1 00:00:24,200 --> 00:00:25,440 Italy. 2 00:00:25,440 --> 00:00:29,920 Enchanting and beautiful home to historic architecture, 3 00:00:29,920 --> 00:00:33,760 art and fashion. 4 00:00:33,760 --> 00:00:37,960 But there's a dark heart to this tourist dream. 5 00:00:46,120 --> 00:00:48,560 Italy is also a society of organised crime, 6 00:00:48,560 --> 00:00:52,520 corruption and unsolved murders. 7 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:56,880 Out of this chilling reality, 8 00:00:56,880 --> 00:00:59,240 a new wave of crime fiction has emerged... 9 00:01:01,720 --> 00:01:05,720 ..with its own twist on the conventions of the detective novel. 10 00:01:05,720 --> 00:01:07,680 Unlike the Scandinavians, 11 00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:11,760 you follow what I would term the British and American tradition fairly closely. 12 00:01:11,760 --> 00:01:14,480 Murder, puzzle, psychology. 13 00:01:14,480 --> 00:01:20,280 The Italians, their books are much more relevant to the world we live in. 14 00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:22,360 It's a no-nonsense, 15 00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:24,640 no-frills 16 00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:28,840 crime thriller, which is absolutely in your face. 17 00:01:28,840 --> 00:01:31,280 It's a world where everyone is a suspect. 18 00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:33,920 In a society where no-one can be trusted, 19 00:01:33,920 --> 00:01:37,760 Italian crime writers take an almost philosophical delight 20 00:01:37,760 --> 00:01:42,120 in telling stories that offer no simple resolutions. 21 00:01:51,120 --> 00:01:54,960 We write more noir in Italy than traditional thriller. 22 00:01:54,960 --> 00:02:00,280 That's because we are more pessimistic than you about human nature. 23 00:02:01,720 --> 00:02:05,440 A noir world with no happy endings. 24 00:02:38,120 --> 00:02:41,040 The detective novels of Andrea Camilleri 25 00:02:41,040 --> 00:02:43,360 are set in contemporary Sicily. 26 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:48,440 They deal with the casebook of the worldly Inspector Montalbano of the local police force. 27 00:02:58,880 --> 00:03:01,400 I absolutely adore Inspector Montalbano. 28 00:03:01,400 --> 00:03:09,280 I think the character is, in many ways, a kind of stereotypical view 29 00:03:09,280 --> 00:03:13,440 of an Italian and perhaps also of a Sicilian man. 30 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:16,800 In the TV version of the books, 31 00:03:16,800 --> 00:03:20,560 Montalbano's liking for long lunches becomes his trademark. 32 00:03:22,160 --> 00:03:24,960 He's frequently shown at his favourite restaurant 33 00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:28,320 where the waiters are left in no doubt about his passion for food. 34 00:03:40,040 --> 00:03:44,480 He has an incredible interest in the whole culture and identity 35 00:03:44,480 --> 00:03:49,280 of Sicily, particularly shown through his love of food. 36 00:03:52,520 --> 00:03:56,760 Montalbano is as enthusiastic when forensically inspecting a menu 37 00:03:56,760 --> 00:04:00,760 as he is searching for clues to a crime. 38 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:06,120 "Bring me a generous serving of the hake. 39 00:04:57,120 --> 00:05:01,120 Camilleri armed Montalbano with a dry sense of humour. 40 00:05:35,600 --> 00:05:40,120 Like all Sicilian policemen, Montalbano has to face the Mafia. 41 00:05:40,120 --> 00:05:44,240 But Camilleri handles this confrontation in a surprising way. 42 00:06:22,360 --> 00:06:30,000 The Mafia is so deeply implicated into the structure of Sicilian and Italian society, 43 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:34,800 that if it disappeared, a lot of it would actually crumble. 44 00:06:34,800 --> 00:06:39,200 It's the cement that glues some of the bricks together. 45 00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:42,600 Until they can find a substitute, they have to be there. 46 00:06:44,880 --> 00:06:48,160 In a community where no-one can be relied on, 47 00:06:48,160 --> 00:06:50,360 Camilleri's stories are a web of intrigue. 48 00:06:50,360 --> 00:06:53,200 where nothing is ever as it seems. 49 00:06:57,200 --> 00:07:00,520 In this scene from the television series, Montalbano arrives 50 00:07:00,520 --> 00:07:04,640 to investigate an alleged kidnapping and recognises immediately 51 00:07:04,640 --> 00:07:06,800 that there are many layers to the case. 52 00:07:27,840 --> 00:07:32,160 The television series portrays Montalbano's encounters 53 00:07:32,160 --> 00:07:36,400 with the Mafia in a very particular way. 54 00:07:39,120 --> 00:07:42,720 It as if he's dealing not with a criminal organisation, 55 00:07:42,720 --> 00:07:44,600 but with local bureaucrats, 56 00:07:44,600 --> 00:07:48,160 a tone he maintains no matter how long the conversation. 57 00:08:15,960 --> 00:08:19,400 Camilleri rejects the Hollywood version of the Mafia, 58 00:08:19,400 --> 00:08:22,320 refusing to put them centre stage in his stories. 59 00:09:01,160 --> 00:09:06,320 Instead, Camilleri chooses to focus on Montalbano's commitment to the law. 60 00:09:09,640 --> 00:09:14,200 He is someone who really has a very strong sense of justice. 61 00:09:14,200 --> 00:09:19,040 He will pursue something because he wants to get to the truth. 62 00:09:22,440 --> 00:09:26,200 Montalbano's image may be laid back, but his methods are not. 63 00:09:26,200 --> 00:09:28,640 Here he conducts a classic interview. 64 00:09:53,400 --> 00:09:56,840 Where Montalbano is different from most other Italian coppers 65 00:09:56,840 --> 00:09:58,720 is that he isn't judgemental. 66 00:09:58,720 --> 00:10:01,960 He takes on the chin whatever he hears. 67 00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:04,680 He might be judgemental in terms of his own feelings 68 00:10:04,680 --> 00:10:07,400 that he doesn't necessarily need to show to people, 69 00:10:07,400 --> 00:10:10,200 but he remains this cool, rational presence... 70 00:10:10,200 --> 00:10:12,240 A bit Holmesian, if you like. 71 00:10:12,240 --> 00:10:14,320 Where the intellect takes over, 72 00:10:14,320 --> 00:10:18,760 although he's a very physical man - he's concerned with food, sex... 73 00:10:18,760 --> 00:10:20,640 Those are elements of his life. 74 00:10:20,640 --> 00:10:25,080 But he's still just basically a rational intelligence that works on problems. 