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      A Beloved Comedian’s Film on Domestic Abuse Draws Italians, in Droves

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      Paola Cortellesi’s directorial debut is kindling discussions about domestic violence and women’s rights. It’s also become one of Italy’s highest-grossing films.A movie centered on domestic abuse isn’t an obvious crowd-pleaser, even when directed by and starring one of Italy’s most popular performers.Yet exactly such a film, “C’è ancora domani” (“There’s Still Tomorrow”), the directorial debut from the comedian Paola Cortellesi, immediately shot to No. 1 at the national box office after opening in theaters in late October, and this week became one of the country’s 10 highest-grossing films ever.“Certainly, I’m surprised,” Cortellesi said during an interview in a bar in her leafy Rome neighborhood, though she added, “It’s a good film, and I am satisfied with what I did.” She attributed the movie’s widespread popularity to “having touched a raw nerve in the country.”The film — which manages to be both heart-wrenching and uplifting — arrived at a time when domestic violence, femicide and women’s rights have dominated public discourse since the death last month of a 22-year-old student, Giulia Cecchettin, in a case in which her former boyfriend is being investigated over her murder.“There’s Still Tomorrow” is set in 1946, in a Rome still struggling with poverty and the fallout from World War II. Cortellesi, 50, who co-wrote the screenplay, said she had been mulling over the film’s themes — disparity, domestic violence and women’s rights — “for a long time.”“I wanted to make a contemporary movie set in the past, because I think that unfortunately many things have remained the same,” Cortellesi said. “Naturally there have been advances, rights have changed, laws have changed, but not completely — that is, proportionately, not in the mentality.”The film captures the quotidian struggles of the protagonist, Delia, whose husband abuses her in a world where women’s roles are undervalued and their opinions scornfully ignored. It is loosely inspired by the tales Cortellesi’s grandmothers told her as a child about what it was like to be a woman during that time.Cortellesi, second from right, in a scene from “C’è ancora domani” (“There’s Still Tomorrow”).Claudio IannoneThe movie is in black and white — as the filmmaker said she always imagined her grandmothers’ old stories to be — a choice that is a deliberate nod to the neorealist film tradition that blossomed in Italy in the wake of World War II. Cinema buffs will also notice that for the first eight minutes the film is shot with a 4:3 aspect ratio, which dominated early cinema and television, but then the screen widens, as the opening credits roll to “Calvin,” a 1998 song by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.Chiara Tognolotti, a professor of History of Italian Cinema at the University of Pisa, noted that Cortellesi was following a common theme of early Italian cinema by portraying “women who try to change their existences, to overturn the typical script a woman was supposed to stick to.”The film explores the tension between the “patriarchal structure that informs Italian society” and a desire to recognize the importance of women’s societal role, “which in fact already exists,” but isn’t always acknowledged, Tognolotti said.Cortellesi attributed the movie’s unexpected widespread popularity to “having touched a raw nerve in the country.”Stephanie Gengotti for The New York TimesCortellesi has been entertaining Italian audiences for decades. She honed her writing and acting chops as a comedian on radio and television, where she used her talent for mimicry and an euphonious voice to impersonate famous singers — mostly Italian, but also Cher, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez.Her stage and television repertoire includes several monologues that use comedy to tackle difficult issues like chauvinism and domestic abuse.She began working in cinema alongside some of Italy’s most popular comics as well as leading men, winning a shelf-full of acting awards. When she started writing screenplays about a decade ago, her stories often focused on issues of social justice involving women, “maybe joking about them,” but also making a point, she said.Moving into the director’s chair felt like a natural progression: After writing several scripts that were made into films by others, she decided that she wanted to bring her vision to life in addition to her words. “I thought that maybe the time had come to tell my story in my way,” she said. Producers who had worked with Cortellesi in the past agreed and decided to back her. “It was the right time,” she said.They could also count on her appeal to audiences.“I think we shouldn’t undervalue Cortellesi’s star power,” said Tognolotti, the cinema history professor. “She’s very popular through television, through her films,” which “appeal to a vast public” through the variety of roles she has played. “That’s one of the reasons this film has been so successful.”The film, Cortellesi’s directorial debut, immediately shot to No. 1 at the Italian box office.Luisa CarcavaleBeyond the box office boom, “There’s Still Tomorrow” has taken off in other ways that Cortellesi could not have imagined.It was shown in the Italian Senate to mark the United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Nov. 25. That week, more than 55,000 teenage students watched the film at cinemas throughout Italy, followed by a live-streamed question-and-answer session with the director and some of the cast. And secondary-school teachers have written Cortellesi to say that they have brought their classes to see the film so that they could discuss the issues it raises.Elena Biaggioni, the vice president of D.i. Re, a national anti-violence network run by women’s organizations, said that by reaching large audiences, the film was contributing to nationwide cultural awareness about domestic violence, adding to efforts spearheaded by women’s groups, the news media and parliamentary commissions that have looked into femicide. “I hope it’s a propelling force,” Biaggioni said.Cortellesi said she hadn’t set out to make a propaganda film. But she wants Italy’s younger generations, including her daughter, who is 10, to know about the history of women’s rights in Italy. “She has to know that these rights have to be defended, and that they can be put at risk,” she said.She deliberately wrote the role of the abusive husband as a loser — “frightening, but also foolish, because he’s an idiot” — so that he wouldn’t be anyone whom young men might look up to. “There couldn’t be even the slightest risk that boys would want to emulate him,” she said. “When they see him, they have to say, ‘I want to be anything but,’ because he has no appeal.”In the immediate future, Cortellesi is touring with the film, in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. “I want it to have a long life,” she said.She has also found that she has a taste for directing. “I’m not giving it up,” she said. More

