Wednesday evening the Venice Film Festival will be inaugurated by a highly anticipated work: it is “The commander“, the film by Edoardo De Angelis with protagonist Pierfrancesco Favino in the role of Salvatore Todarocommander of the submarine Comandante Cappellini during the Second World War.
To remember the life of Salvatore Todaro fu Matteo Renzi in the speech he gave in the Senate in March 2023 immediately after the terrible tragedy of Cutro, in front of the Minister of the Interior Piantedosi. “I want this room – Renzi said – to remember the figure of Commander Todaro, born in Sicily, raised in Chioggia, graduated from the Livorno Academy: this figure is a national hero because in all the difficult moments of Italian history he has always the reasons of humanity prevail. When the October 16, 1940 his boat destroys the Belgian steamer, takes the twenty-six survivors and saves them. This is the Italian identity».
The story of Salvatore Todaro until today it was not particularly known to the general public: born in 1908, he was an Italian soldier, commander of submarines in the second World War. In 1940 he took command of the submarine “Comandante Cappellini” and when the October 16thoff the island of Madeiratorpedoed and sank the Belgian steamer Kabalodecided to take on board i twenty-six shipwrecked of the Belgian ship and carried them on the things of the Azores islands. Such generous behavior was not appreciated by the commander-in-chief of the German submariners, the admiral Karl Dönitz, who severely criticized him. “Not even the good Samaritan in the Gospel parable would have done such a thing”, snapped the German admiral Dönitz, who also admired him. “Gentlemen, – he says addressing his Italian colleagues – I beg you to remind your officers that this is a war and not a missionary crusade. Signor Todaro is a good commander, but he cannot be the Don Quixote of the sea ”. Todaro responded to the criticisms made with a lapidary sentence, reported by many sources and never denied, which has remained famous, since then, in the history of our Navy: “The others don’t have, like me, two thousand years of civilization behind them”. Todaro died in Tunisia in December 1942, hit by the machine guns of an English Spitfire while he was in command of the armed trawler Cefalo. He was 34 years old and his memory was honored with the gold medal for military valor.
Il Comandante, the film by Edoardo De Angelis chosen to open the Venice film festival, focuses precisely on the story of the sinking of the Kabalo and Todaro’s consequent decision to rescue the survivors and welcome them on board, thus saving them from death certain in the midst of World War II. A brave film which has received the full support of the Navy, to the point of granting the production the possibility of accessing its archives and the logbook of the Cappellini submarine. Filming took place in the last months of 2022 between Taranto, Belgium and the Cinecittà Studios in Rome.
Here’s the trailer for the movie “The Commander”
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Alessio DeGiorgi
2023-08-30 16:18:45
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