75 00:10:26,640 --> 00:10:31,400 It's conveyed by Camilleri that people talk to him and they trust him. 76 00:10:31,400 --> 00:10:35,600 He gets results that way - more that way then by browbeating people. 77 00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:40,760 But faced with a corrupt society, 78 00:10:40,760 --> 00:10:45,400 Montalbano is rarely able actually to solve a crime... 79 00:10:45,400 --> 00:10:49,480 And this sets him apart from the traditional fictional detective. 80 00:11:57,720 --> 00:12:02,000 The lack of a resolution in the Inspector Montalbano stories 81 00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:07,000 can trace its roots back to a novel set in Rome in 1927... 82 00:12:08,640 --> 00:12:11,320 ..during Mussolini's fascist regime. 83 00:12:22,040 --> 00:12:26,840 In That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana, 84 00:12:26,840 --> 00:12:32,400 Carlo Emilio Gadda employed a crime story to explore Italy's fascist era. 85 00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:38,720 He's using the tropes of crime fiction - the burglary, the murder and the ensuing investigation - 86 00:12:38,720 --> 00:12:41,800 more as a way of examining society 87 00:12:41,800 --> 00:12:44,440 and what has caused the state of affairs, 88 00:12:44,440 --> 00:12:47,080 the fascist state in Italian society. 89 00:12:50,120 --> 00:12:54,360 That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana begins with the murder of a woman 90 00:12:54,360 --> 00:12:56,400 in an upmarket Rome apartment. 91 00:12:59,840 --> 00:13:04,560 "The body of the poor signora was lying in an infamous position 92 00:13:04,560 --> 00:13:08,720 "a deep, a terrible red cut opened her throat fiercely. 93 00:13:08,720 --> 00:13:12,240 "It had taken half the neck from the front towards the right, 94 00:13:12,240 --> 00:13:17,120 "that is towards her left, the right to those who were looking down." 95 00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:21,440 But Gadda shows how pointless it is to investigate 96 00:13:21,440 --> 00:13:26,040 a single crime when the society that surrounds it is so corrupt. 97 00:13:40,920 --> 00:13:47,240 Gadda's story subtly reveals the way fascism penetrated the lives of ordinary Italians. 98 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:54,400 It is an extremely critical view of the regime, particularly because 99 00:13:54,400 --> 00:13:58,600 one of the things, to me, is very interesting in novel is the way 100 00:13:58,600 --> 00:14:04,120 in which the main female character represents what Italian women 101 00:14:04,120 --> 00:14:07,480 were facing during the fascist years. 102 00:14:07,480 --> 00:14:11,520 It's clearly a very patriarchal society. 103 00:14:11,520 --> 00:14:16,320 Lilliana can't have children so she has all these fairly ambiguous, 104 00:14:16,320 --> 00:14:21,400 complex relationships with other young women, they are adopted by her. 105 00:14:21,400 --> 00:14:24,480 The whole crime revolves around that. 106 00:14:24,480 --> 00:14:28,880 She has been murdered and we need to find out who murdered her. 107 00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:47,480 Gadda was an established literary figure who delivered his anti-fascist message 108 00:14:47,480 --> 00:14:54,360 in a distinctive style that mixed local dialects and slang to satirise Italy's dictator. 109 00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:01,120 Gadda, when he talks about Mussolini, 110 00:15:01,120 --> 00:15:03,880 he is satirical of his performances, 111 00:15:03,880 --> 00:15:07,120 his penchant for particular uniforms. 112 00:15:07,120 --> 00:15:11,720 His macho posturing. There's a series of name-calling that goes on. 113 00:15:17,040 --> 00:15:22,720 Here Gadda mocks Mussolini in a way Italian readers would have instantly recognised. 114 00:15:35,080 --> 00:15:39,160 I think he was attempting to do something which really hadn't been done before. 115 00:15:39,160 --> 00:15:41,480 Obviously, the closest parallel is Joyce. 116 00:15:41,480 --> 00:15:45,320 The time we spend in Rome is like the time we spend in Dublin with Joyce. 117 00:15:45,320 --> 00:15:48,560 It's astonishingly very panoply, 118 00:15:48,560 --> 00:15:51,920 this picture of an entire society. 119 00:15:51,920 --> 00:15:55,360 It uses, like Joyce, a variety of different styles. 120 00:15:55,360 --> 00:15:59,960 It uses a straightforward, academic style, it uses popular vernacular - 121 00:15:59,960 --> 00:16:02,080 it just throws everything in. 122 00:16:02,080 --> 00:16:06,360 "In front of the big louse coloured building a crowd circumfused... 123 00:16:06,360 --> 00:16:09,640 "..Protected an odd job man also in an apron, striped, 124 00:16:09,640 --> 00:16:12,840 "his nose the shape and colour of a wondrous pepper... 125 00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:16,400 "..concierges, the maids, the little daughters of the concierges." 126 00:16:16,400 --> 00:16:22,600 What you have is a detective story, but it's almost a sort of playing 127 00:16:22,600 --> 00:16:25,200 with the conventions of the detective story. 128 00:16:25,200 --> 00:16:27,640 You have a particular kind of inspector, 129 00:16:27,640 --> 00:16:30,040 a particular kind of investigation - 130 00:16:30,040 --> 00:16:33,160 one that's ultimately open-ended and unresolved. 131 00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:39,040 It seems to be that this is an inquiry into the nature 132 00:16:39,040 --> 00:16:43,120 of reality and the way in which one can know reality. 133 00:16:43,120 --> 00:16:48,400 So every type of inquiry leads to a new set of possibilities. 134 00:16:48,400 --> 00:16:53,200 So you can never really get to know and understand reality fully. 135 00:16:54,720 --> 00:16:59,720 The kind of suggestion is that what fascism is really doing is imposing 136 00:16:59,720 --> 00:17:04,560 a series of infantile simplifications on the complexity of reality. 137 00:17:06,640 --> 00:17:10,000 By setting his detective novel in the fascist era, 138 00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:13,560 Gadda became the first writer to use the crime story 139 00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:16,200 as a way of looking at Italian history. 140 00:17:18,600 --> 00:17:22,440 I've always thought that Gadda was one of the very first writers 141 00:17:22,440 --> 00:17:29,160 that makes the link between crime fiction and Italian history very clear. 