Two towering masterpieces: the enduring power of art, the abiding secrets of cinema, and the duels fought in an Italy we no longer have the imagination to conjure up.
It was 1963, a year that changed Italian cinema forever: the year of Fellini and Visconti. In that year, practically simultaneously, two landmark films were shot, wrapped, and edited: Visconti’s The Leopard and Fellini’s 8 1/2. The unbelievable tribulations of the two films’ parallel creation intertwine with the fate of a brilliant novel — rejected, but then rediscovered — and the personal and public struggles of two magnificent, combative directors. Francesco Piccolo’s love of film and his twin passions for politics and literature catch fire in this transcendent work of storytelling — absorbing and vastly entertaining — as it explores the power of genius and the twists of fate.
Like in some enthralling television series, Strega Award author Francesco Piccolo peeks behind the scenes, summoning up the incomparable spirit of that Italy and that time.
The history of cinema is a lot like life itself: spangled with chance meetings, appointments pursued or missed, last-minute decisions, and unforeseeable coincidences. Crucial quirks of fate that make a work of art possible, in the exact form that will long be remembered by an entire society. The casting of an actress, the lighting on set, the love life of, say, the director or even a supporting actor, budget cuts, the sudden rewrite of a scene — any of these things, in their way, can alter their page in the universal book of human genius.
The Leopard and 8 ½ are films that shaped their time, movies we know deeply and personally. And yet we know little or nothing about the circumstances surrounding them. They were shot simultaneously, released around the same time, and for years compared by film critics for the sheer bombastic impact. Before they solidified into the masterpieces we’ve known all our lives, they were each incredibly risky propositions. They were also twin battlegrounds on which two very different and fiercely competitive artists were duking it out. Even as Claudia Cardinale shuttled from set to set, working on both films at the same time, changing her hair color to satisfy the whims of each director, Italy’s entire culture industry was lining up one side or the other, subscribing to Fellini’s or Visconti’s vision of film and the world. And both these directors were old hands at this brand of infighting: before Marcello Mastroianni became Fellini’s alter ego, he’d been Visconti’s preferred actor. At the time, moreover, everyone remembered the notorious brawl at the 1954 Venice Film Festival, when viscontiani faced off publicly against felliniani for the first time — but certainly not the last.
Like a detective burrowing through history to find out the truth about titanic figures of the past, Francesco Piccolo has perused letters, videos, working notes, diaries, interviews, personal gossip, and eyewitness accounts in his research for A Lovely Confusion. This is a novel, true, but it’s very different from other novels, with supporting characters named Ennio Flaiano, Sandra Milo, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Camilla Cederna, Burt Lancaster, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Piccolo’s two great loves, film and literature, illuminate his passion for storytelling. Navigating the seas of mythmaking and fascinating anecdote, his distinctive voice awakens memories by the millions and turns on the lights, long dimmed, of a fantastic bygone era.
Francesco Piccolo
Francesco Piccolo is a writer and screenwriter. His latest books are: Il desiderio di essere come tutti (Strega Prize 2014), L’animale che mi porto dentro (2018), the Negligible Moments trilogy and La bella confusione (2023). He has signed screenplays for Nanni Moretti, Silvio Soldini, Paolo Virzì, Francesca Archibugi, Daniele Luchetti, and Marco Bellocchio, among others. He scripted the TV series My Brilliant Friend. He collaborates with la Repubblica.
- La bella confusione (A Lovely Confusion)
- Momenti trascurabili Vol. 3 (Negligible Moments Vol. 3)
- L’animale che mi porto dentro (The Animal I Carry Within Me)
- Momenti di trascurabile infelicità (Moments of Negligible Unhappiness)
- Il desiderio di essere come tutti (Wanna Be Like Everyone)
- Momenti di trascurabile felicità (Moments of Negligible Happiness)
“This book is never an essay on film, but it is the very personal novel about the happiness of being in the world to do something beautiful, and about the construction and acceptance of life through film and literature.” Annalena Benini, Il Foglio
“Merry and sorrowful.” Teresa Ciabatti, 7
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