Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian poet, film director, writer, screenwriter, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure.
Two Women is a 1960 war drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica from a screenplay he co-wrote with Cesare Zavattini, based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia. The film stars Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown and Raf Vallone. It tells the story of a woman trying to protect her young daughter from the horrors of war. The story is fictional, but based on actual events of 1944 in Rome and rural Lazio, during the Marocchinate.
Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, GE, known as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, was an Italian writer, nobleman, and the last Prince of Lampedusa. He is most famous for his only novel, Il Gattopardo, which is set in his native Sicily during the Risorgimento. A taciturn, solitary, shy, and somewhat misanthropic aristocrat, he opened up only with a few close friends, and spent a great deal of his time reading and meditating. He said of himself as a child, "I was a boy who liked solitude, who preferred the company of things to that of people", and in 1954 wrote, "Of my sixteen hours of daily wakefulness, at least ten are spent in solitude."
Giuseppe Ungaretti was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic, and recipient of the inaugural 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A leading representative of the experimental trend known as Ermetismo ("Hermeticism"), he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned with futurism. Like many futurists, he took an irredentist position during World War I. Ungaretti debuted as a poet while fighting in the trenches, publishing one of his best-known pieces, L'allegria.
8+1⁄2 is an Italian 1963 avant-garde surrealist comedy-drama film directed and co-written by Federico Fellini. The metafictional narrative centers on Guido Anselmi, played by Marcello Mastroianni, a famous Italian film director who suffers from stifled creativity as he attempts to direct an epic science fiction film. Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Rossella Falk, Barbara Steele, and Eddra Gale portray the various women in Guido's life. The film is shot in black and white by cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo and features a soundtrack by Nino Rota, with costume and set designs by Piero Gherardi.
The Conformist is a novel by Alberto Moravia published in 1951, which details the life and desire for normality of a government official during Italy's fascist period. It is also known for the 1970 film adaptation by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Captain "Aarfy" Aardvark is a fictional character, a major antagonist in the 1961 novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Aarfy is the plump navigator in Yossarian's B-25, noted for being oblivious to incoming flak, getting lost on missions, and his omnipresent pipe. His nickname "Aarfy" is an abbreviation of his surname, Aardvark.
Alberto Moravia was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Moravia is best known for his debut novel Gli indifferenti and for the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista, the basis for the film The Conformist (1970) directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Other novels of his adapted for the cinema are Agostino, filmed with the same title by Mauro Bolognini in 1962; Il disprezzo, filmed by Jean-Luc Godard as Le Mépris ; La Noia (Boredom), filmed with that title by Damiano Damiani in 1963 and released in the US as The Empty Canvas in 1964 and La ciociara, filmed by Vittorio De Sica as Two Women (1960). Cédric Kahn's L'Ennui (1998) is another version of La Noia.
Roma is a 1972 semi-autobiographical comedy-drama film depicting director Federico Fellini's move from his native Rimini to Rome as a youth. The film was directed by Fellini from a screenplay by himself and Bernardino Zapponi. It is a homage to the city, shown in a series of loosely connected episodes set during both Rome's past and present. The plot is minimal, and the only "character" to develop significantly is Rome herself. Peter Gonzales plays the young Fellini, and the film features mainly newcomers in the cast.
The ratlines were systems of escape routes for German Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe from 1945 onwards in the aftermath of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in Latin America, particularly in Argentina, though also in Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Bolivia, as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, Spain, and Switzerland.
Alida Maria Laura, Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg, better known by her stage name Alida Valli, was an Italian actress who appeared in more than 100 films in a 70-year career, spanning from the 1930s to the early 2000s. She was one of the biggest stars of Italian film during the Fascist era, once being coined "the most beautiful woman in the world" by Benito Mussolini, but managed to find continued international success post-World War II. According to Frédéric Mitterrand, Valli was the only actress in Europe to equal Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo.
Renato Guttuso was an Italian painter and politician. His best-known works include Flight from Etna (1938–39), Crucifixion (1941) and La Vucciria (1974). Guttuso also designed for the theatre and did illustrations for books. Those for Elizabeth David’s Italian Food (1954), introduced him to many in the English-speaking world. A fierce anti-Fascist, "he developed out of Expressionism and the harsh light of his native land to paint landscapes and social commentary".
Alfred Hayes was a British-born screenwriter, television writer, novelist, and poet, who worked in Italy and the United States. His well-known poem about "Joe Hill" was set to music by Earl Robinson, and performed by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and many other artists.
Ennio Flaiano was an Italian screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist, and drama critic. Best known for his work with Federico Fellini, Flaiano co-wrote ten screenplays with the Italian director, including La Strada (1954), La Dolce Vita (1960), and 8½ (1963).
Honey Monster Puffs is a breakfast cereal manufactured in the United Kingdom from puffed wheat sweetened with sugar and honey, fortified with vitamins and iron. The cereal was originally sold as Sugar Puffs, but was re-branded in 2014. It was labelled as Honey Monster Sugar Puffs for a time. The cereal is known for its Honey Monster mascot, a large, hairy, yellow creature introduced in 1976.
Dacia Maraini is an Italian writer. Maraini's work focuses on women's issues, and she has written numerous plays and novels. She has won awards for her work, including the Formentor Prize for L'età del malessere (1963); the Premio Fregene for Isolina (1985); the Premio Campiello and Book of the Year Award for La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990); and the Premio Strega for Buio (1999). In 2013, Irish Braschi's biographical documentary I Was Born Travelling told the story of her life, focusing in particular on her imprisonment in a concentration camp in Japan during World War II and the journeys she made around the world with her partner Alberto Moravia and close friends Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas. In 2020 she adheres to Empathism.
The Conformist is a 1970 political drama film written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, based on the 1951 novel of the same title by Alberto Moravia. It stars Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda and Gastone Moschin. Set in 1930s Italy, The Conformist centers on a mid-level Fascist functionary (Trintignant) who is ordered to assassinate his former professor, an antifascist dissident in Paris. His mission is complicated after he begins an affair with the professor's wife (Sanda).
The Group is the best-known novel of American writer Mary McCarthy. It made New York Times Best Seller list in 1963 and remained there for almost two years. In 1966, United Artists released a film adaptation of the novel directed by Sidney Lumet.
Elizabeth "Betty" Hofstadt Francis is a fictional character on AMC's television series Mad Men, wife of Don Draper and mother of his three children. Blonde and beautiful but emotionally distant and immature, she spends the bulk of the series slowly growing as a person amid the social and political turmoil of the 1960s. The character's appearance is often compared to that of Grace Kelly, with the similarities between the two also drawn during the first season of the series.
Mario Pannunzio was an Italian journalist and politician. As a journalist he was the director in charge of the daily newspaper Risorgimento Liberale in the 1940s and of the weekly political magazine Il Mondo in the 1950s. As a politician he was a co-founder of the revived Italian Liberal Party in the 1940s and then of the Radical Party in 1955.
