Italy___________________________________________________________________________
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Unprofitable Scandal

The writers and producers of a controversial film are ordered to stand trial.

By Alberto Carosa

Films which provoke scandal, and incite charges of blasphemy, may no longer be profitable. If the marketplace failure of Dogma in the United States was evidence of that fact, further evidence is provided by the film that might be called the Italian counterpart of Dogma: Totò che visse due volte (“Totò who lived twice”). In addition to the financial misfortunes of that film—which were triggered in large part by the protests of outraged Christians across the nation —the filmmakers, producers, and distributors ran into further trouble when they were ordered by Rome’s public prosecutor to stand trial on two counts: blasphemy and attempted fraud against the state.

This was the result of a preliminary hearing in Rome’s criminal court on December 2, when the filmmakers, Daniele Ciprç and Franco Maresco, were told by the judge presiding at a preliminary hearing that the date for their trial would be February 2, 2000.

It all started on December 22, 1997, when Totò che visse due volte was endorsed by Italy’s Department of Entertainment, and given a state subsidy of 1.6 billion lira (the rough equivalent of $1 million in US funds), on the grounds that the national “artistic interest” of the film made it a subject of national interest. Later, prior to the first public showing in Italy, which was scheduled for March 6, 1998 (the film had previously been shown only at the Berlin Film Festival) the Censorship Board ruled that it was “unsuitable for public showing.” The ruling from the Censorship Board—which, ironically, is another division of the same Department of Entertainment which had provided a subsidy for Totò che visse due volte —cited the film’s “clear infringement of article 21 of the constitution and 402 of the Criminal Law” and “bleakness of clearly blasphemous and sacrilegious snapshots, soaked in moral degradation, senseless violence and perverse and beastly sexuality, with filthy and disgusting footage.”

No less severe were the conclusions of several individual members of the Censorship Board. Psychologist Leonardo Ancona described it as “a revolting film.” He said: “It is Christendom as a whole which is insulted in it. It is the dignity of human beings which is ridiculed. It is an attack on the sacred and on man.” For his part, the president of the Censorship Board, Judge Domenico Nardi, stated: “It is not a film, it is the pit of hell.” Among the scenes in Totò che visse due volte which prompted such strong reactions were the depiction of a male masturbating against a statue of the Virgin Mary, the sodomization of an angel, and a foul-mouthed and bad-tempered Jesus who grudgingly “raised” people who have been dissolved in acid by the Mafia.

The two filmmakers—Daniele Ciprç and Franco Maresco, auteurs from the “grunge” culture of Palermo—implicitly conceded that their movie was a mockery of Redemption and the Catholic faith. “The third episode is a Gospel whose starring actor everyone calls Totò, but in fact it’s Jesus,” they told reviewers. In Sicily the name “Totò” is often used as a diminutive for “Salvatore,” which in turn means “Savior.”

Among those who lined up to defend the film and its “artistic merits” were the anarchist author Enrico Ghezzi, who extolled the film as “religious up to impiety: it revolts us and revolts itself.” The Communist actress Laura Betti, added that she saw the simulated rape of a statue of Our Lady as “a message of extraordinary beauty.”

A box-office flop

In the wake of the ensuing, raging debate, Walter Veltroni—then Italy’s deputy prime minister, and a leader of the post-Communist DS party, managed to secure cabinet approval for a new bill which eliminated all censorship of movies. (Veltroni had an axe to grind, since in his capacity as head of the Department of Entertainment he had been the politician primarily responsible for the approval of state funding for Totò che visse due volte.) So the path was cleared for the Italian showing of the film—with the proviso that it would be forbidden for anyone under the age of 18. So the public premiere was rescheduled for March 20, 1998, amid rising tensions between supporters and foes of the showing.

While Veltroni had eliminated the legal obstacles to Totò che visse due volte, Christian critics of the film had been anything but passive. The first broadsides had been fired by the Italian bishops’ conference; by Father Gino Concetti, the on-staff theologian for L’Osservatore Romano; and by the Catholic daily Avvenire, which published a flat condemnation of the film. A conservative secular paper, Il Giornale, raised the rhetorical question whether the film would have been approved and financed by the government if it had slandered the Islamic or Jewish religion.

The stakes were raised when other Christian organizations entered the fray, in particular the pro-family lobby Associazione Famiglia Domani (AFD). The group’s president, the Marquis Luigi Coda-Nunziante, filed a legal suit against the creators and distributors of the movie, charging them with blasphemy and mishandling of public funds. The AFD leader also called upon Catholics in particular, and the Italian public in general, to boycott the film. That appeal was heeded by other Christian groups, so that a series of protests were raised all around the country, and Christians were urged to stop patronizing the theaters were Totò che visse due volte would be shown.

As a result of that boycott campaign, the film experienced a financial debacle at the box office which plunged Ciprç and Maresco into despair. The attendance figures spoke for themselves; during the first weekend of its public run, Totò che visse due volte drew only 6,000 viewers in the entire country. By the next weekend, only three theaters were still showing the film. Only about 100 people turned out for the premier in Rome.

Clash of cultures

But even as the film was rapidly falling into oblivion, the legal action spearheaded by AFD remained on course. Franco Maresco was questioned by the public prosecutor, who had decided to investigate him on the charges of fraud and blasphemy. According to the prosecuting judge, Totò che visse due volte showed a “disproportion between the expenses incurred for its production and the amount of money requested.” According to a court-appointed expert, the cost of producing the film was only one-third of the figure which the filmmakers had collected from the government. So the prosecution decided to go forward with the charges against Ciprç and Maresco, together with their producers and distributors. After the Italian bishops’ conference declined to be involved in the case, the court recognized AFD as a legal representative of Italian Catholic opinion.

The fact that Ciprç and Maresco are represented by a prestigious Italian law firm, headed by the former leftist political leader Guido Calvi, suggests that the legal battle surrounding this film is not a typical court case, but a head-on confrontation between two opposing visions of culture. It is not hyperbole to see this case as a trial of the culture of life against the culture of death, or perhaps even good versus evil. Significantly, in their emotional public reaction to the prosecutor’s indictment, the two filmmakers told Il Giornale that they could be seen as “devils, atheists, but by no means perpetrators of fraud.”

Technically, the film’s originators were only charged with attempted fraud. In fact the state subsidy—which had already been slashed by 30 percent after children under 18 were barred from attendance—has been frozen, and will not become available unless and until the producers and directors are cleared of all legal charges.

But whatever the final outcome of the legal case, the leftist newspaper L’Unita accurately summed up the situation: “Ciprç and Maresco have already lost, even if they should be acquitted. And a part of Italy, scarcely believing the news, is losing alongside them.” But another “part of Italy” saw the case as a significant victory. Giuseppe Rossetto, of the Forza Italia party, said that the prosecution “was one of the best pages ever written in the book of justice regarding the world of cinema.” Rossetto added that “the case highlights the serious questions regarding the work by the government commission which approved the state funding.”

Alberto Carosa is a free-lance journalist based in Rome.

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