Ennio Flaiano

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Statue in honor of Ennio Flaiano in his hometown of Pescara.

Ennio Flaiano (born March 5, 1910 in Pescara , † November 20, 1972 in Rome ) was an Italian writer , journalist and screenwriter .

As a subtle and ironic moralist, Flaiano wrote short stories and other prose that describe the contradictions of the present in a satirical and sometimes grotesque way.

Life

Plaque on Flaiano's house in Via Montecristo in Rome.

Ennio Flaiano was born in 1910 as the youngest of seven children in the port city of Pescara. His father was a merchant, his mother Francesca his second wife. At the age of five he was placed in a foster family with friends of his parents in Camerino . Two years later he started school, attended boarding schools in Fermo , Chieti , Senigallia and Brescia and went to Rome in 1922 to attend a grammar school. He was not a good student, with difficulty he succeeded in being accepted into the Faculty of Architecture ; he finished his studies without a degree. In 1935 he was drafted into the military and took part in the Italian Abyssinia campaign. After returning to Rome, he met Rosetta Rota, whom he married in 1940. In 1939 he began his career as a journalist, theater and film critic for the weekly newspaper Oggi . His only daughter Lelè was born in 1942.

Writing career

In Rome, Flaiano met writers and artists, but began to write himself late.

He wrote his first and only novel, Tempo di uccidere , within a few months in Milan in the winter of 1946 . In it he processes his own experiences as a young lieutenant during the war in Africa. The book is one of the few literary testimonies of the war of 1935/1936, with which Italy tried to secure its colonial rule on the African continent. Flaiano tells of a young Italian soldier who accidentally kills an Ethiopian woman and is then persecuted by feelings of guilt and self-doubt. When the novel came out in 1947, it received critical acclaim and was the first work to be awarded the newly founded Premio Strega , a critics' award for Italian literature that has been awarded every year since then. The novel was filmed in 1989 under the direction of Giuliano Montaldo with Nicolas Cage in the lead role.

In 1949 Flaiano became editor of the magazine il Mondo , where he got his own column. He later also wrote for the newspapers L'Europeo , La Voce Repubblicana and Il Corriere della Sera .

In the 1940s, Ennio Flaiano started working for the cinema. He wrote his first screenplay in 1942 for the film Pastor Angelicus by Romolo Marcellini . By the 1960s, more than 60 scripts were written that were filmed by directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Luigi Zampa and Mario Monicelli. He had a particularly close relationship with Federico Fellini , for whom he wrote the scripts for a total of eight films, including The Idlers ( I vitelloni ), The sweet life ( La dolce vita ) and 8 ½ ( Otto e mezzo ). These three films earned Flaiano Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay.

Flaiano has published several volumes of short stories (including Diario notturno and Una e una notte ) as well as plays, including a. the comedy Un marziano a Roma , a work that he himself describes as his best. His story Melampus was filmed in 1972 under the title Alone with Giorgio ( Liza ) by Marco Ferreri with Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni .

In 1969 one of the Roman theaters, the Teatro dei Fanciulli , founded in 1928, was renamed Teatro Flaiano in his honor .

In 1972 Flaiano died of a heart attack in Rome.

The Premi Internazionali Flaiano , international awards in the categories of literature, theater and film, have been awarded in his hometown of Pescara since 1973 .

Works

Dramas

  • La guerra spiegata ai poveri (1946)
  • La donna nell'armadio (1958)
  • Un marziano a Roma e altre farse (1971)

Novels and short stories

  • Tempo di uccidere (1947) - German: Everything has its time , translated by Susanne Hurni, Manesse Verlag, Zurich 1978. Revised new edition with an afterword by Elke Heidenreich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7175-2236-2 .
  • Diario notturno (1956) - German: Nocturnal diary , Ammann Verlag, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-250-10060-9 .
  • Una e una notte (1959) - German: One and One Night , Ammann Verlag, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-250-10119-2 .
  • Oh Bombay! (1970) - German: O Bombay! , Beck & Glückler, Freiburg 1996, ISBN 3-89470-412-8 .
  • Melampus (1970) - German: Melampus , Beck & Glückler, Freiburg 1993, ISBN 3-89470-410-1 .
  • Il gioco e il massacro (1970)
  • Le ombre Bianche (1972)
  • Autobiografia del blu di Prussia (posthumous, 1974)
  • Diario degli errori (posthumously, 1977)

