Italian Film

Crialese on Respiro and Nuovomondo

2010-04-28T08:50:00.001-07:00

In the films Respiro (2002) and Nuovomondo (2006), creations of director Emanuele Crialese, viewers experience the lives of individuals from little known parts of Italy and go on an epic journey with others. Respiro takes us to modern day Lampedusa while in Nuovomondo we go back in time to rural, turn of the 19^th century Sicily. These films share a set of similarities; while watching them, they bring back strange memories of the other. Each film shares strange images throughout; a set of different, sometimes confusing, artistic shots. Crialese manages to put the viewer in a dream like state, and, if for only for a moment, travel into the world he has created.

Respiro

Respiro follows a young family through their life on the tiny isle of Lampedusa. On this island the everyone seems to know each other (or may even be related). Grazia, the loving, flighty, and sometimes crazy mother of this family is played by Valeria Golino. The film follows her struggle between a free spirit and the grim realities on the island. While her story moves the film forward, we also see the relationships between Filippo and Pasquale (Filippo Pucillo and Francesco Casisa) and their father Pietro (Vincenzo Amato) who struggles in vain to keep his family whole.

Italy is a very diverse county and this is captured by the film. While watching, many native Italians may have trouble understanding the film as it is spoken in the native dialect, something similar to Sicilian. We can also see the local dislike of outsiders when Filippo crashes the date between his sister, Marinella (Veronica D’Agostino), and the local police officer who just recently came to the island. The struggles on the island move to a higher level when Grazia suddenly vanishes without a trace. Although the film is filled with struggle, is also filled with beautiful vistas; when screening Respiro one can almost breathe in the fresh sea air with a sigh of relief.

Nuovomondo

Nuovomondo is a story of a struggling family in rural and superstitious Sicily going on an odyssey in search of a new land full of promise, and even a giant chicken or two! In the opening scenes we see Salvatore (Vincenzo Amato) and one his sons climb a rough, rocky mountain with stones in their mouths as a sacrifice to god once they get to the top. Praying for divine inspiration, they are shown photos of this “new world” where money grows on trees and chickens are larger than men. Finding this signal to go, Salvatore packs up all his belongings (all of which he can carry on his back) and his family for their voyage to this new and mysterious land. Along the way they run into giant olives and carrots and swim through rivers of milk. While leaving Sicily they mean a strange, misplaced, woman named Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who accompanies the family for the trip.

This quality, but overly art filled film shows the audience a different side of the immigrant story. From rural Sicily, a land without electricity, running water or other conveniences in life to a ride atop a giant steal monster (their boat), this story throws our characters from one strange new world to another. Once they reach the new world our family is exposed to the once common practice of eugenics on the famed Ellis Island. Unfortunately, the film ends abruptly, with the characters only just getting a glimpse of the houses in the sky and never making it to their final destination.

Abstract Concepts

Crialese is able to produce a quality film which the audience is able to fall into as he does in each of these movies. Where he may lose some is with his love of the abstract. In each of his films there is a strange scene of swimming in a dream like world. In Respiro, this is towards the end of the film once Grazia has been found. The shot shows what seems to be most of the characters from the film swimming from below the surface of the water. This underwater trance lasts for several minutes and leaves an empty feeling once you have finished the film.

In Nuovomondo, there are several times when our characters are swimming through rivers of milk. In these scenes there are giant carrots that are used as flotation devices. At another point in the picture we see a family carrying giant olives and carrots. At the end, there is another scene of all the characters from the film swimming together in a sea of milk. While these scenes are understandable, I believe that they take away from the film. I am emerged in the lives of our characters and I am abruptly awakened by the overly fictional imagination of Crialese. When watching a movie, I prefer to not have my mind over stimulated by such nonsense.

Another aspect that I found frustrating in Nuovomondo was the fact that Vincenzo Amato went though such great lengths to learn the native tongue of a rural Sicilian town only to be understood and understand every single Italian throughout the movie Nuovomondo. In reality, he would have had trouble understanding most people on the boat. In rural Sicily, during this time period, people living 50 miles apart from each other would have trouble communicating because of the diverse dialects spoken. What was the point to learn this if the rest of the film doesn’t follow suit?

Although each of these movies contains strange scenes of swimming and other dream like sequences, you come to appreciate the magical experience of these films. Each has something to give while providing you with beautiful views of southern Italy. While the images and life style in these films may not be appealing to every western suburbanite, this is one reviewer who, after viewing these films, wants to go visit family in Sicily.

Rotten Tomatoes on Respiro:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/respiro/

Rotten Tomatoes on Nuovomondo:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/golden_door/

History of Emanuele Crialese:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0187740/

Il Vento Fa Il Suo Giro

2010-04-19T10:33:00.001-07:00

Il Vento Fa Il Suo Giro

Nestled in the Italian Alps, the historic and native language, Occitan, has persevered against time and the threats of modernity. It is said that languages are in a constant state of evolution with the exception of those languages that become static. If one looks at the rich literary history and spoken popularity of Occitan, it becomes evident why the Occitan descendants today feel impelled to do whatever necessary to protect their language and way of life. The factors that contribute to the survival of a linguistic minority like Occitan can be truly analyzed once one looks beyond the language as a basic form of communication. A language like Occitan has greater odds of surviving when its people protect its best interest. Language is indicative of a culture: it embraces specific values, ways of life, and most importantly, a sense of community. Exemplary of the cultural ties to language is the film Il Vento Fa Il Suo Giro. It is a film about language; however, in order to appreciate the artistic and provocative qualities of the film, one needs to separate the notion of grammar and syntax from the concept of language and instead, concentrate on its speakers.

The film tells the story of the quiet and desolate mountain town, Chersogno, inhabited by a small population of Occitan descendents. Protective of their language and culture, the villagers are reluctant to share their way of life with newcomers, with the exception of the summer tourists that flock to the town once a year to marvel at the serenity and beauty of the Piedmont region. The locals of Chersogno are taken by surprise when a mysterious Frenchman stumbles upon the village during the solitary months of winter. Enticed by the town’s seclusion and its vast landscape, shepherd Philippe Heraud, believes he has found the ideal spot to bring his family and herd of goats to continue his artesian cheese making. After inquiring about a home to rent, Philippe must await the communal decision of the Chersogno townspeople to determine if he and his family will be welcomed into the intimate yet selective community. While the ‘sindaco’, or town mayor, encourages the townspeople to embrace the newcomer’s arrival, many are still skeptical. Reluctantly, the villagers agree to allow the Frenchman and his family to settle in their village with the hope that Philippe’s pastoral practices will attract tourism to their dying town. Despite the initial kindness of the Chersogno people, Philippe learns quickly that tolerance is not synonymous with acceptance.

A Sense of Community

Before the arrival of the Heraud family, the people of Chersogno come together in an amazing act of solidarity to perform a ‘rueido’. A tradition dating back to the Second World War, a ‘rueido’ is when a community comes together to help out one individual for the good of others. While the men work to collectively restore the house that has been rented to Philippe, the women come together to prepare homemade pasta and other local cuisine in anticipation of the Heraud’s arrival. Their preparations are a collaborative effort, but what unites the Chersogni in the rueido is language. Not only do we see the men and women speaking Occitan while working, but the Occitan language prevails during all community affairs. From political discourse regarding the town’s future to the rueido to festivals, the Occitan language serves as a familiar and intimate means of communication. The sense of community seen in the film must also be considered in terms of its negative connotations. When Emma, one of the town’s eldest members, has an altercation with Philippe, she distorts the details of the story to the town, and paints a violent picture of Philippe. Not knowing the facts of the story, many townspeople come together to support Emma because their allegiance is to one of their own kind. A group of undisclosed villagers even go so far as slaughtering two of Philipp’s goats. Another example of a negative sense of community can be seen when many of the locals unite in making false claims to the local health department about Philipp’s supposed unsanitary living and working conditions. Despite Philippe’s persistence and positive attitude, the multitude of conflicts between the village and his family eventually force him away.

Conflict

Throughout the film, disharmony and conflict play a major role in the storyline. At times, these conflicts are justified while at other times, they’re invented to create disharmony. Interestingly, conflict is mainly limited to interactions between Philip’s family and the townspeople. Although we see disagreement at political meetings or contrary attitudes concerning the best interest of the town, there is almost a utopian quality about the town and its people. It is only when they feel threatened by the presence of “the foreigner” that true conflict arises. If we take into account the various conflicts throughout the film, the first true conflict concerns boundaries. When Emma is concerned that Philippe’s herd is grazing on her land she reprimands him (in Occitan) for not having control over his animals. What seems to be a petty trifle over where Philippe’s goats are allowed to graze is actually a metaphor for the invisible boundaries created by its villagers designed to keep people out. Initially, there are the goats that cross the invisible lines of physical property, but ultimately during a succession of other conflicts, it is “the foreigner” that crosses boundaries and invades the villagers’ space. By the end of the film, we learn that the space which Philippe and his family invade is actually the space of a foreign culture; a culture set in its ways and unwilling to open its door to the possibilities of change.

The Title

I think it is important to end with a comment or two regarding the title of the film since it is mentioned at the opening and ending scenes. Il Vento Fa Il Suo Giro, or “The Wind Blows Around” can undisputedly be interpreted in many different ways. When I think of wind’s capability and capacity, I’m reminded of turbulence, commotion, and unease; however, once the wind stops blowing, calmness is restored. Like life, there are periods of chaos and confusion like there are periods of tranquility and serenity. There is always a balance. While in the film, the Heraud family blows in and as a result, the people of Chersogno collectively experience the metaphorical damage of a windy storm, the wind eventually softens and the village returns temporarily to a peaceful state. In order for the villagers of Chersogno to maintain a peaceful state, they must learn to live side by side with the “foreigner” or risk a constant state of upheaval and chaos; A state of upheaval that would ultimately contradict the peace and beauty of their surroundings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6w6415d0BQ

http://ilventofailsuogio.com/

Lamerica

2010-04-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

Lamerica (1994) is one of the best films directed by Gianni Amelio. It pictures the situation of Albania in the period after the downfall of communism when chaos turned into conflicts. Not also it shows the poverty and how people would handle it, but also and mainly it depicts the way Italy uses Albania for economical gain. Between 1985 when Enver Hoxha died and 1991 when Ramiz Alia was in throne, the economy fell drastically. Students went to strike, and dropped the Famous Enver Hoxha's monument in Tirana. Because people were starving to death, there was no way out but to immigrate to a better place like Italy. Students also broke into the Italian Embassy to get political asylum, and many Albanians departed by boat. Also during these times as it was shown in the movie, Gino (Enrico Lo Verso) and Fiore (Michele Placido) take advantage of this, as they plan to purchase a shoe factory with the assistance of an unscrupulous government official. They tried to set up a fraudulent corporation that will allow them to squeeze a fortune out of Albania's economic chaos. Michele on the other hand, one of the Italian man that deserted the army in the 1940’s, becomes the pawn in a scheme concocted by the two Italian businessmen, as Gino and Fiore think that he is Albanian.

