Vancini, Florestano

(1926-)

   Director and screenwriter. Beginning in 1949, Vancini directed some 40 documentaries and worked as assistant director to Mario Soldati and Valerio Zurlini before making an impressive directorial debut in 1960 with La lunga notte del '43 (Long Night in 1943). Adapted from a novel by Giorgio Bassani that recounted the events surrounding a massacre by the Fascists in Ferrara during World War II, La lunga notte was awarded the prize for Best First Film at the Venice Festival. Then, following the crime drama La banda Casaroli (The Casaroli Gang, 1962) and La calda vita (The Warm Life, 1963), Vancini used the pseudonym Stan Vance to make a foray into the Western all'italiana with I lunghi giorni della vendetta (Long Days of Vengeance, 1967). He returned to a more socially committed cinema with La violenza: Quintopotere (The Sicilian Checkmate, 1972), which used the format of the courtroom drama to investigate the links between illegal power networks in Sicily, and Bronte, cronaca di un massacro che i libri di storia non hanno raccontato (Liberty, 1972), a fictional re-creation of a brutal reprisal carried out by the northern Italian forces during the Risorgimento period. This was followed by another attempted historical reconstruction in Il delitto Matteotti (The Assassination of Matteotti, 1973) before a turn to an exploration of familial and interpersonal relationships in Amore amaro (Bitter Love, 1974) and Un dramma borghese (Mimi, 1979). Vancini subsequently worked mostly for television, directing, among others, the second run of the very popular long-running series on the Mafia, La Piovra (Octopus, 1985), and the miniseries Piazza di Spagna (1993).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira