INTERVIEW with Virginia Jewiss, an American Dante scholar who internationalizes Italian cinema, or “How I Made Sean Penn Cry”

[This post appeared first on 2 Film Critics' website here.]

If you stayed for the credits of this year’s Oscar-nominated Italian film, Io Capitano, you would have seen an American name, Virginia Jewiss, listed under “translation by….”  Jewiss acknowledges that “adaptation” is a more accurate description of the multi-faceted work of those who, by translating materials from the original language, help attract international audiences and obtain distribution for a foreign film. It’s a profession that by necessity has expanded in recent years as more films are made for the worldwide public, very different from the tasks of the person who simply dubs or provides subtitles (though neither of those is a “simple” task) for a strictly foreign film.

For Jewiss, it all started with a request that she make Sean Penn cry.

I recently interviewed Virginia Jewiss (right, with Matteo Garrone), a friend of ours whose career we have followed for years, about this evolving field and about language in film.

Dianne

Let’s start with what to call your work on film. Should I always look for you under “translation by…” or “translator,” even though you prefer “adaptation”? There’s no consistency as to how that screen credit is given. It’s not even on the official credit list of the so-called “universal standard” of IMDb [the online Internet Movie Database, now owned by Amazon]. Translation is what I do when I bring a book across from Italian into English. When I translate literature, the original work already exists—the translator gives it a new voice, in my case, English, but the translation does not alter or erase the original. In film, translation happens before the film is made and is an essential step in getting the work to the screen. So in the film world I prefer the term “adaptation.”

It seems as though the industry does not entirely understand the role of this work. The film industry is still very much in the infancy stage of recognizing the true value of the work of adaptation at various stages of the production process. I’d like to think that the recent boom of highly celebrated films dealing with language will lead to a deeper appreciation of the role of the translator.

Maybe we should start even earlier in the process and ask what IS a foreign film; in your case, what’s an Italian film these days? You began by working with the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino on This Must Be the Place, a 2011 Palme d’Or-nominated film in English, starring Sean Penn. It also won Best Screenplay at the 2012 David di Donatello awards, given for Italian films, I note. In the past, there was a lot of resistance to the idea that an Italian film could be made in English. Even Sorrentino was criticized for making a film in English. So, what does this criticism mean? What does it say about our idea of national cinema, our expectations for a “foreign” film? Sorrentino’s response was to say, “okay, you want an Italian film?” Here it is: La Grande Bellezza [“The Great Beauty,” which won the Oscar in 2014 for what was then called Best Foreign Language Film]. It’s in Italian, smack in Rome, a Fellini-esque film, as if Sorrentino was saying, “I can still do this.” And then his next move was to make Youth, starring Harvey Keitel and Michael Caine, set in Switzerland but filmed in English [another of Jewiss’s adaptations]. I think a lot was happening in those early years of Sorrentino moving back and forth between English and Italian. He carved out a creative space for directors to make films in languages other than their own.

Left, Jewiss with Paolo Sorrentino.

Yet all of the awards in the film industry operate along national lines. Yes. At the Academy Awards, there’s the French entry, the German entry, the Italian entry. The question then becomes, what makes a film Italian? And at the moment, the answer to that is, it’s an Italian director and an Italian lead production company. But the film can be made in any language. I’m hoping that scholars’ and viewers’ expectations that the language of the film has to be the same as the country of origin has shifted because of Sorrentino’s works like Youth and [TV’s] The Young Pope, [Matteo Garrone’s] Tale of Tales and Io Capitano, and other films that are coming out, not just in Italy, but in other countries too. Directors in many countries are asking “what is the language—or languages—in which this particular story should be told?”

You brought up Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature from Italy, yet, in its tale of two young cousins emigrating from Senegal across Africa to—they hope—Europe, the production does not set foot on Italian soil, features no Italian actors, and has very few Italian words. “Io capitano” [“I, captain!”—perhaps better translated as “I’m the captain!”] are two of those few words. Talk about your experience with that film. First let me say that Garrone spent a long time gathering material. He interviewed people in refugee camps and migrants who had made their way to Italy. Garrone is a kind of a neo-neorealist in that he often combines elements of true stories from which he crafts the fictional narrative, but every episode of Io Capitano is in some way true. As he listened to people’s stories, he came to realize the kind of story he wanted to tell.

