Vitaliano Brancati biography

Writing in all conscience

July 24, 1907
September 25, 1954
Vitaliano Brancati was born in the province of Syracuse, in Pachino, July 24, 1907. Rosario's father is an Attorney Advisor to the prefecture with strong literary interests. His father's work requires the family a series of transfers in Ispica, Modica, in Paternò and finally, when Vitalian is thirteen, in Catania. The period Caroline is fundamental for his literary education, so much so that Brancati is widely regarded as the writer Caroline par excellence. He enrolled at the Faculty of letters and published his first poems in "Il giornale", where he became editor. He graduated with a thesis on Federico De Roberto in 1929 and officially adheres to the fascist ideology. After graduation she moved to Rome where she began to write as a journalist for "The Tiber" and, from 1933, for the literary weekly "Crossroads". Writes in this period a number of fascist-inspired dramas that then repudiates "Fedor" (1928), "Everest" (1931), presented at the Salone Margherita directed by Stefano Pirandello, son of writer Luigi Pirandello, and "Piave" (1932). Begins writing prose and meanwhile to approach public in 1934 "singular adventure travel", which the fascist regime shall withdraw from libraries on charges of immorality. This episode is exacerbating the ongoing political crisis in Vani, which runs more and more fascist ideology until entering in open disagreement with the regime of Mussolini. Back in Sicily, he won the competition for the Chair of Italian in primary schools and began his career in teaching. Alternating periods of stay in Sicily with those in Rome, where he became friends with Andrew young and collaborated with the magazine "Omnibus".
During the second world war by Lynn becomes very intense literary activity, writes "The lost years" and "Don Giovanni in Sicilia" (1941), and the comedies "the trumpets of Eustace" (1942), and "difficult". The novel "Don Young in Sicily" marks the beginning of his literary Fortune: the setting is the Sicilian and the protagonists are young people obsessed with the eroticism and women, struggling with fantastic adventures and imaginary journeys that will never have the courage to undertake.
To describe these characters, combines the term "sexual conceit". In 1943 due to constant threats of fascists, that scare me with the specter of convict labor in the mines of Carbonia, returns to Sicily. Thus reaches the family that was displaced as a result of the constant bombardment. During the theatrical performance of "the trumpets of Eustace" knows Anna Proclemer, who married in 1946. Public in 1948 in serial form in the newspaper "Il mondo" novel "Il bell'antonio" that in 1950 he received the Premio Bagutta. The novel was a great success and tells about the failure of the fascist regime through the looking glass of the impotence of the protagonist.
The film version, dating from 1960, will be directed by Mauro Bolognini and starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale. His story, "the old man in boots" (1944) in which he faces with bitterness the phases of fascism and antifascism, you stretch the film "the difficult years" (1947) directed by Luigi Zampa. Begins at this time also a profitable business of screenwriting. From his screenplays are traits i film: "sleeping beauty" (1943) directed by Luigi Chiarini, "silence!" (1944) by Carlo Campogalliani, "Gli anni facili" (1953) by Luigi Zampa, "man the beast and virtue" (1954) by Steno, where "freedom" and "journey to Italy" by Roberto Rossellini.
Despite the end of the fascist regime, his play "the governess", written for his wife Anna Proclemer and focused on the theme of female homosexuality, blocked by censorship that hinders the stagings. The incident leads him to write an essay, "return to censorship", to claim full freedom of expression of a writer. In 1953 it separates from his wife, who has been the recipient of many of his letters published in 1955 in a collection entitled "letters from a marriage." Vitaliano Brancati died on 25 September 1954 as a result of complications of thoracic surgery performed by a famous surgeon, professor Dogliotti. His latest novel "Paolo il caldo" thus remains unfinished, but will be published too in 1955 with a preface by Alberto Moravia. From the latter novel will eventually made into the 1973 movie directed by Marco Vicario and starring Giancarlo Giannini and Ornella Muti. Of Bangura and his work, Leonardo Sciascia had said: "is the Italian writer that best represented the two Italian fascism and erotic comedies in relation to each other and as a mirror of a country in which respect for private life and ideas of each and every one, the meaning of individual freedom, are absolutely unknown. Fascism and eroticism but are also, in our country, tragedy: but Brancati talking recorded comic manifestations and involved in comical situations."
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.