Michele a.k.a. Spiro, a political figure of fascism in Albania.

Gino and Fiore, two businessmen that wanted to sell shoes in Albania, wanted to find a stooge for the company. They chose Spiro Tozaj. In reality his name was Michele Tallarico. He represents the life that the Italian veterans in Albania had after World War II. He was in prison for the past 50 years, and after the downfall of communism he was released. His mind though was stuck in the Fascist era. While Michele travels with Gino, he sees ‘Enver Hoxha’ written in a mountain, but he actually thinks he sees ‘Duce Mussolini’, the Italian dictator back in the day.
Gianni Amelio with this could represent that these two dictators could be the same or totally different. This could be ironic, as Enver Hoxha was against Mussolini. He did not let anyone in Albania listen or speak Italian. Before Enver Hoxha, the Italian was the second language, but during communism only the Albanian language was allowed. He also thinks that he still has a family that left back home to come to Albania in the 30’s. Also at the end, while Gino and Michele were travelling by ship, Michele thinks that he is travelling to America. He was tired, but he wanted to be awake when he was going to land at New York. As New York and “Lamerica” were for Michele, so was Italy for the Albanians the land of opportunity.

Gino, an Italian businessman that became the actual immigrant, (clandestino).

As Gino was trying to find and take Michele with him, he lost everything. He lost his car, as some Albanian kids stole his car’s tires. Also he lost his passport and documents when at the end he was arrested for trespassing on a private area. It is ironic, as Gino was shown as a person that hated the Albanians, but in the end became one. The police in jail told him that no one had a passport in Albania, so he was not going to be exceptional.

The end of the movie, the reach towards ‘Lamerica’, Italy.

Gianni Amelio at the end shows how emotional and dramatic is the experience by boat. He takes extreme close-up camera shots. By showing the facial features, you can see the emotions that these people have while leaving their country. It makes the end of the movie exceptionally realistic and beautiful. As Gino became one of the immigrants on the boat, you could see him being sad. His facial expression was different from the other people in the boat. As he became the unexceptional one, it made him one of the poor Albanian people in the boat. The other immigrants’ facial expressions were different on the other hand. They were happy, as they were going to see the land of opportunity, Italy.

This movie for me was an experience of my past. I was five years old when this when on, but it kept going till 1997, and after 1991 Albanian people have embarked on those ships to reach the new world. As we knew Italian by television, it was easier for Albanians to live in Italy. At the movie though, you could also see that Albanian people thought that Italy was going to be as great as on the Italian television. They would see “Non è la Rai“ or “OK il Prezzo è Giusto” and think that living in Italy was the best thing. My family and I on the other hand had to find a better way of living. We had the chance to fill out an application and win the lottery for legal documents to live in the United States of America.

Links and videos to be interested in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHuaSwKO1Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bmqqbKBxb8

http://www.ecn.org/reds/etnica/migranti/migranti0101albania.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamerica

Nuovomondo

2010-04-07T17:31:00.000-07:00

Nuovomondo (2006) is a film directed by Emanuele Crialese. Crialese has done a wonderful job with this film in representing the journey of a family immigrating from their small village in Sicily to the United States of America. He starts the film with two men holding rocks in their mouth. This opening scene is characterized by silence and mystery. The theme is composed of the mountains that the characters are climbing and also their dirty clothes along with them walking beare feet. The two characters, Salvatore Mancuso (Vincenzo Amato ) and his son walk up the mountain with the rocks in their mouth to pay as a token to the holy place.

This is where Salvatore asks whether he should leave Sicily or stay. He is then shown pictures from his younger child showing money growing on trees, gigantic carrots and chicken that are ten times bigger than normal, and takes this as a sign from above to depart for the new world. This is an important aspect of the film as it develops and initiates an imaginative world that these people are about to depart into. The imagination of the new world from Salvatore’s prospective will be leading the film and will open the doors to the viewers imagination as to what these immigrants belief of their new world is. This will the skeleton of the film, which will keep the viewers to continue thinking of how the story will continue even after it has been watched. When leaving their village, Salvatore brings with him his mother Fortunata (Aurora Quattrocchi) who is the village doctor and has certain which powers which uses against curses, his two sons and two other women who are to be married in America.

The Boat Trip

Upon arrival at the shipyard, Salvatore and his family go through the standard procedure of getting the documentation ready to depart. While waiting, a mysterious English woman appears and acts as if she travels with them. Her name is Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg ) and although she has nothing to do with the Mancuso family, Salvatore is enchanted by her beauty and therefore acts as if she really is part of the family. She plays a big role throughout the film in Salvatore’s imagination of being his wife and partner upon arrival to the new world. Her classy dressing and behaviour also catches the attention of all the women on the ship, to whom she becomes as an ideal female from a stylish prospective. Lucy becomes a symbol in the film, for the characters she assumes the transition that allows them to witness what the new world will hold for them, whereas the viewer gains knowledge of the reason why the immigration is occurring and what the rest of the characters aspired to be.

The long journey begins on the boat as everyone sees it leaving the coast of Sicily. Everybody is nervous, sad, and worried simultaneously since they leave everything they have and know, to go into a world that they have only heard about. Throughout the boat trip the viewer sees compassion between everyone on the boat as if they are a big family going towards the same goal instead of separate people following their personal journey. This unity among the third class poverty is interrupted by an upper class travelling to America and Miss Lucy. The dissonance of the upper class travellers appears in many cases towards an interest in Miss Lucy, who has attracted everyone’s attention due to her beauty and tactful dressing. Due to the same reason she catches attention she becomes dislikes by most of the women and men in the third class. A group of men keep on trying to bribe her by telling her that they will find her a husband, apparently in return for sexual favours. Many rumours spread throughout the boat about this English woman who is travelling alone, but this does not stop the way Salvatore feels about her, which in an instance, when he hears the other men speak of Lucy becomes protective of her as if she really is travelling with his family. Throughout the trip Lucy starts to become interested in Salvatore instead of the other men who keep bribing her, and she begins to flirt with him. Shortly upon arrival to Ellis Island Lucy asks Salvatore to marry her. Salvatore immediately replies to her by saying that he would be honoured, but she tells him that she does not want to marry him because she loves him. Lucy only wants to marry him so she can get into United States but he tells her that he would marry her anyway and replies to her statement saying that love takes time to grow on people. Lucy creates for the immigrants the idea of perfect from an appearance point of view and simultaneously she breaks their perfect marriage, rules and cultural standard ideologies which many of the Italian immigrants have grown up with and live by. Since she does this right before getting off the ship, the viewer gets the hint that the new world might not be as perfect as everyone believes and the culture that one came with will start an immediate “mutation”.

The New World

When arriving in Ellis Island, there is a fog, which clouds any opportunity for anyone to see what will come ahead of them. When everyone comes off shore, they are separated and put into different groups. The authorities start differentiating them based on their intelligence, knowledge and usefulness that each separate individual has. The differentiation is used to see whether they are good enough to enter and live in the United States, since the authorities believe that intelligence is spread through genetics. Whoever does not pass the test is sent back to the old country, while the people who are deemed “worth it” or needed remain in America. Throughout these tests, Lucy reveals her identity as an English woman, and is threatened by the authorities who tell her that it is very uncommon for a single English woman to travel with Italians. Salvatore’s younger son who is deaf and mute also is threatened to be deported because of his handicap which the Ellis Island authorities feel that he might somehow transmit. While being tested by the customs, none of the immigrants get to see the new world except in an instance when Salvatore climbs himself up a window and sees enormous, unfamiliar buildings. Despite him looking outside the window the viewer does not get to see anything, and this is another trick that Crialese uses to leave space to the imagination of whoever is watching the film. Most likely this is because any immigrant that watches it, will be able to relate their own personal experience and feel all the emotions represented in Nuovomondo. Salvatore finally obtains permission to marry Lucy, but he is faced with the problem that authorities want to deport his mother and his son. As he is told this news, Fortunata takes her grandson’s curse of being deaf and lets him tell his father that she wants to go back home since she does not find America a world where she belongs in.

The End

The film ends with an imaginary sequence that Salvatore has throughout the entire trip about being with Lucy and his family in a river of milk. It is accompanied with the rest of the people that came along for the trip, which once again shows the unity towards the same dream and goal. There are no scenes representing the new world these people travelled for and Crialese uses this as a closing scene to allow the film to proceed in each individual’s mind as they would like to portray it. This way of ending the film is extremely artistic since it leaves it open to each viewer’s imagination even after the film is over.

Extra Sources:

Nuovomondo Review:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465188/

Biography of Emanuele Crialese:

http://www.mymovies.it/biografia/?r=17372

Per un pugno di dollari

2010-04-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

Landscape
The landscape is a key convention of any western and Leone makes good use of it, almost as if it itself were a character. The film begins establishing both the landscape and the protagonist, the Man with no Name. The camera looks down at the ground, showing rocks and dirt both harsh and dry. The land has little to no vegetation, which suggests that there is little to no love or nutriment to be found out in the wilderness, and that life, like the terrain, is rough. This is soon to be reinforced as Jesus, Marisol’s son, is pitifully shot at by Rojo’s cruel goons. In the first scene alone, both The Man with no Name and Jesus are shown to be a part of the landscape. The boy is dressed in all white, blending into the walls of the two houses he is caught between.

The Man with no Name is shown in close-up, against a backdrop of brown mountains, his brown face under his brown hat and above his brownish poncho. This could be an effort to suggest a few things. One thing being that both MWNN and Jesus are in their natural surroundings. The MWNN is a wanderer and presumably does a lot of traveling through the desert, it is only natural he would become a part of the landscape.

Jesus, on the other hand, stands out against the brown of the desert, but blends in with the houses, possibly to suggest that he is not suited for the life outside of the house, at least, not yet. In white, he represents innocence and because he matches the house, he represents family and roots. The MWNN has neither.

The landscape is usually shown to be vastly immense and overwhelming, dehumanizing in WS and LS. In these kinds of shots, it is made most important, reducing humans into small, indistinguishable figures. This may cause confusion over which faction we are observing, or at least realize that, on such a grand scale, they all look the same.

