Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Giuseppe and Giorgio are dressed to go out on the town. They get temporarily sidelined by a kid trying to break into a house, who then falls. They go to a nightspot where there is a performer Giorgio has his eye on.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Moscati has to prove himself at the exam, to demonstrate whether he is just presumptuous or can back it up by knowing what to do with the patient before him. His friend Piromallo waits for him outside, meanwhile.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Giuseppe and Elena exchange a few words during the dance, but then he goes home to study. The next day, at the exam, his friend is having a hard time.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Giorgio takes his friend Giuseppe to a ball in honor of Princess Elena Cajafa. Giuseppe feels out of place, but Giorgio insists on having him meet some important people, hoping it will help his career, not to mention the entrance exam they have the following day.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Two medical students at the University of Naples leave the library and race through town down to the beach. At the Cajafa palace, Princess Elena is called to her father's study where they discuss the ball to take place that evening.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
The narrator goes over the vanishingly small number of expressions coined during Mussolini's time that are still in use today. The song that gives the series its name is provided in full.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
After the war came TV. It changed everything, and provided a new way to unify the Italian language and teach people reading and writing.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
The segment looks at the Royal Academy of Italy's dictionary of Italian, which was filled with quotes from Mussolini. By the end of World War II, the dictionary had gotten to the letter “C.”
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Mussolini inveighs against the middle class, saying that it is the enemy of fascism. Much of the footage in this segment features EUR, the Rome district that was built in the 30s and 40s.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
This segment opens with a sort of poem, demonstrating how kids growing up in fascist Italy were expected to behave. Minority groups had a pretty hard time, too.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Schools in fascist Italy banned the study of dialects and moved to using standardized textbooks. The fascist hymn “Viva Adua nostra” refers to a battle won by the Kingdom of Italy in 1896 near Adwa, Ethiopia.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Soon after the introduction of talkies, dubbing came about in the thirties. Dubbing was extremely popular in Italy and remains so today.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
The nineteen twenties ushered in sound in cinema. Italy's L.U.C.E. [L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa or Educational Film Union] was founded in 1924 and generated the fascist regime's cinematic propaganda.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
In World War I, Italians who up until then had spoken their regional dialects, found themselves fighting side by side against a common enemy. But Mussolini was interested in fighting the internal enemy.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Not only does the race go from Brescia to Rome, it goes back to Brescia, and the last part, uphill, is very tricky. This historical footage and commentary is priceless! Fasten your seat belt for the finish line.
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