Okay. Where do you come in? Garrone wrote an initial screenplay in Italian, but he knew the film would be made in some combination of other languages. He wasn’t sure exactly which languages those would be at first—that would depend on where the boys’ journey would start, the route they would take, the people they would meet. But he needed an English script before the location could be selected or actors cast. I usually come into the process very early—as soon as a first full Italian screenplay is ready—because the English version is what gets circulated in order to obtain funding and secure co-producers, which is what allows the project to move forward. Until Garrone charted their journey, I couldn’t introduce linguistic nuances that would locate the story in a specific geography. I used a fairly standard yet emotionally charged English. So my process on that film was very different from my work on This Must Be the Place, where the dialogue had to convey the various Englishes of Dublin, New York, and beyond.

So you are writing a screenplay in English even when the film ultimately might not be filmed in English. Yes, English is the language you need to get everyone on-board. If we are hoping for backing from a French or a German or an Irish production company, they are reading that screenplay and evaluating whether they’re going to invest in it. They read the script or synopsis in English. When Sorrentino made The Hand of God [E’ stata la mano di Dio, his 2021 film set in Naples], he knew from the get-go that it was going to be filmed not only in Italian but in Neapolitan. There’s no English in it. Yet he still needed an eloquent, convincing English-language screenplay to send around. That is how you get your funding, and also how you begin to negotiate world distribution rights. Even for a film that is going to be filmed in Italian, which is the language of the original screenplay, English plays a crucial role in the creation of the project—even if once the money comes in, that script is set aside. It will come back in a strange way later, though, because I usually end up curating [not initially writing] subtitles if the film or TV series is going to be taken to international festivals where a lot rests on those subtitles.

Let’s return to Garrone’s Io Capitano. You did an English version, which, as you indicate, in some ways doesn’t exist in the final version of the film. The English version continued to evolve as Garrone’s thought process evolved. That original Italian script was turned into English, became the basis for some of his exploration of which languages to use, and was further revised once the casting was done. Garrone invited people in Senegal, the characters, the actors he had cast, as well as many other people involved in the project, including refugee-consultants whom he had on the project, to stand with him behind the camera, to make sure that the story he was telling was true to their experience. The co-producers need to be kept abreast of the changes that are happening, so the English screenplay gets continuously updated as the project evolves over the life of the making of the film.

Above, the two young cousins in their trek across the desert, speaking and picking up different languages. Left, Seydou Sarr as Seydou and Moustapha Fall as Moustapha.

Io Capitano, as you’ve indicated, is a complex film in terms of multiple languages, of the language of the film evolving. Beyond the English script, how did that work? Garrone continued to talk with migrants as he and his team began focusing on Senegal. The narrative starts in Senegal, and the script is clever in that it has the boys speak Wolof at home with their families, but then when they’re walking to school, they start speaking French, because that’s how they’re doing their schooling. It is a beautiful expression of their linguistic mobility. But that’s not all. As they make their way east and north to the coast of Libya, other languages are added in to reflect the places and people they encounter. A linguistic odyssey.

Was there a similar process with Garrone’s earlier film, Gomorra [in English, “Gomorrah”—a “true crime” drama based on a best-selling Roberto Saviano exposé of gangs in and around Naples]? I translated Saviano’s book, but I didn’t work on the film, so I can’t speak to that. I will say that Gomorra is set in that southern Italian city and uses such a thick Neapolitan dialect that some scenes were subtitled into Italian when it was screened in Italy. Garrone has been thinking for a long time in a very sophisticated way about the power of language. All of that accumulated experience also informed the language choices and the language sensitivity that came into lo Capitano.

Another aspect of this internationalization of films is the use of language itself almost as a character in a film, or at least as a point of reference for identity and emotion. You’ve mentioned the “boom in highly celebrated films about language.” What are you seeing in these films? Several films nominated for Oscars this year foreground language in innovative ways. Anatomy of a Fall [a French production which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay this year and was nominated for Best Picture, but not for Best International Feature] unfolds around the very question of language. In this courtroom drama, a fascinating blend of French, German and English, the wife [the protagonist, Sandra, a native German speaker] is forced to testify in French, and she keeps saying, “I can’t express myself in French.” One of the problems in their marriage is that the husband [Samuel, who is French] feels that it’s an imposition that they speak in English at home. But she says, “No, English is the place that we meet. I’m living in your country, so when I go outside, I have to speak your language. But what about me? What about my language?” Language becomes, in many ways, the emblem of their marital crisis.

The year 2023 might be seen as a breakthrough year for language in film. You mention other foreign film nominations for that year. Let me mention another Oscar nominee, Past Lives. The main character is a Korean woman who now lives in Brooklyn and is married to an American. A childhood friend from Korea comes back into her life and unsettles her marriage and her sense of self when he asks, “Do you dream in Korean? Who do you speak your native language to?” These two films offer fascinating studies of how you construct—and alter, evolve—your identity through language.

Above, In "Past Lives," Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Nora (Greta Lee)
speak Korean while her husband Arthur (John Magaro) is left out.

Io Capitano seems to bring it all together for you. Filmmakers need to think daringly about language, to recognize all that is at stake with language and dialect choices. And to me, this journey of Io Capitano, where the languages shift and meet other languages, captures the epic quality of the boys’ journey of education. Their delight in learning Italian and their excitement from time to time in the prospect of going to Italy—in addition to everything else the film does—is a powerful reflection on the power of language in storytelling.

What else does the “translator” or “adapter” do with English? I often also will translate into English a soggetto, that is, a synopsis, and then in addition a longer treatment. Standard “intro to film writing” textbooks teach that “first what happens is somebody writes a subject and then they write the treatment, which is longer, and then they write the screenplay.” I’ve been on many projects where a screenplay gets greenlighted and then you back-write the rest of the material that’s supposed to go with it. The Academy Awards, the Cannes Film Festival, they have strict rules for entering a film for competition—that artfully crafted paragraph that’s going to get your film entered into a festival—so we might do 20 rewrites of that back and forth. I am often drawn into that kind of activity too.

What’s your relationship to the writing of subtitles? You mentioned earlier that you might “curate” them. I curate, but do not write, subtitles. Let me praise the subtitlers who have an incredibly hard job, and who—similarly to what I do—perform a challenging sort of translation/adaptation/interpretation. We’ve all watched subtitled films where the characters talk for five minutes, and the subtitle is just one line. It’s a very difficult art and science that has to take into consideration how many milliseconds a shot lasts, what you need your audience to hear and what they need to see. One rule is that on a closeup of a face, only one line. You never want to distract the eye from the actor’s face—when so much is conveyed through expression. In a shot with several people, you can have two lines, but you are always making tough choices about which pieces of the conversation to highlight. Another rule: never put a punctuation mark in the middle of a line, because it stops the eye, and you can’t afford the delay of that split. You need to keep the viewer’s eye moving. That’s why questions we can hear on the screen are often turned into affirmative statements in the subtitle.

When do the subtitlers come into the project? Subtitling is one of the last post-production steps. The subtitler is given the whole film and has very little turnaround time. I’ve been brought in several times to curate some of the subtitles, not because the subtitler hasn’t done a good job—on the contrary—but because I’ve been living with the story from the very early stages of the project. So it makes sense that, once the subtitles are done, the film will come back to me, and I add nuance to some of the dialogue. I can bring that perspective because I’ve carried those characters around with me sometimes for a year or two. The subtitler who has to turn around the film in a week doesn’t have time to really internalize the story in the same way.

You’ve said what the subtitlers do is similar to what you do. Is it translation? Subtitling is a particular form of translation. I think of it as a distillation, because you have to choose short words, you have to choose uncomplicated words. You have to think about punctuation along with all the other rhythms of the ear and eye. It’s an essential activity, often very misunderstood and maligned, when instead it’s bridging vast linguistic and cultural distances, allowing us to experience films in languages we don’t understand. [2 Film Critics’ post “To Dub or Not To Dub: Rethinking the Cineaste's Aversion to Dubbing” deals with these issues.]

I’ve saved the personal for the end. Having followed your career, we were around when you first got into the “business,” as it’s called in Los Angeles. Your entire professional life you’ve been a scholar of Italian literature, with a focus on Dante. Where did you veer off? I did a PhD in Italian, taught Dante at Dartmouth, Humanities at Yale, and am currently Director of Public Engagement for the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins, where I also teach Italian and film. The first novel I translated was Vita by Melania Mazzucco, an extraordinary and partly true story of her ancestors who migrated to the US. I was fortunate to work with Jonathan Galassi, the publisher at Farrar Strauss and Giroux, who then asked me to read a new book I had never heard of, tucked way in the back of a bookstore in my neighborhood in Rome, that was Saviano’s Gomorra. A few weeks later that same book was in the window of every single bookstore in Italy. Things exploded when Saviano began receiving death threats for his daring exposé of the mafia—the book became an overnight sensation. I began working on it before this dramatic shift. Saviano was going to drive me around Naples, on the back of his Vespa, so that I could see the neighborhoods that he talked about in Gomorra. The night before our day in Naples, he called me from the Police Headquarters and said, “we’re not going. It’s not going to happen. I’m under police protection.” I did see him in Rome, though, and worked with him closely on Gomorra and then later on Zero, Zero, Zero, his book about the cocaine industry. He would come to dinner at my apartment, his police escort sitting outside my building the whole evening.

