Becoming Italian Word by Word

Happy 10th Birthday to LA BELLA LINGUA!

Whether you're a parent or an author, your first born always remains close to your heart.

This month marks a landmark birthday for my first book on Italy and its culture: LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language. My publisher is celebrating with a not-to-be-missed offer: a digital copy for just $1.99 — less than the price of, well, almost everything —downloadable here or at other online book retailers until May 5.

A book that keeps selling long after publication is said to “have legs." I like to think that LA BELLA LINGUA sprouted wings that continue to carry it to new readers and to bring wonderful new people into my life. In its eventful first decade, LA BELLA LINGUA became a best-seller in the United States, Canada and Australia, the subject of an acrostic (as well as a best-seller) in the New York Times, and the topic of several dissertations by Italian graduate students. In 2011 the President of Italy awarded me the highest recognition the government can bestow on a foreigner: a knighthood, with the title of Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity) for the contributions LA BELLA LINGUA has made in promoting the Italian language. It is currently being translated into Italian—and Chinese!

Most gratifying to me has been the response of readers--from Vancouver to Paris to Sydney to Singapore. An artist who lives on a remote ranch in South Africa wrote that LA BELLA LINGUA  inspired her  lush paintings of Italian fountains and gardens.  A humanities professor in New York confessed that for two months he kept LA BELLA LINGUA in his  car, “bringing it out when I stopped at a wine bar for a drink or a bite to eat. And now that I have finished--what am I to do?”

A college student recalled choosing LA BELLA LINGUA from all the titles in a bookstore as a middle-schooler, reading it every year since, and learning Italian—first on her own, then in class. She based her college admissions essay on LA BELLA LINGUA’s being her favorite book and won a full scholarship to Northwestern. Still “wildly in love with languages," she wrote to say, “You changed my life irrevocably," and signed her note, "A grateful student."

LA BELLA LINGUA changed my life too. Through Italians I met while researching it, I discovered the largely unknown story of the real woman in Leonardo’s famous painting and wrote MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. This immersion in Renaissance Florence led to my most recent adventure: a quest for the secrets and sources of the fierce creative Italian  drive that has produced so many master works of art, music, crafts, food, wine, literature, cinema, fashion, and design. Just released, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World  has been hailed as an " effervescent love letter to all things Italian” and a “delightful excursion into the heart of Italian culture.”

Whether you are Italian by birth or affinity, have visited or plan to visit Italy, are an armchair adventurer, or simply love pizza, pasta, or Prosecco, I invite you to get to know my literary “children.” But be forewarned: Like me and many of my readers, you might be swept away by la passione Italiana!

 

Why Travelers Fall in Love with Italy

This article originally appeared in forbes.com. Click here to read the complete post.

by Irene Levine

Most travelers who visit Italy return changed in some way, either subtly embracing one or more aspects of Italian culture (perhaps, food or style) or more fundamentally, by re-thinking their approach to life.

Dianne Hales’ just-released book, La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World (Crown Archetype, 2019), masterfully examines the multitude of reasons why so many people fall in love with Italy and the Italian lifestyle. In this book, she weaves a rich tapestry of legends and historical references coupled with interviews and first-person experiences to explain this phenomenon. She focuses on some of the most seductive aspects of Italian culture: its history, food and wine, art, music, cinema, cars and fashion and style.

Dianne previously authored two other seminal books about Italian life: La Bella Lingua, a New York Times bestseller and Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered, which was named an Amazon best book of the year and translated into six languages. Prior to this Italian trilogy, she authored more than forty trade and textbooks on a variety of topics.

Forbes.com spoke to Dianne about her latest book and solicited her advice for travelers bound for Italy:

Can you briefly explain what you mean by La Passione?

Dianne Hales: English speakers think of passion as an intense feeling. La passione italiana is much, much more. Almost 2000 years ago, the early Christians in Rome fashioned the word “passio”
from the Latin for “suffer” to describe the torture and crucifixion of Jesus. Over the centuries Italian wordsmiths expanded its meaning to irresistible romantic love or any single-minded pursuit that combines challenge and rebirth. La passione italiana can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, the banal into the beautiful, food into feasts, sounds into songs, moments into movies.

Thanks to this fierce drive to discover and create, a scrawny peninsula smaller than California has touched every aspect of Western culture, blazing to life in the Sistine Chapel, surging through a Verdi chorus, preening in Valentino red, deepening a vintage Brunello, spicing a tangy penne all’arrabbiata. The world would be a far paler place without it.