142 00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:32,600 That will become almost like a blueprint for later writers. 143 00:17:43,840 --> 00:17:49,240 After Mussolini's fascist dictatorship ended with Italy's defeat in the Second World War, 144 00:17:49,240 --> 00:17:52,600 a writer from Sicily began gathering material 145 00:17:52,600 --> 00:17:56,880 for crime stories which would challenge another sinister force 146 00:17:56,880 --> 00:17:59,480 that came to dominate post-war Italy. 147 00:18:14,840 --> 00:18:18,400 Into the 1960s, Leonardo Sciascia's novels 148 00:18:18,400 --> 00:18:22,000 would expose the power of the Sicilian Mafia. 149 00:18:28,080 --> 00:18:32,280 The Mafia had emerged as powerful players in Italian society 150 00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:36,000 during the US occupation in the immediate post-war years. 151 00:18:41,200 --> 00:18:47,000 Leonardo Sciascia's 1961 novel The Day Of The Owl told the story 152 00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:50,880 of a police detective's battle to solve the murder of a local businessman. 153 00:18:50,880 --> 00:18:56,280 At every turn, his investigations are hampered by murky Mafia forces. 154 00:19:01,760 --> 00:19:06,560 It's a novel in which you really get a sense of how deeply embedded 155 00:19:06,560 --> 00:19:09,200 the Mafia is in Sicilian society. 156 00:19:09,200 --> 00:19:15,080 Not just simply from the point of view of the economics but from the point of view of the culture 157 00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:18,960 and the reign of terror that, in a sense, gripped Sicily 158 00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:23,480 has influenced the way in which Sicilians live their lives, 159 00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:26,920 the social cohesion of communities. 160 00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:30,520 The whole idea of not being able to speak freely, 161 00:19:30,520 --> 00:19:33,560 the sense of distrust that people have. 162 00:19:36,520 --> 00:19:39,840 On a personal level, the difficult relationship that people have 163 00:19:39,840 --> 00:19:42,640 with each other all based on the fact that you cannot trust anybody. 164 00:19:46,920 --> 00:19:49,040 "Two ear-splitting shots rang out." 165 00:19:51,640 --> 00:19:55,280 The beginning of the novel, in which someone gets shot by the Mafia 166 00:19:55,280 --> 00:19:57,240 and no-one has seen or heard 167 00:19:57,240 --> 00:19:59,920 anything, is really emblematic of that. 168 00:20:02,800 --> 00:20:06,880 "Nobody on the bus saw a thing. 169 00:20:06,880 --> 00:20:11,360 "It was a hell of a job to find out who was on the bus. 170 00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:16,760 "The passengers said the windows were so steamy they looked like frosted glass. 171 00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:18,360 "Maybe true." 172 00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:21,920 No-one has seen anything. 173 00:20:21,920 --> 00:20:25,520 You don't want to be involved, it's far too dangerous to be involved. 174 00:20:25,520 --> 00:20:29,160 You do know in Sicily, or you knew at the time, that you didn't have... 175 00:20:29,160 --> 00:20:34,480 The police wouldn't come to help. The state was not there for you. 176 00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:39,480 And that, I think, instigates a mechanism of self-preservation. 177 00:20:39,480 --> 00:20:41,360 You pretend nothing has happened. 178 00:20:41,360 --> 00:20:44,480 You don't want to know, you haven't seen, you haven't heard. 179 00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:46,560 You mind your own business. 180 00:20:46,560 --> 00:20:50,760 You lead your life in a very closed world. 181 00:21:05,560 --> 00:21:08,480 Sciascia doesn't consider himself to be a crime writer. 182 00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:09,960 He's looking at society. 183 00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:14,360 And particularly Sciascia, as opposed to maybe Gadda or others, 184 00:21:14,360 --> 00:21:18,240 what's important for him is not just Sicily but also the landscape, 185 00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:20,400 the colours, the smells of Sicily, 186 00:21:20,400 --> 00:21:23,720 which I think come through incredibly well in his writing. 187 00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:28,920 "Dawn was infusing the countryside. 188 00:21:28,920 --> 00:21:31,760 "It seemed to rise from the tender green wheat, 189 00:21:31,760 --> 00:21:34,200 "from the rocks and dripping trees 190 00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:37,640 "and mount imperceptibly towards a blank sky. 191 00:21:37,640 --> 00:21:40,080 The Gramole, incongruous in green uplands... 192 00:21:49,280 --> 00:21:51,000 Sicily IS different. 193 00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:55,520 You get off the boat or the plane and you feel you're in a different country in some cases. 194 00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:58,720 It's a bit like, if you understand French, if you go to Quebec. 195 00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:01,000 You almost don't understand the language. 196 00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:07,120 The Sicilians are very proud to have seceded, so to speak, from Italy, 197 00:22:07,120 --> 00:22:10,000 not only geographically but also, I think, mentally. 198 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:14,240 It's a different atmosphere altogether, and there's a certain pride of place. 199 00:22:18,040 --> 00:22:24,080 Like Gadda, Sciascia chose to reject the conventional model of detective fiction. 200 00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:28,600 Instead, his investigator, Inspector Bellodi, is forced 201 00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:33,440 to confront the corruption that exists in the society around him. 202 00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:38,440 In Day Of The Owl, the interesting thing is the protagonist, who goes on a journey of discovery. 