That’s your foray into translating not just Dante, but popular books. It’s still not screenwriting. Your first “adaptation gig,” let’s call it, was, as we’ve discussed, with Sorrentino on his first English-language film This Must Be the Place, with Penn. Sorrentino had written the screen play specifically for Sean Penn and said he would only make the film if Sean Penn said yes. But Sean Penn doesn’t speak Italian. And at the time Paolo didn’t speak much English. The producers contacted Rosaria Carpinelli, Melania Mazzucco’s literary agent and asked, “What do we do with an Italian screenplay that needs to make its way into English in a convincing enough way that someone like Sean Penn will accept this role?” Rosaria gave them my name. I am eternally grateful to her.

That was your opening, and you took it? Not so fast! One of producers called me and asked if I would translate the screenplay. I said no! I didn’t know anything about screenplays. I’d never even read one. I had no idea what was involved, and I was afraid it would be quite technical. Being Italian, the producer said, “Come on, meet me for a cup of coffee.” So we met in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome, had a coffee, and he explained: “We have this screenplay, we think it’s really good, we want Sean Penn to star in it. We have no money. But if we can get Sean Penn to read the screenplay in English, and it moves him so much that he cries, he’ll say ‘I want to be this character.’ If he says yes, we can then go to other production companies and say, ‘we have Sean Penn, please give us millions of dollars,’ and they will because everyone wants to work with Sean Penn, and we will make the movie. So all we’re really asking is that you make Sean Penn cry. Do you think that you could do that?”

Don’t keep me in suspense. Did you make Penn cry? Yes! I read the screenplay, and it made me cry. So I knew Penn would too, once I moved it into English for him. I worked with Sorrentino and his producers to come up with a screen-ready script in English, which is what they used to shoot the film.

Has signing on to do a film changed for you much since then? Today when anybody wants to bring me on to a film project, I first sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and then a 10- to 20-page contract. But my first film started with a coffee in Trastevere and a handshake. Tha

Immersion in Rome: Sari Gilbert's new mystery "Deadline Rome: The Vatican Kylix"

If you want to immerse yourself in Rome but can't get there yet, Sari Gilbert's 2021 mystery novel, "Deadline Rome: The Vatican Kylix" is a perfect way to do it. 

Set mostly in Trastevere, Gilbert's novel features a British archeologist turned journalist and part-time detective, Clare Phillips, whose knowledge of Rome's news and police systems is deep and fascinating.

The story opens with a kidnaped young man, who has a head wound, and follows shortly with Clare and her archeological buddy discovering an ear in an Etruscan tomb, where they are picnicking near Tuscania. We've been in some of those tombs - and one can picnic in them - many are simply open. And Tuscania is a gorgeous town in northern Lazio. Hopefully that will  prick your appetite for this delightful book.

Etruscan tomb in Cerveteri

You can follow Gilbert's attractive protagonist as she scooters around Rome and its environs, interviewing everyone from bishops to tombaroli (grave thieves - those who plunder ancient graves for valuable artifacts). For those who watched the British TV series, "Fleabag," you'll be pleased to note there's even a hot priest in the mix.

Enjoying Tuscania

Gilbert's novel intertwines several historically important stories: the questionable provenance of ancient relics, in this case a signed Greek wine cup or the Kylix; corruption in the Italian banking system; and the anni di piombo, or "years of lead," in which kidnaping for political and monetary gain was a plague in the country - the novel is set in 1980. The author, a retired American journalist with years of experience in Rome, adroitly uses these historical themes to remind the reader of critical facets of contemporary Italian history. 

The proposed unveiling of the Kylix reminded us of a big show of recovered artifacts in the Carabinieri headquarters in Rome. Clare visits some of the same places we did, and interviews officials we - mostly unsuccessfully - tried to interview. - photo right; our post here.

