The seventies: the birth of the gay movement in Italy and the cinema

“The fags have their wounded gaze weight"(Allen Ginsberg). 1968 and 1969 were, throughout the western world, the opportunity to definitively question the political, social, family, a world of a world that seemed to no longer be able to respond to the new requests that, especially the cosmos youth, but also the worker universe, they proposed as a possible future.
The student and workers' struggles, through the occupation of the universities, the strikes and the demonstrations of the square, proposed new cultural architectures, far from the university baronado and distant from the classic production means of capitalism. The new questions of freedom affected the sphere of sexuality in particular, overturning the entire system of relationships and relationships that had characterized the lives of individuals: it was above all the feminist movement that questioned the ancient codes of conduct, effectively opening a glimmer Also viable for LGBT claims.

Casus Belli took the night between 27 and 28 June 1969, when a group of policemen, led by Seymour Pine, broke into the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar of Christopher Street, with the intention of beating, insulting and punish, the local visitors. Punitive expeditions of this kind were quite frequent also because the excess of machismo against lesbian and transsexual homosexuals seemed to be the basis on which to build the career of a good policeman.

This time, however, those who until then had been only meek victims, decided to rebel against yet another abuse: out of the place he noticed a large crowd of 'different' who, tired for the continuous abuses of the police, gave birth to a real one and its night of urban guerrilla warfare, forcing the policemen, first to call reinforcements, and Po to retire after hours of battle. Stopped for the incident, the policemen returned the next night in an attempt to give an exemplary punishment, but the LGBT community had decided to respond to that challenge by stubbornly defending itself for two consecutive nights.

In the meantime, the American press had baptized the event such as the Stonewall revolt and, in the battle, some groups close to the alternative left began to support homosexuals. The voice of the poet Allen Ginsberg joined them who celebrated the incident with the famous phrase: "The fags lost their wounded gaze" which is still used today to tell what happened in summary.

The clashes taught that homosexuals were no longer willing to act as a scapegoat for any kind of free violence and that, indeed, thanks to those struggles, they had matured a new awareness that pushed them to organize themselves to defend their dignity of individuals, shake off centuries of discrimination and shame and definitively put that attitude of false humility behind which every different should have hidden according to the heterosexual 'rule'.

From 1970 onwards, first in American cities and subsequently also on the European continent, on 28 June it became the day of homosexual pride in which to remind the world the victory of homosexual and transsexuals against the police who had played the role of symbol of heteronormativity . Over time, the parade of Gay Pride has started to become an event in which to give voice to the claims that, from time to time, the LGBT community had decided to carry on to improve the life of each of its members.

The seventies therefore open with the birth of liberation movements such as the gay liberation front in the United States of America, or the English GLF, the front homosexuelle of action rèvolution (Fhar) in France, the Mouvement Homosexuelle d'Action Rome (Mhar) in Belgium and the Italian revolutionary homosexual unitary front (outside!) In Italy.

The basic idea of ​​these movements was to put the "homosexual question" next to the claims that were carried out by the radical left: those of the students, those of the workers, women and, in the United States, those of ethnic minorities and color people.

Micro -play of the early years of the Italian gay movement

If in countries such as France and the United Kingdom, in the 1950s and 1970s, the integration in the society of homosexual people, in Italy, this previous, had never been born in the 1950s and 1970s. This led to greater difficulty in the birth of a homosexual movement proper: in fact, those experiences of fundraising or management of newspapers such as Arcadie, published in France between 1959 and 1981, were missing.

Everything was born in May 1971, in the house that Fernanda Pivano had in via Manzoni in Milan. The writer had just returned from the United States where she had seen how they were organizing the American homosexual collectives and wanted to share this experience with some friends who were interested in the theme such as Angelo Pezzana and Alfredo Cohen, to give them some useful tips on how to give life to a first nucleus of activists.

The month before, in the newspaper La Stampa of Turin, an article entitled had been published: the unhappy who loves his image in which Professor Andrea Romero, the primary neurologist of the Mauritian hospital in Turin, a book just published by Feltrinelli and entitled Diary of a homosexual.

