Into the Whirlpool of History: How a Midnight Collaboration in Massa Became a Criticism of War
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Uomo del mio tempo: a very short film
While visiting Massa for the premiere of my feature film, The Piccirilli Factor, I was invited to walk through the historic air-raid refuge (rifugio antiaereo) near Piazza Martana. Nestled deep below the Castello Malaspina, the shelter is a massive, hand-hewn empty space. Walking through it, I felt completely sucked into an eddy—a whirlpool of history.
Around me, water dripped slowly, filtering down through the solid rocks above. It was a sobering experience to stand in a subterranean tunnel built to hold thousands, if not tens of thousands, of terrified citizens seeking refuge from the relentless overhead bombardments of World War II.
The very next day, on my way to dinner, I met Stefania Merani outside a local bookstore just steps from the cathedral of il Duomo. Stefania is an extraordinary actor—immensely expressive, deeply knowledgeable, and possessed of a rare artistic intensity. Without a single audition or test, but acting purely in the shared spirit of spontaneous collaboration, we agreed to meet at the shelter that very night at midnight to record a series of poems by Salvatore Quasimodo.
Of all the works we recorded on-site, the one that perfectly captured the heavy spirit I had felt during my first walk through those tunnels was "Uomo del mio tempo" (Man of My Time).
Stefania’s midnight reading inside that cold concrete chamber was nothing short of extraordinaire. Her performance transformed our spontaneous encounter into a collaborative tribute to Quasimodo, but also into a fierce, cinematic criticism of war.
Quasimodo’s verses serve as a chilling reminder that modern humanity is still "the one of the stone and the sling". His words confront us with a "science persuaded to extermination without love", showing how easily the primitive urge to kill is repackaged in the high-tech machinery of contemporary war. Standing in a shelter built to escape the fallout of WWII, Quasimodo’s urgent call for a new generation to "forget the fathers" and their blood-soaked graves shook me deeply.
Indeed, the experience of making this film drove me to revise my own long-held beliefs about World War II, particularly the role we as Americans played in the "liberation" of Italy. It forced me to look beneath the sanitized myths of war and confront its raw, devastating reality.
My hope is that Quasimodo’s voice, brought to life so powerfully through the voice of Stefania Merani, can also help others to pause, look inward, and rethink what we have so long avoided considering.
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