Main Characters
- Peppino Impastato – Played by Luigi Lo Cascio is the young activist that this movie is based on. At a young age he became very aware of the harsh reality of the Mafia when his uncle was blown up by a car bomb. He becomes a very active member of the Communist party in Sicily. He creates a radio station, Radio Aut, to get the word out on how bad the Mafia is and identifies the Mafia boss on the air. He also used it as an extreme form of free speech and a rallying point for the youth of Sicily.
- Luigi Impastato – Played by Luigi Maria Burruano is Peppino’s father and works for the local Mafia boss who is the center of all of the local drug trade. He and Peppino have a falling out and Luigi starts falling apart under the strain of the Mafia boss who wants him shut Peppino up. He after a long time of non communication with his family or Peppino has one last conversation with Peppino in his diner, Peppino offers him a ride home but he cannot take it due to his emotional state and ends up being hit by a car and dies. We are left wondering if this is an accident or if it was murder.
- Felicia Impastato – Played by Lucia Sardo is Peppino’s mother. She walks a fine line between her husband and her son when the two are not speaking. When Peppino has moved out of the house because of the disagreement between him and his father it is his mother who keeps him updated on the family and helps him to get food and his books and other such things. In the end she gets left behind with all of the pain and sorrow from losing her husband and oldest son.
- Giovanni Impastato – Played by Paolo Briguglia is Peppino’s younger brother. He does not follow in the footsteps of his brother even though he stays friendly with him for the most part. He stays with his mother and helps her to deal with all of the drama that is happening between father, son and the local Mafia.
- Cesare Manzella – Played by Pippo Montalbano was Peppino’s favorite uncle and a Mafia boss who is at the very beginning blown up with a car bomb by a rival Mafia boss.
- Gaetano “Tano” Badalamenti – Played by Tony Sperandeo is the local Mafia boss who Peppino persecutes on the radio. Tano is the person who eventually gets so fed up with Peppino’s attitude toward the Mafia that he has him killed.
- Stefano Venuti – Played by Andrea Tidona is the painter who is also a leftist activist who Peppino goes to when he is very young to have him paint a picture of his Uncle Cesare who was killed. He refuses because he had not gotten along with Cesare because he was a communist and Cesare was in the Mafia. Stefano ends up inspiring Peppino to take his anger toward the Mafia to lead a movement against all of the corruption and violence. The Communist party helped Peppino get started on his political and very dangerous career.
Read more about this topic: One Hundred Steps
Famous quotes containing the words main and/or characters:
“Sinclair Lewis is the perfect example of the false sense of time of the newspaper world.... [ellipsis in source] He was always dominated by an artificial time when he wrote Main Street.... He did not create actual human beings at any time. That is what makes it newspaper. Sinclair Lewis is the typical newspaperman and everything he says is newspaper. The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)