The author was Giacomo Dacquino, a Catholic psychoanalyst who secretly transcribed the sessions of a well -known Turin character, homosexual, who, according to the author, had been 'redeemed' to internosexuality thanks to his care.
Driven by the brazenness with which D'Aquino claimed to have 'cured' a patient who, on the other hand, was still homosexual, the group of homosexuals who was meeting in Fernanda Pivano's house, had decided to write a letter to the Turin newspaper to clarify a few The absurdity of the book by D'Aquino that Professor Romero had avoided.

The letter, however, was not published and Pezzana (who had been the spokesperson to the group), saw a response from the editorial staff in which it was stated that "some topics had been talked about too much".
Hence the decision to give birth to their own newspaper in which to give voice to the points of view of the people who were on the other side with respect to the professors who claimed to speak in their name saying false things on their account. It was essentially to give life to an organ that reported the points of view of lesbians and gays that no means of information would have ever dreamed of, in that historical moment, to publish.

The name chosen for the new magazine was out! (Italian translation of the title of a similar magazine, published in the United States with the title as out!) And when, later, it was decided to give life to a movement, it was a obvious choice to call him out! And to borrow from the name of the French homosexual movement decided to assign both the new movement and the corresponding magazine, on the false line of the French group (Front Homosexuelle d'Action Rome) the words of which outside! It would have become the acronym: Italian revolutionary homosexual unitary front.

The number 0 of the magazine was released in December 1971 and was printed in fifteen thousand specimens that were all distributed by hand, not only to make known the project, but also to find people willing to work at the exit of the number 1 of the magazine that He came out in June of the following year.

But who were the boys of the outside? Beyond the more or less well -known names, including in addition to the aforementioned Alfredo Cohen and Angelo Pezzana, Gianni Vattimo, Myriam Cristallo and Maria Silvia Spolato can be remembered, what can be said is that they had all the characteristics of a collective Near the extra -parliamentary left and is in the revolutionary left that the group is looking for its own space, supporting its struggle for liberation from sexual repression to all other instances of Liberation from bourgeois morality and oppression produced by the capital.

This new subject, borrowing many methods of analysis from the feminist struggle, started from the idea that the only way to get to a real liberation was revolutionary practice. It is therefore enough with clandestine meetings in the parks, in the toilets, in the cinemas or in the semi -firm bars, real ghettos in which the "superstructures of the dominant power" forced homosexuals to live clandestinely their diversity. Via also the distinctions of gender and sexual orientation, the result of a castration that begins from birth and which aims to maintain power relationships characterized by injustice and oppression.

It was logical that positions thus decisive would immediately feed the split, among which the most important was certainly that of Elio Modugno, author of the heterosexual mystification (1978) who, in 1972, together with Gino Olivari, gave birth to the delay (Italian Association for the recognition of the rights of homophiles) which presented itself with a more moderate political message.

Even Fernanda Pivano, who in the meantime had collaborated by writing several articles for the magazine outside!, In 1973, was unleashed by the collective because it was not very convinced of the excessive politicalization of the group which, meanwhile, was facing a deep crisis, linked to the misunderstandings that were emerged with the groups of lesbian feminists and which led the Turin collective to federate with the radical party (setting the speech on a decidedly more way reformist), while the Milanese collectives, influenced by Mario Mieli, began to use the transvestism as a weapon of political claim.

In the following years, several other acronyms related to the homosexual world were born: in Rome, in 1975, Massimo Consoli created the political movement of homosexuals (MPO) while in Milan, in 1976, from the ashes of the outside the Milanese homosexual collectives (com). Also in that year, on the initiative of the outside of Turin, the Lambda magazine was born (the name derives from the initial letter of the Greek verb Lùein which means 'melting', 'free') but the publication of a false interview with Marco Pannella in which yes He pretended that the radical politician had come out to lead to a political clash between Angelo Pezzana, who resigned from the position of responsible director and Felix Cossolo, to whom the direction had been entrusted and sanctioned, in fact, the end of the partnership between the magazine and the movement that was born in the seventy -one in the house of Fernanda Pivano.
Beyond the alternate events and the difficulties that the outside encounter during its existence (difficulties that, to think about it, they exist even today in a much more favorable cultural and political panorama) it is useful to tell what has certainly been the most Great success that this movement reached in the early years of his life and to do it, we move to Sanremo, in the spring of 1972 where, on April 5 the Italian center of sexology, a clerical inspirational body, had An international congress on "sexual deviances" is organized.