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      Marina Cicogna, Italy’s First Major Female Film Producer, Dies at 89

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      A countess from an influential Italian family, she charted her own course and produced films by the likes of Pasolini and Zeffirelli.Marina Cicogna, an Italian countess who became her country’s first major female film producer, guiding to the screen celebrated films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Zeffirelli and Elio Petri, died on Nov. 4 at her home in Rome. She was 89.Her death was announced by La Biennale di Venezia, the organizer of the Venice Film Festival. No cause was given.Rising to prominence in an era when the only female names on film posters were often those of actresses, Ms. Cicogna (pronounced chi-CONE-ya) became one of the most powerful women in European cinema, as both a producer and a distributor.She started from a lofty perch. Her maternal grandfather, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, was an industrialist and statesman who served various government roles, including as Italy’s minister of finance under Mussolini. He also founded the Venice Film Festival. In the mid-1960s, when Ms. Cicogna was in her early 30s, she and her brother Bino took control of her family’s production and distribution company, Euro International Films.Even so, she faced challenges: working with imperious male auteurs; earning the respect of the country’s left-leaning cultural leaders despite her titled upbringing; and openly dating women as well as men at a time when such topics were rarely discussed in public by figures of authority.Ms. Cicogna in 2009. She brought prominent films to the screen, including Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Medea” and “Teorema,” as well as Elio Petri’s “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” which won the 1971 Academy Award for best foreign-language film.Nick Harvey/WireImage, via Getty ImagesNor was her path as a woman always easy. “At the time I didn’t think about it,” she said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Roma this year. “But at the end of the day, yes, the intention to put you down was there, definitely.”Among the prominent films she produced or distributed were “Medea” (1969), Pasolini’s hypnotic reimagining of the Euripides tragedy, starring the opera singer Maria Callas; “Teorema” (1968), also directed by Pasolini, in which Terence Stamp plays an enigmatic stranger who seduces, one by one, members of a wealthy family in Milan; “Brother Sun Sister Moon” (1972), Zeffirelli’s lush retelling of the life of St. Francis of Assisi; and “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” Petri’s Kafkaesque thriller, which won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 1971.Ms. Cicogna also had three films at the 1967 Venice Film Festival, including Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour,” starring Catherine Deneuve as a Paris housewife who secretly works at a bordello, which won the festival’s highest prize, the Golden Lion. In addition, she put her stamp on the proceedings by throwing a lavish party that became festival lore.“I didn’t give a big ball, but rather said that everyone could dress as they wanted, as long as they were in white and yellow or white and gold,” Ms. Cicogna said in a 2013 interview with T, The New York Times’s style magazine. “I sent two small Learjets, one to Corsica to pick up Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the other to Rome to pick up Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim.”Such obvious displays of wealth would go out of fashion following the leftist student uprisings in Europe in 1968. “You couldn’t have a big party without hurting people’s feelings,” she continued. “You couldn’t go around with a Rolls-Royce without being thrown eggs at.”Ms. Cicogna, center, with the actresses Gina Lollobrigida, left, and Jane Fonda at the lavish party the countess threw for the 1967 Venice Film Festival. The party became festival lore.Giorgio Lotti/Mondadori, via Getty ImagesCountess Marina Cicogna Mozzoni Volpi di Misurata was born on May 29, 1934, in Rome, the daughter of Count Cesare Cicogna Mozzoni, a banker, and Countess Annamaria Volpi di Misurata, who purchased Euro International Films, ultimately handing control over to her children.Growing up, Ms. Cicogna was a cinema lover who mingled among the children of David O. Selznick, the producer of “Gone With the Wind,” and other film heavyweights at the Venice festival.After an education in Italy, she enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., where she roomed with Barbara Warner, whose father was the Hollywood film mogul Jack Warner. During a school break, Ms. Warner invited her to California.“I never went back,” Ms. Cicogna told T. “I stayed for three months in California at the Warners’.”She later studied photography in the United States, brokering her platinum connections to shoot luminaries like Ezra Pound and Marilyn Monroe in candid moments.Her early forays into the film business included distributing a 1967 West German film, “Helga.” “It was the first time you saw a birth, a woman producing a child, on film,” she told T. “I decided we should publicize it. We put ambulances at the exit of the film, saying that people would faint when they saw that.”Ms. Cicogna in 1967 with the director Luis Buñuel, whose “Belle de Jour” won the Venice festival’s highest prize, the Golden Lion.Giorgio Lotti/Mondadori Portfolio, via Everett CollectionShe was at times linked romantically with the likes of Warren Beatty and Alain Delon, but she also spent decades in a relationship with Florinda Bolkan, a Brazilian model and actress.After they split, she began a long relationship with Benedetta Gardona, a woman more than two decades her junior, whom Ms. Cicogna legally adopted for financial reasons. Ms. Gardona remained her companion until Ms. Cicogna’s death. (Complete information on survivors was not immediately available).Ms. Cicogna looked back on her career highlights of the 1960s and ’70s in the 2021 documentary “Marina Cicogna: La Vita e Tutto il Resto” (“Life and Everything Else”), directed by Andrea Bettinetti, as well as her autobiography, “Ancora Spero: Una Storia di Vita e di Cinema” (“I Still Hope: A Story of Life and Cinema”), published this year.Still, in a 2017 video interview, she expressed regret that she had not remained in the film business. “If I had to look back, I should have never stopped producing, although Italian cinematography has not been the same since. It’s not so great,” she said, adding: “I am also a person who is very torn between the European rather lazy aesthetic way of life and the American more creative, more active way of life.”“I’ve been more European than active,” she said. “I haven’t done as much as I should have done. But I can’t say I’m sorry. That’s the way it was, and that’s it.” More