203 00:22:38,440 --> 00:22:40,440 It's an education for him. 204 00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:47,200 He has to learn the realpolitik of the way things get done and the way things don't get done. 205 00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:51,520 And that book, more than many Italian crime books, has all-encapsulated the fact 206 00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:56,040 that you learn who committed the crime, but there isn't necessarily closure. 207 00:22:56,040 --> 00:22:58,880 And we really want that, readers want that. 208 00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:01,960 But the great Italian crime writers don't give you that. 209 00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:04,480 They say, "OK, you know who committed the crime. 210 00:23:04,480 --> 00:23:08,080 "But this is the real word, and criminals go unpunished." 211 00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:24,360 By the late 1960s, Sciascia began to inject political intrigue into 212 00:23:24,360 --> 00:23:28,360 his stories as a way of talking about the rise of terrorism in Italy. 213 00:23:28,360 --> 00:23:32,720 An era that would become known as the Years of Lead. 214 00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:40,120 The Years of Lead starts from December 1969, 215 00:23:40,120 --> 00:23:44,040 when a bomb is planted in a bag in central Milan, in Piazza Fontana. 216 00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:48,600 There's a real sense, at the time, of great discontent. 217 00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:56,440 This neo-fascist bombing began a decade of terror, 218 00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:01,520 with bloody attacks launched by both right and left-wing extremists. 219 00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:07,560 Sciascia now took on Italian politics. 220 00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:12,040 In 1971, he wrote Equal Danger, a tense crime thriller 221 00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:16,200 about the murder, one by one, of some of the country's top judges. 222 00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:22,480 "Never had prosecutors or judges been threatened, 223 00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:25,960 "or struck down for a position taken during a trial, 224 00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:27,880 "or for a verdict delivered." 225 00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:36,600 In Equal Danger, there is a plot to blame the murders on left-wing extremists. 226 00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:47,640 Sciascia takes on both the left and the right. 227 00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:50,200 So, he's instructed to pin the crime on the left. 228 00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:51,560 But it's not that simple. 229 00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:55,240 But you would think, "Oh, yes, OK, that means he's a writer of the left. 230 00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:58,280 "Therefore, the left will be idealised." No, they're not. 231 00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:04,200 They're shown as disinterested, they have fashionable left-wing causes which they take up. 232 00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:08,320 It's quite a nuanced view of Italian society. 233 00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:11,760 Maybe typical, in many ways, of a lot of Italians who do have 234 00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:14,840 ambiguous views about political dimensions. 235 00:25:23,320 --> 00:25:27,160 We have a period of great social unrest, political uncertainty. 236 00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:33,800 A sense in which no-one knew whether the enemy 237 00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:37,760 came from within the state or from outside. 238 00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:55,600 Through the 1970s, Italy was torn apart by a series of violent terrorist attacks. 239 00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:05,480 In total in that period, we have 14,000 terrorist attacks, 240 00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:07,640 374 people are killed 241 00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:11,120 and 1,170 are wounded. 242 00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:23,480 In 1978, the kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro troubled Italians. 243 00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:29,200 Was Moro killed by the Marxist militant group the Red Brigades 244 00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:32,520 or by sinister forces connected to the government? 245 00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:39,880 The conspiracy theories surrounding the execution of Moro 246 00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:43,720 prompted Leonardo Sciascia to write his own investigation. 247 00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:49,400 In The Moro Affair, Sciascia drew his reader's attention 248 00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:53,840 to inconsistencies in the official version of events. 249 00:26:55,360 --> 00:26:59,200 It all contributed to an atmosphere of political turmoil, 250 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:03,240 in which there were frequent miscarriages of justice. 251 00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:10,040 The victim of one famous case would write crime stories which drew on his experience of the Years of Lead. 252 00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:28,920 In 1976, Massimo Carlotto was a student and left-wing activist 253 00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:32,000 who was framed for a murder he didn't commit. 254 00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:03,960 After being sentenced to 15 years in prison, 255 00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:08,880 Carlotto fled Italy, first for Paris and then to Central America. 256 00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:12,680 He was returned to an Italian prison after five years on the run 257 00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:17,200 and began an extraordinary legal battle to clear his name. 258 00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,720 Eventually pardoned, Carlotto was released in 1993. 