Vittorio De Sica was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement.
Licio Gelli was an Italian Freemason, criminal and terrorist. A Fascist volunteer in his youth, he is chiefly known for his role in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. He was revealed in 1981 as being the Venerable Master of the clandestine masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2).
Alberto Sordi was an Italian actor, comedian, director, singer, and screenwriter.
Mario Alberto Ettore Monicelli was an Italian film director and screenwriter, one of the masters of the commedia all'italiana. He was nominated six times for an Oscar, and received the Golden Lion for his career.
Bernardo Provenzano was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia clan known as the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone, and de facto the boss of bosses. His nickname was Binnu u tratturi because, in the words of one informant, "he mows people down". Another nickname was il ragioniere, due to his apparently subtle and low-key approach to running his crime empire, at least in contrast to some of his more violent predecessors.
Pietro Valpreda was an Italian anarchist, poet, dancer, and novelist. He was sentenced to prison on charges of being responsible for the Piazza Fontana bombing in December 1969. In 1987, he was acquitted by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation for lack of evidence.
Benedetto Santapaola, better known as Nitto, is a prominent mafioso from Catania, the main city and industrial centre on Sicily's east coast. His nickname is il cacciatore, because of his passion for shooting game.
Il Marchese del Grillo is a 1981 Italian comedic motion picture directed by Mario Monicelli, starring Alberto Sordi as the title character. The film depicts early nineteenth-century episodes in the life of a nobleman in Rome. Loosely based on folkloric accounts of the real Onofrio del Grillo, this character plays a number of pranks, one even involving Pope Pius VII. The famous line Io sò io, e voi non siete un cazzo, is appropriated from Belli's 1831 sonnet, "The Sovrans of the Old World".
Commedia all'italiana, or Italian-style comedy, is an Italian film genre born in Italy in the 1950s and developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely considered to have started with Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street in 1958, and derives its name from the title of Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style (1961). According to most of the critics, La Terrazza (1980) by Ettore Scola is the last work considered part of the commedia all'italiana.
Giuseppe Musolino, also known as the "Brigante Musolino" or the "King of Aspromonte," was an Italian brigand and folk hero. Musolino received great notoriety and admiration in Calabria for escaping prison and committing a string of murders in retaliation for false testimony delivered against him while on trial; his later, second, trial after his recapture was subject to extensive international media coverage and attention.
The Scientific Cardplayer, also known as The Scopone Game, is a 1972 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Luigi Comencini. The screenplay was written by Rodolfo Sonego. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
Rosario "Sal" Gambino is an Italian mobster in the Gambino crime family. He became nationally known when he and his brothers set up a multimillion dollar heroin cartel during the 1970s and 1980s. At the turn of the century he made headline news again when members of his family were suspected of trying to get him a presidential pardon through bribery.
Salvatore Riina, called Totò, was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s with the assassinations of Antimafia Commission prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, resulting in widespread public outcry and a major crackdown by the authorities. He was also known by the nicknames la belva and il capo dei capi.
Mid-Century Loves is a 1954 Italian anthology historical melodrama film consisting of five segments directed by Glauco Pellegrini, Pietro Germi, Mario Chiari, Roberto Rossellini and Antonio Pietrangeli.
Rocco Morabito is an Italian criminal and a member of the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia-type organisation in Calabria. Before being arrested in Uruguay on 4 September 2017, he had been a fugitive since 1994 being wanted for drug trafficking, Mafia association and other serious crimes. In June 2019, Morabito escaped from prison, and was arrested again in Brazil in May 2021.
An Italian in America is a 1967 Commedia all'italiana film co-written and directed by Alberto Sordi and starring the same Sordi opposite Vittorio De Sica. Screenwriter Rodolfo Sonego was inspired for the plot by the participation of one of his friends, the painter Salvatore Scarpitta, to the NBC program This Is Your Life.
The term State-Mafia Pact describes an alleged series of negotiations between important Italian government officials and Cosa Nostra members that began after the period of the 1992 and 1993 terror attacks by the Sicilian Mafia with the aim to reach a deal to stop the attacks; according to other sources and hypotheses, it began even earlier. In summary, the supposed cornerstone of the deal was an end to "the Massacre Season" in return for a reduction in the detention measures provided for Italy's Article 41-bis prison regime. 41-bis was the law by which the Antimafia pool led by Giovanni Falcone had condemned hundreds of mafia members to the "hard prison regime". The negotiation hypothesis has been the subject of long investigations, both by the courts and in the media. In 2021, the Court of Appeal of Palermo acquitted a close associate of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, while upholding the sentences of the mafia bosses. This ruling was confirmed by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation in 2023.
The Circonvallazione massacre, in Italian Strage della Circonvallazione, is a Cosa Nostra attack that took place on June 16, 1982 on the Palermo ring road. The attack was directed against Catanese boss Alfio Ferlito, who was transferred from Enna to the Trapani jail, and died with the three escort carabinieri and the 22-year-old Giuseppe Di Lavore, the driver of the private company that had the transportation of prisoners, who had replaced his father. The mandators of this massacre were Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, in favor to Nitto Santapaola, who was in a year-long war with Ferlito for the predominance on the city of Catania territory.
Mario Milano is an Italian Catholic bishop. He currently holds the title of Archbishop-Bishop Emeritus of Aversa, having been granted the personal title of archbishop, and is the former Archbishop of Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi-Conza-Nusco-Bisaccia.
