Subject
“Nerone” (Nero) is a film of 1976, directed by Castellacci and Pingitore, starring Paolo Stoppa, Enrico Montesano, Maria Grazia Buccella, Paola Borboni and Paola Tedesco. A parody of the ascension to the imperial throne by Nero (reigned 54-68 AD), the film had little fortune with the critics, being described as “an unhinged attempt to re-evaluate, in a pseudo-comic key, the emperor Nero.” Disputed by Christians, disliked by the Senate, opposed by his mother Agrippina, poor Nero is interdicted and locked up in an asylum, but eventually, posing as Jesus and persuading St. Peter to renounce his revolutionary intentions, he succeeds in foiling Seneca’s plot. The segment seen here, featuring Nero (Pippo Franco) and the character Roscio (Franco Lechner, stage name “Bombolo”), takes place inside the Circus of Maxentius on the Appia Antica.
Between the 2nd and 3rd mile of the Via Appia, Emperor Maxentius (306-312 AD) had built a grandiose residential complex consisting of a palace, circus and dynastic mausoleum. In this scene we see the remains of the masonry once supporting the tiers of circus seats. It was here that Maxentius moved the Egyptian obelisk originally brought by Domitian for the Temple of Isis in the Campus Martius, transferred again in 1651 to its placement as part of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fountain of the Rivers, at the centre of Piazza Navona. The second segment sees the meeting of Vinicio (Piero Santi) and the Christian Licia (Paola Tedesco), whose love prevails over the cruel persecutions of Nero.”
Director
Mario Castellacci and Pier Francesco Pingitore
Year
1976