When did you realize that you had been seduced by Italian culture? How did it happen?
DH: Italians talk about being struck by un colpo di fulmine (a lightning bolt) when they fall head over heels in love. That happened on my first trip to Italy—an unplanned detour after I gave a talk in Switzerland. I never expected to swoon for a country where I knew no one and could not speak the language, but I did.

Italy seduced me, as it has millions of visitors. Michelangelo’s David set the synapses in my brain on fire. Puccini’s arias stirred my soul. With a bite into homemade pasta in a silky sauce, taste buds I never knew existed sprang to life. My ears overflowed with sounds—choirs, Vespas, street musicians, children laughing.

I knew I was a goner the moment I left—and immediately started thinking about when I could return.

How did your two prior books lead to this one?
DH: I so wanted to communicate with the Italians I had met that I immersed myself in Italian and became enraptured by the music in its words. When my agent suggested I write a book on Italian “because you light up when you talk about it,” I discovered its wonderful backstory—full of poets, princes and a rowdy group of young Florentines who compiled the first dictionary, made up of what they considered “the most beautiful flowers” in the “vulgar” or common language.

While in Florence, I became friends with an art historian who lived in the palazzo where Mona Lisa’s mother grew up. I was so taken by the notion of Leonardo’s muse as an actual Renaissance woman that I set out to reconstruct her story in Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered. At a reading for that book, a man asked, “So are you done with Italy?”  The question struck me as absurd. Italy wasn’t done with me.

In a sense, La Passione is also a tour guide to Italy. Can you offer any suggestions on how first-timers should approach travel to Italy if they only have a week or two abroad?

DH: Pick a passion and a place. Since Italy offers everything, focus on what attracts you and make that your starting point: Florence for Renaissance art, Piedmont for wine, Sicily for ancient ruins (and Inspector Montalbano), Rome for, well, Rome. Because of Italy’s rich history, every town offers a range of other treasures for you to explore.

If you can visit only a major city or two, I recommend hiring a local, English-speaking guide (check the Internet) who can provide an overview and background. Then download or carry a map, and explore an intriguing neighborhood on foot—ideally early in the day or later in the evening when you can feel yourself walking back in time.

For those who have already been to Italy’s iconic cities one or more times, what do you suggest next?
DH: Choose a region that appeals to you—mountains or seaside, city or hill town—and make yourself at home. Rentals are available in every price range (always read reviews and fine print carefully). Go to markets, restaurants, parks, and festivals. You’ll soon start living by a new rhythm, savoring your interactions with locals and enjoying Italy’s greatest gift: its way of life.

How should travelers prepare for a trip to Italy? Is it necessary? How much knowledge of the Italian language is essential for most leisure travelers?
DH: Open your senses. Open your mind. Above all, open your heart.

Learn enough Italian to be polite (please, thank you, etc.) and handle necessities (e.g. where is…my hotel, a bathroom, etc.). Listen to online conversation lessons (my personal favorite: ItalyMadeEasy.com). Stream Italian videos (available online with English subtitles) to accustom your ear to Italian sounds. Download a translation app, and don’t hesitate to use it.

I’d also recommend my books. La Bella Lingua doesn’t teach grammar or vocabulary but you’ll learn (painlessly, I promise) why Italians cherish their language. La Passione taps into something deeper—the zest for living that makes every trip to Italy memorable.

Is there one city (or region) in Italy to which you always yearn to return? If so, why?
DH: In 1990 my husband and I arrived at Il Pellicano, then a rustic inn by the sea in Porto Ercole. “I want to come back here every year for the rest of my life,” I declared. And we have—staying at least a few nights at what is now a world-class luxury resort and then renting places nearby. I’ve written drafts of my three Italian books in hillside houses overlooking the Tuscan coast. We also share food and laughter with friends, go swimming and boating, and delight in dolce far niente— the sweetness of doing nothing.

Is your relationship with Italy monogamous? Where else do you travel for pleasure?
DH: I’ve been married 40 years so I may be monogamous by nature. However, my husband and have had flings with other European countries, New Zealand, Australia, the South Pacific. Most recently we’ve loved exploring the San Juan Islands in the Northwest. And since we live in Bodega Bay, we have the magnificent California coast in our front yard and the Wine Country in our backyard for quick getaways.