While the Rojos and the Baxters have their shootout in the desert, near the graveyard, the men all become part of the landscape as they are obscured in darkness and become faceless. But even in the landscape, there are idyllic images to be found, including a shot through a window that shows a trail of soldiers on horseback among two bushy trees and a two leveled white and blue sky. This shot is both simple and stunning.

Landscape of the Face – CloseUps
Perhaps as to counter the dehumanization of the immense and unavoidable landscape, Leone utilizes a TON of close-ups. In the initial shootout between the Man with no Name and the Baxter thugs, shots are at a distance, WS or MS, but as the tension begins to mount, close-ups become much more frequent. First, there is a MCU on one of the Baxter thugs, the one who stands alone. Then, there is a CU of another thug, as he begins to look worried. Then, there is a CU of the Man with no Name. He looks up with determination in his fierce eyes, a crease between his eyebrows, and his grimacing squint. He talks through the grit of his teeth, still clamped on his cigar, this thin lips moving quick and furious. There is another CU back to thug#1, who is static, but clearly feels the imminent danger. There is another CU to thug#2, who was grinning, but now his smile is shown to falter. Then, there are the onlookers. There is a CU of the coffin-maker, looking worried, and another of Silvanito, who is terribly fretful. Cut back to the Man with no Name, cut to thug#1, who just spits, back to the Man with no Name. His eyes drift down and then back up. Then, this chain is broken by two shots that show the thugs at a distance and then subsequently drawing their pistols, but then there is a CU of the Man with no Name shooting, and then a WS of the men falling. The sequence ends with a CU of the coffin-maker smiling. Close-ups not only provide the characters with a face, but also allow the audience to see what the other characters cannot from their distance. The audience is allowed into the character’s private world and able to study their face and read into their emotions. These close-ups provide visual character development in the absence of dialogue to where even characters with limited screen time are shown to be three-dimensional.

Ramon’s Perspective
Ramon is the only character who the audience actually shares a point of view with. First, in his introduction, he guns down soldiers and we, the audience, are allowed to look down the barrel of his gun with him. This alternates between the CUs of his sweaty, rugged face as he sadistically smiles.

Later, the audience shares Ramon’s perspective as he dies. The camera “woozes” and sways into the bright white light of the sun, spinning and swirling until he falls over defeated. This is a curious element, why are we allowed to see and possibly sympathize with the villain, but not the supposed hero? Perhaps if we could see through his eyes, his hero mystique would be ruined. Or, maybe, it would have killed chances of a sequel.

A Fistful of Dollars at Rotten Tomatoes:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fistful_of_dollars/

A Fistful of Dollars at Clint Eastwood’s tribute website:
http://www.clinteastwood.net/filmography/fistful/

2010-03-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

Per un Pugno di Dollari

A Fistful of Dollars (Per un Pugno di Dollari) is a film directed by Sergio Leone in 1964. This film is part of a trilogy including For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. During the time when the film came out, there were lots of other westerns being made in Italy. Although many "spaghetti" westerns were made before A Fistfull of Dollars, this film is the one most will remember and refer to.

The film starts off with a man (Clint Eastwood) riding into a small town to get some water. From there we can see that there is conflict going on in this town. There was a fight and a shootout going on. This will not be the only time where there is conflict and shootouts. From there the man meets Juan De Dios. Juan says that the people are either rich or dead. This idea is also repeated by the innkeeper. Death and money play a large role in the film. Money is very inportant in that town and is gained only through killing. In that town there are not a lot of people because people are getting killed a lot. There are even feuding families (the Rojos and the Baxters). Some of the locals do not like the man but the innkeeper starts talking to him. The innkeeper talks about the town and the feuding families. Later on the man asks the innkeeper some questions. He asks about what was in the carriage that came into town one day, "Who is Marisol?" and "Who is Ramon?". He does not get an answer but the innkeeper tells him that it is best not to know who Ramon is or see him.

In the scenes where the man meets Ramon, a long take is used and the camera follows Ramon's movements. This shows the importance of Ramon and the meeting of the two men. Ramon is seen as someone who is important but also to be feared. Low angle shots are sometimes used to show importance. Through these low angle shots, it will show them as important and authoritative. Soon the man talks to both families which results on more feuding. He even takes Marisol and her family to the border so they can be free. This is not good since Marisol was captured before and is now the mas freed her. Ramon learns of this and has the man beaten up really badly. But that does not stop the man. At the final shootout, the man takes down Ramon thus ending the feud. The town is now safe.

As mentioned before, A Fistful of Dollars is considered one of the most popular westerns. Even though over 400 "spaghetti" westerns were made between 1962 and 1976 in Ialy, this film is probably the most popular and recognized. This film was also the film that brought Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwod into stardom.

http://http//www.fistful-of-leone.com/films.html,this has information on Sergio Leone and his work
http://http//www.wildeast.net/spaghettiwestern.htm this talks about the spaghetti western genre
http://www.clinteastwood.net/this has information about Clint Eastwwod and his work

Mafioso

2010-03-16T09:39:00.001-07:00

Alberto Lattuada - Mafioso (1962)

Alberto Lattuada did something quite different when directing “Mafioso” (1962). By the title of this film, one may think it is full of action, suspense, and crime, but contrary to popular belief, this film is full of hidden humor. It may sound like an oxymoron, but in this dark comedy Lattuada does a one of a kind job of addressing this taboo subject (in 1962). He exposes the darkness of the mafia, capturing everything from the responsibilities to the perks, all he while incorporating humor and comic relief. “Nino” Badalamenti is a hardworking and meticulous FIAT factory supervisor living in Milan. After years of ignoring his vacation time, and having just earned his yearly bonus, he decides to take his wife, Marta and his two daughters, Cinzia and Caterina, to his hometown Calamo, Sicily. Being a proper, civilized Milanese, Marta isn’t very thrilled to be “watching Italy fade away” as they approach the island on the ferry.

Stereotypes and Humor

Stereotypes are used often within this film. They depict the true rivalry between mainland Italians and islander Italians. Nino later explains that although he may live in Milan, he is “still a Sicilian”. This goes to show the audience that both sides feel the same separation from one another. Once they arrive in his hometown, Nino and his girls, whom prior to this trip have never met his mother and father, are warmly welcomed in the streets amongst a huge crowd of family. Inside Nino’s parents home and examined for the first time, Marta and the children are given odd looks. All three of them have blonde hair, fair skin and are dressed in well-kept clothing, unlike the rest of Nino’s dark haired, dark skinned and rural family members. After introductions, it’s clear that Marta feels out of place. She doesn’t realize that the urban norms she is accustomed to, such as smoking after meals or the way she speaks and carries herself, are not accepted in such a small Sicilian town where people follow old customs. After a hefty meal and post lunch entertainment by Nino, he decides it’s time to go see the Godfather, Don Vincenzo. Before leaving Milano for vacation, Nino’s boss, Dr. Zanchi, asks him to personally deliver a “very valuable gift” to the Don, on his behalf. Marta doesn’t like the idea of being around the Mafia, but Nino explains that when he was a boy he was involved with them, but it merely meant having to be a messenger boy. But now, it seems that Don Vincenzo has a “task”, and it’s apparent that he is highly considering calling upon Nino to accomplish it. During this time, Nino’s father and him are considering some land investments, although after the unusual rainfall, the landlord is now asking for much more money due to the fact that the land now has a “water supply”. A few days later after squabbling over the price of the land, Nino is called to Don Vincenzo’s room to realize that the landlord is also there and willing to give him the land for the original price. Now Nino is in undeniable debt to Don Vincenzo, and vows to repay him in any way that he can. In time, Nino will return this “friendly favor”, when his time comes to show his love, gratitude, and loyalty to the Godfather.

Marta and Sicilian Mores: Mafioso’s Light Side

While this is going on between the men, Marta is trying her best to be optimistic and fit in with her in-laws. She realizes that Rosalia, Nino’s sister, has an unfortunate overgrowth of hair on her body and has therefore developed a complex. Recently engaged to an unemployed lowlife, she’s not even allowed at the beach with her fiancé due to the fact that he feels embarrassed by her. Marta decides to take matters into her own hands and transforms Rosalia from hairy and self-conscious, into a flawless and smooth skinned woman. After revealing Rosalia’s beauty to Nino’s parents, they come to accept her and realize she truly is a good woman. Now that everything seems to be running smoothly amongst everyone, a twist arises. While in town, Nino is invited to go on a trip with his old pals. He explains that he won’t be able to attend due to the fact that he promised his wife that they would leave a few days earlier to visit her parents before returning to Milano. Once Marta hears about this hunting trip though, she changes her mind and tells Nino to go and have fun, now that she fits in with the family she isn’t having such a bad time. Nino is thrilled to go, and now even Don Liborio wants to join! At this point, the audience can somewhat sense that something just doesn’t fit. Don Liborio is being much too kind, and apparently Nino is being much too naïve. This equation just doesn’t seem to add up to happy endings. As the suspicions rise amongst the audience and the story continues to darken, Lattuada does a nice job of incorporating comedic relief.

Nino and the Mafia: the Dark Side

After few hours of sleep, Nino is awakened at two in the morning by his father who serves him a coffee, hands him his gun, and wishes him good luck with a firm hug and kiss on the cheek. He’s a little bit confused by his father’s affection, but pays no attention to why that is and leaves to meet the others. After feeling followed, Nino turns around and realizes that Don Liborio has been trailing him. He takes him to a secret area where Don Vincenzo is waiting for him inside of a car.He asks Nino if he remembers the promise he made to him, and if he was ready to do him a favor. Nino accepts, although according to the Godfather, he can say no to the task if he wants to (which we know is obviously false). He is told he will be going on a “long and short trip”, and that he has to just deliver a letter. He isn’t told where is going exactly, but after a long trip in uncomfortable positions, Nino arrives in New York to realize that he had been fooled. His job is

to kill a man that has been a traitor to them. It will be simple and quick. This is the reason, in fact, that they choose Nino to do this favor for the Godfather. His aim and preciseness make him the perfect candidate.

Same Clothes, Different Film

After successfully accomplishing his assignment by killing the man, we see him return safely to Calamo, with his hands full of game he supposedly caught while hunting. Visibly perturbed, he gets into bed with his wife, near his two children, and cries himself to sleep. The film ends in the same manner it began, with him walking through the factory, supervising the workers. Although he may be wearing the same uniform, adhering to the same responsibilities he’s always had, it’s inevitable that his life is now changed and will never go back to the way it was before. He is Nino Badalamenti, hardworking husband, father and Mafioso, per sempre.