259 00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:04,680 This experience led him to write The Fugitive, 260 00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:07,000 which became a best-selling novel. 261 00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:15,440 "I was a classic accidental fugitive, someone who never expected to have 262 00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:18,520 "problems with the law, who never thought he would need to 263 00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:23,440 "invent an escape from his own country as the one way to save his own life, 264 00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:25,600 "his freedom and his dignity." 265 00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:36,040 The Fugitive inspired a film about Carlotto's years on the run. 266 00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:49,000 This graphic scene leaves the audience in no doubt about how tough it was for him. 267 00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:54,200 He was tortured at the hands of the Mexican police after he was captured. 268 00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:24,560 Carlotto is a kind of special case because obviously he's a man 269 00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:28,560 who knows from first hand about miscarriages of justice. 270 00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:33,360 It's amazing really, if you think about it, what he went through 271 00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:36,400 in terms of the accusations and the time he spent on the run 272 00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:38,440 and so forth before he became a writer. 273 00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:43,120 The ending of that in Britain might have been a ghost writer coming in, 274 00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:45,960 so the celeb writes a disposable book that's thrown away 275 00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,840 that tells a story, everybody reads it, and its serialised in the papers. 276 00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:51,760 He actually turned into a very good writer. 277 00:30:56,800 --> 00:31:02,320 Carlotto has gone on to write violent crime fiction set in contemporary Italy, 278 00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:06,160 drawn from his experience of being in the country's toughest prisons. 279 00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:33,200 Carlotto's rough justice shaped the raw writing style of his novels. 280 00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:38,920 He was influenced by the political tone of Leonardo Sciascia 281 00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:41,480 but he added a new level of brutality of his own 282 00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:45,400 to stories like The Goodbye Kiss. 283 00:31:45,400 --> 00:31:49,680 It's a no-nonsense, no-frills crime thriller 284 00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:54,760 which is absolutely in your face and doesn't deal with subtleties, 285 00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:58,040 but Italian readers and British readers who have encountered him 286 00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:00,160 know exactly where they are with him. 287 00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:04,760 The book's kind of like a bucket of cold water being thrown in the face. 288 00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:14,640 His books basically look at white slavery, drugs, prostitution. 289 00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:18,600 I mean, there's nothing easy or cosy about his books. 290 00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:23,640 For The Goodbye Kiss, 291 00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,720 Carlotto rejected the convention of an investigating detective. 292 00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:35,960 He inverted this tradition by creating an amoral, violent former terrorist as the lead character. 293 00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:47,360 The darkly shot opening scene from the film of The Goodbye Kiss 294 00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:49,480 sets up this figure perfectly, 295 00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:53,240 as he coldly shoots one of his own men in the back of the head. 296 00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:28,520 The Goodbye Kiss is filmed as a modern day noir. 297 00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:38,680 In this world, killings are at once realistic and stylised. 298 00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:45,920 The male characters are real, sort of, macho, strong, aggressive. 299 00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:50,360 And this is not simply because Carlotto is using a particular genre 300 00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:56,600 in which traditionally male characters are depicted in a certain way. 301 00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:58,600 There's something more to that. 302 00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:03,480 When you look at the way in which women are represented in the novels, they are very marginal. 303 00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:09,080 Carlotto's time spent with hardened criminals 304 00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:14,160 shaped the hardcore misogynistic actions of his lead characters. 305 00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:17,360 I don't think Carlotto does understand women. 306 00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:23,280 He sees them basically as pawns in terrible games, 307 00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,480 which is probably why there is so much violence against women. 308 00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:28,600 And these women seldom fight back. 309 00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:35,240 I think he is the kind of writer who says, "I'm sorry, this is it. 310 00:34:35,240 --> 00:34:38,600 "I'm not going to varnish things. This is the way people behave." 311 00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:58,360 There's no sentimentality. This kind of a small amount of human feeling. 