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As Paolo Scandaletti wrote in 1989, Galileo Galilei’s story has always been more adapted than narrated [Scandaletti, 1989, Preface]. In the course of time there have been «many Galilei» [Rossi, 1999, p. 133] depending on beliefs and interests of authors and historians that considered him as a hero of free thought, a rebel, a layman, an anticlerical or a fervent Catholic. Thus, the scientist’s numerous representations have depicted Galilei as a contemporary man and have contributed to perpetuate his myth. «The world has turned its lenses on Galileo and his science» [Perkowitz, 2011, p. 86]: the figure of Galilei is widespread in cultural production and in collective imagination, also because of his massive presence in theatre, cinema, television, comics and advertising. For obvious reasons, this is especially true for Italian cultural production, where Galilei has been portrayed as a national hero in several cinema and television biopics. Throughout the 20th century, historical films contributed to the process of building and strengthening national identity, bringing to the screen famous figures from the past, which embodied the values of the Italian community [Tagliani, 2019, p. 80]. The biographical film emerged within the tradition of historical films and has been a constant genre of Italian film production, to varying degrees, up to the present day [Canova, 2020, p. 4]. Thus, since the early 20th century several biopics have adapted Galilei’s story for Italian screen, although each film has shown a different portrait of the scientist.              
This paper aims to analyse the depiction of Galileo Galilei that emerges from Italian biopics and to identify the recurring items in the scientist’s representation. Referring to a famous verse by Giorgio Strehler’s script Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht, the title of this article sums up the three most frequent elements used to present Galilei on the screen, which are indicated by letters A, B and C.

In every representation of Galilei’s life, it is unavoidable to refer to the abjuration: on June 22nd, 1633 Galileo Galilei delivered his recantation of the Copernican thesis before the Tribunal of the Holy Office in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome. It is just sketched in Galilei’s biography written by Vincenzo Viviani [Viviani, 1966], in a last attempt to remove the trauma of abjuration from public imagination. During the 19th century the theme of the trial gained attention due to various representations of the condemnation in Galilean iconography [Lewis, 2007; Tognoni, 2010].

So, even in the film adaptations of Galilei’s life made since the early years of 20th century, the sequence of the abjuration before the cardinals of Inquisition cannot be missed. Indeed, the whole film story often revolves around the condemnation of the scientist.

Such is the case of Galileo Galilei (1909) directed by Luigi Maggi, in which the scientist made his first appearance on the screen. The film was sold abroad as Galileo, Inventor of the Pendulum, though the title was misleading [Perkovitz, 2022, p. 120]: Galileo merely observed that the period of a pendulum is independent of its amplitude if the amplitude is not too large.

Galileo Galilei (1909) was made in 1909 on the third centenary of Galilei’s astronomical discoveries with the telescope. Only four years before, on the 35th anniversary of the Breach of Porta Pia and the annexation of Rome to the Kingdom of Italy, a crowd of spectators attended the public projection of La presa di Roma (i.e. The capture of Rome) (1905), the first fiction film of Italian cinematographic production. As Brunetta noted, the movie that marked the birth of the national cinema industry had already the features which characterized Italian film production in later years: a historical, lay - when not markedly anticlerical - and ritualistic film [Brunetta, 2008, p. 197].

Restored in 1997 by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema of Turin and Cineteca del Friuli of Gemona, the film was produced by one of the most notable film production companies on the national scene at the time, the Società Anonima Ambrosio of Turin [Gianetto, 2000]. Galileo Galilei is a 223 meters long (about 10 minutes) silent film and it is divided into eight scenes, each of which is introduced by a caption. Rather than Galilei’s life, the main focus of the story is his condemnation by the Church [Merzagora, 2006, p. 176], which depends on the disagreements with a scribe. In fact, while the scientist is studying the motion of the Earth, the scribe attempts to seduce Galilei’s daughter. Rejected, the servant denounces his master to the Holy Office. Galilei's house is searched, his writings are taken away, his daughter is arrested and then shut up in a nunnery. The cardinals of the Inquisition find Galilei’s writings contrary to the dictates of religion: they order them to be burned and force the scientist to repudiate his theories.

