Egypt and Morocco Censor New "Exodus" Film

Exodus in Rabat, Morocco
(Image: corriere.it)

Ridley Scott's Exodus has been recently censored in two North African countries, according to the Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera. Morocco officially frowned on the Biblical epic on the grounds that the movie included a visual depiction of God. Egypt's Minister of Culture banned Exodus because, in his view, the film was a vehicle for "Zionist" propaganda. You don't suppose the inevitable climax of the Moses vs. Pharaoh plot line might have influenced the minster's perspective?

Maybe the minister is just a sore loser.

A Drone's Eye View of Chernobyl

Chernobyl

Twenty-seven years ago, the Soviet Union's version of Fukushima took place at Chernobyl. The disaster created an "exclusion zone" in which human habitation is forbidden. Recently, a drone was used to video footage of the land on which radioactivity imposed a death sentence. The footage was posted in the Italian website corriere.it, the website for Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera.

I once taught a man who directed the effort to extinguish Chernobyl's nuclear fire. He suffered from radiation sickness, but he never doubted his actions during the disaster. I was proud to be his teacher. When I watched the drone's footage earlier tonight, I thought about a brave man whose life touched me, and saved the lives of thousands.

And so, on Thanksgiving Day, I want to thank the many who put their lives on the line for others.

PS. Shortly after Thanksgiving Day, the online version of the BBC posted an article about wildlife returning to the Chernobyl contaminated zone. The fascinating story is linked here.

Designer Sergio Pininfarina -- RIP

Sergio Pininfarina leaning on a Ferrari
(photo from Road and Track)

Italian designer Sergio Pininfarina died earlier today at his home in Turin. His loss will be keenly felt at Ferrari, whose look and style Pininfarina indelibly shaped with his impeccable taste.

The online edition of Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, features a rich photographic archive of the Torinese designer's work, celebrity associations, and family. (Click on "torna indietro" when you want to return to the photo collection's home page.) It's hard to imagine that, only fifteen years after the devastation of World War II, the Farina family (their original name), the Ferraris, and other enterprising Italians were bringing their creative, commercial vision into the world beyond the Alps. There was plenty of ambition to go around. They also possessed a self-assurance, somehow connected to the Western European experience at its best, that's very difficult for Americans to truly understand. I've often wondered if what perpetuated that self-confidence was an aristocratic strain in Italian society.

Pininfarina articulated this notion in a 1987 New York Times interview: "'You make a new car and you invite a dozen people, a dentist, a sportsman, a lawyer, a prostitute. And you say, do you like this, do you prefer that? I accept it, but I am not an enthusiast, and I'll tell you why,' Mr. Pininfarina told the Times. 'I am looking to the future, and these people are accustomed to the past.'"

The quote, and other details about Pininfarnina's life, are included in the designer's obit in today's Washington Post.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the late Indiro Montanelli

The Financial Times reported today that Standard and Poor's downgraded Italy's sovereign debt rating. The downgrade will likely continue the political erosion of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's regime. Many people feel it's time for Berlusconi, whose unbridled immorality and rapacious lust for power echo the unleashed id of some of the more depraved Caesars, to leave public service.

Indro Montanelli

I began thinking about this today as a result of my curiosity about a post-war Italian movie called Il Generale della Rovere. The film, directed by Roberto Rossellini, relates the story of a mole placed by the German occupation authorities into a Milan political prison. The Nazis' goal was for the spy, who pretended to be an Italian general, to learn the name of key Resistance figures. (The protagonist was played by Vittorio DeSica.) The story is allegedly based on the true life story of iconic Italian journalist Indro Montanelli, whose controversial life and work touches many Italian political, social, and cultural preoccupations between the rise of Fascism and the years following the kidnapping and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro. (The late Sicilian author Leonardo Sciascia discusses the Moro incident his interesting, but densely written book The Moro Affair.) In 1973, Montanelli broke with Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, and founded Il Giornale, a right-wing newspaper that was eventually owned by none other than Silvio Berlusconi. According to Montanelli's Wikipedia biography, the journalist couldn't stand the man who would be king. "He lies as he breathes," Montanelli is reported to have said. Most observers today would agree with that terse, bitter assessment.

I don't have enough sense of contemporary Italy to grasp how the electorate could repeatedly make such a bleak choice for its prime minister. What's missing to explain it, I suspect, is someone with the intellectual weight of an Indro Montanelli.

For Italian language links regarding Montanelli, try these two for starters:

Fondazione Montanelli

A review from the Roman newspaper Il Messagero of Sandro Gerbi's and Raffaele Liucci's book on Montanelli, titled Montanelli l'anarchico borghese. (Sorry for the tortured syntax.)