On a more playful level, Clare traipses around Rome (as noted, by scooter, but also on foot, and by car), taking the reader to specific streets and locales that evoke the Rome of Romans, not of tourists. Her favorite barristas, coffee bars themselves, small restaurants, pasta, all are a delight to anyone who loves Rome. And if you don't know a specific street, you can get out your Google Map (or Tuttocitta') and follow along. She also slings the Italian slang, some of which was new to us, but some of which we were pleased to see on the page, including "conosco il mio pollo" - "I know my own chicken" - i.e. I know of what I speak; let me do it.

One complaint might be that Clare is a little too attractive, especially to the Italian men; though I suppose Gilbert might say, that's her Italian experience. One gets a little weary of Clare constantly being noted for her good looks, and those good looks opening doors for her. And a mystery fan with whom I spoke thought there were a few too many characters and that it was difficult to keep track of them all. That wasn't my experience. In any event, these are small criticisms in a wonderfully written book with a good mystery at its heart (you'll note I haven't spoiled it for you). I'm looking forward to more from Gilbert. 

At the bar/cafe Ombre Rosse, in Piazza di Sant'Egidio,
where Clare lives.

Dianne

Gilbert's book is available on Amazon and elsewhere.

Simone de Beauvoir in Rome

 

While reading Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Cafe, I learned that Simone de Beauvoir and her life-long companion, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, had spent a good deal of time in Rome--a month or two every summer in the 1950s and 1960s, and some summers before and after, about which I have less knowledge.  I was intrigued.  I ordered two volumes of de Beauvoir's autobiography (each 400 pages): Hard Times: Force of Circumstance II, covering the years 1952-1962, and All Said and Done, covering 1962-1972.  

What I learned was not what I anticipated. Both Sartre and de Beauvoir were known as deep thinkers and careful, elaborate analysts, and I expected de Beauvoir to apply their considerable intelligence to the city of Rome, to enlighten me with one insight after another. It didn't happen. There's plenty of analysis in the autobiographies--of postwar Japan, or France's poisoned relationship with its Algerian colony (one of de Beauvoir's obsessions), of the social structure of Rio de Janeiro, and so on (the duo traveled relentlessly), and of the distress of growing old and contemplating one's death--but not of Rome, where they spent, cumulatively, several years of their lives. What was going on? What did Rome mean to these two brilliant intellectuals?

In some respects, Sartre and de Beauvoir related to Rome as other tourists--though they were not so fond of those "other tourists." Although de Beauvoir wrote that they had once enjoyed staying outside the city center, and did, in fact, once live in a hotel near Ponte Milvio, their preference was for the center (they would take a car from Ponte Milvio to walk in the old city).  One hotel was the Hotel d'Angleterre, just off Piazza di Spagna [named as such, because of its popularity with the British, and now known as "Hotel d'Inghilterra"]. Another was on the Piazza Montecitorio (the Albergo Nazionale), and still another, the Hotel del Senato, on the Piazza della Rotonda (overlooking the Pantheon). [All three are still operating.]

De Beauvoir (and sometimes Sartre) did some sightseeing, inevitably at sites frequented by those "ordinary tourists," and most of them in the city center. On the Aventine Hill, looking through the keyhole, de Beauvoir wrote: "so by fixing my attention upon a small corner of the earth, beyond it I see an entire country, together with its relationship with the world." With Sartre she visited the Castel Sant'Angelo, saw the city's Caravaggios, walked the Corso ("now made commonplace and ugly"), and waxed eloquent about the beauty of St. Peter's dome against the sky. 

Beyond the city center, they traveled to Hadrian's Villa, Ostia, Cerveteri, Orvieto, the Alban Hills and the new Roman suburbs ("a ring of concrete," in the words of Italian politician Giancarlo Pajetta, quoted approvingly by de Beauvoir). But seldom are these places worthy of more than a mention, of more than the name.  In 1968 and 1969, writes de Beauvoir, "we did not leave Rome at all, and it had never seemed to us more delightful....We walked about less than we had in other years because we had the feeling of being in all the streets and all the squares of Rome at one and the same time." 

Like other tourists--at least those of means--Sartre and de Beauvoir haunt the familiar squares. Coffee in the morning in Piazza della Rotonda; for a time, Piazza Sant'Eustachio (until it got too noisy and crowded); dinner in Piazza Navona or, later on, Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere; late evening whiskey in Piazza del Popolo; the "best ices in Rome" (a standard tourist trope) at a "little street near the hotel." In these volumes, at least, there is no mention of Piazza Vittorio, Monte Mario, the Gianicolo, Ostiense, Piazza Bologna, Monte Sacro, Garbatella, or EUR--Rome's marvelous 19th- and 20th-century neighborhoods. 

