L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 6 NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS maker to receive Venice's lifetime Lion; in fact, the his- tory of the award contains an Italian-American thread t h a t b e c o m e s d i f f i c u l t t o miss if you take the time to read the list of achievements and place the names next to o n e a n o t h e r : J o h n F o r d received the honor in 1971, w h i l e i n 1 9 8 2 i t w e n t t o F r a n k C a p r a , w h o h a d been born in Bisacquino, in the province of Palermo, in 1897 and taken to the United States by his family when he was still a child. By the time Venice honored him, Capra had long since become one of the defining figures of Amer- ican cinema, responsible for It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and a body of work that we can recognize as "Hollywood to its core." Yet the award came to him in the country his family had left decades e a r l i e r , w h i c h g i v e s t h e moment, at least in the eyes of those with a similar back- g r o u n d , a s p e c i a l s i g n i f i - cance. Ten years later, the con- n e c t i o n b e t w e e n t h e L i d o and Italian America became even harder to miss when F r a n c i s F o r d C o p p o l a received the Golden Lion for L i f e t i m e A c h i e v e m e n t i n 1992, followed by Robert De Niro in 1993, Al Pacino in 1994 and Martin Scors- ese in 1995. For four consec- utive editions, the world's oldest film festival gave its highest personal honor to m a j o r A m e r i c a n f i g u r e s whose family histories led back to Italy. W e a r e n o t t r y i n g t o reclaim their heritage and make their achievements an Italian thing: their profes- sional lives and artistic iden- t i t i e s w e r e , a n d s t i l l a r e , quintessentially American. Rather, those four consecu- t i v e a w a r d s h a p p e n e d t o s h o w h o w t h o r o u g h l y t h e history of American cinema had interlaced with the his- tory of Italian emigration. This year another family s t o r y s u r f a c e d , a l t h o u g h from a rather different direc- tion, when Russell Crowe arrived on September 11 to present What Love Builds, a documentary about music that he directed himself and spent around fifteen years assembling. While speaking a t t h e f e s t i v a l , C r o w e returned to something he had discovered only a few years ago: that one branch of his family was Italian. His great-great-great-grandfa- ther on his mother's side was Luigi Ghezzi, born in Ascoli Piceno in 1829, and his route out of Italy was considerably less predictable t h a n t h e b e t t e r - k n o w n A t l a n t i c j o u r n e y s o f t h e n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y w e ' r e accustomed to. Ghezzi went first to Argentina and later to India, survived a ship- wreck, reached Cape Town, m a r r i e d a n I r i s h w o m a n there named Mary Ann Cur- tain, and eventually arrived with her in New Zealand in 1864, where Crowe's family remained. Over the generations, the surname changed enough for the Italian connection to disappear from family mem- ory, and it was only through genealogical research, sup- ported by a DNA test from one of Crowe's relatives, that t h e l i n e w a s e v e n t u a l l y r e c o n s t r u c t e d . C r o w e announced the discovery in 2024, after which the mayor of Ascoli Piceno invited him t o v i s i t t h e c i t y , a n d t h i s month on the Lido he was still talking about the unex- pected route that linked his family back to the Marche. There is one earlier Ital- ian connection to Holly- wood that belongs here as well, especially this year, although it needs little intro- duction after the Valentino centenary coverage in our p r e v i o u s i s s u e . R o d o l f o Valentino came to Venice in 1909, aged fourteen, hop- i n g t o e n t e r t h e I s t i t u t o Nautico Morosini, but was r e j e c t e d b e c a u s e o f h i s m y o p i a a n d s l i g h t b u i l d . Four years later, he sailed for the United States, where the career that eventually made him one of the first truly international movie stars began. By 1923, when h e r e t u r n e d t o V e n i c e , V a l e n t i n o w a s f a m o u s enough to attract attention simply by moving through t h e c i t y , a n d s u r v i v i n g accounts place him at the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido. He died in New York only three years later, six years before the first film f e s t i v a l w a s h e l d o n t h a t hotel's terrace. T h e c o n n e c t i o n r e s u r - faced this September, a cen- tury after his death, when the trailer for La vita di Rudy – Rudy's Life was presented at the Excelsior during an event organized by t h e I t a l i a n F e d e r a t i o n o f F i l m C l u b s . D i r e c t e d b y Leonardo De Carlo and writ- ten by Antonio Ludovico, p r e s i d e n t o f t h e R o d o l f o Valentino Foundation, the film draws on Valentino's own writings and uses origi- nal photographs as part of its reconstruction of his life. Elsewhere in this issue, our i n t e r v i e w w i t h L u d o v i c o looks much more closely at the project, how it developed a n d a t t h e d e c i s i o n t o l e t Valentino's own words carry much of the story. For this piece, the location is enough. V a l e n t i n o s t a y e d a t t h e Excelsior before the festival existed and returned there, in a sense, on film a hundred years after his death, while only a few rooms and ter- races away another genera- tion of American cinema was arriving for the Mostra. There is no single story connecting Clooney, Crowe, C a p r a , C o p p o l a , D e N i r o , P a c i n o , S c o r s e s e a n d Valentino, and trying to turn them into one would surely f l a t t e n w h a t m a k e s t h e s e connections important in the f i r s t p l a c e : s o m e o f t h e m belong to the history of emi- gration, others to ancestry r e d i s c o v e r e d g e n e r a t i o n s later, while others simply c o m e f r o m c a r e e r s t h a t r e p e a t e d l y c r o s s e d t h e Atlantic until Italy became part of them in ways they probably never planned. W h a t V e n i c e h a s d o n e , almost by accident, is give all these different stories the same meeting point. The fes- t i v a l w a s c r e a t e d i n 1 9 3 2 because the Lido needed to bring foreign visitors back after the economic crisis had emptied its hotels, and Hol- lywood was there from the very first evening. Ninety- four years later, American cinema is still arriving by boat each September, with many of the people stepping onto the Lido carrying with them family histories that began in Italy, many genera- tions earlier. This is why we like to say that the traffic, h e r e i n t h e L a g u n a , h a s never really moved in only one direction. No single story connects Clooney, Crowe, Capra, Coppola, De Niro, Pacino, Scorsese and Valentino. Their ties to Italy span emigration, rediscovered roots and careers that crossed the Atlantic until Italy became part of who they are. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 Evening arrivals at the Venice Film Festival turn the Lido into a meeting place for international cinema, with the lagoon and the red carpet sharing the same stage (Original image created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI)

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