My husband, Brian, ran the Boston Marathon yesterday and I spent the day glued to the news reports, first, watching the race, and then, the tragedy. He’s fine; thank God he’s a good runner because he finished almost an hour before the explosion and was not at the finish when it happened. We here in the United States are finding it hard to accept the fact that we aren’t always safe on our own soil, but Italy has known for years that it’s a dangerous world. Italy lived through “Gli Anni di Piombo”.
The Years of Lead was a period of terrorism in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s into the early 1980s when widespread social conflict and acts of terror from both right and left-wing paramilitary groups. Want to know more? There are some great movies to help you understand the era.
The story of the assassination of the Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro in 1978 by the Red Brigades is told by Marco Bellocchhio in Buongiorno Notte, starring Maya Sansa, Luigi Lo Cascio, and Bellocchio’s son Pierluigi (it’s his birthday today – auguri Pierluigi!)
READ MY REVIEW OF BUONGIORNO, NOTTE
In Good Morning, Night, Bellocchio unapologetically portrays Moro as the gentle and forgiving martyr that he evidently was. His death, a horrible and tragic loss, did not unite the country in a revolutionary coup, as the BR thought it would. When the government and even the Vatican refused to negotiate Moro’s release, it strenghtened and unified the Democrazia Cristiana, and weakened the Brigate Rosse.
Groups from both the right and left created havoc with kidnappings, many by southerner Italians who abducted rich notherners and held them for ransom. The most famous, John Paul Getty, was kidnapped in 1973 in Rome’s Piazza Farnese and when Getty Sr. hesitated to pay he received an ear in the mail, promising the other one would soon arrive if the kidnappers didn’t get their money.
Based on a true story, the film, Io Non Ho Paura (I’m Not Scared) tells the story of ten-year old Michele who finds little Fillipo in chains in a hole in the ground covered with a sheet of metal and though you might think that his first instinct would be to tell the adults, Michele knows that, even his own parents, are not to be trusted. As he begins to understand more about what’s going on he’s compelled to help Filippo.
Showing up at film festivals recently, Romanzo di una Strage (Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy), the story of the 1969 bombing of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Milan. Based on a book by Paolo Cucchiarelli, it’s about the terrorist attack in which a bomb exploded in Piazza Fontana (.1 mile from the Duomo) in Milan, Italy, killing 17 people and wounding 88.
I Love Italian Everything 