312 00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:03,280 In fact, when you read a Carlotto book, you're trying to search out that bit of human feeling 313 00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,320 cos you wanted and you grab it, and you're really grateful for it. He's not dealing with that. 314 00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:15,080 Carlotto's version of realism is motivated by a desire to bring what he regards 315 00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:19,880 as a more journalistic approach than seen in Anglo-American crime fiction. 316 00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:15,280 Carlotto's first-hand experience of Italy's violent underworld 317 00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:20,800 has heralded a new wave of Italian writers who base their novels on real characters. 318 00:36:30,720 --> 00:36:32,840 From the other side of the law, 319 00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:38,280 a top Roman judge has dipped into his casebook to write an explosive novel 320 00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:43,000 set in the Italian capital about the city's notorious gangsters. 321 00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:03,080 Giancarlo De Cataldo's debut novel, Romanzo Criminale, 322 00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:06,760 was inspired by his work as an investigating judge, 323 00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:10,480 a role that took him to both crime scenes and prisons. 324 00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:20,360 Being a judge helps me to go in some places where writers long for going all their lives. 325 00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:25,320 Like houses where people have been killed. 326 00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:29,440 And so that's a chance. If you are talented as a writer, 327 00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,440 if you have these gifts, you must use it. 328 00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:34,400 It would be a crime not to use it. 329 00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:44,560 Cataldo's training as a judge and his activity as a judge 330 00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:51,480 I think is important, not only because it gives him 331 00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:56,680 visibility, it gave visibility to his books at the beginning and it attracted additional interest. 332 00:37:56,680 --> 00:37:59,360 But also because it informs his way of writing. 333 00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:18,280 De Cataldo based his story on a real criminal street gang, the Banda della Magliana. 334 00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:26,200 I studied the phenomenon of Banda della Magliana, which was a gang organisation 335 00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:33,040 for people coming from the suburbs of Rome that became a real criminal power 336 00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:38,160 collecting money and imposing a kind of law, 337 00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:43,000 as if Mafia for the first time had taken place in Rome. 338 00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:49,320 I first met one of those people from the gang, he was repented, 339 00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:52,440 he was under protection of justice. 340 00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:55,520 But those judges didn't believe him. 341 00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:59,600 So he was set free and then murdered. 342 00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:03,960 The second occasion, the second chance was working in a trial against 343 00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:08,800 some of the members of these gangs, the survivors, 344 00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:11,040 because many of them had died. 345 00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:18,800 They were real criminals, but they were old-style criminals at the same time. 346 00:39:22,240 --> 00:39:25,720 Set over more than a decade, De Cataldo's novel 347 00:39:25,720 --> 00:39:28,720 imagines how these gangsters may have been involved 348 00:39:28,720 --> 00:39:31,200 in the darkest chapters of The Years of Lead, 349 00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:34,920 an era that continues to intrigue Italians. 350 00:39:38,720 --> 00:39:42,160 One of the achievements of Romanzo Criminale is to fold in 351 00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:46,200 the real life events that he talks about in a kind of responsible way. 352 00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:48,040 I mean, it's a long tradition. 353 00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:50,080 Tolstoy put Napoleon in War and Peace. 354 00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:53,200 So it's been happening for quite a long time to put real events in. 355 00:39:56,320 --> 00:40:00,640 In 2005, these real events were brought to the cinema screen, 356 00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:03,360 when Romanzo Criminale was adapted 357 00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:08,720 into a stylish gangster epic, dubbed the Italian Goodfellas. 358 00:40:13,240 --> 00:40:18,200 A pivotal scene from the film deliberately mixes real life news reports of the kidnapping 359 00:40:18,200 --> 00:40:24,400 of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro with the action, reflecting the twin focus of the book. 360 00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:42,840 I think the novel wants to convey historical facts. 361 00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:49,160 And certainly wants to convey a particular idea of historical facts as well. 362 00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,600 De Cataldo also explores the bloodiest event 363 00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:07,520 from The Years of Lead, which took place at Bologna train station in August, 1980. 364 00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:15,840 In a dramatic scene from the film, 365 00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:21,080 gang member Ice finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. 