Enrico Piaggio: Vespa

Enrico Piaggio: Vespa (Enrico Piaggio - Un sogno italiano, 2019) is an Italian biographical TV drama you can watch online on iFILM. Alessio Boni plays Enrico Piaggio, standing in the rubble of his family's Pontedera factory in 1945 — twelve thousand workers out of a job, a country still shaking off the war. His answer: design something Italy can actually afford.

He brings in Corradino D'Ascanio, an aeronautical engineer who spent the war years building aircraft and early helicopters, and hands him an unusual brief. The scooter D'Ascanio delivered — low to the ground, steel-bodied, easy to ride — was immediately nicknamed "the wasp" by the workers who first saw it. Francesco Pannofino plays D'Ascanio; Violante Placido takes the leading female role. Director Umberto Marino keeps the film focused on two men and a gamble, not a triumph. Runtime: 103 minutes.

Watch Enrico Piaggio: Vespa (2019) online on iFILM — a story about what gets built from wreckage.