Advanced search

Daniela Rocca was a beautiful and talented model, actress and writer, born in one of the poorest districts of Sicily, who found fleeting success in Italian cinema. Although she had envisioned herself as a writer, she entered a beauty pageant, was elected Miss Catania in 1953, and after competing for the Miss Italy title, she made her screen debut in 1954 in «La Luciana».

Rocca was cast in horror films as Riccardo Freda's «Caltiki, the Immortal Monster» (co-directed by Mario Bava) and international productions as Abel Gance's «Austerlitz», but her attractive looks made her ideal for the péplum genre, appearing in Fernando Cerchio's «Judith and Holofernes», Vittorio Cottafavi's «The Legions of Cleopatra», Bruno Vailati's «The Giant of Marathon» (also co-directed by Bava), Vittorio Sala's «The Queen of the Amazons» and most notably in the Italian-American co-production co-directed by Raoul Walsh and Bava, «Esther and the King», in which she played adulterous Queen Vashti, who dances to the court and ends her performance baring her breasts as an act of defiance to King Ahasuerus, and to the prudish film industries of those days.

The following year director Pietro Germi decided to make «Divorce Italian Style», a comedy denouncing the prohibition of divorce by Italian society, while being indulgent to crimes of passion. Germi gave Rocca the role of her career at 24. When she accepted to play an unattractive wife with a mustachioed upper lip, it was seen as an act of great courage for a young symbol of Mediterranean beauty. The movie became an international hit, she won the Best Actress award at the Avellino Neorealism Film Festival, and the movie received the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

But Rocca had fallen hopelessly in love with Germi and when he rejected her, she attempted suicide. Although she continued to appear in films, by 1963 she was considered unreliable and received no film offers. She appeared in Fred Zinnemann's «Behold a Pale Horse» in 1964, but fell into a state of severe depression. She recovered in a mental institution, in Palermo. In 1978 Rocca gave and interview to Marco Bellocchio for the documentary «The Cinema Machine», in which the actress claimed she had been abandoned by her former colleagues. "They said I was crazy, when all I had was a nervous breakdown. They sent me off to the hospital. It took a long time for the doctors to realize that I wasn't mad and let me go."

Daniela Rocca spent the last years of her life near Catania, at a retirement home where she wrote the books «Secret Agent with License to Live», «Lawyer for Rent», «Condemned to Death», «Psychoanalysis, Dreams, and Fantasies Hidden in the Mind», and the poetry collection «Ara».

A tragic symbol of short-lived fame in cinema and of unrequited love, Rocca was the object of two literary homages: the Argentine poet Juan Gelman dedicated a poem to the actress called «Theory About Daniela Rocca», and on April 12, 2016 Domenico Trischitta opened his drama in two acts «Quick Sands» in the Musco theater in Catania, based on her life.

Antonio Catania (22 February, 1952) is an Italian Actor.

Born in Acireale (Sicily), he studied and graduated in acting at the Drama School of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. He started an intense stage career with the stage company Compagnia dell'Elfo, often working with Gabriele Salvatores, with whom he also did several films, like "Mediterraneo", "Puerto Escondido", "The Return of Casanova", and "Naples New York". In the 1990s, he started to obtain significant roles in films directed by Silvio Soldini, Carlo Verdone, Leone Pompucci, Nanni Moretti, Roberto Andò, , starring in more than seventy films. Catania is also very active in television, notably in TV series, like "Zanzibar", "Boris", "The Bad Guy".

Gaetano Russo was born on 14 January 1950 in Acireale, Catania, Sicily, Italy. He is an actor and writer, known for Ladyhawke (1985), Crazy Blood (2006) and Trhauma (1980).

Franco Patanè was born in 1908 in Acireale, Sicily, Italy. Franco is known for Ruben Brandt, Collector (2018) and Tosca (1961). Franco died in 1968 in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy.

Umberto Barbaro (1902-1959) was a progressive intellectual who managed to make important contributions to specifically Italian culture and the appreciation of other cultures by his countrymen even during the Fascist period. A member of the Left Futurist movement in the 20s, he published his first work of fiction in 1931: Luce Fredda, a novel about alienated bourgeois youth in Rome. Also an art historian, he would later make two documentaries on Italian painters. His collaboration with fellow theorist Luigi Chiarini involved working as a teacher at the filmmaking school they cofounded in 1935, Centro Sperimentale, writing essays for magazines they were both involved with,and co-scripting several features. Barbaro led the tendency looking toward a more documentary like approach in Italian cinema and what would later be called Neo Realism. After WWII he succeeded in yet another career, as a translator, by bringing the theoretical writings of Soviet artists such as Eisenstein and Pudovkin to greater awareness in Italy as well as the work of German scholar Rudolph Arnheiim.