At the Pantheon--a favorite piazza 

De Beauvoir could be romantic, even poetic, about Rome.  In the early 1950s, she wrote:  

"Even when its bricks are being scorched by the heat of the ferragosto [the August 15 holidays when all of Italy shuts down], when the asphalt is  melting along the deserted avenues, occasionally punctuated by a solitary, useless policeman in a white helmet, we still feel comfortable there.  This great bustling, crowded city still calls to mind the  little town founded by Romulus.  'They should build cities in the country, the air is much cleaner,' goes the old joke; for me, Rome is the country.  No factories, no smoke; there is nothing provincial about Rome, but often in the streets, on the piazzas, one feels the harshness, the silence of country villages. The old designation 'people,' in which all factions were dissolved, really applies to the inhabitants of Rome, who sit in the evening along the Trastevere [her words], on the Campo de' Fiori, on the fringes of the old ghetto, at the tables on the wine merchant's terraces in front of a carafe of Frascati; children play around them; calmed by the coolness of the streets, babies sleep on their mothers' knees; through the fragile gaiety hanging in the air, impetuous cries rise up from below.  You can hear the popping of the Vespas, but a cricket sings as well." (There's more, but you get the idea.) 

De Beauvoir and Sartre were workaholics. Both were voracious readers (that was part of their "work") and prolific, usually every-day writers.  They were also well connected with various Italian and Roman left-wing networks--they knew Carlo Levi, Alberto Moravia (a terrible driver, by the way), artist Renato Guttuso, literary critic Mario Alicata, and journalists who pressed them for interviews--and these relationships took time. Their days were long but dominated by work: breakfast at ten (reading the newspapers, with the Pantheon as backdrop); writing or reading in the hotel until mid-afternoon ("we also spend many hours in our rooms"); a sandwich on the terrace; a brief walk; work until 5--and often into the evening.

Yet for de Beauvoir, Rome was a certain kind of workplace--a workplace melding into a vacation place, a retreat from frenetic travel and (sometimes) writing. "We were both," she wrote in the 1950s, "Sartre as well as myself, a bit worn out with all the traveling we had done; above all other countries we loved Italy, and above all other cities, Rome; so there we stayed."

For her, then, Rome was, at least in part, an escape. In Rome, she could ease up on being a committed (and exhausted) tourist, and ease up, too, on the writing. In the early 1960s she wrote: "[Writing] is still necessary for me, but sometimes I like giving myself a break from it: I do so when staying in Rome, for example, where I could have all the spare time I want to work....I read for hours when I am in Rome during the summer."  In language that sounds disarmingly simple, even simplistic, she describes Rome as "happy place....it's all so familiar, so happy, there's no need for words." "Rome" is for de Beauvoir a license to read (and not write) or, conversely, a license to return to writing: "Today," she wrote in 1958, "is very beautiful, very blue, I feel the happiness of being in Rome for a long time take hold of me again, and the desire to write. And I write." 

In All Said and Done de Beauvoir describes a variety of her dreams, including several that take place in Rome--"an agreeable place."  

Bill 

City to Mountain Top, Life to Death: Signs of Summer in Rome

If Americans can't get there, at least we can have some dreams of Rome.  Below some photos from an earlier summer, exhibiting some of Rome's uniqueness - and markers of life and death

Here's life  - a bra ad - and death - notices of death pasted over them. In Castel Gandolfo (summer home of the Popes - and featured in the award-winning 2019 film, "The Two Popes"). "In forma smagliante"  is a sort of double entendre  here, trans. "In great shape" "In top form" "Fit as a fiddle" etc.

 Though from 2012, these graffiti faces at left remind us of our 2020 "mask-up" days.

On the "life" side (mostly), right - "Brigata Peroni" or "Peroni [as in the beer] Brigade."  One doesn't normally associate brigades, as in armed forces or the anarchical - and deadly (they killed Aldo Moro)- leftists, the "Red Brigade," with beer.

Left, a fully-stocked outdoor bar/cafe', complete with the requisite photo of iconic actor Alberto Sordi, in the iconic still of him eating spaghetti (from the film "Un Americano a Roma") - we've probably seen a hundred of these in restaurants and cafes and bars - and books!