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      An Operatic Mess at the San Carlo Theater

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      The San Carlo in Naples is at the center of an offstage drama in which each of two respected figures believes he is the house’s rightful leader.It’s hard to gauge whether the drama currently playing out behind the scenes at the San Carlo Opera House in Naples will end as “opera seria” (serious) or an “opera buffa” (comedy).Italy’s oldest opera house currently has two respected figures, each of whom believes he is its rightful general director after a convoluted dispute that critics say has cast the theater, and Italy, in an unflattering light.It has all the elements of high drama — conflict, tension, perhaps even vendetta — and is playing out like a farce, or, in the words of some Italian news outlets, “un pasticcio”: a mess.A quick plot synopsis:Act I. In May, Italy’s government passed a law that said general directors of the country’s 13 state-run opera theaters could not serve beyond their 70th birthday. That immediately terminated the contract of Stéphane Lissner, who had turned 70 in January, midway through his term as the general director of the San Carlo.He was the only general director immediately affected by the law, and there was open speculation in the news media that the law, which was passed as an urgent measure, had been drafted to specifically single him out.The French-born Lissner, who ran La Scala in Milan for a decade and the Paris Opera for six years, warned the board of the theater that he would challenge his termination.Act II. In August, the theater hired Carlo Fuortes, 64, as a replacement, not long after he resigned as the chief executive of Italy’s national broadcaster, RAI.Fuortes is an experienced manager who was praised for turning around the Rome Opera during a stint there as general director from 2013 to 2021. Italian news outlets widely reported that the hard-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wanted to replace Fuortes in the broadcast position with its own nominee. It was said that the San Carlo was meant to be a consolation prize for Fuortes, who began there on Sept. 1.Stéphane Lissner was the general director at San Carlo until May, when the Italian government passed a law stating that general directors at opera theaters could not serve beyond age 70.Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesMr. Lissner was replaced by Carlo Fuortes, who before he was hired at the San Carlo, was the head of Italy’s national broadcaster, RAI.Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockAct III. On Sept. 12, a labor court reinstated Lissner, after his lawyers challenged the grounds for his dismissal. The culture ministry told the theater board to reinstate him, which it did on Monday evening, according to his lawyer. (The board declined repeated requests for comment.) Lissner is expected to return to Naples from Paris, where he has been since June, as soon as this week. But the board has also announced it would file appeal the court’s decision.What happens in Act IV remains to be seen. A review panel within the same labor court will now examine the decision to reinstate Lissner, who is again legally the theater’s general director. His lawyer, Pietro Fioruzzi, pointed out the “irony” that his client had been reinstated by the same theater board that was appealing that decision.“What happened is certainly not worthy of the history of Naples and the history of the San Carlo,” said Riccardo Realfonzo, an economics professor who sits on the board.Realfonzo had contested several management decisions at the theater, including some hirings and Lissner’s remuneration, which Realfonzo said was too high. He has also refused to sign off on the theater’s last two budgets, because they were not balanced, he said.As a representative of a regional government that funds the theater, he was concerned about the potential financial fallout in the event that the theater had to end up paying both general directors, or paying off one of them. He protested by not attending meetings.Alberto Mattioli, an opera critic who just published a book about Italy’s opera houses and their history, said the hastily passed law that ended Lissner’s run was also in line with Italy’s hard-right nationalist government drive to “put Italians first” at the top of the country’s cultural institutions, pointing out that the people it initially affected both happened to be French.Dominique Meyer, who runs La Scala and is also from France, would have to leave in 2025 when he turns 70. Officials at the Milan theater said legal experts were examining the new law to determine whether it would apply at La Scala, which is governed by a different statute than other opera theaters.Mattioli said that by using the San Carlo as a pawn in political deal-making the government had diminished the standing of the theater, one of Italy’s most prestigious institutions. “Everything that’s happened confirms that Italy is a really incomprehensible country,” Mattioli said.Fuortes has not spoken publicly about the situation and his lawyer declined to comment. His standing at the theater after Lissner’s reinstatement is unclear, but he has threatened legal repercussions if he is dismissed, according to a letter from his lawyer to the San Carlo board that was shared with The New York Times by a third party.It could take weeks for the review panel to hear the appeal. In the meantime, the drama is certain to continue. More