How do you cope with re-entry after leaving the place you love so much? How do you manage to bring a little bit of Italy back home with you?
DH: That’s the true gift of la passione italiana: it becomes part of you. In many ways, we live an Italian lifestyle in the U.S. We eat Italian dishes, drink espresso and Prosecco, and listen to Italian opera. But more importantly, we’ve absorbed its deeper lessons: Appreciate your senses. Cultivate compassion. Hold family and friends close. Choose the bello over the brutto. Love without limits. Let the human spirit soar.

What could be more seductive than that?

7 Reasons to Discover La Passione!

I am thrilled to announce the publication of my new book: LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World.

Like any author, I’m eager for people to read my book. But with more than 8 million titles on Amazon alone, why choose mine? Let me offer seven reasons, based on my discoveries as I traveled through Italy in search of la passione italiana.

1.The places you’ll go:
The Aeolian islands, where I learned the danger of angering ancient gods. The food markets of Bologna in the “fat belly” of Italy. The rolling hills of Piedmont, home to Barolo and Barbaresco, the king and queen of Italian wines. The atelier of the Italian sisters who dressed the movies’ great beauties when Rome was “Hollywood on the Tiber.”

2. The people you’ll meet:
Venice’s premiere “erotic glass artist,” who breathes passion into molten glass. An archaeologist who has excavated through almost three millennia of ruins to the first settlement in Rome. The “flying baroness” who roared to international celebrity as Italy’s first female race car driver. The poor boy from Southern Italy whose passion for feet inspired him to become “shoemaker to the stars.”

3. The stories you'll hear:
The lace-makers of Burano who saved their island from starvation, stitch by stitch. The ghost of the young Florentine who escaped from her tomb to “live twice” with her true love. The history of Neapolitan pizza. The singers, castrated as boys to preserve their high voices, who sublimated passion into song.

4. The tastes you’ll enjoy (vicariously):
Wine from a vineyard on an Umbrian hillside cultivated since centuries before Christ’s birth. Hand-made chocolate confections invented in Perugia by clandestine lovers. Balsamic vinegar aged in Modena for more than sixty years and drizzled over gelato. Passatelli, a pasta of cheese and breadcrumbs that I learned to make in a Bologna kitchen.

5. The experiences you’ll share:
A pre-Carnevale parade on the oldest canal in Venice. A 24-hour Good Friday processions of mammoth altars crafted centuries ago and carried through the streets of a Sicilian town. Lunch of traditional bagna cauda with young wine-makers in the Langhe. A stroll through Cinecittà, the fabled “Factory of Dreams” that still inspires all who  “have cinema in their blood.”

6.The joy you’ll find:
An Italian-American woman’s inspiring campaign to save an abandoned chapel in the Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino. Sleek road rockets and the roar of their engines at the Ferrari museum in Modena. Heart-shaped balloons on Valentine’s Day in Verona, home to Shakespeare’s Juliet and her Romeo.  Moonlight in Venice and fireworks over the Bay of Naples.

7. For the lessons you may learn:
La passione italiana imparts simple but profound life lessons: Hold family close. Appreciate your senses. Cultivate compassion.  Share food and laughter with friends. Honor the sacred. Choose the bello over the brutto. Love without limits. Let the human spirit soar.

Whether or not you are Italian by blood or aspiration, have visited or dream of visiting Italy, love pasta and pizza (and who doesn’t?), let yourself by seduced by a passion that resonates in all our souls.

I look forward to sharing my Passione with you!

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered  and  LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com. 

As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE, and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

 

How Italy Seduced the World

Italy has been seducing foreigners since its history began. Century after century, in peace and war, over perilous passes, stormy seas, and rutted roads, they have come—explorers, adventurers, traders, sailors, soldiers, writers, musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, penitents, pilgrims of every sort—to the promised land of their imagination.

For a veritable Who’s Who of Western civilization, Italy served as the essential finishing school, a required destination for any person of refinement. Yet even cultural acolytes who came to learn from dead Italians found themselves enchanted by living ones—and infected with la passione italiana. “At last—for the first time—I live!” Henry James wrote in his diary when he arrived in Italy in 1869. “Who has been in Italy can forget all other regions,” the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol gushed. “Who has been in Heaven does not desire the Earth.” The bequally besotted Robert Browning declared, “Open my heart and you will see / Graved inside of it, ‘Italy.'”

