Another Italian series based on real events, this time not about the mafia, but about the political events that Italy has always been rich in and which were sometimes no less bloody than the mafia showdowns. We are talking about what happened there in the 60s - 70s of the last century. The series is called differently in different sources - I watched under the title "Years of Breaking" (there is also "Years of Defeat", etc.) / Gli anni spezzati, 2014, directed by Graziano Diana. In essence, these are three two-part films – “The Commissioner”, “The Judge” and “The Engineer”.
Further can be considered spoilers.
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The first film “The Commissioner” is dedicated to the events with the bombings in Milan and tells about the real-life Commissioner Luigi Calabresi (Emilio Solfrizzi), who was engaged in the investigation of these explosions. The commissioner was an educated and reserved man, and also a believer, but, unfortunately (at least in the film), he sometimes had to obey his superiors, who put pressure on him. Fatal for him was the case of the anarchist Pinelli, arrested along with other anarchists on suspicion of an explosion in one of the banks, which then allegedly jumped out of the window of Calabresi’s office, after which leftists and journalists called him a murderer and began to poison him, literally opened a hunt for him. He also did not believe in the guilt of Pinelli, this explosion quite fit into the handwriting of not anarchists, but the “red brigades”, who committed a large number of crimes in those years. And although it was then determined by the court that he was not in the office, no one threw Pinelli out, no suicide he committed, just lost his balance, and Calabresi was declared innocent, but they did not calm down. He was killed near his home by shots in the back. He was followed by a pregnant wife and two sons, and a third was born after his death, one of whom, Mario, became a well-known journalist and writer, then wrote a book about his family. In Italy, the Commissioner of Calabresi is quite famous and revered. About him was shot another film by Marco Tullio Jordan “Novel about the slaughter”
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The second film "The Judge" is also dedicated to your real character - the justice of the peace (in Italy - magistrate) Mario Sossi (Alessandro Preziosi). He was abducted by a group of Red Brigades after 8 members of one group were sentenced to life imprisonment. They held him for 35 days in a country house and even put him on trial, promising to be released in exchange for the release of those convicted. As a result, he even consulted them there a little, because he understood that the state would never go to a direct exchange, advising the jury to appeal to the court of appeal, which seems to have even made such a decision, Sossi was released, and the attorney general and at the same time Sossi’s personal friend Francesco Coco did not approve this decision, for which he was subsequently killed. Sossi subsequently continued to work, as well as engaged in political activities, died in 2019.
The hero of the third film "Engineer" is a fictional character - engineer Giorgio Venuti (Alessio Boni), who works as some manager at the Fiat plant. He is a widower, living with his two daughters, aged 22 and 16, and their grandmother. He is a decent person, all immersed in work, so he does not really notice what is happening in his family, believing that everything is well there. But this was far from the case, first we (and only much later he) see what his eldest daughter is doing - she, it turns out, got involved because of a love affair with a teacher who not only dragged her to bed, but completely brainwashed her, with his leftist group committing terrorist acts, in the end she is involved in two attacks, as a result of which the people on whom she provided information are killed, in the latter case a doctor, a close friend of their family. The leader of the group did not order to kill, but in the group there was a rebellious idiot who just killed. She is eventually arrested and sent to prison, facing life imprisonment. We do not know how it will end in her case, but the procession of all the workers of Fiat, in which Giorgio was involved, eventually took place.
As you can see, I told so much in detail, not caring about spoilers, since there is a lot of information on the Internet about all these events, it was all in fact, I not only watched the movies, but also read about the characters. Watching these films will be interesting, first of all, for those who are interested in such topics, they are not bad, the actors are good.