DIO COME TI AMO

 DIO COME TI AMO

Nel cielo passano le cloude

Che vanno verse il mare

Sembrano fazzoletti bianchi

Che salutano il nostro amore

In 1966, the film Dio Come Ti Amo was released, based on the song by Domenico Modugno, winner of the 1964 San Remo Festival. It was also the era of street cinema, something very different from mall cinemas, as cities were not yet so dangerous. When the film was released in Brazil, huge queues formed to watch it. And when Gigliola appeared in the first scene, gathered with other girls by the pool, singing "Non ho l'età", there was total silence, only the audience's breathing could be heard...

We can say that "Dio come ti amo" was a mixture of a photo-novel and a fairy tale, as all the elements of both types of stories were present there. The poor and naive girl who falls in love with her best friend's boyfriend, and the latter falls in love with the protagonist's brother, was a recurrent plot in life's photo-novelas. The... rescue of love, so to speak, when the heartthrob, disappointed with his beloved for thinking that she was betraying him... my God, what an emotional scene! When the first notes of the song reverberated through the walls of the cinemas, the most complete silence took over the place, and only people's breathing was heard. And when the girl finished singing, with her angelic voice, her declaration of love and still the plane was leaving... it is impossible to express the feeling of sadness and disappointment, replaced by the purest joy when the plane stops and Mark Damon comes down from it... the expression of the purest happiness is stamped on Gigliola's face, and the cinema comes down with applause, when the two young people in love finally embrace, and exchange a passionate kiss. Yes, it's cliché, it's commonplace in the stories of the time, but it's simply exciting...

I love this movie myself. Until recently I had a DVD of it and, from time to time, I watched it. Without exaggerating, I think I've seen it at least five hundred times... I just adore Gigliola. She is, even today, my favorite idol. I'm not saying that there aren't other good female singers in the world. Of course there are... but she is, for me at least, incomparable. I just love her songs. "La vie en rose", for example... I find it simply divine in her voice, not discrediting the other interpreters. "Mistero" is another simply beautiful song, "Como passo il ponte con te", "Tutte meno una"... the latter being one of my favorites. It has several songs, and they are all beautiful. Of course there are songs from her repertoire that I don't like. "Il povero soldato" is one of them... I don't like it, I only heard it once and then never again...

Why am I talking about Gigliola Cinquetti today? Sincerely, I do not know. I just kept thinking about which song I would write, and this love song popped into my mind like that out of nowhere, and even though I was trying to think of another one, it was the one that stuck with me... so I had to write...

Before you ask me, no, I didn't see the movie in 1966. I saw it much later, but street theaters still existed. It was, shall we say, at the end of the era of this type of cinema. Almost at the end of the lights of this type of entertainment, when many of the projection rooms were already being closed or transformed into porn movie screening rooms. The room where I watched Gigliola's film for the first time, some time later became a bank branch. Other rooms, in other locations, became Pentecostal temples. The city streets were beginning to deteriorate. To this day I still cannot understand why this happened. The city a few years ago was beautiful, it was a pleasure to walk through its streets and avenues. These days... my God, what decadence...

As you know, I've said it several times here, I live in Santo Amaro. For me, the city of Santo Amaro. Legally, a neighborhood in the South Zone of São Paulo, since the 1930s. When I was born, Santo Amaro had lost its city status a long time ago. But it still retained a hint of a country town. And it was simply a fantastic thing to walk through its center...

The center of São Paulo was also a nice place to walk around. The Anhangabaú Valley, Praça da Sé... the old bus station, in Praça da Luz, with its multicolored dome, receiving travelers from various parts of the state and the country... my God, what a beautiful thing it was! The bus station was huge, but close to today's main bus station, it was insignificant in size... but its charm gave a thousand to zero in the current bus station...

It could just be nostalgia... and of course it is nostalgia... but for me the past was much more beautiful than today. I don't know, everything had much more charm, let's say... the streets were clean, the public squares well taken care of, most of the streets were dirt, because the city was still brewing, but the centers were well maintained. You could walk calmly at any time of day or night anywhere in the city, downtown or on the outskirts, without fear of being mugged or killed on any corner. Was there no violence in the world then? Of course there was. But to a negligible degree compared to today. Those were the years of lead, some people say when referring to that time in particular. Perhaps. I can't say knowingly that they weren't. But for most people, it was a period where they could fight for their dreams, because they were sure they would achieve them. The criminals weren't as violent as those of today, drugs didn't circulate as freely as they do today, and the music was much prettier...

When I walk through my neighborhood and see the state it is in... yes, I know that is the price of progress, but the streets I walk through today are not the same streets of my childhood, the School where I studied, where I learned to read and write is no longer the same. I mean, the physical space is still the same, but its essence has changed, and a lot, during the passage of time. It's something you can't stop, time. He advances even when we protest against it. And everything changes. I've been told that the world of the past seems better to me than the one of today, because I see it through the lens of nostalgia, where everything that has passed was simply perfect, even if it wasn't. It might be...

after all, it's not just the neighbor's grass that is greener than our backyard. The situations we've experienced were much more beautiful than the current moment of our lives... even if reality doesn't match our memories...

It's 8:23 am on this cold and rainy Thursday... the thermometers are showing 17ºC right now, and there's no forecast that the temperature will rise a little today. Another cold day...

Stay with God and may he pour his blessing on our heads, and may he grant us the most beautiful and wonderful Thursday we have ever had in our lives. May He allow us to make at least one of our dreams come true. And may He allow us to meet here again tomorrow... kisses....