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The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

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Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#31

Post by js2 »

sigil wrote: post #28
js2 wrote: post #27

A demonstration by Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato in Lina Wertmüller's The Seduction of Mimi : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mx407UflJQ

Wonderful, thanks for that. Wertmüller's “Swept Away” (also starring Giannini and Melato) is one of my favorite films. Wonder how much hand dialog I’ve been missing!

The clip is from a longer 4 minute scene with no dialog set to the prelude to Verdi's La Traviata (had to look it up...). All body language. The full movie is on YouTube and the extended scene starts at 34:20:

https://youtu.be/Xo9uf8Q8Pc4?t=2060

(You could argue the scene starts even earlier, at 23 minutes in.)

I've seen three of Wertmüller's films. Mimi, Swept Away, and Seven Beauties. Of those, I enjoyed Mimi the most, but they were all worth seeing.

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#32

Post by butokai »

twic wrote: post #30

A friend of mine from somewhere around Como has a gesture where she taps her upper arm with her index finger while making a theatrical pained expression. I have no idea what it represents or means. She usually does it while reacting to something she doesn't like, perhaps particularly being asked to go along with someone else's suggestion which she thinks will be arduous. It vaguely suggests someone shooting up heroin…

I tend to use with a meaning more nuanced towards "boring". What's going to happen is so extremely boring, that I'd better be sedated, high on drugs or the like in order to withstand it. I can see how the "drug" thing might shift the meaning to be: you must be high on drugs in order to suggest something this arduous.

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#33

Post by tacone »

twic wrote: post #30

A friend of mine from somewhere around Como has a gesture where she taps her upper arm with her index finger while making a theatrical pained expression. I have no idea what it represents or means. She usually does it while reacting to something she doesn't like, perhaps particularly being asked to go along with someone else's suggestion which she thinks will be arduous. It vaguely suggests someone shooting up heroin…

It's actually tapping with two fingers on the veins of the upper harm. It means what's going on is so tedious that she'd prefer to get a jab to escape from it.

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#34

Post by znpy »

raceling wrote: post #18
agentwiggles wrote: post #14

Every time I rewatch the Sopranos, the "non me ne importa" gesture gets into my vocabulary for a while. (I think of it more as the "vaffanculo" gesture though, as it almost always accompanies this phrase in the show). It has this wonderful quality of vulgar, spiteful dismissal that we don't have a good expression for in English - although the somewhat common "jerk off" gesture is similar in intent, that one is pretty…

> Every time I rewatch the Sopranos Those are Americans, not Italians.

I wish I could upvote you twice.

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#35

Post by phreack »

bogomipz wrote: post #5

I see the book's publication is from 1958 and much of the imagery suggests a bygone era. Are all or most of these still in use today? It's amusing to note that the first picture has in the middle of the last row, the now ubiquitous "Heavy Metal horns." I remember reading an old interview with Ronnie James Dio, who was Italian, where he said he picked up the gesture from his Grandmother. It's widely accepted that he i…

Yes, they're still so prevalent in Italy and Italian-descendant cultures that I thought they'd be self-explanatory since they come to me so naturally. The one on the cover of the book for example, is literally just a question mark, with all of the various connotations a question mark might have (even as a single sentence by itself "?"), and is used so often I can't believe other cultures don't have any hand gesture for it nor adopted it.

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#36

Post by riffraff »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #7
bogomipz wrote: post #5

I see the book's publication is from 1958 and much of the imagery suggests a bygone era. Are all or most of these still in use today? It's amusing to note that the first picture has in the middle of the last row, the now ubiquitous "Heavy Metal horns." I remember reading an old interview with Ronnie James Dio, who was Italian, where he said he picked up the gesture from his Grandmother. It's widely accepted that he i…

from a quick look at the first image of "Napolitan gestures" at least money, stealing and wait a moment are still largely in use. Horn sign that legend says RJ Dio introduced by simply flipping the way his grandmother did the gesture (we do it palm facing the floor, the metal one is palm facing the face) it's still very popular as a scaramantic gesture against bad luck.

Upwards and palm facing outwards was also common as an insult, but "cornuto" has become obsolete as am offense.

We don't even say it to football referees anymore!

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#37

Post by chromerift »

prionassembly wrote: post #19
chromerift wrote: post #10

I'm not Italian, but Argentinian and it's funny how we have most of these, though some of the definitions are slightly weird to me, for example, the one on the cover means "what", back tips of the fingers on the chin means "I don't know". There's also a very interesting one we have, idk where it comes from, where one closes the fingers and bends the thumb a couple of times, sometimes accompanied by saying "minga", wh…

> back tips of the fingers over the chin Yes, but the "no me importa" gesture sweeps over the chin.

Mine too, forgot to mention.

Also it could mean don't know + don't care depending on the facial expression, but I've not seen it as just don't care.

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#38

Post by Izikiel43 »

boredemployee wrote: post #25
klez wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have that book. Caon was my SO's thesis advisor. The interesting part about that book is that it also points out whether the gesture has a different meaning in other cultures. For example it says the gesture for "OK" that you do by making a circle with your thumb and index finger has a vulgar meaning in Russia (iirc).

in some latin america countries as well

Brasil only afaik.

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#39

Post by paganel »

LtWorf wrote: post #9
brainzap wrote: post #6

now I am interested in the vulgar ones

Il gesto dell'ombrello :D https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesto_dell%27ombrello

Albertone in a thread about Italian hand-gestures, there's nothing more Italian than this. Now, all that is missing is some link to a ragionier Fantozzi sketch.

Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

#40

Post by strongpigeon »

bujak300 wrote: post #4
sph wrote: post #3

I had some hard time deciphering the gesture from still images, but I have to say it's pretty accurate and I am surprised by how I am used to using them when I speak Italian, and how I unconsciously avoid them when speaking English. I never thought about it. Now that I live abroad, I wonder if I'm slowly losing that "body language", and making myself harder to understand to other Italian speakers, entering some uncan…

The unconscious component is crazy, my otalian SO was trying to teach me to do some of the gestures correctly but she was not able to execute the gestures consciously, only in the flow of speech

Reminds me of “The Centipede’s Dilemma”:

A centipede was happy – quite!

Until a toad in fun

Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"

This raised her doubts to such a pitch,

She fell exhausted in the ditch

Not knowing how to run.

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