366 00:41:22,720 --> 00:41:25,400 The fictional character being placed within this 367 00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:31,000 environment allows us to indulge what might have taken place. 368 00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:32,920 We see Ice arriving at the station. 369 00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:38,240 The clock says 10:23. We know at 10:25 the bomb has to go off. 370 00:41:38,240 --> 00:41:42,680 And to see him emerging from the station with the bomb going off behind him... 371 00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:50,080 ..and then walking in the rubble of 372 00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:55,760 what is an incredibly effective reconstruction of the events, 373 00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:58,280 is extremely disturbing. 374 00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:04,960 And I think that scene brings us into the heart of the Bologna bombing. 375 00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:07,240 It puts us there among the dead. 376 00:42:07,240 --> 00:42:12,240 I mean, the shots of children are incredibly chilling. 377 00:42:12,240 --> 00:42:15,600 And it brings home to us as well that this is not 378 00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:19,280 just a fun gangster movie, but that there is a very sinister side to it. 379 00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:28,600 The movie is far different from the book, because in the book, 380 00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:34,640 we had no real link in a comparison 381 00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:38,240 between the gang and the Bologna massacre. 382 00:42:38,240 --> 00:42:41,280 The movie is far different. 383 00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:46,040 But what I wanted to mark was that are part of Italian history 384 00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:50,040 was criminal history, and that there's a grey zone 385 00:42:50,040 --> 00:42:54,080 between the normal citizen, 386 00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:59,000 the power, the legal economy, and the underworld. 387 00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:03,680 And that is why Romanzo Criminale is more than a thriller. 388 00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:07,120 A historical and political crime novel. 389 00:43:10,760 --> 00:43:14,040 The location of this bombing was significant. 390 00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:18,680 Bologna, a university city, was known as Red Bologna, 391 00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:22,320 in part due its reputation as a centre of left-wing politics. 392 00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:32,760 And today, this politically radical city has inspired 393 00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:35,520 a young female author to write a crime story 394 00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:38,440 which confronts the rise of sexual violence against women. 395 00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:09,720 In 2010, Barbara Baraldi's novel The Girl With The Crystal Eyes 396 00:44:09,720 --> 00:44:12,840 introduced a new character into Italian crime fiction. 397 00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:16,480 The female vigilante. 398 00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:39,320 "Her quick, small fingers pick up a rose. 399 00:46:39,320 --> 00:46:42,680 "But it's not the rose's thorns that pierce the man's flesh, 400 00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,640 "but a kitchen knife, sharp and shining 401 00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:49,920 "that enters deep into his chest and then slides out again, 402 00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,840 "spurting hot, dark, dense drops of blood 403 00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:57,240 "that splash the perfect features of her face." 404 00:47:07,920 --> 00:47:12,480 I think you'd have to say a writer like Baraldi has a cinematic sensibility. 405 00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:15,920 She deals in a kind of visual language, even though its words 406 00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:19,520 on a page, which she knows readers will quickly relate to. 407 00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:23,960 So there is the literary equivalent of fast cutting, and cutting between scenes. 408 00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:29,200 And there's a minimum of exposition. 409 00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:31,240 There's a minimum of explanation. 410 00:47:31,240 --> 00:47:36,240 Cos she thinks, my readership will be able to keep up with me, and if they don't, too bad. 411 00:47:36,240 --> 00:47:40,360 They're going to have to struggle initially, but it will be worth it in the end. 412 00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:45,320 So she's of a generation where film has informed her writing as much as anything she's read. 413 00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,880 Baraldi found inspiration for her horror writing style 414 00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:55,240 from literary classics familiar to British readers. 415 00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:21,760 "She takes a last look in the gilded mirror, 416 00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:24,880 "a mirror that wouldn't be out of place in a fairy tale, 417 00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:29,720 "a fairytale that's frightening but where she's the fairest of them all, 418 00:48:29,720 --> 00:48:34,640 "beautiful just as she is, smelling of blood." 419 00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:39,840 They're almost like dark, nasty, black fairy tales. 420 00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:43,040 And in various respects, she is quite unique. 421 00:49:14,600 --> 00:49:21,040 Barbara Baraldi has to make her mark in maybe a society that doesn't have the most enlightened views of women. 