Rotten Tomatoes Review of Mafioso

Mafioso 1962 Trailer

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

2010-03-05T08:04:00.000-08:00

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970)

The film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) tells the story of Sam Dalmas, an American writer in Italy preparing to return to the United States. After witnessing an attempted murder believed to be connected to a recent murder spree, Dalmas becomes involved in trying to solve the mystery of the crime, and find the murderer. In this unlikely scenario, Dalmas becomes an obsessive detective with considerable investigative skills. Inspector Morosini provides the high-technology of the day, and the usual trappings of crime-solving; computer calculations of crime evidence, the expert opinions of a psychiatrist, and an audio analysis of recordings of the suspected killer. However, while the technology provides clues, it takes a detective to solve the crime.

The local police do not find the success that Dalmas does in both investigating, and in becoming a target for the murder. Dalmas methodically investigates every possible lead, and just as he is about to return to the U.S., he investigates an artist connected to the murderer via a macbre painting. After an unfruitful investigation, he returns to his girlfriend, who has been stalked and is about to be murdered. He finds that the mind behind the killings is that of the woman who he initially rescued. This twist, while predictible, is only the surface of the film. If carefully considered, the issue of colonialism can be read into the weave of the film.

The website called “Kinoeye” has an essay by Frank Burke that identifies a theme of containment in the film as a metaphor for colonialism – (“Intimations and more of colonialism,” http://www.kinoeye.org/02/11/burke11.php). Indeed, containment is repeated a number of times; the opening where Dalmas is contained between two glass doors at the gallery, the prisoner who helps Dalmas find leads, the painter who is self-contained out in the country, and the bird with the crystal plumage within the film, who is extremely rare and contained in a cage. This sense of containment sets the stage for both physical and psychological entrapment, as well as serving as a metaphor for colonial oppression. Sam Dalmas becomes fixated with the case, which becomes it's own form of containment.

Once Sam Dalmas is obsessed with the case, he is in a way, trapped by it psychologically, even leaving his girlfriend to investigate the painter only hours before they are to fly to the United States. The theme of containment is also associated with aesthetic values. The art gallery, the painter, and the caged bird all pose contradictory values, in that as people and things representing aesthetic beauty and its creation, they are also physically entrapped within their respective environments. While Argento may not represent his Marxist political values on the surface of his film by directly representing an oppressed character, he does present a metaphor for colonial oppression, whereby things of value are appropriated or held captive by an outside force. This metaphor raises the film above that of the “whodunit?” formula, however, the film does contain classic thriller elements.

A glove found at the scene of the crime serves as a classic “Mc Guffin,” an object that provides a clue which may or may not be pertinent to the crime. Upon careful analysis, the police lab and inspector identify the glove as belonging to a left-handed male who smokes Cuban cigars. While this level of detail leads the viewer to expect a male murderer, by the end of the film, the opposite is found to be true. This red-herring technique is common for thriller cinema.
While there are a few lapses in narrative logic in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, the film is compelling enough to sustain the viewer through the action of the film via its suspense, and this is the film’s strength. While there are obvious comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock, Argento is truly his own filmmaker who avoids the sense of Hollywood kitsch that sometimes appears in Hitchcock’s later films. Argento is indeed a film auteur, and it is unfortunate that his standing in Italian National Cinema has concealed the influence of his artistry outside of his home country.

Useful links on Dario Argento:
Kinoeye: “Intimations and more of colonialism” by Frank Burke
http://www.kinoeye.org/02/11/burke11.php

Senses of Cinema: Biography on Argento http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/argento.html

Offscreen: “Dario Argento, Maestro Auteur or Master Misogynist?”
http://www.offscreen.com/biblio/phile/essays/argento_maestro/

La Notte

2010-02-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 film La notte is about an established author, Giovanni, and his wife Lidia in post war Milan. La notte has been a highly respected motion picture worldwide, receiving numerous awards including the Berlin International Film Festival “Golden Berlin Bear” award for best film and the highly respected David di Donatello award (similar to America’s Academy awards), given to Antonioni for best director.

La notte introduces its audience to Giovanni and Lidia as they visit an ailing friend in the hospital before making an appearance at Giovanni’s book signing party. This initial scene reveals the movie’s set-up including moments discomfort, separation, and unusual silence. Throughout the film, there are many occurrences where words or conversation would seem appropriate, and at times crucial. However, Antonioni includes these moments to strengthen the notion of despondency between the main characters. Lidia’s abrupt solo exit of the hospital room and the following scene of her alone, crying, and in pain due to Tommaso’s state of health are evidence of her own life, revealing the pain and isolation within her marriage.

Many times throughout the film deliberate silence and gazes are exploited to dramatize the visual happenings, leaving the audience employed to insert their own dialogue and emotion. Giovanni and the deranged patient, the fight Lidia witnesses, her walk through the city, and the awkward meeting of Valentina with Giovanni and Lidia with the male party guest, are times where words are replaced with gazes, stares, and contemplation. At times, silence is disturbed with natural noises of planes, sirens, a baby crying, and rockets.

This void the director depicts in the film is exemplified by Giovanni’s wife Lidia. She made a vow to love her husband but finds it increasingly difficult to respect him and his profession as his attention is constantly elsewhere. The depressing emptiness the audience feels, is also felt by Lidia. She leaves the book signing party unnoticed and wanders the city in hopes of some excitement or meaning. As she drifts through the city she comes across a clock, broken with motionless hands, a symbol of her stagnant marriage and the constant void she is longing to change, but may be too late.

The film’s climax occurs at Gherardini’s evening party. It seems as though Giovanni senses his wife’s distance. He flirts with the host’s daughter Valentina. She insists that he should reunite with his wife. Giovanni dismisses this claim by saying Lidia sent him to her. Lidia, from afar, sees them together but decides not to stop them as she knows her relationship with Giovanni is coming to an end. With lost hope Lidia tries to make the most of her evening. One of few scenes where Lidia smiles and is seen enjoying herself is when she receives attention from a male party guest and is approached, inviting her to dance. Later Valentina confronts Lidia about her actions that evening with Giovanni, yet Lidia interrupts, making a confession of her own to Valentina. Her marriage is not what it once was.

The last few moments unravels the overwhelming feeling throughout the film. Lidia reveals her nightclub thought to Giovanni that remained a mystery until this point. Throughout the whole film, Giovanni and Lidia lacked affection towards one another; their interactions usually consist of short conversations with abrupt subject changes, avoiding argument and confrontation. Lidia expresses that the love she once felt has been exhausted. She made a choice to love Giovanni over Tommaso, but her love has extinguished.

The ending scene of Lidia and Giovanni together brings about a mix of emotions. The live band on Gherardini’s lawn sets the melancholy mood. When Lidia reads the love letter she pulls from her purse to Giovanni, he feels uncomfortable and queries who wrote such words of affection and devotion to Lidia. After he questions the letter’s author, Lidia turns to him in astonishment. “You did” she replies to Giovanni. His failure to remember his own words reassured Lidia that his professed love did not exist.

La notte may have left some empty, cold, angry, or sympathetic. The lack of words in the film is made up in emotion we feel for the characters. Director Antonioni embraces the fact that we are what we make of ourselves. For Giovanni his addiction wasn’t from “tasting the wine and becoming an alcoholic”(as he talks to Signora Resy), but can be metaphorically applied to his intellectual stature, success, and attention that blinded him from the love he had for Lidia.

Aside from the interesting voyage we took following the course of Lidia and Giovanni, I particularly found Antonioni’s cinematography visually pleasing as artist. Antonioni marvels his audience with his artistic expression in his cinematic creations. The director’s first name may be coincidental to one of Italy’s most celebrated painters and sculptors of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, but Antonioni doesn’t disappoint in his modern artistic expression of art using actors and motion picture as paint for his canvas. Antonioni may give the audience of La notte an additional reason to watch just for his stunning cinematography capturing Italy’s post war beauty. La notte is sprinkled with busy cityscapes, serene landscapes, vivid reflections, natural use of light, and extreme tonal contrasts to add an additional element of uniqueness. Antonioni’s attention to artistic beauty is just one of many aspects the audience of La notte will witness throughout the movie.

Here are a few sites that offer great additional information on the film and the director Michelangelo Antonioni:

http://www.culturecourt.com/F/Antonioni/LaNotte.htm
(Themes in the film La notte)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054130/
(Reviews on the film)
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/antonioni.html
(Biography of Antonioni)
http://mikegrost.com/antonion.htm
(Overview of Antonioni and his films)

Le chiavi di casa

2010-02-05T14:59:00.001-08:00

The 2004 film directed by Gianni Amelio Le chiavi di casa (The Keys to the House) is a very emotional film that deals with illness, family values, and unconditional love. It is a story that any human being can appreciate, no matter where you come from. It is a story of a man who, for the first time in his life, is meeting his fifteen year old son. What sets this story apart from the rest is this man, whose name is Gianni, not only has a fifteen year old son that he has never met, but his son is handicapped with muscular dystrophy. Seeing their relationship develop in the 105 minutes in which the film takes place is very touching to watch. You see these two strangers get to know each other over the course of a short period of time, and you get to see the love they begin to have for one another. Watching them onscreen together is something that touched me. The way that Gianni would look at his son was so full of raw emotion. You could tell as an audience member that he knew he missed a lot of things in Paolo’s life, and he didn’t want to miss anything else ever again. The conversations they have are never ones of importance (they talk about really general things), but even though the topics were not that important, the way they talked to each other was. They were getting to know each other, and it was very emotional to see them do that throughout the film.

This is also a story of forgiveness. When his son was born, Gianni walked out on him. The boy’s mother dies giving birth to him, and when Gianni learns that not only is the mother dead but the child will have many complications for the rest of his life, he immediately flees. He doesn’t even look at his son before he abandons him. The handicapped child, whose name is Paolo, is raised by his aunt and uncle. He never actually meets his real father until now. When this was all told in the beginning of the story, I wanted to hate the character of Gianni. How can somebody be such a coward and leave their newborn son like that? But as time went on, you can’t help but like Gianni. I wanted him to do well, I wanted him and his son to bond, and I wanted him to become a real father to this wonderful child. Andrea Rossi, the actor who plays Paolo, actually has muscular dystrophy in real life. Watching him on the screen was amazing. He was brilliant in this role, and actually having to live with this disease throughout his whole life made it all that more real and moving. The way these two people interact was something you could not look away from.