Okay - we've posted photos of the nonsensical writings on shirts and jackets, but we think not this one, which does have the word "death" in it - seen in a Rome market. I just finished reading Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way" in which he quotes some of these.  None is better than this one at right.

Eating IN the streets of Trastevere. This could be a good model for restaurants in the US
trying to expand their outside service.  Not exactly social distancing.  And no
worries from those actually standing in the street that they could be run over.

For the death end, here are two photos from the top of a mountain an hour or two outside Rome in the Abruzzi (the Gran Sasso). Yes, the ubiquitous cross was there, but also Mary, complete with rosary, and several plaques to hikers who had gone on to other heights.

In the photo below, the plaque on the right says, "Friendship doesn't need time or space. We know you will always be at our side.  Ciao Nicola."

And in that same photo, the plaque on the left reads, "In memory of Ezio Noce. Your mountain friends affectionately remember you, in this place familiar to you."

Dianne

Decorated Rome

There's a hard side to Rome, and a soft side.  The hard side is crazy traffic, failed mass transit, and a politics built on division and conflict, dating back to the Fascists and Partisans of the World War, the bitter and violent Anni di Piombo of the 1970s, and today, differences over gender, race, and immigration.

The soft side is romantic and seductive: the Trevi Fountain, Trastevere in a light drizzle, comfortable restaurants and seductive cafes.

On the soft side, but less noticeable, is a Roman fondness for informal decoration.  We've noticed this aspect of Rome many times over the years.  Here are some soft-side images from 2019, 2018, and 2017.

Monteverde Vecchio: nursery guy does this with his truck:

In Aurelia, an older woman--perhaps homeless, more likely just eccentric, but clearly a fixture in the neighborhood--had decorated this seatless bicycle more or less as a shrub, with a basket of plants and flowers off the back tire:

    Fancy paint job:

    Another fancy paint job:

   A sidewalk stairway in Trastevere, in all its crocheted glory:

Red umbrellas as driveway decoration, Prati

A small commercial truck, with an historical theme:

The scooter windshield of a Roma fan who hates Juventus (sometimes there's a hard side to the soft side):

And last, cheating a bit because it's Sicily, not Rome--a melon vendor looking back to JFK (2016):

Bill

Cute Cat Clickbait - Roman style

We're not immune to cute cat photos, having owned several cats in our lifetimes - all of them wonderful in their own ways (yes, Zelda, the last, you were the best). So we have shot a few cat pix in Rome, along with shooting Bill's graffiti and my daily chronicles.

Rome is a cat-loving city.  There are its gattori - the women (mostly) who put out food for the cats, and the cat sanctuaries at the Pyramid and in Largo

Inside the cat sanctuary at Largo di Torre Argentina.

di Torre Argentina, the latter where Caesar supposedly was killed (talk about iconic places). Bo Lundin, who is the author of the Swedish guide to Rome, wrote on RST about Nelson, the one-eyed cat who hung out in those Roman ruins.

Cats chilling out on scooters are our favorites.  At the top of this post and immediately below are two from last year.

Our scooter was parked right next to this guy; so we had to take care not to disturb him (or her).

Just to show our long-lived interest, the photo below is from 2007.

Then there's this cyclist - whom we saw in both 2018 and 2019 - so we know the cat survived at least one year riding on his shoulders (and the cat obviously is no kitten).

In Villa Borghese.

We conclude with a few favorites - below, eating a potato chip on the terrazzo of Lo Zodiaco on Monte Mario (this one made it into the print edition of RST - p. 132):

That's me giving this bold cat a non-nutritious treat (the chips
came free with our drink).

And these wonderful cat/ghosts from, I recall, Trastevere.  I can't recall the graffiti artist's name, but in looking for it, I discovered lots of graffiti cats, including those by 215 and Alice (who once were a couple) and Diavù (Anna Magnani with cat). Bill says he has more photos of cat graffiti in his files as well - so there likely will be another "cute cat clickbait" post in RST's future.

Dianne

Intriguing Independent Book Stores - those that remain - in Rome

English-language book stores (or bookshops, as the English call them) in Rome have dwindled over the years (along with map stores, to our chagrin) - I have an RIP at the end of this post for a couple of them.

Marcello at the desk of Anglo-American Bookshop, with his favorite book
(just kidding)

We unfortunately see the same trend in the US, as reading of books in print declines and screens and earphones take over. Yet, there are 2 older stalwarts in the independent book store market that remain in Rome, plus an upstart. These three are all appealing options for those looking for English-language books. We have personal ties of sorts to all of them (and they all carry Rome the Second Time and Modern Rome).

