Barbara Pezzotti, “Visualising the anni di piombo: The Representation of the Bologna Massacre in Romanzo criminale (2005) and Romanzo criminale – The Series (2008-2010)”, Fulgor, vol 5.3 (2018): 50-59. (original) (raw)

Giancarlo De Cataldo's novel Romanzo criminale (2002) has been turned into a film, Romanzo criminale (directed by Michele Placido, 2005), and subsequently a TV series, Romanzo criminale -La serie 1 e 2 (directed by Stefano Sollima, 2008. Like the novel, the film and the TV series are inspired by the story of the Banda della Magliana, a criminal gang that terrorised Rome in the 1970s and 1980s, and frame the crime story in the political and social context of the time. This article concentrates on the representation of the 1980 terrorist attack known as la strage di Bologna that features in both. I argue that, following Placido's controversial graphic representation of the strage and its victims, Sollima consciously avoided creating the possibility for what Burgoyne calls a "prosthetic" experience (2009: 139) by which the audience might understand and remediate this traumatic event through the emotions of one character. The series (in which graphic violence is frequent and functional to the representation of the psyche of the criminal protagonists) avoids sensationalism and provides a representation of the strage in which historical documents are central. Given Sollima's response to critics' concerns regarding the film, and his avoidance of the manipulation of archival material, Romanzo criminale -La serie must be seen as the result of mediation among film producers, critics and scholars. It also illustrates the potential of the series format, compared with the feature-film format, in the representation of historical events on film. The TV series Romanzo criminale -La serie (2008-2010, seasons 1 and 2), directed by Stefano Sollima, was produced after the controversial film entitled Romanzo criminale directed in 2005 by Michele Placido. Both are adaptations of Giancarlo De Cataldo's novel Romanzo criminale published in 2002. In this article, I argue that Romanzo criminale -La serie is particularly effective in re-interpreting the troubled period of Italy's history known as the anni di piombo (years of lead), 1969-1982. 1 In particular, I compare the treatment, Visualising the anni di piombo: The representation of the Bologna massacre in Romanzo criminale (2005) and Romanzo criminale -La serie (2008-2010) Volume 5, Issue 3, June 2018 50