In the program there were many interventions of self -styled specialists who intended to speak of the causes and treatments of a disease called 'homosexuality'. Some contributions suggested real toilets, such as the "aversion therapy", illustrated by the English psychiatrist Philip Feldman, who intended to treat the homosexuality of people by submitting the 'patients' to discharges caused by some electrodes applied on the fingertips, who came triggered whenever the subject who intended to be treated lingered more than eight seconds on erotic images that represented males (On the other hand, to cause a positive 'reinforcement', it was not punished with any download the patient who, on the other hand, lingered on erotic images that depicted women).

Or to resort to hypnosis to modify the sexual orientation, proposed by Jefferson Gonzaga of the University of San Paolo, which, however, his goodness, said that the healing times were extremely long, given that patients who took care of from Ten years had not yet been 'healed'. The so -called Reder technique that consisted in producing an injury in that area of ​​the brain that neurologists call "medial ventricular core".

The militants of the outside decided that the time had come to publicly say no to this exploitation of the suffering of homosexual people and on the morning of April 5, on the occasion of the opening of the work, a large team of militants, welcomed the participants with a slogan sound (with people who repeated: "Normal! Normal!" And of signs (among which the truly guessed one should be reported on which the writing stood: «Psychiatrists we came Cure you! »), thus inaugurating the long fight against homophobia that continues today.
The organizers of the conference had the police intervene who, of course, seized the material of the dispute and screen the participants.

What the organizers did not know is that among the people who had regularly enrolled in the congress, there were also gay militants, like Angelo Pezzana, who, when the turn of his intervention came, made his debut saying a phrase that would remain in history : "I am a homosexual and I'm happy to be!" The three days organized to pass the idea that homosexuality was a perversion that, for the well of society, had to be prohibited and treated, resolved in a victory of the Italian homosexual movement that had all that visibility from the chronicles of those days that , until then, the Italian media had refused to give.

Perhaps, by right right, we can consider the congress of April 5, 1972, the real Italian Stonewall, if only because he let all those who deal with homosexuality, who existed a new and interested interlocutor to deal with: a Movement that helped the homosexuals themselves to see their condition with new eyes.
 
The cinematographic side

The social claims formally open by the feminist movement and the newly homosexual movement, the struggle of students and workers, from a cinematographic point of view, made one of the most fruitful decades of the entire history of Italian cinema of the seventies, both in terms of genres that of content.

The possibility of dealing with topics never dealt with first thanks to the greater freedom that was also on a sexual level, stimulates directors and screenwriters to explore situations that constituted a taboo: just think of the film Ultimo Tango in Paris (1972) which cost Bernardo Bertolucci la loss of civil rights for a few years. This greater unscrupulousness did not only concern the author's cinema, in the seventies, in fact, many low -cost films (the so -called b movies) considered to be of poor qualitative band that Fons the ambiguity of their language and with the ambiguity of the Themes they dealt with, they played a crucial role in modifying the country's connective tissue.

As for the homosexual characters present in the cinema of those years, even if there are some significant novelties to be recorded, in most films, their representation follows the common places and clichés of the previous decade even if, in the sixties, all these common places had to deal with the presence, on the Italian territory, of a homosexual movement that was no longer afraid to express his judgments. In this direction, in fact, it is interesting to evaluate the infinite controversies that were born, in the second half of the seventies, among the lambda and outside!, Who started from a very different background attitude.

In fact, there were those who believed the presence of gay characters on the big screen however positive, because they are useful to make the Italian population become aware of the actual existence of homosexual people. On the other hand, there were those who claimed that the cinematographic representation of homosexuals and lesbians should be the result of a new and more correct vision of homosexuality, purified by that negative tara that constantly muddy their lives.

