The Ambiguous Charm

Shooting a film on Andreotti is like making a film on a symbol: no matter if the main character is still alive and amongst us. Even if it’s a little bit strange for a biopic, in a way it’s a perfect fit with the character.

One of the main examples (if not the first) of Italian biopic cinema dates back to 1974: the year that Roberto Rossellini directed one of his most controversial films, Year One. It is the story of Alcide De Gasperi, founder of the Democrazia Cristiana (‘Christian Democracy’) party in the years following World War II. The ‘political biopic saga’ continued with The Moro Affair and Good Morning, Night, dedicated to another Italian leader, Aldo Moro (related to the Democrazia Cristiana, as De Gasperi and Andreotti), ending with The Caiman by Nanni Moretti, dedicated to Silvio Berlusconi.

These political characters incarnate history. They are transfigured into symbols – snapshots of their particular time and country.

Thus the snapshot of De Gasperi that Rossellini creates evokes the rise of a nation. Rather than the sanctification of a politician, it is the portrait of a defeated country which is learning how to find the energy and the dignity to rise up from the dust.

In the same way, two different films dedicated to Aldo Moro don’t really describe the man, nor his story as a politician, but take what happened to him (his kidnapping by a group of revolutionary Communists at the end of the 70s) as a pretext to describe that particular moment in Republican history. The Moro Affair (by Giuseppe Ferrara) is a perfect reconstruction of his kidnapping and death; Good Morning, Night (by Marco Bellocchio) tries to investigate the deeper meaning of what happened, showing the short-circuit of an ideology. In both cases, the personal story of Aldo Moro is kept in the background. What he did, his actions as a politician… everything is less important than what happened to him. His tragic death gives him a new, most important value: so important that it erases him as a man. Perhaps this is the real destiny of certain politicians. They became a symbol, no longer a human figure.

The Caiman is a perfect representation of this. It’s not a film on Berlusconi, but on the representation of Berlusconi - several versions of him, each one at the same time true and fake. When Italy becomes a berlusconian country, the figure, the man, becomes difficult to describe in a unique, complete way.

So what kind of snapshot of the Giulio Andreotti symbol will arise from Il Divo? In the Rossellini film on De Gasperi, the controversy was connected to the different interpretation he gave to the historical facts. Concerning Andreotti however, the historical facts are already uncertain, evanescent…

He was appointed Prime Minister seven times (his last premiership ended in 1992) and was part of almost all of the governments of the first 40 years of the Republic as of 1948, the year in which he co-wrote the Italian Constitution. Made a senator for life at the end of 1991, he was then on the path to becoming President of the Republic when the killing of Falcone and the first rumours of his connection with the mafia forced him to give up this dream.

From this point a lot of aspects are ambiguous and undefined: he went under enquiry for the murder of a journalist (condemned and then declared innocent), associating with the mafia (found guilty but not condemned because the facts were far too old) and was suspected of a strange connection with the ‘Golpe Borghese’ plan (a failed coup d’état) in the 70s…

If cinema has always been a mirror of society, it will be very interesting to see a reflection of this contemporary Italy – which seems to have a particular need for heroes, but which in the meantime is so deeply charmed by the most ambiguous aspects of the men of power.

Simone Fenoil