The full truth about the dealings of seven- time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti may never emerge, but director Paolo Sorrentino has come close with his complex film Il Divo. He talks to PADDY AGNEWabout the man and the movie
YOU COULD argue that Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino's densely crafted film about enigmatic, seven- time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti, might prove too complex for Irish viewers. Yet, you would probably be wrong.
Yes, this is a film which tends to provide a bewildering catalogue of many of the darkest moments in recent Italian history, in which mystery follows upon mystery, violent death on violent death. Il Divotells an alarming tale that runs from the Red Brigade killing of Christian Democrat president Aldo Moro in 1978 through to Andreotti's own indictment for and subsequent acquittal of "Mafia association" in 1999. Along the way, the tale touches on a whole host of infamous, high-profile murder victims such as banker Roberto Calvi, businessman Michele Sindona, Palermo Prefect General Alberto Dalla Chiesa, journalist Mino Pecorelli, Euro MP Salvo Lima and mafia investigator Giovanni Falcone.
The thread that links all these different and grizzly events is ex-Christian Democrat senator Andreotti himself. In different ways and at different times, Andreotti was involved with all of the above, be it as a political friend or foe. The enigma that is Andreotti and his attachment to power (even now as a 90-year-old “life senator”, he occasionally makes himself heard) makes for intriguing cinema, even if the politics seem complicated.
For this reason, 39-year-old director Sorrentino is not worried that the film may prove baffling to Irish viewers not intimately familiar with the last 30 years of Italian political life, pointing out: “Italian politics are so complex and intricate that they are difficult for Italians to follow, let alone the Irish ... For me, it’s much more important that the film prompts a reflection on how politicians use power.”
Prizes picked up at Cannes last May and in Dublin two months ago would suggest that Sorrentino has a point. Beautifully filmed, brilliantly acted, Sorrentino's Divomoves from the realistic to the ironic and even to the surreal with consummate ease, all the while accompanied by a clever soundtrack that includes Faure, Vivaldi and Sibelius, as well as original compositions by Teho Teardo.
In choosing to make a film about Andreotti, Sorrentino has chosen one of the most enigmatic figures not just of Italian but also of European post-war history. This is a man whose reign of power ran from 1947 to 1992. In that time, he served as prime minister seven times, and was foreign minister on six different occasions, serving in no less than 24 Italian governments in all. He saw US president Harry Truman out of the White House and he was still there to welcome in Bill Clinton.
Put simply, Senator Andreotti was a key figure in post-war Italy, a central player not only in Italy’s international rehabilitation after the shame and suffering of Mussolini’s 20-year long Fascist regime but also a major figure in Italy’s post-war economic revival. He is not only a founding father of the modern Italian state but also the embodiment of many of the scandals, mysteries and controversies that have marked that state.
Former centre-left senator and magistrate Luciano Violante once said of Andreotti: “He was a frontier politician, a man who continually skirted the shorelines of power, be they legal or illegal.”
Il Divois just one of the many nicknames that have been applied to Andreotti over the years. It might mean "the divine one" or more modestly "the popular one". He has also been treated to less kind epithets, at times being known as "Beelzebub", "The Sphinx" or "Il Gobbo" (a reference to his hunched back).
Throughout all his time in power, he fascinated the Italian media, which adored (and still adores) his biting wit while regularly referring to him as “impenetrable”, “ironic”, “laconic” and “in love with power”.
A central thesis in Sorrentino’s film is that, to hold on to power, Andreotti made many questionable deals and as such he embodies the “contradiction of power”. At one point in the film, Andreotti exclaims: “People simply do not understand the terrible things that those in power have to do in order to guarantee the country’s well-being and development.”
Sorrentino argues that to reflect on Andreotti and his relationship to power (clientelism, using the Mafia vote, jobs for votes, money handouts via the local parish priest etc) is to reflect on a key aspect of modern Italy: “Italy hovers between being a modern developed democracy and a country that seems much more like the Third World ... Italian politicians think they are a pillar of seriousness in the country, but in fact they are grotesque; they don’t realise that they have become a cabaret act.”
