When Giulio Andreotti, seven times Italian Prime Minister, went to see the
film Il Divo, which portrays him as the man at the heart of postwar Italy's
dark secrets, he suffered in silence. There came a moment however, it was
reported, when the 90-year-old Andreotti groaned and stood up, declaring:
“No, no - that is really too much.”
When we met at the Italian Senate I asked him what the “too much” moment was.
Was it when the film's Andreotti - brilliantly played by Tony Servillo, who
also starred in Gomorrah - explains the discrepancy between his deep Roman
Catholic faith and his political pragmatism with the cynical words “God
doesn't vote”?
Was it perhaps when he recites a list of mysterious violent deaths and says:
“Sometimes you have to do evil to do good”? Or was it the scene in which he
is seen sealing his links to the Mafia by giving a “kiss of honour” to Toto
Riina, the notorious Godfather who was arrested in 1993 and is serving
multiple life sentences, an episode that one Mafia turncoat swore he had
seen?
He gazes at me owlishly through his spectacles, a small, hunched but alert
figure, as if struggling to remember. “Yes, the kiss, I think,” he says. “It
never happened, you know. It was an invention. I would kiss my wife, but not
Toto Riina.”
OK, but did he also resent the rest of the film? He shrugs. “I didn't see much
of it, to be honest.” A disarming smile and a chuckle. “I had better things
to do.” Did he consider complaining to Paolo Sorrentino, the director, whom
he once called “a blackguard”, or even taking legal action? “Good heavens,
no. I don't say the film didn't interest me, I say it didn't particularly
move me. I don't consider myself a hero or a saint. I am a normal man.”
“Normal”, however, is the one thing Andreotti is not, as emerges with dramatic
force from Sorrentino's operatic and often savagely biting film, which won
the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival last year. His various
nicknames speak for themselves: Il Divo Giulio (from Divus Iulius, the
nickname of Julius Caesar) but also Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness, the
Fox, the Hunchback (“Perhaps if I had taken more exercise when young my
figure would be different,” he remarked).
He is a difficult man to pin down: evasive, enigmatic, witty, entertaining,
sinister to many, he embodies the Italy of the past 65 years, including its
“dark heart”. Having lived through Fascism as a young man, he was present at
the creation of postwar Italian democracy as a disciple of Alcide De
Gasperi, the great Christian Democratic Prime Minister.
Andreotti was born in Via dei Prefetti, just “two steps” from Parliament. He
said he preferred “the old, authentic Rome” of the cobbled historic centre
to the modern suburbs. He tends to see events in the broad sweep of history
rather than today's headlines. “I have been blamed for almost everything
apart from the Punic wars, which were before my time,” he once said. His
father died when he was young, and he was brought up in considerable
hardship by his mother. As an altar boy he acquired the faith that has never
left him (he still goes to Mass every day).
He studied law and dabbled in journalism, until a chance meeting in the
Vatican library with De Gasperi took him into politics. An aunt taught him
to realise that few things were truly important and to keep a sense of
perspective. The two dominant women in his life, however, have been his wife
Livia (played in the film by Anna Bonaiuto), to whom he has been married for
more than 60 years (they have four children, plus grandchildren), and his
long-serving secretary Vincenza Enea (Piera Degli Esposti), both of whom he
found sympathetically portrayed.
He was Prime Minister on seven occasions from 1972 to 1992, as well as
Minister of the Interior, Defence Minister and Foreign Minister, and is now
a Senator for Life, still manoeuvring to support or bring down governments.
He has sat in Parliament without interruption since 1946 - with (his enemies
say) the backing of the United States, the Vatican, the secret services and
the Mafia.
When Il Divo was shown at the London Film Festival last October a critic for
Times Online wrote: “Small, stiff-limbed and short-strided, Andreotti ought
to be a figure of fun as he pigeon-steps his way through marble halls and
palaces. The laughter stops when he comes to a halt, standing at the static
centre of a room while lackeys and lieutenants swirl around him.”
He was acquitted, convicted and then acquitted again of ordering the murder in
1979 of Mino Pecorelli, an investigative journalist who had alleged that
Andreotti had links to the Mafia and to the kidnapping and murder in 1978 of
Aldo Moro, a former Prime Minister and close Christian Democratic colleague
who wanted to bring the Italian Communists into government in an “historic
compromise”.
He was also acquitted on a separate charge of “Mafia association”. However,
the final judgment in the Pecorelli case, in 2003, stated that Andreotti had
had strong ties to the Mafia until 1980. It has never been established what
he knew about the fate of Roberto Calvi, the Vatican-linked financier known
as God's Banker, who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in
1982.
So, a Mafia man? No, Andreotti says: after all, he himself ordered a crackdown
on Cosa Nostra. “Anyway, I was born in Rome and live in Rome. We have our
criminal gangs in Rome, but they are not Cosa Nostra.” He is being
disingenuous, I suggest: after all, Christian Democracy was sustained by
Sicilian votes, as is Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia today. “Yes, yes,” he
murmurs. “The Sicilians are full of enthusiasm, you know. Warm people.”
Did he ever say that you have to be evil to do good? “No, no. It's not true
anyway. Evil is evil and good is good. It's a hypocritical excuse on the
part of those who have done evil and seek to justify themselves.” He is
famous for remarking that “Power wears out those who don't have it” - a
remark used in the film Godfather III - but says he never used his power to
enrich himself.
The episode that haunts him most - and features prominently in Il Divo - is
the death of Moro at the hands of the extreme leftwing Red Brigades, which
is still shrouded in mystery 30 years on. He denies rumours that as Prime
Minister he could have done more to save Moro. “Moro and I were very close,”
he says. “I was head of the Catholic University after him. He was a very
complex man, very intelligent, a fascinating figure. The Red Brigades were
not numerous, as it turned out, but they were highly motivated. They wanted
to destroy capitalism.”
One theory is that many of the unsolved mysteries of postwar Italy are related
to murky plots to stop the communists gaining power in a strategically vital
Western country: after all in 1990 Andreotti himself acknowledged the
existence of “Gladio”, a secret anti-communist military body that
infiltrated the Italian elite.
“That is simplistic,” Andreotti counters. “Christian Democracy combined its
values and convictions with the need to defend us against international
communism, that much is true. The communist danger really existed. It is no
secret that the Italian Communists and some leftwing trades unions were
supported not only ideologically but also financially by Moscow.”
And the Vatican? On his side table the real Andreotti has a photograph of
himself with Pope Benedict XVI and images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. “The
Vatican has some influence with certain groups and persons in Italian life,
but I believe most Italians respect the Vatican and do not think the Pope
interferes too much.” Far from bending to the Vatican's will he sometimes
stood up to it, he says.
Despite its popularity Andreotti dismisses the film, saying he believes he
will in the end be judged “on his record”. So the mysteries remain. I asked
him if was true that when he turned 90 he had said he would “take his
secrets to the grave”. “True. In my life I have made many, shall we say,
delicate choices. Some people played a double game, claiming to be on one
side while being on another. Some things you don't see at the time because
you are blinded by the light. You think you understood everything, then you
see you didn't. But the past is the past. It is better to look to the
future.”
Il Divo is released on Friday