Even if you have never set foot on its soil, Italy has so profoundly permeated our collective unconscious that you’ve touched and been touched by its heritage. Musicians everywhere play the do-re-mi notes invented by an Italian monk. Italian paintings, sculptures, and buildings adorn cities on every continent. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa outranks all other masterpieces as the world’s most famous painting. Ferrari’s Cavallino Rampante (Prancing Horse) outshines other brands as the most recognized logo. Italian itself has become trendy, ranking as the world’s fourth-most-studied languag

From Boston to Berlin, Sydney to Singapore, people nibble on biscotti, sip capuccino, drive Fiats, stream Italian films, and zip up Diesel jeans. The Mediterranean diet—practically a synonym for the cooking of southern Italy—has won over legions of fans and foodies. Even mainstream supermarket chains stock Italian pasta, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and peeled tomatoes. Italian fashions have become just as ubiquitous. The upscale salons of big-name designers line the chicest shopping streets of major cities on every continent. The “Made in Italy” label lures millions of customers with a sophistication that blends elegance with exuberance.

Yet “Italy fever” reflects more than the popularity of Italian products. “People around the world are attracted to what’s inside these objects– to the universe of values that they sense,” observes the distinguished author Federico Rampini, US bureau chief for La Repubblica. “Wherever I’ve traveled, I’ve met people who aspire to live like Italians. What seduces them is the culture of knowing how to live that Italy has raised to a level of perfection.”

At the heart of this culture pulses la passione italiana –- especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Imbued with its fire, we might all become as brave as Italy’s gladiators, as eloquent as its poets, as alluring as its beauties, as beguiling as its suitors. At the very least we can savor more fully the greatest of Italian passions—for life itself.

What could be more seductive? Read more in my new book: LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World,available to preorder here or on sale everywhere April 16.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.

As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

 

A Passion for Italy

A New Blog for a New Book

I didn’t have a clue. I had never set up a website, written a blog, created a Facebook group, or composed a single tweet. All that changed ten years ago when I prepared to launch my first Italy-themed book.

La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language attracted readers around the world, earned for me the great honor of being knighted by the President of Italy, and garnered a spot on the New York Times best-seller list and as the subject of a Times acrostic. The companion blog that I created — "Becoming Italian Word by Word" — also took on a life of its own, attracting almost two million visitors and winning a “blogger of the year” award for “Best Arts and Cultural Blog” from Italy magazine.

Over the last decade readers have come from just about every country -- Italy, England, Ireland, Poland, China, India, Japan, Australia, Samoa, Russia, Morocco, Germany, Brazil, Chile. A woman on a ranch in South Africa wrote to say my blog had inspired a series of paintings of Italian gardens. A group of nuns doing missionary work followed it regularly. Many teachers used the blog to spark conversation in class. One woman translated and read  each post to her blind elderly brother, who had been born in Naples.

To all my readers and followers, grazie di cuore. I thank you from my heart. But after a decade of focusing on words and expressions in la bella lingua, I am changing gears. As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

My new blog will go beyond the pages of LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World  to present more interviews with passionate Italians and more descriptions as well as photographs of the people I met and the places I visited.  I am excited about sharing the backstories of my research with you, and I hope you enjoy discovering more about  the Italian passions that seduced the world.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered, and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.

What is "la passione"?

“Of course, you are Italian,” a Roman friend insisted years ago, “You have something more important than blood: la passione.”

I accepted the compliment without fully comprehending its significance. Passion, after all, can bloom anywhere. Think of France, with its culinary cathedrals; Spain, with its bullfights; Argentina, with its tango—not to mention the millions of soulmate seekers pursuing passion online. Yet these pursuits now strike me as mere imitations. How could it be otherwise? The original, including the word itself, was made in Italy.

In the first century AD, newly minted Christians, constructing a vocabulary for their fledgling religion, chose the term passio for the agony that Jesus endured to redeem a world of sinners. Etymologists trace its roots to the Latin passus, past participle of pati (to suffer), inspired by the “sacrificio di Cristo e a quells dei prima martiri” (the sacrifice of Christ and that of the first martyrs).

Healers appropriated the word for maladies such as “passion of the liver”—a diagnosis that conjures an organ engorged with rage. Medieval writers—Dante foremost among them— recognized romantic love as una passione so compelling that it could not be resisted. The Renaissance extended the definition of la passione to any all-consuming quest, most often for beauty in its infinite variety. Romantics idealized the irresistible intensity of such ardor, even when it exploded into “crimes of passion.”

