"Il segno del comando", or The Good Old Times of Italian RAI TV, when I was in God's Mind
Updated: 2 hours ago
1971.
I still am in God's mind ("essere nella mente di Dio", as we say in Sicily, means "to not be born yet") and there I will stay for the most part of the Seventies; my Siblings are little kids and my Parents have not bought yet the Grundig black-and-white TV (I had a Proust's madeleine moment in Munich, last year, when I noticed Grundig's advertising panels at the station), so they watch the sceneggiati at our Aunt's and Uncle's home with our Cousins, who are teenagers, while my Siblings (especially my Sister, who is the youngest of them) fall asleep on the sofa.
Those were the good old times when RAI TV offered great cultural entertainment: the sceneggiati, as drama fictions were called between the Sixties and the mid-Eighties, unified well-read and illiterate Italians: those who read Italian and international novels and plays enjoyed to watch them on the TV with their family, and those who had a poor education and not enough money to buy a TV used to gather in a bar or in their parish oratorio and discovered authors and literary works they probably would never have known otherwise.
Those were good times also for classic concerts, opera, operetta, and even ballet, which has always been so criminally neglected in Italy. Carla Fracci, Paolo Bortoluzzi, and many other great Italian and foreign dancers had their well-deserved place in RAI TV programming.
I feel nostalgic for a time I have never lived: during the Eighties, all went wrong and the Italian TV public service started to adapt its programming to the bad quality of private televisions, especially those who were bought by Silenus Berlusconi, the Northern mafioso and fascist disguised as socialist, who was good friend with Bootyno Craxi, destroyed the old beautiful city of Milan and its huge parks by his greedy and shady property speculation with the complicity of Craxi's brother-in-law Paolo Pillitteri, Major of Milan, and used his TV channels in order to brainwash adults and kids through his junk, stupid and vulgar shows, years before his political rise in 1994, a disaster that the TV brainwashing made easier, during one of the most chaotic and dramatic times in recent Italian history.
I was probably an exception because, when I was a child, I already hated Berlusconi, his TVs and even Milan because of him.
Back to 1971, the year I did not live outside God's mind: RAI screenwriters did not just adapt already existing novels and plays, but they also imagined and wrote the plots of many sceneggiati. Il Segno del Comando, written by Giuseppe D'Agata, directed by Daniele D'Anza and starring Ugo Pagliai and Carla Gravina, was one of them: it was so successful that a Carosello advertising short film was inspired by its sombre, mysterious atmosphere. Here is the opening of Il Segno del Comando. I unfortunately cannot find on YouTube the Carosello spot, but I would add that Carosello, which was broadcasted for twenty years, ended when I was not even born, so this is one of the many childhood memories I cannot share with my older Siblings and my much older Cousins.
For many years, Il Segno del Comando was just a title mentioned by my Parents and my Brother who, despite his young age, and even if this TV series scared him, stayed awake and watched it; when it was finally broadcasted again, three decades later, I finally could enjoyed it.
Lord Byron intrigued me since a very early age (I was five) because I loved ancient art and mythology (the history of art textbooks had a special attraction to me) and I had read in an enciclopædia for children that he was a tormented poet and an adventurous man who died in Greece, while supporting the people in their struggle for freeing their Country from the Ottoman Empire. He was also one of the first supporters of Irish independence and his first speech at the House of Lords was a defense of Luddites. Byron also vehemently opposed Lord Elgin's decision to remove the Parthenon's marbles from Athens and to relocate them in London.... How not to love him?
I have fond memories of the conference I gave and the essay I wrote in French, for an edited volume published in Italy, about Byron's poem The Corsair and how 19th-century opera and ballet libretti, loosely inspired by the poem, had transformed the Byronian Hero.
Above, the very first Lord Byron's portait I saw on the cover of an encyclopædia's volume at home, when I was five years old. Painting by Thomas Phillips, ca. 1813-1814.
Below: the second Lord Byron's portrait I saw when I was five, in the same childrens' encyclopædia where I saw a portrait of Oscar Wilde for the first time. In this portrait, painted by Thomas Phillips in 1813, Byron wears a traditional Albanian dress. Albania, like Greece, was occupied by the Ottomans.
Yesterday evening, Il Segno del Comando suddenly popped up in my head because YouTube suggested me a new tribute video by Morrissey Unofficial Videos channel for the beautiful You have killed Me (2006): it is a very original and clever idea to choose some scenes from Il Segno del Comando, instead of scenes from more obvious films by Visconti and Pasolini starring Magnani and Pasolini's Accattone, all mentioned by Morrissey in his song.
The marble statue of Morrissey is a very good idea in itself, even if, in my humble opinion, a photo from the Maladjusted era with shorter hair would have been a better inspiration in order to fit to the Ancient Roman statues in the TV film scene; but the very weird thing, to me, it is that Morrissey's statue strangely looks like Robbie Williams trying to resemble Morrissey: am I the only one who sees it? Anyway, to make fan videos implies a lot of work, time and love, and I am happy there are people who have the skills and the talent to make video homages to Morrissey's songs.
By the way, this morning I was happy to find on YouTube many videos from Morrissey's show in El Paso, like this one. Alfred Rossy, whoever you are, thanks a lot.
Article written by me, on a very cold afternoon in Paris, using my own Natural Intelligence and my childlike fingers typing on my mobile phone's keypad.
Illustrations found on the Web.
Vera da Pozzo
Paris, 7th November 2026
(C) Vera da Pozzo
(C) Italy is Mine
(C) Italy is Mine and It owes Me a Living
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