23/06/2023 - Carmen Giardina and Massimiliano Palmese’s charming documentary homes in on Dario Bellezza, considered by Pasolini to be the best poet of his generation in the ’70 and ‘80s

Charming and poignant in its rigorous simplicity, Carmen Giardina and Massimiliano Palmese’s documentary Bellezza, addio – screening in a world premiere at the 59th Pesaro International New Film Festival– paints the portrait of one of the most original Italian poets of the twentieth century, Dario Bellezza.

Both provocative and sensitive, bold yet fragile, Bellezza lived through Sodom-Rome in the ‘70s and ‘80s, offering up “a clear, crystalline and counter-current voice” (Nichi Vendola) within the nascent movement for the rights of the gay community. Upon the publication of Invettive e Licenze in 1971, Pier Paolo Pasolini hailed the book the work of the “best poet of his generation”. Paradoxically, this endorsement from Pasolini, for whom Bellezza harboured unconditional admiration, weighed heavily upon him, because he wanted to be the best without the help of eminent advocates. “I didn’t know how to capitalise on my notoriety. I’m a loser”, we hear him state in an interview. To depict the poet, Giardina and Palmese - who brought the brilliant Il caso Braibanti to Pesaro in 2020 - turn to Bellezza’s closest friends - including poets Renzo Paris and Elio Pecora, and critic Franco Cordelli - but also to footage from the time, when you might have crossed paths with Carlo Emilio Gadda and Goffredo Parise en route to seeing Alberto Moravia, Sandro Penna or Alberto Arbasino.

The poet’s friendship with Pasolini was indisputable. As Giuseppe Garrera - the curator of Bellezza’s archive - reminisces, the young poet was Pasolini’s clerk for three years while the latter was working on Medea (1969), essentially a role invented by PPP to combat the young author’s continual lack of money. Ninetto Davoli remembers this in The Decameron, where Dario played the sacristan grave robber.

Lettere da Sodoma was the “first scandalous book about the homosexual condition” which helped many to gain knowledge at a time when diversity was considered a red flag. Bellezza became a kind of cursed poet, the “Rimbaud of Monteverde”, as he was called. “An accursed man hounded by joy”, in the words of his friend Barbara Alberti, with whom he often laughed. Bellezza loved his female friends ferociously. Poet Amelia Rosselli rented out a room to him, but couldn’t stand the comings and goings of different boys, while his relationship with Elsa Morante ultimately turned sour.

It was a golden time for poetry, which “wasn’t yet finished with the avant-garde”, stresses Simone Carella, a facilitator at the legendary, experimental Beat 72 theatre, dedicated to theatre and poetry. In June 1979, the “First International Festival of Poets” was held on the beach in Castel Porziano, which Bellezza took part in and where he was whistled at, as were all of his colleagues, moreover. Ten thousand young people attended, including nudists and potheads, causing a scandal in the newspapers. On the third day, the stage literally (and symbolically) collapsed into the sand. Was this the end of poetry?

A journalistic scoop revealed that he was unwell with AIDS. A shy and reserved man who’d hidden his homosexuality from his parents, Bellezza locked himself up in his house, devastated by the fury which followed. He was treated like a leper, even on the streets of Rome which he loved so much and whose markets he’d always frequented. He expressed his existential malaise in a TV interview shot in Campo de’ Fiori, meaningfully filmed in front of the statue of Giordano Bruno, the heretic philosopher who was burned at the stake by the Church in that same town square in 1600: “God is my only hope, but I’m not a believer”. An emotional Maurizio Gregorini speaks of Bellezza’s final moments. Dario died in March of 1996, after a “tempestuous life”, as he himself described it in one of his poems. Ultimately, Giardina and Palmese’s work is a dual reflection on two urgent issues: gender equality and the civil function of poets, who were disregarded by institutions and mainstream culture at the time.

Bellezza, addio is produced by Zivago Film and Luce Cinecittà.

(Translated from Italian)