The most Italian of these is Anglo-American Bookshop at via della Vite 102, founded in 1953, when, as it says on its site, "This choice was very courageous as the English language was not yet considered a recognized language worldwide for any type of exchange (economic, cultural, tourist etc.)." Hmmm.  [The "Story" is still only in Italian on the site, but you can click your 'translate' button to get it in English.] 

We've always appreciated Anglo-American because our Italian friends shop for their English language books there, and because they sell more of our books than anyone else (except, unfortunately, Amazon). They are still ordering Rome the Second Time 10 years after its publication. Marcello, who manages the shop, is friendly and helpful. The location is ideal, very near the Spanish Steps. The shop is large, with lots of sections, magazines, and book paraphernalia.









The most American/English of the three is Almost Corner Bookshop in Trastevere at via del Moro 45. Owned for many years by Dermot O'Connell, who moved from Saudi Arabia in the 2000s to buy it (from the founder, who opened it in 1991), the bookshop recently was sold. It's tiny and chock full of books. You'll find Scottish patriot Anita Ross at the desk, as she has been for years; she's very knowledgeable and helpful.

Translator Frederika Randall and author Giacomo Sartori,
of "I Am God" at Almost Corner Bookshop.

We also like Almost Corner because of the events there, many involving our friends. Frederika Randall brought in now-Paris-based Italian author Giacomo Sartori, whose fascinating 2016 novel "I Am God" she translated and sheparded to US publication (named one of the NYT's best books in translation a year or so ago - look for a review in this space soon). 

And we had a terrific free trip to the nearby hilltown of Montecelio and its surprisingly excellent Archaeological Museum "Rodolfo Lanciani" (Museo Civico Archeologico "Rodolfo Lanciani") where Notre Dame (in Rome) Professor Ingrid Rowland gave a reading from her extensive scholarship on Italy (our favorite of hers, her book on Giordano Bruno). 

Ingrid Rowland being introduced at the Montecelio Archeological
Museum in an outing sponsored by Almost Corner Bookshop.

That day as I recall she read from her Pompeii book and talked about the mystic German monk, Athanasius Kircher, who ended up in the monastery, Santuario della Mentorella, well behind Tivoli (near Guadagnolo), which we hiked up to and almost killed ourselves hiking down from (it's on a precipice; we took the wrong path - and I hadn't read yet the part about Kircher's heart being burned in the church on his death - maybe that should've been an omen). Photos of our near-death trip and the sanctuary are at the end of this post.

In Montecelio's excellent Museo Civico Archeologico
"Rodolfo Lanciani."

The author readings and trip were all courtesy of Almost Corner. Again, great book store location, helpful and friendly staff. There's a nice story on prior owner Dermot O'Connell here: https://books.substack.com/p/notebook-bookselling-at-the-crossroads

The appealing entrance to Otherwise
Bookshop near Piazza Navona.

And then the upstart. To open an independent bookstore in these trying times is indeed courageous.  Otherwise Bookshop is just off Piazza Navona, in fact practically on Piazza Pasquino on via del Governo Vecchio.


Otherwise is across the street from its Italian counterpart, Altroquando, which has a pub and reading area in its basement. It was at that pub that we gave a talk on our approach to Rome - talk about the need for courage! - to Romans. Otherwise has a full schedule of events, including book clubs, poetry slams, and music.

Audience for our talk on our "second time" take on Rome at
Otherwise Bookshop's pub below its sister bookshop, Altrove.

Just before our talk at Otherwise began.

I also originally cited Feltrinelli International, which WAS an adequate bookshop selling books in languages other than Italian near Piazza della Repubblica - part of that immense publishing house and chain and soulless compared to these other three. Just before this post went live, Feltrinelli announced it was closing several stores, among them this international bookshop.

So the RIPs besides Feltrinelli International?  Among them, The Lion Bookshop, the grand dame of English-language bookshops in Rome, which simply closed one day in 2011. And, the Trastevere Open Door Bookshop which exists, but has turned into only a used-book store.

Dianne

The rock-perched Santuario della Mentorella where
the philosophical monk Kircher hung out.

Taking the wrong path (the view down was precipitous). Note the path is marked (lower right) and there's a cable to hold onto, upper right--suggesting the steepness of the hill.