Country: Italy
Year: 1960
Duration: 105'


In the autumn of 1943, in Ferrara, the reorganized Fascist party is torn from the inside by the fight between consul Bolognesi, a man of “moderate” views, and his opponent Carlo Aretusi, advocate of the violent action. In order to get rid of his rival, Aretusi hires an assassin to kill him. The murder is blamed on the Antifascists. So the Black Brigades come to Ferrara, led by Aretusi, and they kill eleven people. On the background of this tragedy, there is the love story between Anna, the wife of a pharmacist with paralyzed legs, and Franco Villani, who has been the woman’s lover many years before. Franco’s father is one of the victims of the massacre. He is forced to go to Switzerland, leaving his lover behind. After a while, Anna leaves the city as well. In the summer of 1960, Franco comes back to Ferrara married and with a child. He tries in vain to have some news about Anna. He meets Carlo Aretusi instead. The two greet each other in a friendly way.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala -  English translation Francesca Sala


Biography

film director

Florestano Vancini

(Ferrara, Italy, 1926) began his film career in the early 1950s as a documentary maker. He then worked as assistant director for Mario Soldati and Valerio Zurlini, before debuting as a director in 1960 with It Happened in ’43. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he alternated politically-involved works like La banda Casaroli (1962) and The Assassination of Matteotti (1973), with more intimist films like Seasons of Our Love (1966), and he also directed spaghetti westerns like Days of Vengeance (1967). During the 1980s and 1990s he dedicated himself to television (“La piovra 2” and “Piazza di Spagna”), and returned to films in 2005 with E ridendo l’uccise.

FILMOGRAFIA

filmografia essenziale/
essential filmography

La lunga notte del ’43 (1960), Le italiane e l’amore (ep. La separazione legale, 1961), La banda Casaroli (1962), La calda vita (1964), Le stagioni del nostro amore (1966), I lunghi giorni della vendetta - Faccia d’angelo (1967), Violenza al sole (1969), Violenza: quinto potere (1972), Bronte - Cronaca di un massacro che i libri di storia non hanno mai raccontato (1972), Il delitto Matteotti (1973), Amore amaro (1974), Un dramma borghese (1979), La baraonda - Passioni popolari (1980), «La piovra 2 » (TV, 1985), Imago urbis (doc., 1987), «Piazza di Spagna» (TV, 1993), E ridendo l’uccise (2005).

Declaration

film director

At some point, I read a tale called “Una notte del ‘43”, which I found amazing, maybe the best one of the “Cinque storie ferraresi” by Bassani. This tale is set in a specific historical and chronicle reality: the autumn of 1943, in Ferrara, with an atmosphere and events that I actually lived, more or less.I didn’t live Bassani’s fantasy things insted, such as the characters that he put in this environment. I liked his literary idea as well, which I used in the film. Bassani’s tale takes place in a very long period of time, it’s almost a thirty-years-long tale. We could say it is the story of a young boy, who went to the march on Rome in 1922, as one takes part in an adventure, as he was living a Tom Mix kind of adventure. Then, there were the Fascism years: this man had certain experiences, he lived certain events, until he reached a particular state of mind, awareness or recklessness, until a resolution, which in Bassani’s tale happened many years after the war. It is an almost thirty-years-long story. But it is also a very intimate one, very subtle, based on a man who accidentally witnesses a murder in Ferrara and this determines a turning point in his short life. I cut the story in a briefer period of time, just a few weeks in the autumn of 1943, trying to condense in a few days what Bassani wanted to say, or what I wanted to say.

Who invented the character of Ferzetti, the protagonist of the film, who doesn’t exist in the tale?
He’s my idea. I put the story through three phases, the last being the general structure of the film. But in my opinion, the most important change is not Franco, who follows Bassani’s narrative line, but Anna’s relocation, which is totally different in Bassani’s work. In my film, Anna is a defeated woman, who holds on to her last hope, her love towards Franco.

While shooting La lunga notte del ’43, did you feel more confident about some parts and not so sure about others?
No, I didn’t. I loved the whole film. What moved me the most about the reception of the critics in Venice was the almost unanimous opinion on the imbalance between the first and the second part, that means between the love story and the ensemble story. I really felt the love story as well, even if maybe I didn’t manage to express it. I absolutely didn’t write the love story in order to have an excuse to tell the other one. I wasn’t interested in neither of them separately, without this fusion. (...)

Did you want to imply something in the characters of Franco and Anna, apart from real events?
What is my film? It’s the story of common small-town middle-class people, who have their little private drama; they are involved in something that seems external to their private lives and they are forced to do or not to do something, to take a stand.

What is the relationship between Franco and his family? Why does he act that way, considering he lives in that kind of family? Maybe this is an aspect of the character which is not very clear.
There are no men, nor characters who are totally negative, of course. Franco is an average suburban intellectual, a man who sees and understands what happens around him, but he keeps a light eye on it. He is a superficial man. There were many like him, at the time. As it also happens today. 

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala -  English translation Francesca Sala

Cast

& Credits

Director: Florestano Vancini.
Aiuto regista: Marco Leto.
Plot: da un racconto di "Cinque storie ferraresi" di Giorgio Bassani.
Screenplay: Ennio De Concini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Florestano Vancini.
Director of photography: Carlo Di Palma.
Art director: Carlo Egidi.
Costume designer: Pier Luigi Pizzi.
Editor: Giovanni Baragli.
Music: Carlo Rustichelli.
Cast and characters: Belinda Lee (Anna Barilari), Gabriele Ferzetti (Franco Villani), Enrico Maria Salerno (Pino Barilari), Andrea Checchi (farmacista), Nerio Bernardi (avvocato Villani), Raffaella Pelloni (sorella di Franco), Isa Querio (madre di Franco), Alice Clements (Blanche Villani), Loris Bazzocchi (sicario), Carlo Di Maggio (console Bolognesi), Gino Cervi (Carlo Aretusi), Silla Bettini.
Production company: Gino Cervi, Alessandro Jacovoni per la Ajace Film-Euro International Films.
Italian distribution: Euro International Films;
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