As it can be easily deduced, the historical reconstruction of Galilei's story was misrepresented in favour of a more mythicized approach, which combined anecdotes that had entered the common imagination about the scientist and real events [Testa, Olivotto, 2010, p. 496]: the representation of science and the scientist did not respond to the historical reality, nor to the desire to communicate scientific contents, nor it was meant to shake the existing stereotypes about the figure of Galilei, which, on the contrary, were reiterated. However, it’s worth noting the continuous presence of the crucifix and the initials S.U. (i.e. ‘Sant’Uffizio’, Holy Office), worn by the Congregation's members, exhibited on the stand of the cardinals of Inquisition. The constant reference to the power of the Church served to portray the prelates as enemies in a far from veiled way [Alovisio, Carluccio, 2014, p. 146], which was a characterization present in Italian cinema since its first film [Brunetta, 2008, p. 197].

Indeed, the decision to make a movie about Galilei’s life did not only respond to the need to commemorate an anniversary linked to the scientist’s life and work, but it was also a part of the policy of ‘nation-building’ initiated with the Unification of Italy [Coen, 2009], which intended to provide a ‘historia laica’ [Ciliberto, 2011, p. 369] (i.e. secular history) in open contrast with the Church, through the historical reconstruction of the cinema. This history was based on the ‘martyrs’ and ‘heroes’ who had fought for the birth of modern civilization and the New Italy. Therefore, from the first scenes of the film, Galilei is portrayed as an elderly academic, a sage reflecting and guarding his intellectual freedom, a hero of free thought against the tyranny of the Vatican [Ciliberto, 2011, p. 369].

During the fascist period, the figure of Galilei was a highlight of the collection of ‘great Italians’ that the regime showed off to point out the links between fascist culture and the nation’s past. Galileo Galilei fell into the category of men of genius that Italy had given to the whole world and who contributed to ‘demonstrate’ the primacy of Italian civilization [Baioni, 2021, p. 414]. Moreover, 1942, in the middle of World War II, was the third centenary of Galilei’s death, that occurred in Arcetri, on January 8th, 1642. Leonardo Algardi, the secretary of the EIAR Radio News, a journalist and radio critic, used the anniversary to write the script of a movie about Galilei’s life, that he deposited in the archives of the SIAE (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers) in December 1941. The Archive of the Museo del Cinema of Turin keeps a file containing two «Sequences of elements to make a fictionalized biographical movie about Galileo Galilei in the 300th anniversary of his death (1642-1942)», one of which – probably the first draft – bears the autograph title Eppur si muove…! (i.e. And yet it moves!). Along the lines of Viviani’s biography, Algardi’s screenplay retraced the stages of Galilei’s life, from his medical studies at the University of Pisa to his imprisonment in Arcetri, interweaving them with his scientific discoveries, family events, the publication of his works, the conflicts with his detractors, especially the clergy or religious members. Even in this case, a pivotal role in the structure of the work was played by the scene of abjuration, described in detail, denoting Algardi’s expertise in historical research. In recounting Galilei’s life and work, Algardi used a vocabulary related to the semantic sphere of war: the scientist has to counter «his enemies», to defend himself against the «envies and enmities» caused by his discoveries, the opponents «arm themselves» with arguments against him, Galilei abandons «the safe haven» of Padua and goes to Rome «to try to defend himself by forestalling the intrigues of the enemies», where he «successfully rejects the false accusations made by his numerous opponents». In the words of the screenplay, the political climate in which it was written echoes: the entry into the war by the USSR, Japan and the USA gave the conflict a global dimension and irreversible features of the ideological clash by that time. It is also noteworthy that, compared to an early version of the script, the copy deposited at the Storage of Plots and Scripts dwells in more detail on the disputes between Galilei and the members of the clergy, such as the one with the Dominican Niccolò Lorini concerning the incompatibility of Copernican theory and the Bible, or the dispute with the Jesuit Orazio Grassi which would lead to the writing of The Assayer.