422 00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:22,880 So there are various ways to go. 423 00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:25,920 She went in the way that is kind of a rebellious, punkish way. 424 00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,160 She's probably aiming at younger readership. 425 00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:33,240 And you wouldn't read one of her books if you were squeamish 426 00:49:33,240 --> 00:49:36,520 of easily shocked, because you'd put it down very quickly. 427 00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:50,640 It's taken a long time for the women to come out and Barbara Baraldi is one. But you have other writers. 428 00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:56,720 You've got Francesca Mazzucato, and a mad writer called Isabella Santacroce, 429 00:49:56,720 --> 00:49:59,000 who does incredible public events, 430 00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:02,520 and whose books are almost like, Lewis Carroll goes psycho. 431 00:50:08,520 --> 00:50:15,360 The women, rather than bringing a sort of softer, cosy version of it, which, for instance a lot of 432 00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:21,600 British and American female writers do, it is a bit cosy, a bit too convenient, 433 00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:23,960 like the traditional Miss Marple. 434 00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:29,680 Although, obviously, some, Rendell are very dark for a psychological point of view. 435 00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:33,720 But the new Italian women writers bring a feminine touch, 436 00:50:33,720 --> 00:50:36,680 but a feminine touch which is actually quite bloody. 437 00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:42,280 And proves an absolutely fascinating contrast with their male counterparts. 438 00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:58,520 A contemporary of Baraldi's is another Bologna writer, who has brought 439 00:50:58,520 --> 00:51:05,080 a journalistic rigour to the genre to become the most high profile and successful writer of Italian noir. 440 00:51:24,240 --> 00:51:29,720 Carlo Lucarelli is the celebrity face of Italian crime fiction, 441 00:51:29,720 --> 00:51:32,480 even presenting a hugely popular TV show 442 00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:37,200 where he casts himself as the lead investigator into real crimes. 443 00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:46,720 He has a very peculiar interest in setting himself up 444 00:51:46,720 --> 00:51:52,320 as an investigative journalist-cum-historian-cum-writer. 445 00:51:52,320 --> 00:51:54,480 He wants to combine all three aspects. 446 00:51:56,360 --> 00:52:00,640 He applied his extraordinary method when researching the character 447 00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:04,400 of a serial killer in his best-selling novel, Almost Blue. 448 00:53:02,640 --> 00:53:05,720 "Sometimes my shadow is darker than other people's. 449 00:53:05,720 --> 00:53:08,760 "I've seen it sometimes when I'm walking along the street. 450 00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:10,720 "It stains the wall alongside me. 451 00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:15,280 "Sometimes I get scared that someone will notice it 452 00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,160 "but I can't run away from it because it would follow me, 453 00:53:18,160 --> 00:53:21,560 "it would spread out stickily and black alongside me. 454 00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:24,600 "That's why I stay close to the wall." 455 00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:27,520 We are inside a psychotic mind. 456 00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:32,480 That is more important than in the world that we see in some of the other Italian crime writers. 457 00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:35,280 That informs everything. So everything is paranoid, 458 00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:38,600 everything is strange, schizophrenic and disturbing. 459 00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:45,800 It was the first Italian crime fiction book which, in my opinion, 460 00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:53,160 actually integrated perfectly the best of English and American hard-boiled crime fiction elements. 461 00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:58,040 And brought them alive within an Italian context. 462 00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:06,920 Lucarelli also used intensive research to dig up his country's 463 00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:09,440 troubled past for Carte Blanche, 464 00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:14,160 a novel set during the final months of Italy's fascist regime. 465 00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:37,120 Lucarelli was frustrated at Italy's failure to properly investigate the fascist period. 466 00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:02,520 To research Carte Blanche, Lucarelli tracked down a former policeman 467 00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:04,960 who had served in the fascist police. 468 00:55:28,720 --> 00:55:32,400 What shocked Lucarelli was that after the war, 469 00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:38,400 this fascist officer was allowed to continue as a policeman in Italy's post-war democracy. 470 00:55:56,880 --> 00:56:00,800 Lucarelli's interviews with the policeman would form the basis 471 00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:04,440 for the character of Commissioner De Luca in Carte Blanche. 472 00:56:06,240 --> 00:56:09,040 He would go on to feature in a further two novels, 473 00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:11,000 to form a period crime trilogy. 474 00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:06,440 By tackling Italy's painful history and embracing the lack of any certain resolution, 475 00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:11,880 Lucarelli can trace his method back to the roots of Italian noir. 476 00:57:13,520 --> 00:57:20,000 He identifies in his fellow writers a shared commitment to write more than simple crime stories. 477 00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:50,320 This is the authentic voice of Italian noir.