XX SECOLO. L’INVENZIONE PIÙ BELLA (20th Century. The Most Beautiful Invention), the program promoted by the CSC - Cineteca Nazionale, is entering the last stretch of its first, successful edition, a fourth and final part - scheduled from May 9 to June 29 - which will bid farewell to the audiences of Rome and Florence and at the same time renew the appointment to next year for a new season of great cinema.

Curated, as always, by Cesare Petrillo (one of the most authoritative connoisseurs, not only in Italy, of "classic cinema", and founder, with Vieri Razzini, of Teodora Film), the fourth part - again at the Quattro Fontane in Rome and at the La compagnia in Florence - opens on Monday, May 9, with a homage to one of Hollywood's greatest stars, CLAUDETTE COLBERT. Then, for five weeks, the program will be painted black, or rather NOIR, with a tribute to one of the main genres of American cinema, capable of nourishing the collective imagination all over the world thanks to its dark and disturbing atmospheres. A completely different atmosphere, from June 20th, with a tribute - in the centenary of her birth - to an authentic icon, JUDY GARLAND.

Another anniversary, this time an all-Italian one, closes the programming of this first season: June 29 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of MAURO BOLOGNINI who, since the late 1950s, directed highly successful films, including Il bell'Antonio (Handsome Antonio), and had an uncommon ability to range across genres, eras and social classes, telling the story of the "outcast" Rome of Pasolini (La notte brava, aka The Big Night) and Tuscany at the end of the 19th century (La viaccia, aka The Love Makers), the working class of Metello and the corrupt and suffocating bourgeoisie of Fatti di gente per bene (The Murri Affair). Why, then, is Bolognini so neglected? Perhaps precisely because of his "eclecticism" that makes it difficult to pigeonhole him into a precise category (political cinema, comedy Italian-style), and that risks overshadowing not only the formal qualities of his cinema - always so controlled in the choice of shots, so precise in reconstruction, so careful in the use of color and black and white - but also the sincerely humanist spirit, far from any moralism, that informs all his work.