Another important character in this film was that of Nicole, played by Charlotte Rampling. She was someone that Gianni met in the hospital, and she too has a mentally and physically handicapped child named Nadine. She and Gianni become fast friends, and she teaches him so much about life and the struggles that are apart of it. She never ran away from her responsibilities as a mother, but she also doesn’t fault Gianni for running away from his. She gives him hope, and she ultimately makes him want to become a better person, for himself and for his son.

In conclusion, this film really spoke to me. Having members of my family that are handicapped (although not as severely as the children in this film), it is nice to see a film about handicapped people without one mean or negative thing said about them. Gianni isn’t afraid anymore of what he must do for his son. He just doesn’t want to see his own flesh and blood in any more pain. (There is even a scene in the film where Paolo is in the hospital getting his blood taken, and Gianni has to leave the room). He knows he is new to all of this, but he is willing to do whatever it takes to be there for his child. This is essentially a love story, but not between two adult people, but between and man and the son he never knew. It is a beautiful film.

I also looked online to see what other people thought of the film. It was interesting to see their reactions to it. Here are a few links I found that had some opinions of the film.

movie review of the film

rotten tomatoes review of the film

Le Fate Ignoranti

2010-02-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

A movie full of confusion, scandalizing events, and broken hearts, Le Fate Ignoranti (2001) won awards at a number of Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals such as; ‘Best Film’ at the New York Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and ‘Best Film’ at the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival. Ferzan Özpetek, the director, is of Turkish descent but resides in Italy. He is an openly gay director who deals with numerous sexual issues in several of his films, including this feature film and also La finestra di fronte (2003).

This movie begins as Antonia strolls around an art gallery, anxiously awaiting her husband. A man eventually approaches her and at first seems to be a complete stranger: she blows him off. Shortly after it becomes evident that this stranger is in fact her husband Massimo, and Antonia was ignoring him because of his late arrival. This opening scene offsets the movie right away; it gives us the idea that their relationship was a bit strange, due to meeting at an art gallery and him arriving reasonably late.

In early scenes of the movie we discover a typical relationship between the two spouses, yet they seem to be a bit distant: he departs frequently for business trips and soccer games. One day when Massimo was leaving for an entire day to go watch a soccer game with his friends, he was crossing a busy road and an SMS message distracted him. While grabbing for the phone, in the midst of crossing the road, a car struck him and he was viciously whipped in the air and died on impact.

A newly developed scene arises and it seems as if a couple of weeks have passed by, due to Antonia clearing through all of Massimo’s things. While scavenging through his belongings she finds a large painting that seemed to be a present someone had given Massimo. She reaches for the painting and discovers that there was a hidden message on the back from what seemed to be a mistress of some sort. It was signed, ‘La tua fata ignorante’ (your ignorant fairy)

With Massimo deceased, Antonia is devastated to have found out that he was probably having an affair with this mystery person for who knows how long. She goes off and tries to discover this mistress and does her best with the leads she has. She stumbles upon an apartment complex and finds a group of individuals that seem to be a bit different; due to hair style and the way they dress. Antonia asks to see if she can possibly speak to a certain lady (she found out the name of the person who sent Massimo the painting) but the individuals who live there say that she is gone and isn’t coming back for a while. This seems to intrigue Antonia and she comes back frequently to see if she can possibly encounter this mistress or possibly pick up more evidence.

On her frequent visits she becomes close to all these individuals of the apartment complex because they seem to brighten her spirits. They are always together, compared to her being at her house virtually alone. It eventually becomes evident that this group of friends forms a community that involves many different categories of people; homosexuals, transsexuals, and even heterosexual immigrants. Antonia isn’t bothered at all by this because they were always very friendly and open hearted. Quickly after Antonia discovers who the mistress of her husband actually is, turns out it was actually the most kind of all the people at the apartment complex, a man by the name of Michele. Massimo was cheating on Antonia with a gay man for 7 years. This basically tore Antonia to pieces, but due to her being very close to this new group of friends, Antonia seems curious to discover what Michele and his world has to offer.

The rest of the film is an adventure to see what this Michele was all about. Antonia was frequently with this homosexual ‘mistress’ and they became very good friends, almost too close.

It was in a book store while searching for a book, a collection of poetry by Nazim Hikmet, upon finding the book, Massimo approached him and offered practically anything for it. Michele explained that he was shocked because he never met anyone that liked the same poet as himself. The scene develops with Antonia figuring out exactly what book he was talking about. She then proceeds to recite some verses by the author, that of which Massimo knew. Michele asked Antonia if she and Massimo would recite Hikmet with each other often. She told him that Massimo had no idea who Hikmet even was; the book was for her.

Another interesting scene is when Michele was upset with himself for having an affair with Massimo all these years. Antonia and Michele, both moved, experienced an emotional connection which for a moment became a romantic connection, as they leaned and in to kiss one another. Antonia was being sexual with the homosexual man that her deceased husband was having an affair with for 7 years.

These scenes tied everything together for me. It seems as if the two were actually perfect for each other. Massimo found similar qualities in Antonia and Michele so therefore it led him to having a relationship with both of them. So when Antonia and Michele actually got to know each other they quickly began liking each other more and more, probably because they are more compatible with each other than Massimo was with either of them.

I personally found this film to be a bit strange, very out there. It is a movie that needs to be viewed more than once to appreciate its true value. It’s a story of love, a strange kind of love, a love that is never truly fulfilled. I viewed Massimo as being almost a middleman in the perfect relationship; he had a relationship with two individuals that were more perfect for each other. Massimo was one that would be able to please two different people very well, but he did it in a very mysterious fashion. His actions were probably due to him not being able to connect extremely well with the two so he had to get the best of both worlds, little bits at a time. When Massimo was out of the picture an amazing chemistry developed between Antonia and Michele. Something was there that I truly believe Massimo didn’t have with either of the two.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/his_secret_life/

I thought that the American trailer of the film was pretty interesting to watch due to the very sexual vibe you get from watching it. Even though the film itself wasn't very sexual.

This Italian trailer makes a lot more sense. The film itself was presented a lot better and clearly in this trailer. The different reading of the movie from watching two different trailers to me is quite interesting.

The Hundred Steps

2007-12-17T11:32:00.001-08:00

The Hundred Steps is a historical film, depicting the life of Peppino Impastato, outspoken activist against the Mafia. The film is a terrific look into a significant time period in the history of Italy.

HISTORY
Researching Italian history, I am amazed to find how deeply the idea of communism is rooted in Italy. For a country so slow to industrialize, Italy has taken vast steps towards the left. It began with the Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI, or Italian Socialist Party in 1892. This party at its height was 860 thousand members strong in 1946, according to Wikipedia. This party eventually split into two separate groups: the reformists- who were strong in parliament, and the maximalists- led by Mussolini. Soon the Maximalist group overcame the reformists and ousted them from the party. Developed through leftist views came the Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI, or Italian Communist party, a group that reached higher prevalence than the socialist group with over 2 million members in 1947. The group was once led by Antonio Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci as they increased the rift between their party and the socialists.

TERRORISM
The Red Brigades was a terrorist group active during the “Years of Lead” or highly turbulent time of political instability. There were many politically-motivated murders, one being the killing of Aldo Moro, who was assassinated during this time. Moro, a Christian Democrat, was trying to make compromises with the Communist party, led by Enrico Berlinguer, an agreement known as the compromesso storico, or historic compromise. In an extremist response, the Red Brigades kidnapped Moro and after 54 days of captivity, assassinated him. The terrorist group left the body in the trunk of the car half way between the Christian Democratic office and Communist offices in a symbolic gesture. Today there are also many different conspiracy theories concerning the death of Moro.

The actions of the Red Brigade show some significant resemblance to the FLQ, or Front de libération du Québec (Quebec Liberation Front). The FLQ was another terrorist group that used extreme means instead of peaceful endeavors. Like the Red Brigades, the FLQ was comprised of Marxist followers who wanted to declare war on their Anglophone oppressors, overthrow Quebec government, and separate from Canada. The group was active from the years 1963-1970, and was responsible for over 200 bombings and the death of five people. Two separate FLQ cells kidnapped two political figures, one after the other. First it was English-speaking James Cross, British Trade Commissioner, and than Pierre Laporte, Quebec’s own Minister of Labour. Laporte was soon killed (some reports suggest it was an accident). In order for Cross to be released they made several demands, including transportation to Cuba. Some of them were met and after two months, and Cross was finally let go. This period was known as the October Crisis.

This terror organization seemed to operate much like the Red Brigades, or least performed some acts that are closely similar. These actions took place less than a decade before, and proved to be successful on some account. The actions of this group could have likely inspired the Red Brigade’s kidnapping of Aldo Moro.

CINEMA

Color. The mise-en-scene in the film is very detailed. The use of the color red is abundant throughout the movie. For instance in the scene where the young Peppino is at his Uncle’s funeral, his small frame is surrounded (?) by an extravagant red thrown like chaird looking like the king of Communism (if there could be one). Also in the scene after his father first learns of his dealings with Communism, there is a red light covering him while he is lying on the bed, showing that this ideal of Communism was soon to encompass his life.

Music. There was also a significant amount of American music used in the film. In fact in scenes that show Peppino in progress, mostly have an American soundtrack in the background. I found this extremely peculiar, since for most American, the ideal of communism is taboo. II Iasldkfjfjdkls;a jlkewr Although the soundtrack featured artists synonymous with the anti-war, leftist view, like Janis Joplin and Lenard Cohen. I was also surprised to see how the hippie culture was vastly apparent in Italy during that time.

STORY
The story is one that is bittersweet. The reality of it even seems to contain dramatic, narrative elements. The way in which Peppino was killed mirrored the same way that his Uncle, whom he had a positive relationship with, was killed. There is also the probability they along with Peppino’s father were set up to be killed by the same person, Don Tano. Tano, who lived just one hundred steps away, was an interesting figure. In the 80’s he came to the U.S. and sold drugs out of pizza parlor. He was convicted in 1987 for drug trafficking and then later in 2002, was convicted of the death of Peppino Impastato. Tano died in prison. His drug empire was estimated at $1.65 billion.

A complex version of Tano exists in the film. In the scene where he visits Peppino at the coffee house we see a side to Tano that we have not previously encountered. You see the struggle inside of Peppino as Tano explains what he has done for his family. In a sense, Tano helping Peppino’s father, actually helped Peppino become what he was. Peppino’s family wasn’t suffering from financial peril and this allowed him and his brother to attend school. Is the scene in the pizza parlor a dream sequence, or did Tano really offer an escape path to Peppino?

