1900

Last month, we waltzed through mid – 19th Century Italy. Today, we jump forward a half – century --- royalty continues its decline, the middle – class and powerful industrial leaders are ascendant in Europe. It’s a new century and the dawn of a new, perhaps golden era. But is it? Where still a force, European royalty is having its last hurrah in controlling lands far beyond their borders through vicious policies of imperialism. A minor Prince in Germany (who calls himself the German language derivation of Caesar) is going to overstep his bounds and plunge Europe and some of the rest of the world into a butcher’s shop of a conflict, known airily as WWI. As a result, the world further shunts royalty into the wastebin of history. But the desire for power, for rule over lands beyond your own borders? That remains. The eyes that lust after it, the hands that seek to grasp it, change from supposedly holy royal hands to an unholy alliance between politicians and industrial and financial might. And the world again sends its military off to slaughter one another. 

We saw the seeds of the downfall of royalty during the unification of Italy in Luchino Visconti’s film, The Leopard. This month, we follow two men from very different backgrounds who emerge from a unified Italy. They face the fallout of WWI and the rise of cooperation between autocracy and industrial might that forms fascism. Another decorated Italian director, Bernardo Bertolucci, mounted an ambitious film to follow their path and that of Italy as a five – hour epic, 1900. The film, which debuted in 1976, not only portrayed another turning point for Italy and the world but was a significant change for Bertolucci as he moved away from a scandalous and dark part of his career. But this is just a light story travelling over decades --- nothing to teach the US and the world in 2025…

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