In practice there was no film that could escape this lawsuit which, with the passage of time,, however, became more and more sterile and repetitive, because it is a fact that a film can be a beautiful film even when it offers characters LGBT that look like specks and that, on the contrary, there have been films capable of giving a non -stereotyped idea of ​​the experience of homosexual people who, however, had weaknesses of other type. The fact is that the extreme politicization that the debate had taken on had put in the background the evaluation of the actual artistic value of a film whose director chose to speak also of homosexual characters.

Coming to the films we can only start from the two directors who, better than any other, have been able to transmit their homoerotic fantasies into their works. These are Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Of the first they must be remembered: death in Venice of 1971 (cinematographic transposition of the homonymous short novel by Thomas Mann); Ludwig of 1973 (in which the existential events of King Ludovico II of Bavaria are narrated) and family group in an interior of 1974 (where the relationship between an elderly professor and an tenant has a vaguely homosexual flavor); The second must certainly be remembered the entire trilogy of life: the Decameron (1971), the stories of Canterbury (1972), the flower of the thousand and one nights that is instead of 1974 (see the work card that we projected during The review that our cineforum dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini). To these works is added Salò or the 120 days of Sodoma (1975) which, with a radically different climate, proposes several homosexual weaves.

For the rest, the lion's part is always the Italian comedy, as a sexomatto by Dino Risi (1973) where in one episode the story of Cosimo is told, emigrated from Puglia to Milan, who will fall in love with a disguise that He then discovers being his brother Nino, who had left the South before him; or like the boiling potato. Filmed in 1979 by Steno, who, with undoubted courage, openly addresses the homosexual question in the Communist Party, proposing, among other things, homosexual characters who go beyond the commonplaces that still resisted in those years.

Strawberry blonde (1980), directed by Mino Bellei is important, because without giving up the climax of Italian comedy describes the life of a couple of the same sex that lives together and who shares the same apartment.
The film that indicates as the best attempt to bring homosexual characters to the center of a cinematographic narrative, however, is to forget Venice by Franco Brusati (1979) which, with a decadent and sophisticated tone, tells the intertwined stories of two homosexual couples: a format by two men and one formed by two women. The fact that the film has been nominated for the Oscar for best foreign film is a consequence of its objective value.

To these films must then be added: Triumphal Marcia by Marco Bellocchio (1976) where, among acts of accusation to the military world, the violent attitude towards women finds the story of a love story between a captain (Franco Nero) and a recruit (Michele Placido); Ernesto (1979), revised and correct transposition in the final, of the novel of Saba, directed by Salvatore Samperi; Beyond the good and evil (1977) by Liliana Cavani, in which it proves, recalling the love triangle between Nietzsche, Reè and Salomè, as there is no place for homosexuality even in a morality that goes "beyond of good and evil "; A particular day (1977) directed by Ettore Scola, where Mastroianni and Loren give life to one of the most beautiful films of Italian cinema, telling the meeting between a homosexual and a woman who share marginalization.

Finally, two classics of the seventies such as Vizietto (1978), directed by Edouard Molinaro (appreciated by many for the position of sympathy aroused by the couple composed of Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault and criticized by others for the presence of Many common places from Avannspettacolo that characterize the life of the two protagonists characterize their lives) and splendor and miseries of Madame Royale (1970) by Vittorio Caprioli, with a Tognazzi often en trams that agrees to act as a signator to the police and, once discovered, pays the consequences of his double game.

to know more

Giovannini Fabio, Communists and different. The PC and the homosexual question, Dedalo Libri, Bari, 1980.
Mieli Mario, Elements of homosexual criticism, Feltrinelli, Milan, 2003.
Modugno Elio, Heterosexual mystification, Kaos, Milan, 1991
Rossi Barilli Gianni, The gay movement in Italy, Feltrinelli, Milan,! 999.
Russo Vito, The veiled screen, Baldini & Castoldi, Milan, 1999.