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      Toto Cutugno, Singer Whose ‘L’Italiano’ Struck a Chord, Dies at 80

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      The nostalgic ballads and catchy pop songs he wrote paved the way for an international career. He sold more than 100 million albums worldwide.Toto Cutugno, an Italian singer and songwriter whose 1983 hit song “L’Italiano” became a worldwide sensation and was still hugely popular decades later, died on Tuesday in Milan. He was 80.His longtime manager, Danilo Mancuso, said the cause of Mr. Cutugno’s death, at San Raffaele Hospital, was cancer.In a career that began when he was in his late teens, Mr. Cutugno sold more than 100 million albums worldwide.“He was able to build melodies that remained stuck in the audience’s mind and heart,” Mr. Mancuso, who had worked with Mr. Cutugno for 20 years, said in a phone interview. “The refrains of his most popular songs are so melodic.”Mr. Cutugno’s career began with a stint, first as a drummer and then as a pianist, with Toto e i Tati, a small local band in Northern Italy. He soon branched out into songwriting.His talent for writing memorable songs earned him collaborations with famous French singers, like Joe Dassin, for whom he wrote “L’été Indien” and “Et si Tu N’Existais pas,” and Dalida, with whom he wrote the disco hit “Monday, Tuesday … Laissez-Moi Danser.” He also wrote songs for the French pop star Johnny Hallyday and for famed Italian singers like Domenico Modugno, Adriano Celentano, Gigliola Cinquetti and Ornella Vanoni. International stars like Celine Dion sang his songs as well.But Mr. Cutugno also found success singing his own compositions, first with Albatros, a disco band, which took third place at the Sanremo Festival of Italian Song in 1976. He then began a solo career and garnered his first national recognition in Italy in 1980, when he won the festival with “Solo Noi.”Mr. Cutugno in performance in Rome in 2002. “He was able to build melodies that remained stuck in the audience’s mind and heart,” his manager said.Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe returned to the festival three years later with “L’Italiano.” He finished in fifth place, but the song, a hymn to a country straining to rebuild after World War II — marked by symbols of Italy like espresso, the Fiat Seicento and a president who had fought as a partisan during the conflict — became tremendously popular. It is still one of Italy’s best-known songs, played on television and at street festivals across the country, as well as a nostalgic reminder of their homeland for expatriates elsewhere.The song’s success paved the way for an international career: Mr. Cutugno went on to tour over the years in the United States, Europe, Turkey and Russia.“Russia was his second homeland,” said Mr. Mancuso, his manager. “The only Western entertainment that Russian televisions broadcast at the time was the Sanremo song festival, and Toto was often on, and was appreciated.”He added that Mr. Cutugno’s nostalgic tunes were reminiscent of the musical styles of Eastern Europe, and especially Russia, which made them instantly familiar to those audiences.In 2019, Mr. Cutugno’s ties to Russia got him into trouble with some Ukrainian politicians, who wanted to stop him from performing in Kyiv, the nation’s capital. Mr. Cutugno denied that he supported Russia in its aggression against Ukraine and noted that he had rejected a booking in Crimea after Russia reclaimed it in 2014. He eventually did perform in Kyiv.In 1990, Mr. Cutugno won the Eurovision Song Contest. He was one of only three Italians to have done so — the others were Ms. Cinquetti in 1964 and the rock band Maneskin in 2021. His winning song, “Insieme: 1992” (“Together: 1992”), was a ballad dedicated to the European Union and its political integration. That same year, Ray Charles agreed to sing an English-language version of a song by Mr. Cutugno at the Sanremo festival; Mr. Cutugno called the collaboration “the greatest professional satisfaction” of his lifetime.Mr. Cutugno, who was known for his emotional guitar playing and for shaking his longish black hair when he sang, also had a stint as a television presenter in Italy.Toto Cutugno was born Salvatore Cutugno on July 7, 1943, in the small town of Tendola, near Fosdinovo, in the mountains of Italy’s northwest between the regions of Tuscany and Liguria. His father, Domenico Cutugno, was a Sicilian Navy marshal, and his mother, Olga Mariani, was a homemaker.He went to secondary school in the city of La Spezia, where he grew up, and took private music lessons that included piano and accordion.He is survived by his wife, Carla Cutugno; his son, Niko; and two younger siblings, Roberto and Rosanna Cutugno. More

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      Can a Rapper Change Italy’s Mind About Migrants?