The many accusations against Andreotti, however, do not seem too much like cabaret. He was accused (and acquitted) of involvement in the 1979 murder of investigating journalist Mino Pecorelli because the reporter was allegedly about to publish incriminating material about Andreotti’s attitude as a government minister to the Red Brigade kidnapping and subsequent killing of fellow Christian Democrat Aldo Moro. In brief, the allegation was that Andreotti had refused to negotiate with the Red Brigade, while police and military forces had not tried too hard to find Moro.
The best known and the first Mafia “pentito” (supergrass), Tommasso Buscetta claimed to have learnt from other godfathers that Andreotti had called on the Mafia to kill General Alberto Dalla Chiesa, a prefect sent down to Palermo in 1982. Left without adequate resources or protection, the general was indeed killed by the Mafia, just months after arriving in Palermo. Buscetta claimed that Andreotti had wanted Dalla Chiesa killed because he, too, had come to know too much about Andreotti’s role as Minister during the Moro affair.
Most spectacularly, of course, he was accused (and again acquitted) in the so-called “Trial of the Century” of “Mafia association” – systematic collusion with Cosa Nostra in Sicily. Palermo magistrates argued, using the evidence of various “pentiti”, that Andreotti was the Mafia’s “point of reference” in Roman political circles. There was even the claim, reproduced in Il Divo, that Andreotti personally met with then “Boss of Bosses”, Totò Riina, in Palermo in September 1988. On that occasion, according to Mafioso Baldassare Di Maggio, the two men exchanged a kiss, a traditional greeting between Sicilian godfathers.
The Palermo trial, which along with the kiss features in the film, made much of Andreotti’s close relationship with Euro MP Salvo Lima. The son of a Mafioso, Lima’s 30-year long career in Sicilian politics relied heavily on collaboration with the Mafia. Lima was Andreotti’s man in Sicily, someone who was able to guarantee hundreds of thousands of Sicilian votes, allegedly in return for “favours” such as the manipulation of appeals courts hearings, the removal of obstinate Mafia investigators and a generally soft approach on anti-Mafia legislation.
In March 1992, Lima was gunned down and killed by the Mafia outside his Palermo home, allegedly because he had failed to ensure that Mafiosi sentenced at the celebrated 1986-1987 Maxi-Processo (supertrial) had had their convictions quashed at subsequent appeals hearings. Andreotti, claimed various pentiti, was meant to have “fixed” the appeals hearings.
There is a key scene in Il Divowhere Andreotti is interviewed by Roman journalist Eugenio Scalfari, founder and editor of the prestigious Rome daily La Repubblica. The interview in question never took place, but it represents an element of dramatic licence that allows Sorrentino to ask a series of terrifying questions concerning Andreotti's links to all of the above mentioned "mysteries". Was it just co-incidence, asks the sceptical Scalfari, that you were in some way connected to so many killings and scandals? "I don't believe in co-incidence, I believe in the will of God," replies Andreotti.
More than 10 years ago, The Irish Timesinterviewed Andreotti. Like Sorrentino in the film, I too was curious about many of these scandals. Yet, when I met Andreotti, I was confronted not with some diabolic monster but rather with a frail, elderly, hunch-backed man who was wearing two clearly worn-out old grey cardigans to combat a cold Roman winter's day.
Andreotti had much to say about Italy’s relations with the US, the Arab world, the European Union and even with Ireland. He could recall Garret Fitzgerald clearly, claiming that the two of them chatted away quite happily in French. The late Charles Haughey, however, might have been disappointed to learn that he made no impression on Andreotti at all. The life senator could not remember him.
At a certain point in the interview, I asked Andreotti about Salvo Lima. Given that the children and dogs in the Palermo street knew that he was a Mafioso, did Senator Andreotti never have any doubts? “No, absolutely not, I never had any suspicion that he might be involved with Cosa Nostra,” came the immediate answer, complete with a seraphic smile. Matter closed.
Of course, various “matters” are not closed. Paolo Sorrentino is an optimist. He still believes that one day light will be shed on some of the Andreotti mysteries: “For now, there are no answers but perhaps in time there will be ... Hope is the last thing to die...” he says.
In the meantime, Sorrentino is "thinking" about his next film. It might even be a sort of modern-day Dolce Vitathat bears no resemblance to Fellini's masterpiece but which analyses the relationship between showbiz, celebrity and political power in today's Italy. Like Il Divo, that could be a film worth watching.
