The novel came out a few days ago The years in black and white (North) by Francesca Giannone, has already reached the top of the best-selling book charts. We are in a town in the province of Lecce, in the sixties, in a patriarchal family with four sisters. Everything revolves around the Elia family’s tailoring business, but each of them cultivates a dream, a passion: Giovanna’s rebellious music, Jane Austen’s novels in which Ada takes refuge, Maria’s will not to settle and, above all, the thirst for images of Mimì, the youngest, who from the projection booth of the Apollo Cinema, while watching films by Fellini and Visconti, dreams of something that seemed impossible at the time: becoming a director.
A novel that must be revealed little by little, reading its 416 pages, which really flow like a film. We talked about it with the author, Francesca Giannone.
Four sisters as in Plittle women: a case?
“Absolutely not. Little women it was truly one of the first classics I read and I go back to reread it every now and then. Those four girls have remained with me and influenced the lives of many generations of women. So Maria is Meg, sensible, devoted to the family, protective of others; Giovanna is Jo, the rebel, unconventional, impulsive but also generous; Ada is Beth, the most sensitive, the one who will suffer the harshest repercussions from fate; and finally the protagonist, Domenica known as Mimì, who is Amy, the youngest, the one who has had the most freedom and the one with an artistic vocation.»
Is the bond between sisters important to you too?
«I have a sister to whom I am very close, to whom I also dedicated my first novel, The Postman; she is my best friend, my confidante, my life partner. There is no bond like that between sisters. Then, in addition to those by blood, there are the sisters one chooses: other women you meet along the way, more than just friends. My novel talks about sisterhood by blood, but also, in a much broader sense, that between workmates, between villagers.»
Mimì wants to become a director in an era when there were no female directors.
«Yes, now Mimì herself says that there was one, Lina Wertmüller, but that she was just starting out and was a niche figure. Mimì needs a model to inspire her and chooses Federico Fellini because, from the moment she sees his first film, The sweet lifehe falls in love with her. So much so that he called his first camera Anita.”
What kind of director do you think Mimì will become?
«In a certain sense I imagine her as I described her: a director who thrives on details. It’s something that Vincenzo, the friend with whom she shares a passion for cinema, often reproaches her: “You neglect the overall vision and focus too much on the details.” But she replies: “For me the details are revealing. A look, a gesture say much more than the overall vision.” His could become an atmospheric cinema, a bit French, à la Nouvelle Vague.”
There is always a start for a writer, a place, a moment, attention to a detail in which a story comes to mind and asks to be written. What was the impetus for this novel?
«I was working on another novel, a completely different story set in another period. One evening I’m going to see the film Diamonds by Ozpetek and, as I was leaving the cinema, I heard the voice of a little girl from the sixties who was unable to go to the cinema because her father forbade her. Mimì’s voice, just like in the incipit that I later wrote. I go home, create a file called “Mimì”, put the other novel aside and start writing straight away».
Did you draw on family memories for the tailoring?
«I was inspired by one of my grandmother’s sisters, who was the seamstress of the town of Lizzanello, where I set The Postman. I experienced all those scenes that I describe in the tailor’s shop as a child: the neighboring customers who came in and out and who even just came to say hello.”
From the seamstress to the hairdresser we tell each other everything…
«Very true. I realized already as a child that it was also a place where women could be with each other without husbands or boyfriends and also say intimate, uncomfortable things to each other. The seamstress’s house was a place of whispered confidences and I have carried this with me over the years: the feeling that it was a small, all-female community.»
There are dramas, even very strong ones, but there is also tenacity, the desire to find one’s own path…
«The determining figure, the one who generates the movement of the characters, is the master father who oppresses his daughters, demands absolute control over them and his wife, says and does terrible things. These four girls could have gone grey, succumbed and instead went to take their freedom in both a family and social context in which there were very few freedoms. They have the tenacity to do it, to go and get it with stubbornness.”