It is very ironic that the Impastato business was a pizza parlor, which was also the means that Tano used to sell drugs in the states.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3675535.stm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnDEcQm5lEE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq7ekpUjrMs&feature=related

L'America

2007-12-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

"While he has not made a documentary, his film reflects a heightened sense of reality derived from the experience of life." --- Rob Edelman

“L’america” was directed by Gianni Amelio (the man responsible for a film we watched earlier in the semester, “The Keys to the House”) and released in 1994. What is unique about this film is that it brings traditional linear Italian film-making to new places by using the methods of neo-realism to carry the audience along on a dreamlike, ironic mythologizing journey whose mood and methods are all his own. This extremely powerful film, almost documentary-like in its presentation of its characters and themes, is as fantastic as it is vividly concrete and sad.

The film tells the story of two Italians, Fiore (Michele Placido) and his assistant Gino (Enrico Lo Verso) who go to the impoverished, wrecked post-communist Albania with the scam of setting up a shell shoe factory as what they - or Fiore, for the most part, because he by himself is the mastermind of the scam - think will be a profitable tax shelter. They corrupt an Albanian official named Kruja, which they turn into Croce (cross) to grease the bureaucratic wheels and obtain government approval for the plan. Unsatisfied with others who have cooperating families who are able to make claims, they find Spiro (Carmelo Di Mazzarelli), an old man they are told is an orphan and has been imprisoned by the communists for fifty years. They sign him up as the Albanian figurehead "president" of the company. Fiore hurries back to Italy and leaves Gino in charge of watching over the derelict factory they have taken control of, and also to make sure Spiro stays out of trouble.

When Fiore leaves however, things go wrong, and as the story progresses, they get even worse, until Gino has lost everything - even his Italian identity. The journey we as the viewers go on is compulsive watching and echoes tragic wanderings like those of the father and son in De Sica's “The Bicycle Thief”, or the couple in Fellini's “La Strada.” Amelio achieves a sense of understanding and a sorrow and pity that a person can have only when everything has been stripped away from them and nothing but their essential humanity remains. Basically, you have to imagine the worst thing that could happen to you while on a journey, and then take that even further, and you have an idea of the trajectory and transformative emotional power of “L’america.”

When Gino finally gets ahold of Fiore on the phone, he learns that their scam has failed, and they are not only in deep trouble, but he and Spiro are both out of a job. Of course, Spiro says he knew this would happen all along. The Spiro character is extremely pivotal in the film. At first he appears as a derelict, worse than a bum, clearly out of his mind. When asked his age he holds up his fingers twice, and the viewer realizes he still thinks he’s twenty years old. But somehow there is a young man still inside Spiro that seems to emerge as the film goes along as a figure of great humanity, energy and hope.

The first disaster occurs when Spiro disappears from the nuns' institution where they have left him. After being a prisoner for fifty years, all he wants to do now is escape. Gino finds him and takes him on a journey along the coast in a jeep, but once they're out in the middle of nowhere, Gino is lost. He runs around frantically looking for Spiro, and when he gets back to the car, it has been stripped of its tires. He calls for the police, but since he only speaks Italian, no one can understand him. They can only stare at him. These faces Amelio shows us, and again at the end, in that powerful closing montage on the boat heading for Italy at long last, communicate more with these pained and tired expressions than any words ever could.

Much like the great Italian neo-realist filmmakers of the forties and fifties, Amelio uses real places and real people with great skill. What does all this mean? First of all, it's an affirmation of the sheer and inexplicable power of poverty. The fact that Spiro's insanity comes across as beautiful and hopeful shows that the film is not to be taken too literally. The film shows us a lot about Albania, colonialism, rich and poor nations and economic exploitation, yet at its core it is truly a film of heart-wrenching sadness. When we see those faces in the closing scene, the pain felt by these people is truly individualized, showing us the viewers that the problems highlighted not only in this film but in other issues plaguing the world today can be seen in one agonizing stare.

“L’america” is a breathtaking film, and clearly sets Amelio apart as one of the most powerful and humanistic Italian filmmakers working today.

Source:

http://www.filmreference.com/Films-A-An/L-America.html

I Cento Passi

2007-12-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

I Cento Passi

“I want to give up politics and life” – Giuseppe “Peppino” Impastato

This was the sentence that allowed the city officials in Cinisi to pass off Peppino’s death as a suicide. In reality the mafia dealt him out a fate he and his supporters probably could have seen coming, considering he spent the most important years of his life mocking them and their ill power.
The film I Cento Passi directed by Marco Tullio Giordana serves to recount the tale of Peppino’s life from his childhood to his unfortunate death and even beyond, to show his numerous supporters. This fast-paced film brings out Peppino as a people’s hero, sacrificing his safety and eventually his life to expose the government and mafia for what they really are. Peppino’s views on how the government should function and his radical ideas of Socialism thread through the film a story of a countercultural struggle against the people who have the power and refuse to give it up.
The opening of this ‘anti-mafia’ film is oddly similar to most mafia films that glorify the mafia code. The slow pacing and long shots certainly intensify the tension of the film. It takes young Peppino to a celebration where he becomes attached to his uncle Cesare Manzella, and also seems to be a young predecessor that might carry on the family’s name. We are introduced to Tano, who is the antagonist to not only this film, but also Peppino’s true life, when Peppino almost runs him over while trying to learn how to drive. Just like most mafia films the villain is introduced early and now all the audience is waiting for is someone to get whacked. It comes when Cesare is blown up in a car bomb, something that the audience can see from a mile away.
The oddest thing about this set of events is that in essence, they are all true. All of the events have probably been embellished a little, just to dramatically heighten the action, but all of the family relationships existed; Tano blew up Peppino’s uncle Cesare in the tragic car bomb fashion; and after Cesare’s death pieces of his body were found clinging in lemon trees meters away from where the explosion occurred.
After Cesare’s funeral the film takes a change of course and turns from looking like a mafia film into an anti-mafia film. The foreshadowing begins when young Peppino is sitting in a deep red chair at the funeral, away from the rest of his family. He is observing the rituals of the mafia and looking very critical of their actions. Subsequently the editing quickens its pace, showing us action and reaction shots that relay information as fast as the audience can process it. After the funeral Peppino visits the artist Stefano whom he heard speaking in public days before and asks him to paint a portrait of his late uncle Cesare. Stefano refuses and instead tells Peppino a story and a poem that will alter Peppino’s life forever. With the foreshadowing of red drapes flowing behind young Peppino, the film then thrusts us years later when Peppino is actively protesting with his Socialist group. The group is storming the police and a throwing themselves in front of a group of bulldozers that are trying to develop the land. The two lifestyles are juxtaposed wonderfully to start a parallel of politics between the two factions of the counterculture and the power holders.
The development of the mafia and mob bosses has probably existed a long time, and has been a group that has focused on the importance of deep politics. Sadly, the passive-aggressive way in which the mafia seems to get things done is by committing criminal acts such as murder in order to get what they want. In the opening scenes of I Cento Passi, there are many references to the changing times in Italy. A group of kids joke around when they are near a car asking where the horses went, and when the Socialist Stefano is speaking out against the dangers of the mafia, Cesare tells him the new wave of politics in Italy is a democracy, and people are getting more jobs and making ends meet. There irony in this statement because while technology is advancing, the common people are not experiencing any relief from the suffering. The economic miracle is simply only giving more food and power to the mafia. Certainly, the mafia would look forward to a capitalist society because in all ways that is how a mafia functions. They are very much a pro-bureaucracy group, with one person functioning as the head and many individual levels of bosses below that. It is this fundamentalism that helps fuel the mafia’s distaste for Communist believers. Politically these groups are far left, and far right, and the state of the society surrounding Peppino is clearly far right. At one point Peppino’s own father says he will kill him if he is truly a communist. Marxist followers focus on the rise of the lower class and the dissolving of classes that hold power in society. This power will fall into the hands of the people and an eternal utopia will form.
Peppino’s course of action through the film is to try and inform people using a deep mixture of media and culture. Italy is famous for its contributions to art and literature, and both will become devices which Peppino can use to deliver his message. When Peppino founds the radio station Radio Aut, he begins to broadcast daily messages to the people, poking fun at the mafia and similar institutions. This young, fast-paced generation seems to try and do anything to capture the attention of the people to inform them of the corrupt ways that need to change. The soundtrack to this Italian film that accompanies the radio station and Peppino as he travels around Cinisi is primarily an English one that has a lot of American counterculture rock bands. The sounds of Janice Joplin and Leonard Cohen help provide an atmospheric background to Peppino’s political crusade.
When his lack of fear for the mafia finally thrusts Peppino into the position where he believes he has enough supporters to start an actual political campaign, the tide turns for him. In the Sicilian town Peppino consults Stefano to get his input on the idea of him running for office under the Socialist Democratic party, and once he has announced he is going to run, the mafia steps in. They handle Peppino much like they are expected to, only in a much more gruesome manner. The kill Peppino and blow his body up so that there is no trace of him left.
The fact that the officials would try and hide his death as a suicide proves despite the adoration and agreement Peppino’s supporters had for him, it did not equate to years of power the mafia held. It is appalling that the government has kept the case closed on Peppino, and waited twenty years to take action against Peppino’s killers.
Considering the current political climate, this film is a very potent one. It is important for citizens, especially in a democracy, to know what is going on in the government. While Peppino’s ideas of government may not be a completely achievable goal, the freedoms he spoke out for, especially freedom of speech, are important to society. Had this film not documented Peppino’s account, many people would not know the lengths to which one man went to fight for what he believed, and I am curious to know what Peppino’s thoughts on the current state of the world’s politics would be had he not been brutally murdered thirty years ago.

Sources:

Ruberto, Laura E. and Kristi M. Wilson, eds. Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema.
Detroit. Wayne State University Press, 2007.

