Film Restores the Record on Italian Explorer
TORONTO – While it’s rather self-evident that Italians and their contributions have helped shape much of the modern Western world, some notable figures along the way have been forgotten. For instance, Antonio Meucci, whose work on the “talking telegraph” preceded Alexander Graham Bell’s by decades – but lost out due to an expired patent. With ethnographer Giovanni da Verrazzano however, his achievements were buried in French archives for centuries.
A new docufilm directed by Matteo De Nicolò and Daniele Palmi, titled Janus – Giovanni de Verrazzano, is currently shooting in Tuscany. The film tells “of a crucial moment in the history of exploration: the landing of the explorer and anthropologist Giovanni da Verrazzano at New York Bay, offering a contemporary and cinematographic reinterpretation of his feat and his gaze on the New World”, according to the synopsis.
The Italian explorer, often labelled an ethnographer, was the first European to discover New York Bay, 85 years before the English explorer Henry Hudson arrived. More significantly, he travelled the Atlantic coast between Florida and Newfoundland, being the first to survey and establish the “continental nature” of North America.
His work and discoveries profoundly shifted European global strategy, which before 1524 had been mired in medieval myths about North America being a series of islands. Verrazzano’s reporting led to France claiming the coast from the Carolinas to Newfoundland – which was later named New France. He was also the first European (post Norse) to explore Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
The film’s Producer Francesca Papini says the project’s aim is to, “return to the figure of Verrazzano the historical importance he deserves”. The sentiment might be in reference to some of the feigned ignorance historians and legislators have perpetrated when commemorating or attributing Verrazzano’s achievements. Describing it as feigned ignorance is being generous.
The Verrazzano-Narrow Bridge which connects Brooklyn to Staten Island was misspelled (and many believe spitefully) with one ‘z’ in 1960. The then NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the bridge’s architect Robert Moses were vehemently opposed to the name altogether, deeming it “too long and difficult to pronounce”. And so, the misspelling remained until 2018 when Governor Cuomo intervened.
Today, Verrazzano’s surveying is treated as a brief prelude to Cartier’s explorations, with nary a paragraph or two dedicated to the Italian. He’s at best a forgettable footnote. Not to mention that much of what you find online about Verrazzano refers to him as a “French Explorer”.
French, he was not. And Jacques Cartier was commissioned to make three voyages further inland, following Verrazzano’s findings. In less than 80 years from the Italian’s mapping of North America’s east coast, Samuel de Champlain established the first official permanent French colony (Quebec) in Canada. To the chagrin of many I’m sure, the groundwork for French colonialism in Canada…was laid by an Italian.
Image courtesy of Reeload Srl
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
