Milan, Capitol Cinema, 60 years ago: first release in Italy of La Dolce Vita.
Now it is recognized all over the world as one of the best movie realized, but at that time Italy shouted to the scandal and many screening of the movie were canceled.
Federico Fellini, Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Fontana di Trevi, the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
2013, La Grande bellezza. 360° worldliness, even more the bleakness hidden by the face of an fleeting beauty, no scandal declaration.
Paolo Sorrentino, Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli, Il Fontanone (Gianicolo Fountain), the Oscar as Best foreign movie.
The protagonist is always Rome.
A Rome city whose beauty is used and abused as the stage of an unrestrained worldliness, sometimes vulgar or without any sense of taste to be gentle. As if that beauty could camouflage the corruption, the emptiness, the decadence. Rome is framed and described for how it has been transformed or better for how it is lived, i.e. the antithesis of itself.
The is anyway a difference: the city of La Dolce Vita is the Rome of the great Cinema and of the High Fashion and there was a very good taste in the daily life, on the road, in the behavior, the city of the great Beauty (the one we are living in) is neglected for what concerns things and people; and yet it seems that this city is not bored by the time passing by, it looks everybody and everything coming and going and she stays there, immobile.
There are much more potholes, abandoned buildings, but she still has a timeless allure.
Rome and Italy all are giving us time to batten down the hatches. The empty stress and squares of Italy for the COVID19 revealed us all their beauty but at the same time all theirs and our fragility.
We should have learned to take care of us, of others and of the treasures of our country, because nothing is granted. All this situation we are still and we will still leave in for a while, should have reawaken a sense of love for what we are and what we have and since this time is always compared to the second world war I like to borrow the words of a roman actress, the first non speaking english actress to win the Oscar Best Actress Award, so proud to be roman, Anna Magnani, “Nannarella” for all romans:
“I was born in Rome and I also know were, in Porta Pia, you can imagine” “But your official bios speaks of Alessandria in Egypt” “Well, I can do nothing about it. I want to be born in Rome, because I was born in Rome” (You may find the interview from which I took these words at the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuZa5Nz3I9I )
Someone once said that “Beauty will save the World”, if it is so than it’s time for Italy to raise its head because the World pretends lots from us and if we will not be able to do what we did after the second world war and throughout all our History restoring the world with Beauty by taking strength from our creativity and ability in innovation, well… then there will really be the need to shout to the scandal.