Inspired by the journey that I will soon make, today I want to write about Sicily. Documenting myself on this land so rich in culture, history and traditions, I dusted off books by Sicilian authors and rediscovered films set in the villages of this splendid region. A place that boasts a crystalline sea, a Baroque-style city, natural parks and palaces declared heritage of Unesco, Sicily is also the home of historical writers, who have marked Italian literature, as well as being a place of inspiration for great directors.
Pages and pages should be written about Sicily and its characters who have marked its culture but, given the limited space here, I want to offer you an overview of the writers and directors that I personally prefer.
If I say Sicilian literature, the first author comes to mind and Giovanni Verga, who I link to the years of my schooling. Born in 1840 in Vizzini, in the province of Catania, Verga was one of the greatest exponents of literary realism thanks to his narrative style characterized by rigorous descriptions and devoid of personal opinions. His novels are set in the Sicilian countryside, where he spent his childhood and adolescence. Verga is best remembered for the ambitious project of the cycle of the vanquished, a set of five novels through which to tell the man’s struggle for survival in a constantly evolving society. However, only the first two novels, I Malavoglia (1881) and Mastro don Gesualdo (1889), will be completed and published,
Another great Sicilian writer and certainly Luigi Pirandello, born in Agrigento in 1867 and Nobel Prize for literature in 1934. Pirandello, who in addition to writing novels also dedicates himself to dramaturgy and poetry, and best known for the late Mattia Pascal (1904) and One, None, One Hundred Thousand (1926). His novels are extraordinarily modern for the topics covered and many reflections that emerge from them can be applied to today’s reality: already at the time Pirandello, strongly pessimistic, grasps the limits of the human being trapped in the roles that society attributes to him, with consequent crisis of the ego and loss of one’s own identity, in a reality characterized by incommunicability.
Another writer who left his mark on our literature and certainly Leonardo Sciascia, born in Racalmuto, in the province of Agrigento, in 1921. A man of great values, Sciascia was a writer, journalist, elementary school teacher and politician. From his pen were born detective novels such as Il Giorno della Civetta (1961) and To each his own (1965), as well as Il Consiglio d’Egitto (1963) set in 1700 Palermo and the collection of short stories Gli unci di Sicilia ( 1957). In his writings, Sciascia draws a clear profile of our society, describing it with pessimism and mistrust.
From the pages of the novels of these writers you can get to know the truest Sicily, the one made up of traditions and folklore, but also through the cinema we can learn a lot about this land and the people who live there. A few decades away from Verga, Pirandello and Sciascia, there are other artists, this time directors, who have told Sicily through their films.
Among the contemporary Sicilian directors stands Giuseppe Tornatore, a native of Bagheria (Palermo), the city that inspired him for his film Baaria (2009). Baaria is just Bagheria, in dialect, and is the place where the events of Peppino Torrenuova and his family take place from the thirties to the eighties. The viewer follows the events of the life of Peppino, a young son of peasants who decides to rebel against his family, first by joining the Communist Party and then falling in love with Mannina and implementing the so-called “fuitina” by locking himself in the house with her. Following Peppino for decades, the viewer follows at the same time the historical, social and political events that have involved Sicily, from fascism to the landing of the allies, from the referendum for the Republic to the arrival of television, as well as the presence of the mafia on the territory.
Tornatore had already chosen the places in Sicily to set his films, for example Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988). We tell the story of Toto, a well-known director who decides to return to his Sicilian country of origin, Giancaldo (an imaginary village, which takes its name from the mountain above Bagheria), on the occasion of the funeral of a man who marked the his childhood and made him discover cinema and a passion for directing. Toned in his native land, Toto relives with nostalgia the most beautiful moments of his childhood, all linked to Giancaldo and Sicily.
Another director, Marco Tullio Giordana, although not of Sicilian origins, has chosen to tell about Sicily and, above all, about a character who has marked its history. This is the film The Hundred Steps (2000), which tells the story of Peppino Impastato, killed in 1978 by the mafia, against which he had openly rebelled. The young Peppino lives in Cinisi (Palermo) and his house is exactly one hundred steps from that of Don Tano, the local mafia boss. Peppino is tired of the climate of indifference and silence in which the town and his own family, affiliated with Cosa Nostra, live and decides to openly challenge the boss and the mafia. He also founded the historic Radio Aut, from which he broadcasts not only excellent music, but also personal speeches and outbursts on the mafia and the omerta that feeds it. Become an uncomfortable character,
The authors and directors I told you about are nothing but drops in the ocean which is Sicilian culture. There are numerous other Sicilian writers in addition to those mentioned here and, certainly, there are many other films set in Sicily and which tell the most significant characters. This just wants to be a starting point to discover, according to your tastes, what Sicily can offer us in literature and cinema, a land that has a lot to offer. Valentina Morlacchi 8 August 2015
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