The former head of the Italian government had founded a veritable empire in key cultural sectors in Italy.
Silvio Berlusconi, who died on June 12, 2023, marked the Italian cultural landscape of his last forty years. Before becoming a major figure in Italian politics, the “Cavaliere” established himself, thanks to his holding Fininvest, in many sectors such as television, advertising, but also publishing and cinema. Sometimes praised for his strokes of genius, sometimes perceived as the killer of Italian cinema, he leaves a controversial image. On the announcement of his death, the former French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, denounces on Twitter “the harmful action that was his against Italian and European culture”. Back on its influence in the world of culture.
>> Follow the reactions live after the death of Silvio Berlusconi.
Mondadori, a publishing empire
At the end of the 1980s, Silvio Berlusconi extended his media empire by taking large shares in Mondadori, the country’s largest publishing group. This is done at the cost of a legal battle of more than twenty years and an order in 2013 to pay the De Benedetti Group 500 million euros following accusations of corruption.
From fiction to essays, via children’s books, the press group, now headed by his daughter, Marina Berlusconi, has control of important parts of the country’s intellectual production. It has subsidiaries such as Mondadori Electa for art books, Mondadori Education for school books, Rizzoli, a flagship known for its essays and children’s books, or Il Mulino, in the university sector. Sprawling, the group also has at the end of the chain 600 points of sale and a large online sales site.
And the Cavaliere did not hesitate to invest himself personally. In 2001, in the middle of the electoral campaign, Silvio Berlusconi used his group to publish and distribute his biography to millions of his fellow citizens. Passionate about books, he has also personally taken care of the publishing of works such as theIn praise of madness of Erasmus, theUtopia by Thomas More, the Prince of Machiavelli (accompanied by annotations of Napoleon) and even the communist party manifesto of Marx and Engels. Faced with this publishing giant, certain authors, such as Umberto Eco then protested by creating an independent publishing house, La Nave di Teseo.
An audiovisual giant
Thanks to Mediaset, now MediaForEurope, Silvio Berlusconi is gradually becoming a major player in the country’s film production. Its production company, Medusa Films, has supported filmmakers such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Ettore Scola and Giuseppe Tornatore, and distributed many Italian and international films such famous works as Basic Instinct And Terminator II.
In the 1980s, some accused him of killing Italian auteur cinema by contributing to the desertion of cinemas. But in the newspaper The worldthe Berlusconi group defends itself and then declares: “We participated this year (1985) in the production of nearly forty of the approximately one hundred Italian feature films. (…) We have sixteen studios between Rome and Milan. We offer fifty-four of our weekly broadcasts: four thousand hours per year“.
Since then, the Italian audiovisual giant has lost its luster. “His big flaw is that he never understood either digital or pay TV like Sky and Netflix.“, explains to AFP Carnevale Maffè, professor of strategy at the Bocconi University of Milan.