I ragazzi di via Panisperna (Via Panisperna Boys) is an Italian movie by director Gianni Amelio, telling the enthusiasms, fears, joys and disappointments of the (private and professional) life of a well-known group of young men fond of physics and mathematics, who just made history as the Via Panisperna boys.
The movie derives from a 3-hour long TV movie, which was produced and broadcast in two parts by RAI in 1990.
Contents
Plot
The story is inspired by a real life fact and set in the 1930s when, at the Institute of Physics of Via Panisperna, in Rome, physicist Enrico Fermi managed to involve a group of brilliant young students—Emilio, Bruno, Edoardo and Ettore (all of whom became famous scientists)—forming a working group committed to scientific research who would achieve great discoveries in the field of nuclear physics.
The film explores the private side of these young men's lives, characterized by their anxieties and enthusiasms.
The story has among the main themes the relationship between Enrico and Ettore, the former becoming both a sort of father and of elder brother to Ettore, with the typical disputes (misunderstandings hiding affection) happening in a family. Unfortunately, the fascist political regime, the racial laws, Ettore's disappearance into nowhere (suspicious death or suicide, it will never be known)—he who already realized how their exciting discoveries could become powerful destruction weapons in wrong hands (attentively see the scene set in Sicilian fields)—all proves to be more decisive than the love for physics which had drawn them together so much and, finally, the boys turn different ways.
Cast
Andrea Prodan as Ettore Majorana
Ennio Fantastichini as Enrico Fermi
Michele Melega as Franco, assistant of Fermi
Giovanni Romani as Edoardo Amaldi
Alberto Gimignani as Emilio Segrè
Giorgio Dal Piaz as Bruno Pontecorvo
Laura Morante as Laura, wife of Fermi
Cristina Marsillach as cousin of Majorana
Mario Adorf as Orso Mario Corbino
Virna Lisi as mother of Majorana
Sabina Guzzanti as Ginestra, lover of Amaldi
Georges Géret as Francese