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      In mid-March, weeks after a ship wrecked on Italy’s Calabrian coast, the waters of the Mediterranean Sea were still releasing ashore what remained: planks of wood, engine parts, children’s shoes, bodies. The season of drowning migrants had come early this year.Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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      in Television

      ‘We Are a Romantic Country’: On the Set of a Steamy Hit in Italy

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      Italy falls for “Mare Fuori,” a television melodrama about the inmates of a juvenile detention center who pass the time making out — when not scowling at or occasionally stabbing one another.Before dawn, the teenage girls convened outside the Naples Navy base where the wildly popular Italian television show “Mare Fuori” is filmed.“We want to show them all of our love,” said Federica Montuori, 16, who with her fellow fans unfurled white sheets with spray-painted messages expressing how the lead actors, who play star-crossed — and mobbed-up — lovers in a juvenile prison, “belong in our hearts.”On the wall beside her, the scrawls on the bricks are love letters to “the most beautiful series in the world” and its main characters. “Ti Amo Carmine,” read one rectangle. “Ti Amo Rosa,” read another.Other fans have dived from nearby piers and swum to the back of the set, vexing gate guards charged with keeping them at bay. During the day, their screams have ruined takes.“We had to stop shooting,” said Ivan Silvestrini, the show’s director. “They won’t listen. It’s pretty unbearable, but what can you do?”Maria Esposito, who plays Rosa Ricci in the series, and Mr. Caiazzo, who plays Carmine, filming a scene for the fourth season.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesItaly has fallen for “Mare Fuori,” or “The Sea Beyond,” an often gritty but always soapy melodrama about the inmates of a coed juvenile detention center who pass the time stealing kisses — when not scowling at or occasionally stabbing one another.Entering its fourth season, the show, set and steeped in Naples street life, is “Saved by the Bell” meets “Scared Straight” meets “Gomorrah” meets Skinemax. It has been a smash hit on Italian television and is a fixture on Netflix Italy’s most-watched list. During Carnevale, children dressed up as the precocious gangsters, with leather hot pants and jackets, tank tops, lots of chains and toy guns.Its hypnotic theme song, recorded by an actor who plays an inmate on the show and who is also an increasingly popular singer in Italy, has been streamed 35 million times and gone platinum. Some fans have kept vigil singing the chorus outside the set.The series tells the intertwining stories of a hodgepodge of attractive delinquents, in a fictitious juvenile hall inspired by a real one — where the sexes are separated — on an island off Naples. Most of the characters are hardened thugs from competing Naples mob families, but there is also a rich Milanese piano prodigy jailed after a night out in Naples goes terribly awry, and a manipulative goth goddess who licks faces, cuts herself and kills for fun.The cast of mostly unknowns keeps the budget low, but the ensemble approach is also creating stars to supply Italy’s insatiable and often schlocky television-cinema complex.The show has turned Ms. Esposito and Mr. Caiazzo into celebrities. Fans can often be found surrounding the Navy base where the show is filmed, and even diving off nearby piers to swim to the back of the set.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe producers market the show as a dialect-heavy portrayal of Naples reality with a redemption message. But following on other Italian hits, like “Baby,” about underage prostitutes, the show has also underscored Italy’s infatuation with steamy young adult programming.“We have realized that these stories of young lovers, people like a lot,” said Roberto Sessa, one of the show’s producers. “In the end, we are a romantic country.”The plot revolves around Carmine Di Salvo, the reluctant and seemingly meek scion of a crime family who really just wants to be a barber, but who lands behind bars after stabbing a would-be rapist of his girlfriend in the neck with scissors. Incarcerated, he finds a nemesis in Ciro, the prince of the competing crime family, who eventually tries to kill Carmine and his piano-playing cellmate but who ends up getting stabbed with a screwdriver.Things really took off in the third season, this year, when Rosa Ricci, the late Ciro’s sister, shoots a guy to get into jail so she can settle scores with Carmine. In classic Montague and Capulet style, she falls for Carmine instead.A scene from the third season of “Mare Fuori,” whose costume director said “skin, skin, skin” is an important part of the show’s look.Fosforo PressOn a street in Naples, a fan of the show, Domenico Marino, 18, and his girlfriend considered taking home a souvenir pillow — displayed next to similar shirts, mugs and key chains — of the scantily clad Rosa featuring her catchphrase (“I am Rosa Ricci, and who the [expletive] are you to tell me what I need to do”). He decided on a cushion of her late brother Ciro instead.On Naples’s Via San Gregorio Armeno, famous for its Christmas nativity scenes, a crowd gathered to admire terra cotta figurines of the cast standing in front of the juvenile prison, displayed next to a manger.“We keep making them as long as there is demand, even for the ones who get killed,” said Elio Cassano, 60. “They don’t look at the soccer players or the Holy Family in the crèche, they form crowds around ‘Mare Fuori.’”One of the admirers, Chiara D’Amico, 18, a Sicilian with a crush on Carmine, said the juvenile prison reminded her of high school. Her mother, Santina Santonocito, 40, said she liked the show because it taught children “not to make errors — life inside is not so easy.”Pillows with photographs of the show’s characters on sale in Naples.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesElio Cassano arranging figurines of the show’s characters outside a shop in Naples.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThey were visiting Naples, with plans to see its castles and eat pizza. “But the first thing on the list,” Ms. D’Amico said, was a pilgrimage to the set.Shortly before noon, a black van carrying Maria Esposito, 19, who plays Rosa, rolled up to the gate. She blew kisses from the passenger seat, sending the fans into a tizzy.On the set — which looked like a seaside high school with a soccer court, a foosball table and a black piano that had hearts traced in its dust — she stopped in hair and makeup with Massimiliano Caiazzo, who plays Carmine.“The theme of a forbidden love touches adults just as it touches adolescents,” said Mr. Caiazzo, 26, as Ms. Esposito, puffing on an e-cigarette, had her lashes doused in mascara.She had worked as an aesthetician before she joined at the end of the second season, which had made her “weep perennially, every day, with joy.”But for a young woman who loves going out (“I love living”), it was not easy being the face of Naples, she said. “I’m walking around the streets with my face on the pillows,” she said. “It’s a little creepy.”Rossella Aprea, the show’s costume designer, holding one of Rosa’s outfits.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe costume designer, Rossella Aprea, said that since there was no uniform in a real Italian juvenile prison, she could use her imagination. At a rack dedicated to Rosa, she held up a skimpy leotard decorated with dragons.“A lot of black, super tight, crop tops,” she said. “Skin, skin, skin.”Outside, the director struggled with a scene about the arrival of a new inmate, who held a leather satchel and looked as if he had either returned from safari or robbed a Banana Republic.“Tell him to come out of the car and look towards the girls,” Mr. Silvestrini instructed with frustration. He said he understood sex appeal was vital to the show’s success and required the suspension of disbelief about love in the detention center through the creation of imaginary circumstances for hooking up, what he called “room for romance.”“We created a pizza lab, a place where the boys and girls can be together,” he said. “And they can be promiscuous.”Ms. Esposito on the way to her dressing room. In the show’s third season, her character shoots someone to get into jail so she could settle scores with another character.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesAfter lunch, the director ordered the activation of a smoke machine for atmosphere, then walked a 40-something actor who played a crooked guard and a 20-something actress who played an inmate through their scene.“Then, at a certain point,” he instructed. “The kiss moment.”Their moment extended to a full-on make out session, lasting so long that the crew gave each other awkward looks.Soon after, Ms. Esposito walked on set for the day’s final scene.“She’s my star,” Mr. Silvestrini said.Ivan Silvestrini, the show’s director, seated in front of a screen, along with other members of the cast and crew, reviewing a scene.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesMs. Esposito, rail thin and with long straight black hair, wore bell-bottomed tight leather pants and a leather halter top. “These pants have gotten loose on me,” she said, laughing. “I’ve lost weight from the stress!”She said everywhere she went, she was mobbed by teenagers, “but also the adults.”“It’s in the hearts of all, this series,” Ms. Esposito said.She and Mr. Caiazzo acted an intense face-to-face scene on a staircase, the director called it a wrap and the crew blasted the “Mare Fuori” song. Soon after, the stars departed in separate vans, and the fans screamed and ran after them.Ms. Esposito made a heart sign with her hands.“Rosa Ricci,” they bellowed. “Bellissima.”Mr. Caiazzo greeting fans as he left the Naples set.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times More

