By Jacopo Barigazzi

"Near where I live in Bergamo, Northern Italy, there's a soccer field," says the video artist Bruno Bozzetto. "In order not to walk for 40 meters to the parking spaces, soccer players leave their cars right in front of the field, where there is no parking. They are going there to work out, but they can't walk 40 meters? That's Italy."

Bozzetto himself is a symbol of Italian creativity. Born in 1938, his name is well known in Europe, especially in France and Germany, for a string of animated cartoons. One of the most famous,   "Allegro, non troppo" (from the musical notation meaning, literally, "lively, but not too much") is a feature in which famous classical pieces by Debussy, Ravel and Vivaldi inspire a collection of stories with penetrating social themes.

Bozzetto made the savage but affectionate little Web video "Europe and Italy" in 1998 after he got to know Flash technology while working on an advertising campaign. "I made it just for fun," he says, but countless people around the world have viewed it in the decade since. If he were to do it again he says he would change very little. He would add the scene at the soccer pitch and he would cut the segment where Italians don't respect the "No Smoking" sign. "For some weird reason Italy has been the most serious country in applying the European ban on smoking in public spaces such as coffee bars and restaurants," says Bozzetto. "In Spain and Belgium they still smoke." (Click on the coffee bar below, then click "Play")

Anyone who has ever tried to get from one side of an Italian road to another on the clearly marked "zebra" crossing knows what it must feel like to be a tenpin in a bowling alley. [Read this week's cover story on dysfunctional Italy, Agony and Ecstasy.] But this is not peculiar to Italy, it turns out. Traffic in Mumbai or Sao Paulo is not so different: "I've received letters from people in Russia, Portugal. Greece, Brazil, India and other places saying that in their countries it works exactly the same way," says Bozzetto.  "Many told me my whole cartoon applies to the cities where they live, apart from the coffee scene where every Italian asks for a different kind of espresso. I recently found out that in Azerbaijan someone did a local version of my cartoon simply by replacing the Italian flag with the Azerbaijani colours. The only segment that was cut out was the coffee scene."

Which means that's the most truly Italian moment in the movie. Every Italian wants a different cup of espresso – macchiato, with cold milk, short or double, whatever – but it has to be different.  "Italians are very individualistic," says Bozzetto. "At an individual level they are very clever people. But please don't put them together. They tend to try to resolve any common problem by doing what feels right to them. I don't know why, whether is because they want to be original or because they pretend to be smart, but it's a very negative thing. Everyone makes his own law. Everyone thinks 'this law is wrong for me,  so I'll do it this other way.'"  Even when it's time to ask for a cup of coffee, Italians have to show they are creative. "Germans are less creative but at least they follow the rules. In Naples if you cross the street when the light's green they think you're crazy!"

 But Bozzetto is not too pessimistic: "We always tend to blame others for our problems but we have to realize that if things have gotten worse for the country in recent years, we are all responsible. We cannot, as Italians love to do, blame the government just because it's raining outside." Maybe because, in fact, it doesn't rain so much in Italy, and because Italians can still enjoy beautiful landscapes, great food and one of the world's richest artistic heritages, it's not so surprising that "at a personal level we are still happy even though we are not really taking into account how difficult the situation is." What is the real spirit of Italy today? If he had to give it a title, he'd says, he would call it "Allegro, non troppo."