Once he submitted the script, Algardi asked the Ministry of Popular Culture to recognize the priority of his initiative and to include his movie in the program of events celebrating the third centenary of Galilei’s death planned by the Executive Committee for the national honours to Galileo. However, he reserved the right to announce the name of the film production company that would make the movie in a later moment. In 1941, Algardi himself was the director of the Superba Film, a Genoese film company founded in 1935, but he stated he was in negotiations with several production companies interested in the script. In fact, it had to be a movie of huge proportions: Algardi’s press release, which he wrote for radio and cinema news, reported that the movie about Galilei’s life had to be made with «the stateliness of means due to a production of this kind». Therefore, considerable fundings were needed. However, no movie was ever made from Algardi’s script. In his memoirs, preserved in the Archives of Fondazione Diaristica Nazionale in Pieve Santo Stefano, there is no reference to the project of a movie on Galileo Galilei. Algardi merely wrote that the period of activity of Superba Film represented an immature experience, bound to come to a quick end, since he was too young and inexperienced, not engaged in developing a production and a business plan [Algardi, 1998, p. 77]. Numerous hypotheses can be formulated about the failure of the film project: Algardi’s lack of experience; the absence of producers willing to fund the project; the revocation of the authorization by the General Management of Cinematography; the anticlerical connotation of the screenplay; Algardi’s political orientation – in fact, even if he joined the Fascist Party to work for E.I.A.R., he always professed to be “non-Fascist” [Algardi, 1998, p. 18]; or even the appearance of a competitor film producer wanting to take advantage of the occasion of the Galilean celebrations. In 1942, indeed, the National Institute LUCE made a scientific-educational film entitled Galileo Galilei (1942) on behalf of the Cineteca Scolastica. It was a documentary directed by Giovanni Paolucci with the scientific advice of Sebastiano Timpanaro, future director of Domus Galileana, in which a voice-over recounted the salient events of Galilei’s life. In this film made by the official organ of the regime, the disagreement between Galilei and the Church was no longer presented in terms of conflict and hostility, but in conciliatory terms. The relations between the State and the Church had changed with the signing of the Lateran Pacts: the Vatican and the regime had an interest in putting Galilei’s conflicts with the Church aside and in supporting the integration between science and faith [Baioni, 2021, p. 416]. Despite Timpanaro’s advice, the spoken parts of the documentary were almost entirely censored without his knowledge and they were replaced with a more rhetorical and magniloquent script [Levi, 1998]. With regards to the observations with the telescope, the voice-over quoted a letter from Galilei to Belisario Vinta, the secretary of the Grand Duke, in which the scientist wrote: «I give thanks to the Lord who was pleased to make me alone the first observer of such an admirable thing, kept hidden from all the centuries» [Galilei, 1610]. And with regards to the abjuration:

What emerged from the film was the image of Galilei as believer and a scientist. Not coincidentally, right after Galilei’s date of birth (February 15th, 1564), the date of his Baptism was mentioned (February 19th, 1564). Therefore, the abjuration was deliberately shown with ambiguous terms.

In the numerous adaptations of Galilei’s life for the screen, a second element can be detected in a more veiled or explicit way: the controversial presence of Giordano Bruno. It is emblematic that already in 1908, when the Società Anonima Ambrosio made the first film on the life of Galileo Galilei, another film production company, Itala Film, made a film about Giordano Bruno, which has unfortunately been lost. Thus, Bruno and Galilei were the first scientists to be represented on the silver screen in Italy – although the term ‘scientist’ may seem inaccurate referring to Giordano Bruno. As already pointed out, the choice of the protagonists of the two short films did not only depend on the film producers’ desire to educate the spectators and to recall their meagre historical knowledge, but it depended also on the aforementioned nationalistic and anticlerical policy.

In 1962, when prior restraint was abolished, Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo arrived in Italy. The next year the play was performed at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan under the direction of Giorgio Strehler, stirring up heated controversy. As Massimo Bucciantini pointed out, when Life of Galileo was read in Italy, the topic of the responsibility of the scientist – the central point in Brecht – definitely faded into the background beside the interpretative stereotype of «the offense against religion, the little respect for the pope and the cardinals, the sacrilegious way to mock the members of the clergy in the carnival scene» [Bucciantini, 2017, p. 78].