Although modern English-language dictionaries acknowledge the religious roots of “passion,” they define it as a state or an outburst of strong emotion, intense sexual love, or deep desire or enthusiasm. La passione is all these—and much more.

The Dizionario Affettivo della Lingua Italians (Emotional Dictionary of the Italian Language) describes la passione as a flammable material—volatile and dangerous. When it possesses you, it causes infinitesimal, voracious particles to pulsate in the blood. You risk burning like a torch, flaming bright, and then disintegrating into embers. When you are inside la passione, nothing else can enter your mind. When it flees, you search desperately for more.

Passion—and passion alone—lifts us above the ordinary. Without passion, there would be no literature, no art, no music, no romance, perhaps none of the wonders Italians have wrought. Beyond sentiment or emotion, la passione qualifies as a primal force of nature that cannot be ignored or denied.

You will find more--much more--about this fierce drive to explore, discover, create, pursue beauty, and love and live with every fiber of one’s being in my new book, La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World. You can preorder it here or find it wherever books are sold on April 16. 

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.

Cari amici, I will be moving my blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts.  Click HERE  to subscribe (top of sidebar).  Note that if you are already subscribed (via e-mail) to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog.  However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again (using the same link as above).  Thank you!

 

 

March News from Dianne

“Imagine a world without Italy: Painting without Leonardo. Sculpture without Michelangelo. Literature without Dante. No Verdi choruses or Puccini arias. No Fellini films or Ferrari roar. Heavens uncharted, vines unplanted, tables bereft of pasta, pizza, and a Sicilian cake so divine that its bakers swore it could make the dead breathe again.”,

This is how LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World begins.

Western culture is indeed unimaginable without Italy. Its borders contain more  of UNESCO’s designated cultural treasures than any other nation. Its inhabitants created the first universities, banks, public libraries, and law and medical schools; mapped the moon (in 1651); split the atom; produced the first modern histories, satires, sonnets, and travelogues; invented the first working compass, battery, barometer, microscope, radio, and thermometer; garnered twenty Nobel Prizes; and bestowed upon the world the eternal gift of music.

But why Italy? How did a scrawny peninsula smaller than California  leave such an outsize imprint on Western culture?

After  decades of searching for answers,  I credit la passione italiana. My new book, available now for pre-order and on sale wherever books are sold on April 16, explores this primal force and its impact on food, wine,  romance, literature, art, music, religion, film, fashion--and very fast cars.

I’m excited about sharing the story of how la passione italiana seduced the world—in print and in person. Here is the initial list of places where I’ll be speaking this spring.  You can find details on the Events page of my website, which will be updated as we firm up additional dates for the summer and fall.

San Francisco:

Italian Cultural Institute, 6:30 p.m., April 17 (with Frances Mayes)

Libreria Pino, 6:30 p.m., April 24 (with Lisa Engelken)

Il Cenacolo (members and guests), noon, May 16

Marin County

Book Passage, Corte Madera, 4:00 p.m., April 28

East Bay

Stanford Women’s Book Club (private), morning, May 2

Orinda Books, 2:00 p.m., May 2

Houston

Italian Cultural & Community Center, 7:00 p.m., May 7 (with Rita Richardson of Friends of San Filippino)

New Orleans

American Italian Cultural Center, 6:00 p.m., May 8 (with Rita Richardson)

Atlanta

Ciancia Conversation Club, 7:00 p.m., May 9 (with Rita Richardson)

If you’re in Italy this June, I’ll be presenting my book at an event sponsored by the Friends of San Filippino  on Sunday, June 9, in the lovely Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino and in a lecture at the British Institute in Florence on Wednesday, June 12.

I look forward to meeting many of you in my travels. Come and discover la passione italiana!

                                                                                                                                                A presto,

                                                                                                                                                Dianne

Please note: I will be moving my blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts.  Click here  to subscribe (top of sidebar).  If you are already subscribed (via e-mail) to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog.  However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again (using the same link as above).  Thank you!

The New Italian Cinema Festival Comes to San Francisco

 

You don’t have to cross an ocean to meet some unforgettable Italians, appearing in a delectable assortment of movies in the New Italian Cinema festival, presented in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute and scheduled for the first weekend in December in San Francisco.