Black and white, therefore, does not only refer to cinema…
«In fact the title has this double meaning: yes, it refers to the black and white of the film because color wasn’t there yet, at least in the amateur films that Mimì uses. But black and white was also the daily life of women in a decade that in the collective imagination is very colorful: fashion, music, cinema, student revolts. When I thought about this novel I wanted to put down on paper the reality of those years, the black and white reality of that society, with a whole series of absurd laws which fortunately were abolished in the following years. But for me it was important to tell how our ancestors, great-grandmothers, grandmothers, aunts and mothers lived in that historical context, with all that apparatus of absurd laws: the parental authority that prevented mothers from exercising their parental rights on minor children; adultery punished with one year in prison only if it was committed by women; the shotgun marriage which extinguished the crime of rape if the man who had used violence then married the victim; the honor killing which provided for much lighter punishments if a man killed a woman who had cheated on him…It was also important to underline the contradiction of all this.”
The descriptions of the dresses that the Elia sisters design for their atelier in Lecce are very effective. It seems like you can see those very colourful, short, sometimes tight, sometimes trapeze-shaped coats… How did you imagine them?
«I obviously took inspiration from the collections of those years. I studied all the spring-summer and autumn-winter collections from ’63 to ’68. I also saw the evolution of fashion in those years and took inspiration from the collections I saw in magazines, the same ones with which customers went to the tailor’s shop to say: “I want this”. And the seamstress reproduced it. The biggest revolution was that of the skirt which gradually became shorter until the arrival of the miniskirt in 1965, created by Mary Quant and which became a symbol of female liberation.”
Cinema, thanks to Mimì’s passion, is the great protagonist of the story…
«This novel is truly a great love letter to the Italian cinema of those years. I made an overview of the great masterpieces of that period: The sweet life, The LeopardSergio Leone’s first films, films with Monica Vitti, Italian wedding, Blow-Up by Antonioni, Fists in the pocket dthe Bellocchios. It was an incredible decade for Italian cinema. The Sixties were unrepeatable: Italian cinema won the Golden Lion for Best Film four times in a row. Hands on the city (1963), The red desert (1964), Vague stars of the Ursa… (1965), The Battle of Algeri (1966). And then the Golden Bear in 1961 a The night, by Michelangelo Antonioni, and the Palme d’Or in 1963 at Leopard…»
And is it also your favorite cinema?
“Exact. I continue to see those films over and over again. For example, on August 15th of each year The overtakingas a kind of ritual”
Speaking of films, there is also another film that you paid homage to in this novel, which is New Cinema Paradiso.
«Yes, the opening scene of Mimì who sneaks into the projection booth by climbing onto a stool because she is still too small is really a declared homage to New Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore”.
And isn’t Mimì’s first attempt to edit her footage by cutting pieces of film with scissors and transparent adhesive tape perhaps a tribute to the final scene with the kissing sequence that the projectionist had to cut due to censorship?
«Very good, you’re the first to notice. I’m glad you noticed, because I put that tribute there on purpose.”
After an incredible success like The postman is there a bit of fear of confronting yourself?
«In reality this is the novel that resembles me the most, because inside there are a whole series of themes that concern me. So no matter what, I’m happy I wrote it. Then he really seems to like it…”
Having as its narrative voice that of a little girl who then becomes an adolescent and finally a young woman, can it also be seen as a Bildungsroman and, as such, enter schools?
«I hope so, because in my opinion the new generations must know our past. I think it has a lot to say to girls and boys today, because it makes them understand where their grandmothers came from. Well, Mimì could be one of their grandmothers. Already for There postman many teachers invited me to their classes and some eighth grade girls used it for their exam essay.”
But The postman When does it become a series or a movie?
«Rai Fiction has announced that it will be an event series on Rai 1 in 2027. But I still don’t know anything about the cast. However, I am very happy because with that location it will be able to reach many people, as has happened for The brilliant friend».
You studied at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, but then you became a writer. Do you think one day you will also work for the cinema?
«Cinema remains a great love and, in fact, it has greatly influenced my way of writing, constructing and narrating stories. Many readers, reading my novels, tell me that they feel like they are watching a film. I realized that I actually brought that cinematic language into fiction, in some way. And I don’t rule out writing for the cinema in the future: I would go for it, it would be a dream.”