The Church felt threatened by the disrepute the play was casting on its image, Life of Galileo was immediately labelled as ‘for mature audiences’, prayer vigils were organized to exorcize the scandal the drama was unleashing. The controversy about the staging of Life of Galileo even ended up in the city council of Milan[Bucciantini, 2017, p. 126 ss.].              

Moreover, in Brecht-Strehler’s drama, the story of Galilei is linked to the story of Giordano Bruno. Galilei seemed to follow in Bruno’s footsteps and he risked to face the same fate – that’s why Giordano Bruno is more often named «the one burned at the stake». What makes the difference between Galilei and Bruno is the fact that Bruno did not have evidence that Galilei gave, through his observation with the telescope.

A few years after the first show of Life of Galileo at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, Strehler even entertained the idea to make an adaptation of Brecht’s drama for the cinema: the film was supposed to mark his cinematographic debut as a director. Here too, the movie never saw the light of day, as the documents preserved in the Archive of the Civic Museum Carl Schmidl of Trieste prove. In May 1969, Strehler wrote to Helen Weigel: «I’m dealing with the making of a film based on Life of Galileo with the Paramount, with Rod Steiger»[Strehler, 1969a].

Only a month later, in June 1969, in a letter to the film producer Maurizio Lodifé, he wrote that “the Galileo project vanished” [Strehler, 1969b]. In September 1969, only three months after the letter was written, a new biopic on the life and works of the scientist was presented at the Venice International Film Festival: Galileo (1968) by Liliana Cavani.

The movie was commissioned by Angelo Guglielmi, the head of RAI Special Programs, to Liliana Cavani, who had debuted as a television director in 1966 making a biopic about Saint Francis of Assisi. Galileo (1968) traced the crucial years of the scientist’s life – since 1592, when he became a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Padua, to the abjuration in 1633 – emphasizing the parallelism of Bruno’s and Galilei’s stories. Although there are no documents attesting that Bruno and Galilei ever met, Cavani imagined a dialogue between the two, who were in Padua in the same months in the fall of 1592 and visited the same families (such as the Venetian Andrea Morosini’s house). According to Cavani, «they could not have known each other» [Magrelli, 2022, p. 50], «they may not have met, but they may also have» [Cavani, 1970, p. 189]. Actually, Bruno was under arrest since May, 1592 while Galilei started his lectures at Padua in December, 1592. In any case, this is not the only distortion of the truth in the movie: for the purpose of the narrative, Cavani represented Bruno’s condemnation to be burned at the stake simultaneously with Galilei’s observation with the telescope. Instead, Bruno died in 1600, while Galilei started to point his telescope towards the sky in 1609.              

The structure of the movie consists of two symmetrical parts, the former is about Giordano Bruno, the latter is about Galileo Galilei, along the lines of Giordano Bruno. Both open with the research and the philosophical study and close with a trial: the sentence of Giordano Bruno marks a watershed between the two parts. Not only the two stories are intertwined, but also in the first part of the movie the editing alternates Bruno’s storyline and Galilei’s storyline in a counterpoint in which the actions of the former affect the actions of the latter [Rossi, 2003, p. 100]. For the purpose of this paper, there are two significant scenes: in the first one Galilei, who has just heard of Giordano Bruno’s denunciation to the Inquisition by Sagredo, decorously wears the academic gown to go to the University, stares at his own reflection in the mirror and complains that he looks like “an idiot” forced “to put on that uncomfortable overcoat” and that he could not think straight. The following scene shows Bruno’s interrogation by the cardinals of the Roman Inquisition; then, returning home after a lesson, Galilei unties his ruff collar. This is a metonymy: Galilei’s brain cannot think freely because it is gagged by the gown and the collar that the official culture imposes [Rossi, 2003, p. 101]. The presence of Giordano Bruno in the movie permitted the director to not only emphasize the continuity between Bruno and Galilei, but also to mark the distance between them. Cavani herself said that she found Galilei more modern than Bruno, because Bruno was basically a philosopher, who bore his verdict on the basis of unshakable faith in his reason and his intuitions [Brignoli, 2011, p. 116], instead Galilei was a scientist who asserted only what he could prove. When Galilei abjured, he pretended to change his mind, he played a part. And he saved himself.