Among the featured films:

*AS NEEDED (Quanto Basta), a charming narrative about a hot-tempered chef performing community service at a school for adolescents with Asperger’s and his intense relationship with a teenage protégé with a perfect palate. Overcoming all odds, the young man cooks his way to the final round of a culinary competition for young chefs. Exceptional performances set against classic Tuscan settings.

*BOYS CRY (La terra dell’abbastanza), a raw, wrenching story of two young, happy-go-lucky friends training to work as baristas or waiters. A tragic accident thrusts them into the dark underworld of their rough Roman neighborhood as they turn to crime and violence as their only hope.

*EASY (Un viaggio facile) follows an overweight former go-kart champion known as Easy as he transports a coffin with a worker’s body back to his home village in the Ukraine. Along the way, the unlikely but lovable hero encounters unexpected perils and predicaments.

*HERE AND NOW (L'assoluto presente). In this searing portrait of modern malaise, three young men, restless for adventure, prowl the streets of Milan. Their violent attack of a random stranger sets off repercussions that change the course of their futures. 

*HOTEL GAGARIN, a fantastical feast of a movie about an unlikely crew of Italian film-makers and wannabes, duped into travelling to Armenia on a sham project. When war breaks out, they find themselves marooned in a grand hotel but, through the magic of movie-making, end up bringing the locals’ dreams to life. An absolute delight!

*THE LAST PROSECCO (Finché c’è prosecco c’è Speranza), a wry and witty mystery that takes us into the vineyards and behind-the-scenes dealings in the lush Veneto as an unflappable detective investigates the mysterious death of a local count. As sparkling as the bubbles in a glass of Prosecco.

*MANUEL, a debut film as compelling as Italy’s neorealistic classics, captures the turmoil of an eighteen-year-old. As he comes of age, Manuel struggles to do what he hopes is the right thing and desperately tries to win the relative freedom of house arrest for his long-incarcerated mother.

The Festival also presents several documentaries, including The Last Italian Cowboys (Gli ultimi butteri) on the legendary horsemen of western Tuscany; The Call (La Convocazione) on jurors serving in a Milan criminal court; and Open to the Public (Aperti al Pubblico) on the Neapolitan agency that manages—often chaotically--some 40,000 public housing units. Several directors and cinematographers will make personal appearances at the screenings.

Click here for the complete schedule, venues and tickets, including group tickets and discounted passes.

Andiamo al cinema! Let’s go to the movies!

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language and  MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. Click here to preorder her upcoming book, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World.

New Italian Cinema in San Francisco

 

Andiamo al cinema!

Let’s go to the movies!

A troupe of actors and escaped criminals shipwrecked on an island off Sardinia.  A sommelier who loses his “nose.”    A hairdresser named Fortunata (Lucky) struggling to create a new life.  Beautiful conjoined twins with exquisite voices who yearn to pursue their dreams. Young Italian emigrants to Cuba encountering unforeseen dangers.

These are some of the characters arriving in San Francisco for the 21st New Italian Cinema Festival, co-presented by the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and New Italian Cinema Events of Florence.  For five film-packed days, from November 8 to 12, nineteen movies will explore aspects of Italian life Americans rarely see.

The festival opens with La stoffa dei sogni (The Stuff of Dreams), a light-hearted, lusciously photographed adaption of The Tempest, winner of the David of Donatello prize for best screenplay, directed by Gianfranco Cabiddu.

Five documentaries focus on contemporary topics.  Castro takes viewers inside a community of families occupying an abandoned building in Rome. In La prima meta (First Try), a rugby coach trains inmates of a Bologna prison to compete with professional teams.  Bruno Bozzetto, an internationally acclaimed animator and director, offers a tour of his creative world in Bozzetto non troppo (Not Too Much Bozzetto).  Camminando sull’acqua (Walking on Water) chronicles the 1966 flood of Florence with never-before-seen color footage and first-hand recollections.  A special screening of Franca: Chaos & Creation provides a son’s loving portrait of his mother, Franca Sozzani, the legendary editor of Italian Vogue.

Seven films, all first or second releases by emerging young directors, are competing for the prestigious City of Florence Award, decided by audience ballot. They include:

     *Il padre d’Italia (English title: There Is a Light), a romantic drama about a rootless gay man and an uninhibited pregnant young woman in Turin.

     *Dopo la guerra (After the War), which follows a reformed terrorist living in France who flees with his daughter to avoid extradition to Italy on murder charges.

     *Cuori puri (Pure Hearts), a chance encounter between a devout teenager about to take a vow of chastity and a volatile young street tough.