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      Claudia Cardinale Gets MoMA Tribute for Film Career

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      Ahead of a MoMA retrospective, the actress reflected on her career, which includes over 100 films and many classics of Italian cinema.On a recent afternoon in Rome, Claudia Cardinale recalled the many heartthrobs she worked with during her more than six-decade movie career, and let out a full-throated laugh.“And they also wanted to make love with me,” she said, “but I always refused.”Over the years, the fresh-faced beauty — who David Niven, her co-star in an early “Pink Panther” movie, once described as Italy’s best invention besides spaghetti — had given the cold shoulder to more than one famous screen Casanova, Cardinale said in an interview. “They tried,” she added. “I turned down seducers.”Then she laughed her mischievous laugh again.Cardinale, 84, was in Rome last month for the Italian presentation of a newly restored version of Luigi Comencini’s 1963 film “La ragazza di Bube” (“Bebo’s Girl”), about a small-town girl who stands by her man, even after he is convicted of a crime and goes to jail.“Bebo’s Girl,” which earned Cardinale her first prestigious acting award, Italy’s Nastro d’Argento for best actress, will be shown on Friday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first in a 23-film retrospective honoring the Tunisian-born Italian actress that runs through Feb. 21. It is one of a handful of times that the museum has presented a tribute to a living actor in its more than 90-year history.“Beautiful actresses come and go,” Joshua Siegel, a MoMA curator, said in video message shown at the Rome screening. “But they usually don’t endure over a period of some 60, 65 years.”Cardinale with Fabio Rinaudo at the opening night of “8 ½,” in Rome, in 1963. Archivio Luce CinecittàCardinale said she would not be in New York for the retrospective; she no longer travels like she used to. It tires her — she now uses a cane to get around — and she prefers to stay out of the limelight.Cardinale was in the public eye long enough, starring in more than 100 films since 1956. For many film buffs, she is best remembered for her roles in Italian cinema classics: as the young wife Ginetta in Luchino Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers”; as Angelica, a commoner whose vitality and beauty seduces Sicilian aristocracy in Visconti’s “The Leopard”; as the enigmatic Claudia in Federico Fellini’s “8 ½,”; or as the feisty Jill, the widow with a ranch to protect in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.”She also has boasting rights from her star turn in Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” a legendarily difficult movie that was shot in the Peruvian jungle and described in The New York Times as a favorite of “connoisseurs of production disasters,” and the movie and its making as “fables of daft aspiration.”Cardinale has said that “Fitzcarraldo” was the adventure of her life, but during an interview last month, she said she had no particular favorites. “My God, I’ve done some many, I don’t know which one I prefer,” she said, and laughed again. “Maybe ‘Once Upon a Time in the West,’” she said, “and then so many others.”Cardinale in “Once Upon a Time in The West.”Paramount Pictures, via Everett CollectionThe MoMA tribute, organized with Cinecittà, Italy’s national film company, includes some of Cardinale’s better known performances. But for the occasion, Cinecittà also restored three works less likely to be known to American audiences: “Bebo’s Girl,” but also Marco Ferreri’s 1972 “The Audience,” about a man’s obsession with meeting with the pope, and Pasquale Squitieri’s 1990 “Atto di Dolore,” about a widow whose son is a drug addict.Though Cardinale’s name will forever be associated with classics of Italian cinema, she spoke little Italian when she first set foot there in 1957.Cardinale was born in Tunisia in 1938, into a family of Sicilian immigrants that had settled there decades before. “I still feel a little bit Tunisian,” Cardinale told the news agency ANSA in May at a ceremony to name a street in her honor in the port town La Goulette, near Tunis.In 1957, she won the Most Beautiful Italian in Tunisia contest, which came with what turned out to be her ticket to stardom: a trip to the Venice Film Festival.Cardinale on the set of the film “Austerlitz” by Abel Gance (1960).Archivio Luce CinecittàIn “Claudia Cardinale: The Indomitable,” a book published by Cinecittà and Electa to coincide with the MoMA tribute, the author and critic Masolino D’Amico recalls being at that festival and seeing Cardinale for the first time, “splendid in all her youthfulness,” wearing an emerald green bikini and posing for the paparazzi.“She seemed to think that small shower of camera clicks was like a game,” Masolino writes. “She was not — I understand this clearly now — trying to be sexy, and maybe not even attractive. She was simply happy to be there.”In Venice, she caught the eye of Franco Cristaldi, at the time one of Italy’s most important producers, who, in Pygmalion fashion, transformed the young ingénue into an in-demand movie star. He also became her life partner, adopting her son, Patrick Cristaldi. Now 64, he was initially passed off as her brother so as not to crack her “virginal feel and glow,” or to scandalize society, Cardinale’s daughter, Claudia Squitieri said.Stardom had a price. Cristaldi demanded hard work and discipline, and in 1962 drafted a contract that oversaw every aspect of the actress’s life, professional and private. She accepted, if reluctantly: Her family depended on her, and she had a child to raise.That life ended when she met the director Pasquale Squitieri in 1973 on the set of “I guappi,” (“Blood Brothers”) and the two fell madly in love. Their careers took a hit: Cristaldi was a powerful producer in Italy whom industry people feared crossing.“Claudia Cardinale: The Indomitable,” a book published by Cinecittà and Electa to coincide with the MoMA tribute. via Puntoe VirgolaCardinale would make nine films with Squitieri, even after she moved to Paris and he remained in Rome. Never married, they eventually split, but remained close.Claudia Squitieri and Patrick Cristaldi now live with their mother in a house near Fontainebleau, France, where Cardinale has created a foundation to support two causes close to her heart: women’s rights and the environment. Cardinale has been a UNESCO good will ambassador since 2000, for campaigning work to improve the status of women and girls, and she is the honorary president of Green Cross Italy, an environment advocacy group that sponsors an award for sustainable films at the Venice Film Festival. The foundation is “something to continue her shine,” said Squitieri, who runs the organization for her mother.Cardinale said she was very close to Squitieri. “I am lucky to have this daughter, who I adore,” she said. “She looks after me; she looks after everything.”Because Cardinale won’t be in New York this week, Squitieri will do the honors. On Friday, the “Bebo’s Girl” screening will be followed by “Un Cardinale donna” (“A Woman Cardinal”), a whimsical short featuring the actress, produced for the retrospective by Manuel Maria Perrone.Speaking at the film’s Rome premiere, Perrone said that “dealing with an idol, with such a strong icon, is something extremely difficult, even fragile.”“She’s been doing this her whole life,” he said. “Being an icon is her job.”Claudia CardinaleFeb. 3 through Feb. 21, at the Museum of Modern Art; moma.org. More

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      Gina Lollobrigida, Movie Star and Sex Symbol, Is Dead at 95