Galileo by Cavani is a deeply Catholic man [Angeli, 2017, p. 2], well-connected to the ecclesiastical environment of those times, within which he cultivates his friendships, shares his studies and demonstrates his faith in God and in science. However, he turns out to be an ingenuous man, who believes he can trust the Pope and his personal friendship, he can dialogue with the power and counterpose experimental truth against the dogmatism of the Church. He is a believer who turns out to be ‘a transgressor despite himself’ [Gissi, 2014, p. 112] and, in the end, he yields to the power of the Church, not due to his weakness, but due to his coherence. In a film sequence, Galilei says before Inquisitors:

The movie was made in 1968, a significant year in Italian history, marked by protests and struggles against institutions and established power. The Second Vatican Council had recently been concluded and one of the issues that had been discussed was the relationship between science and faith. Cavani called herself a ‘Catholic of dissent’ [Angeli, 2017, p. 7] and it is noteworthy that she assigned the role of historical consultant of the movie not to a historian of science, but to a historian of religions, Boris Ulianich [De Ceglia, Lusito, 2021, p. 96-97], who had already collaborated with her in making Francis of Assisi (1966). According to the director, Galileo (1968) was meant to be «a film-debate» [Ricci, 2016, p. 81.], «the story of a denied dialogue» [Marrone, 2000, p. 55]. It represented a firm indictment of the intransigence and ignorance of the clerical power and a complaint against the authority of the Church – which is depicted through monumental, vertical, marble and pale scenic design. The movie was intended to provoke the audience’s reflection, to open a discussion on those critical issues dominating the Italian public debate at the end of the Sixties.

However, RAI never aired Galileo either in 1968 or later. After a private screening of the movie in the presence of some members of the clergy and executives of State television and without the knowledge of the director herself, Galileo was sold to the distribution company Cineriz so that it could be shown on the silver screen. The movie was censored, the scene of Giordano Bruno’s punishment was removed and the Catholic Film Centre prohibited it for minors under the age of 14. Many years later, Ettore Bernabei, at the time chief executive officer of RAI, stated that Cavani’s Galileo «was more outrageous than Brecht’s»[Bucci, 2005] because of its marked anticlerical connotation. On September 2nd, 1968 Galileo was presented at the Venice Film Festival and in February 1969 it was released in cinemas in its short version – that is without the scene of Giordano Bruno burning at the stake. This was not the first time that RAI censored Giordano Bruno’s presence in a movie – and more would follow. Just the year before, on the television broadcasting of Caravaggio (1967), a miniseries produced by RAI itself on the life of the painter, the executives made cuts without any warning. The offending scene involved Caravaggio being present in Campo de’ Fiori when Giordano Bruno arrived with a muzzle on his mouth to be burned at the stake [Guglielmi, 2022, p. 138]. Although this was a historical distortion, the episode had been included in the script at the behest of the director Silverio Blasi and the actor Gian Maria Volonté, who played Michelangelo Merisi. A few years later, Volonté played the role of Giordano Bruno himself in a movie directed by Giuliano Montaldo. The Giordano Bruno (1973) by Montaldo had first to face the difficulty of finding producers willing to finance the movie[Acconciamessa, 1973], then it was censored by the Church and by the Film Review Commission of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment, that granted its permission some years later.

Soon after Galileo was hastily withdrawn from the cinemas on minister Giulio Andreotti’s express request[Palombelli, 2005]. All copies and documents about Cavani’s movie owned by RAI were destroyed [Magrelli, 2022, p. 51]. Ironically, Galileo continued to circulate thanks to San Paolo Film, a production and distribution film company of San Paolo Publishing Group, which kept a copy of the movie for the distribution in schools and parishes.