Francesco Rosi’s The Truce (1997)

2007-11-18T11:09:00.000-08:00

Francesco Rosi’s adaptation of Primo Levi’s 1963 novel La tregua (The Reawakening in the USA) deserves to be acknowledged for some important merits. First of all, Rosi took the responsibility to film the difficult work of an established and widely known Italian author. Secondly, he choose to adapt one of Levi’s books that is surely less famous than the survival account Se questo è un uomo (1947 and 1958, If This Is A Man) and in doing so, he decides to show a less explored topic related to the Holocaust: the survivors’ return at the end of the war. Thirdly, in retelling us the story of Primo Levi’s return from Auschwitz, Rosi increases the short list of Italian films about the Holocaust, a list that in 1997 counted only Kapò (1959) by Gillo Pontecorvo, Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1970) by Vittorio De Sica, Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975) by Lina Wertmüller, and Jona che visse nella balena (1993) by Roberto Faenza. However, Francesco Rosi’s film, even considering the difficulties of approaching the Holocaust theme and the adaptation of a book highlighted by Milicent Marcus in her “Francesco Rosi’s The Truce,” fails to be compelling and to allow the viewers to become, as Marcus says, the “addressable others” (267). This failure is caused, in my opinion, by the excess of explanatory and didactic dialogues, especially in the second half of the movie. The film says too much with words instead of suggesting with images, and this is even more jarring when the words come from Primo Levi, a survivor who felt the burden of guilt for having escaped death and who wrote poetry and pages of an extreme symbolic power. When Rosi’s film ends, the viewer has the impression of having witnessed/observed a compilation of Holocaust topoi: the feeling of guilt of the survivor, the problem of Jewish camp collaborators, the role and the place of God during the time of the Shoah, the survivor’s responsibilities to let the world know, and the prisoners’ anguish for their families’ fates—all of this, but without having room to think about them, or, using Levi’s words, to meditate.

The opening establishing shots

The film starts with eloquent captions that set the time and the place: Auschwitz, January 1946. In addition, the fire, the German shouting, and the barking dogs contribute to recreate a “familiar” Holocaust scene. After few minutes, though, Rosi decides to show us Primo’s tattooed arm with a close-up, as to re-center our attention to the protagonist of the story and away from the mass of prisoners running away from the Russian army. The symbolic power of the tattooed number allows us to read this image as an unusual establishing shot that contributes to our attitude toward the movie.

The same shot will be repeated at the end of the film. Primo is back home and he is about to start writing Se questo è un uomo. His survivor’s status is now full of responsibility: he is now a messenger and the number on his arm is there to remind him of his new duty.

Disorientation

The following scenes show the beginning of the long journey home. As in other films and literary works about the Holocaust, confusion and disorientation are the common feelings among the prisoners. Although apparently calm and serene (a state that Turturro’s Levi seems to be very comfortable with), Primo shares the same sensation as the repeated questions he poses in the first hour of the film testimony: “Go where?,” “Kept by whom?,” and “Where are we going?” This disorientation, however, does not coincide with the filming of the journey. The viewer is never lost and the journey, although winding, appears linear.

Rosi’s translation

As observed by Marcus in her article, Rosi takes the responsibility to be Levi’s translator and messenger in the market scene. In this scene, Primo tries to tell what living at Auschwitz was to the people at the market. Initially, he has the help of a person who is able to translate in Polish what Primo tries to say to sell his shirt. However, as soon as Primo starts talking about Auschwitz, the translator refuses to continue. Rosi, then, with the movement of the camera that pans until arriving on top of the people, makes the viewers aware of his presence and accepts the task of continuing Primo’s testimony.

Rosi’s “Cinema of Prose”

In fulfilling his duty of messenger of a messenger, as said before, Rosi is very assertive and didactic. In the second half of the film, in fact, in a series of short scenes, many issues related to the Holocaust are treated and apparently exhausted in a very simplistic way. Among these, I will talk about the problems of the camp collaborationists and of the German feeling of guilt as they are treated in two scenes of the film. The first issue is quickly approached when Cesare is distributing the meat of a calf and Daniele (a character who is never fully developed) prohibits Flora from having it because she “broke bread with the S.S.” Primo’s opposition to Daniele is clear and understandable. Nonetheless, the problem of Jewish collaboration with the Nazi deserved a much deeper analysis than the acceptance/refusal dichotomy and should have not been liquidated in terms of right or wrong.

The second issue is focused in particular in the Munich station scene. Although Marcus’ analysis of this scene highlights interesting connections for the image of the kneeling German, I still feel that Rosi’s choice does not pay enough attention to the extent of controversial historical and sociological knot. This image is much too conclusive to be credible, especially considering the historical context of 1946.

Rosi’s “Cinema of Poetry”

A scene that could be qualified as a moment of Pasolinian Cinema of Poetry is the scene in which the Italian survivors watch through a window the Russian family who gave them food to eat. Uncertain about their journey and about the fate of their own families, in this scene through the deforming glasses of a window this family appears like an unreachable mirage. The deformation and the color of these images tell us about the feelings and desires of these Italian men much more than they could explain with words by themselves.

In my view, if Rosi could have adopted consistently these stylistic choices, he would have realized a much more compelling movie that would have pushed the viewers to think about the survivors’ journey more than just consider it a mere act of tribute.

Links:

An article about Primo Levi’s death/suicide

A web site about Primo Levi’s literary works

Resnais’ poetic documentary about the Holocaust Nuit et Bruillard (1955, in French with English subtitles)

A page and a video about Willy Brandt kneeling in 1970

Citation:

Marcus, Millicent. “Francesco Rosi’s The Truce.” After Fellini: National Cinema in the Postmodern Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2002.

The Wilder West

2007-11-12T05:59:00.000-08:00

Sergio Leone’s self described “Fairytale for grown-ups,” A Fistful of Dollars is an intense look at a different kind of West than classically portrayed. Before the film even starts the viewer gets the idea that it is not like any other of the genre. The opening titles depicting silhouettes in deadly shoot-outs with Ennio Morricone’s ominous score, prepare the viewer for a redevelopment of the idea of the “Wild West” as perilous and violent, com-pared to more the romanticized depictions in classical Hollywood westerns.The title sequence sets the tone for the unromantized tale of savagery in a frontier soci-ety. Leone takes well-established conventions of the genre and turns them on their heads to demonstrate arguably a more realistic picture of the west and its inhabitants. The most obvious reworking of the genres conventions are the characters who are gritty, conniving, evil and constantly involved in power plays, scheming against each other. The lead character, the man with no name (Clint Eastwood,) is the best at this: able to exploit both sides in their struggle against the other, while stacking his money in secret. His anti-hero identity strongly contrasts traditional roles of benevolent protectors from films like Shane and High Noon, where the lead man rids the town of bad guys for moral reasons and asks for nothing in return.In A Fistful of Dollars, the dichotomy of good and evil is absent, both sides are evil and TMWNN eliminates both indiscriminately for one reason only: money.
The main charac-ters reflect the different values of character in Italian culture at the time, and also serve as a commentary on global issues. As Alberto Moravia states in his review on the film, cited in the article “Per Un Pugno Di Dollari,” by Christopher Frayling: “The main charac-ters are everyday delinquents who were in the background of American films but who, in Italian ones, have invaded the foreground to become the protagonists. The qualities which make them attractive, in the eyes of our public, are not generosity and chivalry but guile, street wisdom and ‘ingenuity’.” Leone’s characters are realistic; they are more identified with than the immaculate and virtuous protagonists that previously dominated the genre.

Other distinct differences that play down the romanticization of the west are the visual violence, bloodshed and grime. Leone was not shy about showing brutality between his characters. The amoral position of virtually every character, embodies a code of shoot first and don’t even bother asking questions; TMWNN dispatches four Baxter thugs right in front of their stronghold and when the Sheriff protests, he tells him to get the corpses in the ground. When the Rojo brothers firebomb the Baxter compound later in the film, they shoot every survivor as they come out despite their pleading surrender. One of the most shocking instances of violence is the interrogation of TMWNN by the Rojos. The scene shows Rojo goons beating the living daylights out of TMWNN with close ups on his bloody face and hand, to the delight of Esteban Rojo. The film is packed with these dramatic close ups that show in detail the bloody wounds, and dirty, sweating faces of the characters, these shots are worlds away from the single smudge of dirt and solitary rip in Gary Cooper’s shirt in High Noon. Leone’s characters are dirty from the beginning and become more and more tattered and filthy as the film goes on.

An interesting anecdote about the realistic grime of this film: the poncho the man with no name sports in all three of Leone’s trilogy was never washed throughout shooting of any of the films.
The aspect of the film that pulls everything together into the “fairytale for grown-ups,” is Leone’s heavily stylized aesthetic. Influenced by many classic western directors as well as the films of Akira Kurosawa, namely Yojimbo, which heavily influence the films plot and characters. Leone makes use of the widescreen format, favored by many Holly-wood western directors, not only to convey the enormous landscapes but to layer his mise-en-scène with extreme close ups in the foreground and other action in the back-ground.These shots are subtle but are everywhere in the film; in the hostage trade-off scene especially, every Rojo family member is shot using this technique. The use of these extreme close-ups, often of squinty eyes, supplements or replaces a lot of the film’s dialogue and adds the operatic suspense that became trademark Leone. The ex-treme close-ups convey much more than any dialogue could. Other distinct stylistic points are the quick zooms that bring us in to the extreme close-ups, imposing high and low-angle shots, gun point-of-view shots and parallel shots of different character.

In the final shoot-out between Ramon and TMWNN, Leone compares the two by first photographing each man’s dusty, spurred boots from low angles, then close-ups as each man loads his weapon and finally the extreme close-up on each man’s filthy face in a final stare down before TMWNN subdues Ramon. TMWNN is so fast on the draw the shoot-ing is done more by the gun than him, so shoot-outs are photographed from the gun’s point-of-view. These stylistic considerations give a personality to the film and build authentic suspense throughout.A Fistful of Dollars’ baroque take on the western sparked the massive wave of Italian “Spaghetti Westerns” that revitalized the genre in a dramatic but more realistic fashion. The era of quixotical Hollywood westerns was at an end, with the emergence of the wilder west.

_________________________________________________
Links
Archive of Leone’s films and other info about the director.
Samples Ennio Morricone’s score.
A fistful of Clint Eastwood.
Singing Cowboys.

_________________________________________________
Citations

Frayling, Christopher. "Per un pugno di dollari/ A fistful of dollars." The Cinema of Italy. Ed. Giorgio Bertellini. New York: wallflower, 2004.

Suzy and the Twisted Technicolor Nightmare: Dario Argento's Suspiria

2007-11-03T13:35:00.001-07:00

“Bad luck isn't brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds.”
~Dr. Frank Mandel

From the opening frames of Dario Argento’s highly stylized nightmare Suspiria (1977) until the frenzied closing, the viewer is inundated with richly nuanced sub text and metaphor. Part of a trilogy told by Argento based upon Thomas de Quincey’s “opium dream” of three mothers in his novel Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Suspiria tells the story of the wide-eyed, childlike Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arriving for the first time at the prestigious ballet academy in Germany where she will be studying.

Down the Rabbit Hole...