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      She began her career in her native Italy and, although she achieved fame in America worked more often in Europe. She later had a second career as an artist and filmmaker.Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian movie actress who became one of the post-World War II era’s first major European sex symbols, died on Monday in Rome. She was 95.The death was confirmed by her agent, Paola Comin. Ms. Lollobrigida had already appeared in more than two dozen European films when she made her first English-language movie: John Huston’s 1953 camp drama, “Beat the Devil,” in which she played Humphrey Bogart’s wife and partner in crime. That film, and the attention she garnered in “Fanfan la Tulipe,” an Italian-French period comedy released in the United States the same year, were enough to put her on the cover of Time magazine in 1954.She went on to unqualified American movie stardom, exuding a wholesome lustiness in a handful of high-profile films. She starred in “Trapeze” (1956) with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis; “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1956), as Esmeralda, Quasimodo’s beloved beauty (Anthony Quinn played Quasimodo); “Solomon and Sheba” (1959), a biblical epic with Yul Brynner; “Come September” (1961), a romantic comedy with Rock Hudson; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” (1968), a comedy about an unwed mother.Throughout her career, however, she continued to make many more European films than American ones. She starred with the continent’s leading men, including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Yves Montand.A 1955 film, “La Donna Più Bella del Mondo” (“The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” — a term some in Hollywood came to use about Ms. Lollobrigida herself), released in the United States as “Beautiful but Dangerous,” brought Ms. Lollobrigida her first major acting award: the David di Donatello, Italy’s equivalent of the Oscar. She won the Donatello twice more, for “Venere Imperial” (1962), in a tie with Silvana Mangano, and for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” in a tie with Monica Vitti.Ms. Lollobrigida with Burt Lancaster, left, and Tony Curtis in the 1956 film “Trapeze.”Associated PressMs. Lollobrigida was always considered more a sex symbol than a serious actress — at least by the American press — but she was also nominated for a BAFTA award as best foreign actress in “Pane, Amore e Fantasia” (1953). She received Golden Globe nominations for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” in 1969 and for a recurring role on the prime-time television soap “Falcon Crest” in 1985.After two decades in front of the camera, she embarked on a multifaceted second career as artist and filmmaker. She published her first book of photographs, “Italia Mia,” in 1973. “Believe it or not, she takes good pictures and isn’t just trading on her name,” Gene Thornton of The New York Times wrote.Ms. Lollobrigida greeted the crowd at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesShe wrote, directed and produced “Ritratto di Fidel,” a documentary based on her exclusive interview with Fidel Castro, the Communist leader of Cuba, which was shown at the 1975 Berlin film festival. She was also a sculptor, and an exhibition of 38 of her bronze pieces was presented at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, among other venues, in 2003.Ms. Lollobrigida was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1993. She ran unsuccessfully for the European Parliament in 1999.Liugina Lollobrigida was born on July 4, 1927, in Subiaco, Italy, east of Rome. She was one of four daughters of Giovanni Lollobrigida, a furniture maker, and Giuseppina (Mercuri) Lollobrigida. In her teens she studied art. But after she was discovered by a movie director, Mario Costa, she began appearing in small roles in 1946.By 1949 she was a star, billed second in “La Sposa Non Può Attendere” (“The Bride Can’t Wait”). The next year she appeared in “Miss Italia,” inspired by her real-life experience: She had come in third in the 1947 Miss Italy pageant. (The winner, Lucia Bosé, and the first runner-up, Gianna Maria Canale, also went on to movie careers.)Ms. Lollobrigida in New York in 2010. After two decades in front of the camera, she embarked on a multifaceted second career as artist and filmmaker.Keith Bedford for The New York TimesAfter her film career wound down in the early 1970s, Ms. Lollobrigida appeared on television in Europe and the United States, including the “Falcon Crest” episodes and an American television movie, “Deceptions” (1985), in which she played an excitable duchess entertaining in Venice. Her last feature film appearance was in “XXL” (1997), a French comedy that also starred Gérard Depardieu, about a Jewish family in the garment trade.She married Milko Skofic, a Yugoslavian-born physician who became her manager, in 1949. The couple separated in 1966 and divorced in 1971. Their son, Milko Jr., survives her, along with a grandson.In 2006 she announced plans to marry Javier Rigau y Rafols, a 45-year-old Spanish businessman. But she canceled the wedding less than two months later, reportedly because of overwhelming press attention.Ms. Lollobrigida broke a thigh bone in a fall last year and had surgery to repair it in September. She said she was able to walk again soon afterward.Ms. Lollobrigida was often outspoken in interviews. In 1969 she suggested that women pretended to be stupid in front of men. She claimed to have no beauty secrets and to do no exercise other than dancing, and to have no objections to being seen as a sex object and being told that she had a beautiful body. “Why should I be offended?” she said in a 1995 interview with The New York Times. “It’s not an insult.”Yet she had grown philosophical with age. “Success is something that goes up and down,” she said in the same interview. “I was hungry, I was rich, the life changed again, and now I’m not rich, but I still have my mind.”Alex Marshall and Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting. More