In his representations for the big and small screen, the father of modern science presents those clichés and stereotypes that typically characterize the movies scientists: Galilei is often portrayed niggling on scattered papers, making complicated calculations and, above all, handling odd tools, which he uses for his observations and experiments. The scientific instruments are the third recurring element in Italian biopics on Galilei: complex contraptions of his own invention are shown as mere film props or as tools handled and flaunted by the protagonist. The presence of these devices on the film stage alludes to Galilei’s scientific activity.The narration in biopics does not convey contents regarding Galilei’s strictly scientific activity and works: one can only intuit the significance of them, if one is already familiar with the figure of the scientist[Merzagora, 2006, p. 176].

Obviously, the telescope cannot miss among the numerous and curious instruments on the scene. Galilei was not the first person to use the telescope: he was the first person to turn it towards the sky. However, he designed his own telescopes, built increasingly larger and more powerful types of them and converted a device for making objects that are faraway look closer into an instrument of scientific research through his ability to reconcile mathematical theory and handcrafted practice. His revolutionary act made Galilei with the telescope in his hands the most widespread and instantly recognisable image of the scientist, whose iconography resorted to the telescope since the 19th century[Tognoni, 2010, p. 61] and it influenced the world of art: painting, music, poetry and theatre [Vannoni, 2023].

A, albeit of modern manufacturing [Merzagora, 2006, p. 648], was already present at a scene in Galilei’s first appearance on the silver screen in the short film Galileo Galilei (1909). Furthermore, early on in Cavani’s first draft of Galileo (1968), the movie opened with the scene of the observation of the night sky: Galilei, Mazzoleni and Sagredo first saw the Sun rise on the Moon with the telescope. The scene might seem «an overused figurative commonplace» [Ricci, 2015, p. 87] to the director and she opted to replace it with the brilliant scene of the anatomy lesson inside the Anatomical Theatre of the University of Padua. In another scene, that was cut from the movie, Galilei and Paolo Sarpi went to the workshop of the alchemist Mamugna, where they were trying to turn lead into gold in the presence of scholars and members of the clergy. This scene was intended to describe the historical and scientific context of the time, which also included the study and practice of alchemy.

Galilei’s contribution to science was a key theme of Strehler’s plan to make a film out of Brecht’s Life of Galileo, too. According to Strehler, in fact, Galilei symbolised the need to know, the need that led him to conquer outer space for the first time. But Galilei also embodies the issue of the responsibility of scientists, accentuated by Brecht. In his Notes on B. Brecht’s Galileo preserved in the archive of the Civic Museum of Trieste, Strehler wrote that behind Life of Galileo there was always «the immense radioactive cloud of Hiroshima», «a terrible shadow» which constantly appealed to the responsibility of scientists. Therefore, the movie on Life of Galileo should have been «not a movie about the past, but a movie about the future», a movie that speaks «to us, directly», that teaches us «to better understand what to do».

The most accurate representation of Galilei’s scientific works is the one the director Roberto Rossellini inserted in his television series Man’s Struggle for Survival (1970-71). In the mid-Sixties he abandoned cinema for television and he carried out an educational project of encyclopaedic ambition in the conviction that «TV, with its exceptional capability of penetration, is the ideal instrument to spread knowledge to masses» [Iaccio, 2006, p. 148].

Part of Rossellini’s historical-educational programs was Man’s Struggle for Survival, a television series made between 1967 and 1969 in twelve episodes and aired in two cycles in 1970 (episodes 1-6) and in 1971 (episodes 7-12) respectively on RAI’s First and Second Channel [Michelone, 1996, p. 62]. In the series Rossellini traced the history of mankind since man’s appearance on Earth, in the light of certain themes such as sociality, transcendence, science and technology [Masi, 1987, p. 108]. In the eighth episode, entitled From the age of magic to the age of science, Galileo Galilei appeared in his academic gown, summoning scholars, prelates and academics to his workshop. While explaining his discoveries, he let them observe the lunar surface, the immeasurability of the number of the stars, the shape of Venus towards his telescope. Some of them refused to look into the instrument, others observed and shared Galilei’s curiosity and enthusiasm. Rossellini’s Galilei is a smug optimistic intellectual, who illustrated his discoveries and presented his conclusions with pedantic manners and authoritative stance. At the same time, he was a conflict-free Galilei: some of the bystanders dissented from the opinions expressed by Galilei and accused him of blasphemy. Anyway, in the twenty minutes of the episode devoted to Galilei there was no mention of the controversies with the Aristotelians, with the Church, or of the trial and the abjuration. In addition to the telescope, on the scene there were numerous scientific instruments, because of the educational purpose of the series: on the table in Galilei’s workshop, there were an armillary sphere, a geometric and military compass, a microscope and, a little further away, an astrolabe and other telescopes.