     *La pelle dell’orso (English title: On the Trail of My Father), the tale of a father and son’s surreal hunt for a dangerous bear known as il diavolo (the devil).

     *I figli della notte (Children of the Night), a blend of a coming-of-age drama and horror movie, directed by Andrea De Sica, grandson of famed actor and director Vittorio De Sica.

     *In guerra per amore (At War for Love), a delightful romp that sets a bumbling man’s quest to win his beloved’s hand in marriage against the backdrop of the Allies’ invasion of his Sicilian homeland.

     *Moglie e marito (English title: Husband and Wife), a zany comedy about an unhappy married couple -- a neurosurgeon and a television personality -- inadvertently transported into each other's bodies.                                                                                                                                                                                   

     Click here to see a complete schedule, browse films and order tickets. The festival ends with Il duello del vino (The Duel of Wine), a comic jaunt through the esoteric realm of wine-tasting, with its stars appearing  at the closing party on November 12.

Words and Expressions

Regista — director

Recitare una parte — to play a part

Ciak! — the equivalent of the director’s “Action!”

Sceneggiatore — screenwriter

Girare un film, un video –- to shoot a movie, a video

Dianne Hales is the author of MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and  LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.

 

The Italian Language at the Movies

L'italiano al cinema, l'italiano nel cinema

Italian at the Cinema, Italian in the Cinema

The third week of October marks the seventeenth Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondo (week of the Italian language in the world). This year's theme is “L'italiano al cinema, l'italiano nel cinema” (Italian at the cinema, Italian in the cinema).   [Click here to download a new book on this subject, free this week.]

When cinema muto—silent films—first appeared in the early twentieth century, most Italians spoke in dialect; many were illiterate. After the lights went down in a theater, people would ask, “Who can read Italian?” and someone would shout out the titles. When talking pictures (film parlati) emerged in the 1930s, millions of Italians learned how to speak italiano standard, long used mainly by priests, scholars and aristocrats.

Diction schools, originally established to train radio announcers, churned out professional doppiatori (dubbers) for both foreign and homegrown films, a practice that continued through most of the twentieth century. In Italian theaters, international film stars like Greta Garbo, Laurel and Hardy, Gary Cooper and Mickey Mouse talked with “a Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth”—classic Florentine pronounced with Rome’s more melodious accent.

After the grandiose promises of fascism imploded,  filmmakers lost funding, equipment and studios but found their voice. Directors and scriptwriters, ammucchiati (heaped together) as they put it, collaborated like artisans in a Renaissance bottega (workshop).  With unflinching, often-excruciating honesty, they recounted the stories Italians were telling each other about their bitter struggles through dictatorship, occupation, war and devastation.

The neorealistic movies did more than help Italy come to terms with a terrible time in its history; they gave dialects back to Italians. Rossellini’s 1946 film Paisà followed the Allies’ advance up the Italian peninsula in six episodes, each reflecting a different local dialect. Visconti’s La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), shot in 1948 with Sicilian fishermen speaking and singing in their dialect, required an Italian voice-over on the mainland.

The most famous of Italian directors, Federico Fellini, invented new words that remain in use today. Vitelloni, the title of one of his first films, referred to big overgrown calves but took on new meaning as a derogatory description of aimless young men. Paparazzi, the plural of the name with which he baptized an aggressive photographer in La Dolce Vita, became the universal word for celebrity-chasing news hounds.

American classics took on Italian names, such as Mezzogiorno di fuoco (Midday of fire) for High Noon, Via col vento for Gone with the Wind and Viale del Tramonto for Sunset Boulevard. They also added some unforgettable expressions to the Italian lexicon: 

    *“Domani è un altro giorno” -- Rosella’s (Scarlett’s) famous line, “Tomorrow is another day”

    *“Francamente me ne infischio” -- Rhett’s response, “Frankly, I could care less” (Censors wouldn’t allow the phrase “I don’t give a damn.”)

    *“Suonala ancora, Sam” -- “Play it again, Sam,” from Casablanca

    *“Ma, dici a me?” -- “Are you talking to me?” from Taxi Driver  

    *“Che la forza sia con te”-- “May the Force be with you,” from Star Wars

    *“Amare significa non dover mai dire mi spiace” -- "Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” from Love Story

Click below to watch the trailer for La Dolce Vita.

Dianne Hales is the author of MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and  LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.