L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 10 THURSDAY, AUGUST 23, 2018 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE DONATELLA POLIZZI " Italians do it better" was written on a Madonna tee-shirt in 1986 when s he s ang P apa don't Preach, but the idea that Italians are great lovers and seducers goes back to much ear- lier times when, in Hollywood, Rudolph Valentino became the latin lover hero, in opposition to the fighter-for-justice-hero, the only one existing until then. Italy is a country of saints, poets, and seducers. Seducers who, unlike the Don Juan myth and more like the Venetian Gia- como Casanova, are hedonists, positive, pleasant, fun and leave a feeling of nostalgia and sweet- ness in the women they meet. Even though the concept is often associated with the expression latin lover, due to the olive skin and dark hair of the actors impersonating this role, when we move away from movies and into reality, we should rather use the words "Italian lover." Immigrated to the US from Apulia, Rudolph Valentino can be cons idered the firs t real seducer of modern times, who entered history not only because of his unique combination of style, appearance, charisma and his famous "Valentino gaze," but also because he died very young at 31, thus consolidating a myth. Opposite to the "cold" Vikings, to the Northern men, Italian men are considered fun loving, warm and in love with women, all women. Probably the movie La Dolce Vita, after which actor Marcello Mastroianni became the seducer par excellence, represents a reaf- firmation of the Italian lover and the beginning of what could be defined the branding of Italy and Italians, the land and the purveyors of pleasure. Scholar Jacqueline Reich, who dedicat- ed a study to Marcello Mas- troianni and masculinity, entitled Beyond the Latin Lover: Marcel- lo Mastroianni, Masculinity, and Italian Cinema, reaches the con- clusion that beneath an image of hyper-masculinity lies the figure of the inetto, the Italian schlemiel at odds with and out of place in a rapidly changing world. Diverse roles throughout his career―the impotent man, the cuckold, and the unruly woman's victim, among oth- ers―present an anti-hero caught in traditional but increasingly unsteady modes of masculinity. To Reich, the inetto is a reflec- tion of the unstable political, social, and sexual climate of post-war Italy and its constantly shifting gender roles. This is definitely a way to analyze the phenomenon, but the myth s till s tands and, even today, women of Anglo-Saxon culture consider Italians exotic, their accent sexy and dream of a love story with them. The years that crowned Mas- troianni successful actor and quintessential lover, were also those of Franco Califano, who maintained to have had over 1700 women during his life. Good looking, nicknamed "the bas tard w ho came from the South," in his famous song The Skin he said: "it's the skin, not the heart, the moon and the stars." Italian melodic music, a genre still strong even in hip- hop times, can be considered the soundtrack to all these loves, especially to summer romances. If you w ant to get in the mood of those years, just listen to Il Cielo in una Stanza, by Gino Paoli, and Senza Fine by Ornella Vanoni, both from the '60s, when a group of young Italians, named by the French "Les Italiens," conquered the Côte d'A zur. The crew w as made up by Beppe P iroddi, Franco Rapetti - known as the Prince - Rodolfo Parisi and the most famous of them all because of his affair with bombshell Brigitte Bardot, Gigi Rizzi. They were known for their light, care- free attitude and undisputed love for women. Tanned, wearing unbuttoned shirts with chains underneath and leather pants, they lived the rebellious '60s in the geographical triangle of Milan-Portofino-Saint Tropez, more interested in a life of plea- sures than politics: "We had to fight against the multimillion- aires to conquer women," wrote Rizzi in his memoir, "All I had was my face, and that made the challenge even more exciting… we were poisonous." "It was '68," he wrote in an open, ele- giac letter to mark Bardot's 70th birthday, published by Corriere della Sera in 2004, "and I was dancing barefoot on tables , always out to win, never worry- ing about tomorrow. I was 24, and on French soil I felt like a musketeer, drinking Cointreau with Johnny Halliday and play- ing football with Gilbert Bécaud in the afternoons on P lace Delice. I look back and I see Saint Tropez, the hellish pit of Esquinade, the endless nights between Escale and Papagayo, and one night in particular, when you were there to applaud the exploits of Les Italiens." In the '70s, juke boxes played G rande, G rande G rande by Mina, Tanta Voglia di Lei by I Pooh, Anima Mia by I Cugini di Campagna, Ti Amo by Umberto Tozzi and, in Rimini, Maurizio Zanfanti - called Zanza, abbrevi- ation for zanzara, mosquito, as his technique was to strike and then fly away - was king of dis- cos and playboys. His fame as lover conquered Europe and girls flocked to the small beach town in Romagna hoping for a romance with him. According to his words, he has been with over 6000 different women and he always won the challenge with the most famous playboys from Versilia, the Tuscan coast where star was the city of Viareggio. Zanza was so famous and so s ought after that he had his "helpers," called Zanzini, also wearing leather pants and jackets over their bare skin and sporting long blond hair. The Independent and Bild dedicated articles to him, calling him the Italian Romeo or Tarzan: "Once I had built up a reputation, I didn't even need to try. The women would come to me." The typical Italian man wore a S peedo or P ort Cros s mall swim suit, no knee-length surfer pants like today, and their sexu- ality was very visible and looked at by all women, most of them hanging around topless on the sandy beaches of Italy. After the '80s, AIDS was like a cold shower and the atmos- phere of fancy free love was affected. Everything became darker, yet this side of the Italian lifestyle changed but was not erased. Indeed, if you cruise the Italian web, you can still find sites dedicated to rimorchio, lit- erally the act of towing, dedicat- ed to the art of picking up women. The first of these rules is "there's plenty of fish in the sea: the time you dedicate to an ex girlfriend is stolen to a future romance;" and then we have "Women deserve respect, those who are at their first experience deserve more," "Women want men who are sure of themselves. You always know what to do, what to drink, where to go; you always know you know!" Maybe Italian men know how to please women because they have always had strong mothers who expected them to behave pleasantly, or maybe it is the pasta and water in the country, but Zanza's words are still valid today: " The mos t beautiful things in the world are sunshine, women and football. I don't care for anything else." Marcello Mastroianni: immense Italian actor and a quintessential Latin lover The art of a Made in Italy Latin love

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