Gérard barred from Roland Garros

No dogmatic adherent of the 

Fall of Man school of sartor-

ial policing, himself - 

remembered by us all, in fact, 

for teasing the fine line be-

tween treachery and liberty in 

composing some habillements - 

Gérard nevertheless recoils from 

tennis’ fatal overreaction to the 

immaculate whites of Bill Tilden, 

the blithe panache of René Lacoste, 

the marmoreal valour of the Finzi-

Contini’s, for that matter, in their 

banishment's redoubt. You’d almost 

think, we’ve heard him muse, they 

do it for the money.

As if some gruesome Larry Ellison, 

flaunting the fattest, lurid Rolex 

he can find, practitioners of tennis 

now were bent, he truly feared, on 

forcing clashing catamarans to front 

a sponsor corporation, on what used 

to be a genial game. The iconoclastic 

lust to deny to others what they like 

was flashed before his eyes by Vittorio 

de Sica, in the arrogant brush of the 

fascist leather trenchcoat through the 

Dottore’s library, arresting the whole 

household as much for sensibility as 
hereditary faith. 

Now tennis, now sailing: why do they 
mock their favourite crimes, and per-
petrate such blight, denying us gen-
tility in camouflage of spite? 

Vittorio de Sica, director

Giorgio Bassani, book

Giancarlo Bartolini Salimbeni,

  art direction

Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini

1971