Buondì.
As last week, hopefully we’re on the road again this morning, this time heading for the coast at Rimini, for a weekend with the in-laws, and maybe a swim in the Adriatic, which is now the temperature of soup, apparently.
Tourist soup!
Look Rimini up in Google Maps, why don’t you? It was a port and settlement as far back as Roman times. There’s a triumphal arch, a Roman bridge – which is still in use two millennia later (crafty Romans – think of the return on investment on those blocks of stone) – and the remains of the old city wall.
There’s also a museum celebrating the famous film director, Federico Fellini, who was born in Rimini. Fellini was a child during the Mussolini period, and personally experienced what’s described in today’s Summer Series article: the shaping of Italian society along fascist lines.
Wikipedia explains that the young Fellini was a member of the ‘Avanguardista’, a compulsory Fascist youth group for teenage boys. Read all about it in today’s free article (with online audio).
Incidentally, we have ‘easy reader’ ebooks of two of Fellini’s films, La dolce vita, which more or less everyone has heard of, and Amarcord, which apparently is Rimini dialect for ‘I remember’ and relates memories of the (fascist) Italy of the director’s childhood.
Before you go clicking on those links, neither ebook is on offer, and both films (so both ebooks) follow the rather ‘challenging’ narrative structure that was avant-garde in the ‘sixties.
Fellini was basically famous for making confusing movies, so if you’re into Hollywood films with happy endings, you might not like (or understand) either one, at least without repeated viewings.
But if you’re interested in insights into Italian life and culture, both are worth a shot.
The Fellini museum, by the way, backs onto a little piazza which features a brass rhinoceros standing in a rowing boat, a motif from one of the films. Roomie, when she lived with us, liked to duck under the ropes and climb on the boat.
On the other side of the piazza from the nautical rhino, there’s a pizzeria called Hasta Luego, where I hope to be chilling with several cold beers on Saturday evening, as it’s my Italian brother-in-law’s place, so I get a discount.
He’s a better businessman than I am, by the way, so also owns the adjacent and rather classier ristorante L’ingrata Grill & Cucina, along with the Fellini-themed breakfast place cum deluxe sandwich bar next to that, Circus.
Così, just saying. If you happen to be in town, there are worst places to spend your cash.
So, where were we? Ah yes, some social history about Italy under fascism, which our series writer – a young woman – clearly disapproves of.
Check out the text (with online audio) below to find out how, in the nineteen-twenties, Italians were brainwashed into being good fascists and Catholics.
For men, it wasn’t vastly different from what would have come before, I suppose. Uniforms and the like – plenty of that in WWI. The fascist version would have been similar, just with more sport and less democracy.
For women, though, Mussolini’s ideas amounted to a definite step backwards in terms of equality and progress. Ladies! Have lots of babies, stay home to look after them, and do what your husband (and the state) tells you.
It doesn’t sound very appealing to me, though I hear ‘traditional motherhood’, if such a thing ever existed, is coming back in certain circles. Like Mussolini, they’ll be trying to ban abortions next.
N.b. The previous twenty episodes in this series can be found on our History page, along with the ninety Summer Series articles from previous years. Scroll right down to the end to find the latest ones.
A lunedì, allora.
P.S. 
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