“Hagiographic film” –

Berlinguer – The Great Ambition, a film directed by Andrea Segre which sees Elio Germano in the role of Enrico Berlinguer, opened the nineteenth edition of the Rome Film Festival. Among those present also Maurizio Gasparri, president of the senators of Forza Italia, who commented on the film about the political leader as follows: “As an old political militant, I saw with interest and respect the film dedicated to Berlinguer, which inaugurated the Rome Film Festival . I was already a young activist in the years when Berlinguer led the communist party. So the film seemed interesting to me, precisely because of my attention to the political themes to which I have dedicated a life, albeit with very different positions from those of Berlinguer. Obviously, I cannot fail to note the hagiographic intent of this film. Berlinguer almost seems like a hero of anti-communism, due to his belated disagreements with the Soviet Union. It then seems almost hostile to the funding of the Soviet Union, which for decades, even with Berlinguer as secretary, allowed the PCI to express its great power on national territory. The undeniable position of firmness towards terrorism also emerges.”

“But – says Gasparri – it would have been interesting to also deal with other topics. And that is the subservience of the PCI to Moscow for decades and decades, even in the first years of Berlinguer’s leadership. The equivocal attitude of the PCI then when the Red Brigades emerged in the early 1970s. I keep in my archive the first pages of L’Unità, when Berlinguer was already Secretary of the PCI, on which they wrote about the so-called Red Brigades, which ‘were called red but in reality were black’ and many other incorrect analyzes which for years influenced the Italian left. Even illustrious journalists for years, only to then make a public self-criticism, wrote and said profoundly incorrect things about the Red Brigades. It was the murder of a left-wing trade unionist, Guido Rossa, that decisively changed the attitude of the PCI. But it was many years after the titles I mentioned. As regards Berlinguer’s personal honesty, nothing to say or criticize. However, while he was Secretary, without any personal appropriation, the PCI received three forms of illegal financing: money arriving from Moscow (read Cervetti’s book which recounted the events of the so-called ‘Moscow gold’), money and the support that came from the red cooperatives (fundamental for advertising, for events such as the Unity celebrations and many other occasions) and some more Italian free-range bribes that exponents of the left, including the PCI, had pocketed”.

Gasparri then concludes: “Therefore I repeat, nothing to say about personal honesty and respect for the death on the field which occurred during a rally in 1984, but we are waiting for a second film that completes the gaps of the one just released.”