The analysis conducted hitherto has pointed out that in cinema and television biopics on Galileo Galilei made in Italy during the 20th century three essential elements recur: the abjuration of the Copernican theory, the comparison with Giordano Bruno and the presence of scientific instruments on the scene, particularly the telescope. The first element refers to the conflict between Galilei and the Church, between freedom of thought and dogmatism, knowledge and power. Therefore, the abjuration represents the historical and political context in which Galilei lived and worked. The presence of Giordano Bruno in movies about Galilei’s life and the comparison between their thinking refer to the historical and philosophical context. The scientific instruments framed in the background or used by actors or built by Galilei allude to the scientific context of the time. On the screen, the scientific context of Galilei’s life is often neglected in favour of the first two contexts. This is the case of the last movie made in Italy on Galilei affair: Eppur si muove (i.e. And yet it moves) by Ivo Barnabò Micheli. This is a German-Italian coproduction made in 1989 on the occasion of the first publication of the documents concerning the trial of Galilei preserved in the Vatican Secret Archives in 1984 [Pagano, 1984]. Eppur si muove (1989) is an inquiry film rather than a biographical film, in which the director imagines that a German screenwriter goes to Rome to carry out a thorough investigation on Galileo’s case. In the movie historical reconstructions and interviews with representatives from the religious and scientific world follow one another: the philosopher and mathematician Ludovico Geymonat and then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, future Pope Benedict XVI participate in the debate.

The movie directed by Barnabò Micheli has not been followed by any other Italian biopic on Galilei so far, nor has Cavani’s Galileo (1968) ever been aired on TV. Even in 2009, proclaimed the International Year of Astronomy, to celebrate the fourth centenary of Galilei’s astronomical discoveries, Italian cinema and television didn’t show their readiness to take such an important opportunity to make a new biographical movie on Galilei, although Italy was the location of numerous Galilean events and celebrations of international importance, too.

The genre of biography is becoming more and more popular in the audiovisual landscape, gaining increasing critical and public success thanks to its ability to look inside the lives of the characters to recount the wounds and the contradictions of history. The absence of a new biopic on Galileo Galilei’s life may signify that Italian cultural industry is not ready to heal that wound which has been bleeding for four centuries.

AMNCArchive of Museo del Cinema of Turin

ASCCHistorical Archive of Comune of Carpi

CMTCivic Museum of Trieste

FGSFile Giorgio Strehler

FLCFile Liliana Cavani

Giordano Bruno (1908) by Itala Film.

Galileo Galilei (1909) by Luigi Maggi, Società Anonima Ambrosio.

Galileo Galilei (1942) by Giovanni Paolucci, Istituto Nazionale LUCE.

Francis of Assisi (1966) by Liliana Cavani, RAI.

Caravaggio (1967) by Silverio Blasi, RAI.

Galileo (1968) by Liliana Cavani, RAI, Rizzoli Film, Kinozenter (Sofia).

Giordano Bruno (1973) by Giuliano Montaldo, Cinematografica Champion.

Man’s struggle for survival (1970-71) by Roberto Rossellini, RAI, Orizzonte 2000, Logos Film (Parigi), Romania Film (Bucarest), Copro Film (Il Cairo).

Eppur si muove (1989) by Ivo Barnabò Micheli, Antea, Laura Filmproduktion (Monaco).