Posted by
jiezi189 on Friday, December 11, 2009 2:25:05 AM
Silvio Berlusconi backed it as a celebration of northern Italian pride.
The leader of Italy's most outspoken anti-immigrant political party
appeared in it. And the state television network, Rai, partly paid for
it. But despite the hype, a €10m (£9m) price tag and a host of star
names, the first attempt to produce a "patriotic" film for Italians
living north of Florence has turned out a box-office disaster and the
catalyst for an unseemly political row.
Barbarossa (Redbeard),
stars Rutger Hauer as the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, who
unsuccessfully fought the clans of northern Italy in the 12th
pearl jewelry century. Cécile Cassel, the sister of actor Vincent, plays his wife, Beatrix.
As an epic tale of derring-do and heroic defiance by Milanese rebels,
the film's plot was seen by the Northern League – which dreams of
establishing a breakaway country in the north called Padania – as a
139-minute party political broadcast. The league's leader, Umberto
Bossi, even plays a cameo role and influential supporters of the
Padania project provided much of the financial backing for the biggest
Italian historical epic to be produced in 40 years.
Then it
all started to go wrong. The film depicts the defeat of Frederick I at
the epic battle of Legnano by forces led by Alberto da Giussano, a
famed Milanese blacksmith. Da Giussano is one of Bossi's heroes, as he
made clear, leaving no one in any doubt that he saw a contemporary
parallel. "In Alberto da Giussano," he said, "I recognise and relive
the spirit that moves a nation to risk its life to win its rights and
its liberty."
Combining opposition to immigration with
wholesale pearl jewelry
disdain for rule from Rome – by officials likened by Bossi to
Barbarossa's henchmen – Bossi recently threatened to form a line of
northerners along Italy's Po river to keep out foreigners. It was a
stunt typical of the aggressive populist style that won him 8.3% of
Italy's vote at last year's election and a seat in Berlusconi's
cabinet. But Bossi is not so experienced in the politics of cinema.
An uncomfortable Cassel has already expressed her discomfort with the
film's not-so-hidden agenda. "I knew nothing of the political ghosts
behind Barbarossa," she said, adding she would have reconsidered taking
the part if she had. The film's director, Renzo Martinelli, immediately
retaliated by saying that Cassel, "like many French people, has an
enormous sense of self-importance".
Cassel was notable by her
absence from Barbarossa's premiere this month, at which Bossi told the
assembled audience: "This is the dawn of a reawakening." Emerging from
the screening, Berlusconi described the medley of battle cries and
thundering hooves as "bellissima".
But in its opening weekend Italy's cinemagoers
pearl jewelry wholesale
disagreed, deserting Barbarossa and flocking to Quentin Tarantino's
Inglourious Basterds, which took ¤1.8m compared with only ¤441,000 for
the Italian epic.
By the end of last week, the magazine
L'Espresso was wondering aloud whether the film would prove to be the
biggest flop in the history of Italian cinema. Even in the Northern
League stronghold of Erba in Lombardy, a mere handful of card-carrying
party members showed up for the film's first night. One local paper
asked pointedly: "If the Lombards don't go and see it, who will?"
Audiences in the Italian south have been, to say the least,
disappointing.