Young people in Italy must know
about Nilde Iotti, the former Resistance messenger who became
the first woman Speaker of the House, actress Paola Cortellesi
said in helping present Peter Marcias's biopic of the late
Italian Communist Party (PCI) icon at the Venice Film Festival
on Monday.
"I am honoured to have contributed to passing on her memory,"
said Cortellesi, who did the commentary for the documentary.
"Our rights today are a fruit of her struggle," said Cortellesi,
who is best known as a comic actress and impressionist and has a
string of TV and film hits to her credit.
"The film is sueful not only to know the brave life and
exemplary work of Nilde Iotti, but also to show young
generations the hard battles that produced our rights, so as
they don't take them fro granted and recognise they must be
defended." said Cortellesi, 46, who has starred in about 20
movies as well as a number of theatrical shows, television
shows, and radio shows.
Cortellesi was speaking in a video-link from Rome where she is
filming the follow up to her smash hit Like A Cat On The Ring
Road, directed by her husband Riccardo Milani.
Her new police series for Sky, Petra, in which she plays an
inspector, will debut next Monday.
'Nilde Iotti' is being shown as a special event at the 77th
edition of the world's oldest film fest.
Iotti died at 79 in 1999, a grand dame of the
old PCI and the new Left Democrats, and once a cause of
controversy in the PCI as the 18-year-long companion of its
mythologized leader Palmiro Togliatti, 27 years her senior.
Iotti, whose birth name was Leonilde, served as speaker of the
House on three occasions, from 1979 to 1992.
After the PCI dissolved in 1991, she was
elected for its main heir the Democratic Party of the Left in
1994.
Iotti was seldom willing to talk about her relationship with
Togliatti, 27 years her senior and head of the PCI from 1927
until his death at Yalta, USSR, in 1964.
But on the 25th anniversary of Togliatti's death she agreed to
recall her years with him in an interview in the Milan daily,
Corriere della Sera in 1989. She spoke of her first difficult
times with Togliatti, when the party disapproved of
their relationship and spread ''grumblings and rumors.''
Togliatti, whose unofficial title within the party was The Best,
was held up as an irreprehensible example to party workers and
his relationship with Iotti was long kept a secret from the
rank and file. The party line on sexual matters - perhaps to
compete with the morality authority claimed by the Catholics -
was austere and even puritanical.
Iotti traveled with Togliatti to the Soviet Union, where the
party secretary spent the Second World War in exile, and met
Stalin. ''Togliatti did not want to work in an international
structure,'' she recalled, and refused to return to the Soviet
Union until after Stalin's death.
Togliatti was a minister in a number of governments from 1944
until 1947, agreeing to a privileged role for Catholicism in the
Italian state. After the 1948 elections in which the Christian
Democrats won, he found himself at the head of the left-wing
opposition. He turned the Communist party into the strongest in
the west, with more than two million members, and
eventually laid the basis for distancing it from Moscow.
His platform draft for the Italian Communist Party Congress of
1956 called for ''socialism on a new road'' and ridiculed
''revolution imposed by foreign countries'' - a statement that
sparked a clash with Nikita Krushchev.
In spite of this, Togliatti supported Soviet actions in the
Hungarian revolt of 1956.
After her companion's death, Iotti gradually rose in prominence
in the party, becoming something of a semi-regal figure.
An ardent feminist, she was held up as an example of what women
could achieve.
"She was a unique woman, a fighter with tact and charm", said
the actress.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA