In the Footsteps of Galileo

Italian scientific biopics experienced a period of extraordinary media hype in the 1970s, when some intellectuals personally committed to bringing the lives of the scientists of the past to television in order to discuss the relationship between knowledge and power in the present. Nevertheless, might we properly speak of "Italian-style" historical-scientific fictional drama? To answer this question, we will focus on Roberto Rossellini, Liliana Cavani and, above all, Lucio Lombardo Radice, a promoter, scientific consultant, author and presenter of, and sometimes even actor in, some of the most controversial of these scientific biopics. This article aims, first of all, to reconstruct this history, explaining the reasons for the success of the genre, starting in the 1960s, and the crisis it underwent in the 1980s; secondly, to ascertain the influences these ideological works exerted on choices, approaches and styles of the next generation of science historians and communicators.