Scripts

  • Lo Sceicco bianco (1952) - German: The white sheikh ; Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-21586-X .
  • I Vitelloni (1953) - German: The idlers ; Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1977, ISBN 3-257-20318-7 .
  • La Strada (1954) - German: The song of the street ; Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-257-20316-0 .
  • Il Bidone (1955) - German: Die Schwindler or Fellini's crooks ; Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-21587-8 .
  • Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) - German: The nights of Cabiria ; Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1977, ISBN 3-257-20317-9
  • La Dolce Vita (1960) - German: The sweet life , Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-257-20121-4
  • Giulietta degli spiriti (1965) - German: Julia and the spirits ; Diogenes Verlag, Zurich, ISBN 3-257-20123-0
  • Pastor Angelicus (1942)
  • Inviati speciali (1943)
  • Vivere ancora (1945) - German: Live again
  • L'Abito nero da sposa (1945)
  • La Freccia nel fianco (1945)
  • Roma città libera (1946)
  • Il Vento mi ha cantato una canzone (1947)
  • Fuga in Francia (1948)
  • Robber and Gendarme (Guardie e Ladri) (1951)
  • Parigi è semper Parigi (1951)
  • Il Mondo le condanna (1952) - German: Those who live from love
  • Canzoni, canzoni, canzoni (1953)
  • Fanciulle di lusso (1953)
  • Vergine moderna (1954)
  • Love, Women and Soldiers (Destinées) (1954)
  • La Romana (1954) - German: The joyless street
  • Camilla (1954)
  • Dov'è la libertà ...? (1954) - German: Where is freedom?
  • Tempi nostri (1954)
  • Peccato che sia una canaglia (1954) - German: It's a shame that you're a rascal
  • Totò e Carolina (1955)
  • Il Segno di Venere (1955)
  • La Donna del fiume (1955) - German: The woman from the river
  • La Fortuna di essere donna (1956) - German: How wonderful to be a woman
  • Calabuig (1956)
  • L'Ultimo paradiso (1957) - German: The Last Paradise
  • Racconti d'estate (1958) - German: summer stories
  • Fortunella (1958)
  • Un Ettaro di cielo (1959)
  • Un Amore a Roma (1960) - German: nights of love in Rome
  • Fantasmi a Roma (1961) - German: The haunted castle in Via Veneto
  • La Notte (1961) - German: The night
  • Boccaccio '70 (1962)
  • Hong Kong un addio (1963)
  • 8 ½ (1963)
  • El Verdugo (1963)
  • Tonio Kröger (1964)
  • Io, io, io… e gli altri (1965)
  • Una Moglie americana (1965) - German: key game in Texas
  • La Decima vittima (1965) - German: The tenth victim
  • Le Plus vieux métier du monde (1967) - German: The oldest trade in the world
  • I Protagonisti (1968) - German: Bandit to be visited
  • Colpo rovente (1969)
  • Sweet Charity (1969)
  • Vivi o, preferibilmente, morti (1969) - German: eat or die
  • Liza (1972) - German: Alone with Giorgio
  • L'Inchiesta (made into a film in 1986 and 2006) - German: The investigation
  • Tempo di uccidere (1989): Based on the novel for the film Time to Live, Time to Die , screenplay by Giuliano Montaldo
  • Lo Scippo (filmed in 2001)

literature

Letters

  • Ennio Flaiano: Soltanto le parole: Lettere di ea Ennio Flaiano (1933-1972) , Bompiani, 1995, ISBN 8-84522671-9 (Italian)

About the work

  • Michele Ferrario: Bibliografia degli scritti di Ennio Flaiano , All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro, 1988, ISBN 8-84441088-5 (Italian)
  • Lucilla Sergiacomo: Invito alla lettura di Ennio Flaiano , Mursia, 1996, ISBN 8-84252111-6 (Italian)
  • Milagro Martín Clavijo: La farsa trágica en el teatro de Ennio Flaiano , Peter Lang Publishing, 2002, ISBN 3-631-39165-X (Spanish)

About the author

  • Marisa S. Trubiano: Ennio Flaiano: a journalist in Rome. Essay in: Italian Culture , Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp. 195 (16); American Association for Italian Studies, 2000. (English)
  • Antonio Marchetti: Pescara. Ennio Flaiano e la città parallela. Edizioni Unicopli, Milan 2004. (Italian)
  • Hanns-Josef Ortheil : The little founding father. In: The white islands of time. NA: btb, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-442-74720-7 . Pp. 269-280. (EA: The little founding father (About the Italian writer Ennio Flaiano). In: Merkur , 1998, Heft 4, pp. 347–353.)

Supplementary literature

  • Antonio Palermo : Solitudine del moralista: Alvaro e Flaiano , Ligori, 1986, ISBN 8-82071511-2 (Italian)
  • B. Schmidt: Africa in Italy. Traces of the "Sogno Coloniale" in Italian literature , Master's thesis, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 2003 ( summary )
  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Critical lexicon for contemporary foreign language literature , loose-leaf collection, Munich

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Flaiano, Ennio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Flajano, Ennio; Rota, Giovanni
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Pescara
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1972
Place of death Rome