios control and disliked many of the films to which she was assigned. She began receiving roles in the mid-1950s, beginning with the epic drama Giant. These included two film adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer, although she disliked her role in BUtterfield 8, her last film for MGM, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. She was next paid a record-breaking $1 million to play the role in the historical epic Cleopatra. During the filming, Taylor and co-star Richard Burton began having an affair which caused a scandal. Despite public disapproval, Burton and she continued their relationship and were married the first time in 1964. Dubbed Liz and Dick by the media, they starred in 11 films together, including The V. I. P. s, The Sandpiper, The Taming of the Shrew, and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Taylor received the best reviews of her career for Woolf, winning her second Academy Award, in the 1980s, she acted in her first substantial stage roles and in several television films and series, and became the first celebrity to launch a perfume brand. Taylor was also one of the first celebrities to take part in HIV/AIDS activism and she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. From the early 1990s until her death, she dedicated her time to philanthropy and she received several accolades for it, including the Presidential Citizens Medal. Taylors personal life was subject to constant media attention throughout her life and she was married eight times to seven men, endured serious illnesses, and led a jet set lifestyle, including amassing one of the most expensive private collections of jewelry. After many years of ill health, Taylor died from heart failure at the age of 79 in 2011
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Media related to Vittorio Gassman at Wikimedia Commons