Guglielmo Giannini

Guglielmo Giannini (14 October 1891 – 10 October 1960) was an Italian politician, journalist, writer, director and dramaturge.

Guglielmo Giannini
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office
8 May 1948 – 24 June 1953
Member of the Constituent Assembly
In office
25 June 1946 – 31 January 1948
Personal details
Born(1891-10-14)14 October 1891
Pozzuoli, Campania, Italy
Died10 October 1960(1960-10-10) (aged 68)
Rome, Lazio, Italy
NationalityItalian
Political partyCommon Man's Front (1946–1949)
Christian Democracy (1953)
People's Monarchist Party (1958)
ProfessionPolitician, journalist, writer, director, dramaturge

Biography

Guglielmo Giannini was born in Pozzuoli, by Federico Giannini and Mary Jackson, and grew up in Naples. He practiced many different trades (from bricklayer to a clerk in a cloth shop) before coming to journalism, in modest satirical papers. Travelling around Europe, he became fond of the crime novel and began to write various scripts with this technique.

Subsequently, introduced by his father, he pursued a journalistic career. He fought as a volunteer in the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) and participated in the First World War. At the end of the "Great War", he moved to Rome and returned to the profession of journalist. During this period he began to work also as a playwright.

Contrary to Italy's entry into the Second World War (a choice dictated by the conviction that defeat was certain), he struggled for this position to continue working.

In 1942, during the war conflict, his son Mario died in a plane crash in the Falconara Marittima airport. To this disgrace he dedicated the essay La folla, written after the news of his son's death, printed in 1945 and published in 1946. This tragedy contributed to rooting in him an indiscriminate hatred for the political class, and in particular for his leaders, without distinction of membership.

In 1943 Giannini also directed four feature films in a year, including Grattacieli and 4 ragazze sognano, both with Paolo Stoppa as the protagonist.

On 27 December 1944 Giannini founded a new weekly, "L'Uomo qualunque" (translatable as The Common Man or The Ordinary Man), which in May 1945 exceeded 800 thousand copies.

Tired of the fascist dictatorship and the intrusion of politics in the lives of private citizens, but also of the return of traditional parties, Giannini, following the success of the weekly newspaper, founded an opinion movement called Common Man's Front.[1] The movement, based on a new political pseudo-ideology, called "qualunquismo". Retrieved 5.3% of the votes in the parliamentary election of 1946, getting 30 deputies to the Constituent assembly, including Giannini himself, who became group leader in the Parliament.

In 1947 Giannini, after having tried an alliance with the Christian Democracy and the Italian Social Movement, approached the communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, defined two years before as "worm, rogue and forger". Many sympathizers of the Common Man's Front, astounded by this choice, abandoned Giannini who so enounced the pact of friendship with the Italian Communist Party to make an alliance with the Italian Liberal Party. Anyway, in the parliamentary election of 1948 the FUQ-PLI alliance obtained only 3.8% of the vote; Giannini was elected to the Chamber and joined the Mixed Group. After the electoral failure, Giannini resigned as president of the Common Man's Frontin October 1948.[2] In 1953 Giannini was a candidate with the Christian Democracy and in 1958 with the People's Monarchist Party, but in both cases he was not elected.

Electoral history
Election House Constituency Party Votes Result
1946 Constituent Assembly Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone FUQ 59,555 Y Elected
1948 Chamber of Deputies Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone BN 13,095 Y Elected
1953 Chamber of Deputies Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone DC 13,439 N Not elected
1958 Chamber of Deputies Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone PMP 4,967 N Not elected

Filmography
  • Duetto vagabondo (1939)
  • Il nemico (1943)
  • 4 ragazze sognano (1943)
  • Grattacieli (1943)

References
  1. Hidalgo-Tenorio, Encarnación; Benítez-Castro, Miguel-Ángel; De Cesare, Francesca (15 March 2019). Populist Discourse: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Politics. Routledge. ISBN 9780429648960 – via Google Books.
  2. GIANNINI RESIGNS ITALIAN PARTY POST; Common Man Front's Creator Had Aided Communists by Combating de Gasperi
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