Upon her arrival, a panic-stricken young woman is fleeing the building, and is soon thereafter murdered (in a uniquely Argentian baptism of gore). After Suzy begins settling into life at the academy, several strange occurrences including unexplained dizziness, hemorrhaging incidents during dance practice and additional murders complicate matters significantly for our poor, naïve protagonist. Suzy will go on to discover that the academy is in fact run by a coven of witches who plan to eradicate her, and she must summon her courage and overcome her innocence to defeat the head witch, the ancient Helene Marcos.

An Anti-Fairytale: The Maiden versus the Hag

The female archetypes portrayed in the film run the gamut. Our pure-as-the-driven-snow protagonist, Suzy, offers a counterpoint to the devious and malevolent women that populate the film, most notably the omnipresent and omnipotent Helene Marcos, who serves as the polar opposite to the goodness that Suzy represents. Like the “Hag” and “Maiden” archetypes of fairytale literature (Gould), Helene is the evil Queen to Suzy’s Snow White; we are not actually introduced to her until the very end of the film, and even then we are only allowed to see her in pieces. Ostensibly her visage is so horrifying we cannot be allowed to gaze upon it. Even Suzy’s fellow students, when they are introduced to her, are catty and cruel. Can Suzy ever really trust anyone?

Suzy, in Technicolor

Helene’s academy is inhabited by her coven of witches who do her bidding, and the most dominating presence in this vein is clearly the sadistic Miss Tanner; her thick German accent and severe presence evoke Nazi-era monsters such as Ilse Koch, dubbed “Buchenwälder Schlampe” (The Bitch of Buchenwald) by the inmates who suffered horrifically at her hands. Miss Tanner serves as one of several fascist elements in Suspiria. In her essay “The ‘Mother’ of All Horror Movies”, Linda Schulte-Sasse explains: “What was National Socialism if not a historical version of what the witches achieve on a seemingly apolitical level: a systematic reign of surveillance and paranoia, a disciplining of the body and social behaviour (those punished in Suspiria are the ones with a "strong will"), a process of selecting who belongs to the ‘we’ and elimination of who does not.”

A Blood-Splattered Space: Carol Clover’s “Terrible Place”

The action of the film revolves entirely around the chilling dance academy, an absurdly stylized space that seems to defy logic almost as much as the film’s plot, characters and subject matter completely flout reason. We are ushered into experiencing the spaces of the film as such in the opening apartment scenes, when the fleeing girl and the woman are gruesomely murdered.

Killed by falling compass in a geometric nightmare

Everything about this space is ludicrously over the top. The architecture of the apartment, the vibrant, screaming color scheme and the almost slap-dash madness of the building’s layout; these elements all help prepare us for entry into the main event, the arena in which the essential action will take place: the dance academy. A bizarre charlatan of a building, bathed as it is in a violent red, the building seems torn directly from Argento’s own phantasmagorical imagination; however, it is in fact an actual location: Haus Zum Walfisch (Whale House) in Freiburg, Germany.

It is this space that echoes the idea set forth by Carol Clover in her essay, “Her Body, Himself” of the “Terrible Place” in the slasher film canon, the veritable fun house of horrors in which our protagonist will experience the most unspeakable of terrors, where she must face down and defeat the slayer or become yet another victim of the meat grinder. In Clover’s estimation, “The house or tunnel may at first seem a safe haven, but the same walls that promise to keep the killer out quickly become, once the killer penetrates them, the walls that hold the victim in.”

Bloody Red and Bruised Blue: Color in Suspiria

A phantasmagorical version of the NBC Peacock

Undoubtedly the most striking element at work in this film is the use of color. Color which at once saturates, overwhelms and assaults the audience, not a single shot is free of its heavily stylized use. Reds (the most prominent of the film’s colors) permeate the image to warn us of impending doom; softer lavender and blue hues steep the frames in their ominous glow. Indeed, it is the colors and the image that dominate this film, carrying the audience beyond the narrative. Schulte-Sasse explains that, “Throughout the film we are held captive by image and sound; each movement from space to space—whether the drive from the airport, a walk up or down the gilded school staircase, or a subjective traveling shot through the red Jugendstil corridor of the dance school—is experienced more aesthetically than in narrative terms.” (Schulte-Sasse) According to an un-credited source in the trivia section of the Suspiria page on www.imdb.com, the film was shot on standard film stock and printed using the outdated 3-strip Technicolor process on one of the few remaining machines to achieve the over-saturation of color.

Malicious Melodies: Goblin's Soundtrack

The film’s menacing score is provided by Argento-favorites Goblin, an Italian prog-rock band who also scored Argento’s Deep Red and George A. Romero’s horror classic Dawn of the Dead.

Their unnerving score perfectly compliments the ominous tone of this film, offering timely portents of danger. The music is heavily laden with frightening sound effects (screams, whispers, etc.) that add to the hysterical pace of the film.

While its highly stylized manner may alienate some, I believe it truly adds to this richly surrealistic nightmare of a film. Personally, I found Suspiria difficult to review, due to the overwhelming amount of symbolism and metaphor it contains and my desire to write many more pages. As a long-time fan of Profondo Rosso, I highly enjoyed this film, and I would certainly recommend it to both Argento fans and horror fans alike.

____________________________________________________________________

Suspiria at IMDB.com: http://imdb.com/title/tt0076786/

Suspiria at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspiria

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1020662-suspiria/

Review at Slant Magazine: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=405

Comprehensive site on the life and work of Dario Argento: http://www.darkdreams.org/

Goblin’s website: http://www.goblin.org/

____________________________________________________________________
Citations

Gould, Joan. Spinning Straw Into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman’s Life. New York: Random House, 2005. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812975456/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top/103-1851940-0704664

Schulte-Sasse, Linda. “The ‘Mother’ of All Horror Movies.” Kinoeye. 10 June 2002. http://www.kinoeye.org/02/11/schultesasse11.php

Clover, Carol J. Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1992.

Forced into Nothing in Primo Amore

2007-10-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

“What’s the point of being here?” Sonia asks Vittorio when she gets the impression that he does not want to talk to her when they meet for the first time. This is the question I kept asking as I watched Primo Amore. In this film, Vittorio, a goldsmith, finds Sonia perfect in every way except for her body, so she starves herself to be the perfect body for him. I cannot see why Sonia would go through such torture for a man who never tells her he loves her nor does anything that can be construed as an act of love. Yes, he does ask her to move in with him into a place where they can see the Romeo and Juliet castles. But he is not the passionate Romeo compared to her self-sacrificing Juliet. When he tells her, “Don’t disappear,” the irony undercuts any romantic meaning as she is disappearing by starving herself to please him. In the final scene, he tells her that he will be nothing if she goes away. However, he utters this to her after he declares that she is nothing while she is naked with her head down.

Vittorio treats Sonia like gold not as something of high value but as a literal piece of gold, as an object, to be molded into weighing nothing. He first sees her as gold when he visits her while she is modeling for a night drawing class. The moles on her body remind him of the gold specs arising from the molten liquid.

He makes gold pieces that weigh nothing that he tries to force people into manufacturing. He believes that if he reduces Sonia into nothing then she will be something precious. Unfortunately for him, scraping Sonia away causes her to break down on several occasions either crying, fainting, or sneaking bites of onion imagining it as a piece of chicken. At her final breakdown in the restaurant, I cheered for her as she attacks the neglected fettuccine dish and steals bites from the kitchen exclaiming, “I want to eat whenever I want.”

Vittorio does not seem to desire her as a sexual being as she loses weight. However, the close-ups used in the sex scene reduce Sonia’s body into pieces of flesh suggesting that he desires her in this reductive state. Yet, as she continues to starve herself, she and Vittorio have reduced their physical intimacy to hugs and scant kisses. This makes them seem more like friends than lovers.

Garrone seems to be obsessed with framing Vittorio around straight lines. Vittorio lives in a prisonlike apartment building. He and Sonia walk often down a street lined with street lamps. They also frolic in the woods in the midst of barren trees with very smooth trunks, showing by analogy how Vittorio thinks that a woman should naturally be thin as a stick. These straight-lined images suggest that Vittorio is imprisoned in his straightforward thinking. He can only see what is in front of him.

In one scene, what is in front of him is a Sonia who is blurred (Vittorio is also blurry but not as much as Sonia). His blurriness coincides with his “pep-talk” to Sonia. He explains that he is not with the present Sonia who weighs 45 kilos (99 lbs) but with a future Sonia who will weigh 40 kilos (88 lbs). Sonia appears blurry to show the audience how she is reduced to nothing physically and to show how Vittorio does not consider her feelings.

The impact of that image makes me forget that Sonia had set this torture in motion. In a visually uninteresting full shot, a skinny woman walks by Sonia at the pool. Sonia looks at the woman and then at Vittorio who has his eyes on the book. The close-ups and the blurry images make me blame Sonia’s condition completely on Vittorio even though she made the decision to starve herself. These shots make her look trapped into being nothing. And I am trapped by the aesthetic beauty of these shots. Thus, I sympathize with her struggle to fulfill someone’s desire for beauty.

In the final scene, Vittorio says “Only what truly counts remains.” And I remain disconcerted by this film so much so that I have to go eat for Sonia.

Links:

IMDB page for Primo Amore

An Analysis of Matteo Garrone in Italian

Composer Banda Osiris official site in Italian

A monstrous comedy of manners

2007-10-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

"Netflix shares fell 3%, but if the Canadian dollar does not reverse its overvaluation, Blockbuster might be forced to slash 4th quarter forecasts by as much as 19%," or so might say Loris while trying to distract himself from the "obscene bombardment" being put on by his female roommate for some reason unknown to him.

Roberto Benigni, best known here in the States for Son of Pink Panther and more recently La Vita è Bella, worked with screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami, directing and starring in a trilogy of loosely-related films: Il Piccolo Diavolo (1988), Johnny Stecchino (1991) and the film we'll concern ourselves with here: Il Mostro (1994).

Like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), considered "the greatest film of all time" (Schlegel, 2007), Il Mostro also has at the beginning an opening animation in which a skeleton shows fear of a monster and has its bones scattered.

The title monster is a serial rapist and killer of women, emblematized by a small dog in the animation sequence. Opening animation sequence aside, the film begins quite seriously with a stark, static shot of the tenements at night, followed by an indoor shot of a woman's leg stopping a stubborn elevator door from closing. After the opening animation sequence, there is an aerial shot of the tenement where our protagonist lives, then, after a montage showing the crime scene investigators at work as the police chief tells the press what he knows about the monster, we cut to the police chief's press conference. The monster has claimed his 18th victim, and the police chief explains not only the heinousness of the crime but also the veil of normalcy which has enabled the criminal to elude the police so far. But soon the police chief and the police doctor, Paride Taccone, forget that the veil of normalcy excludes eccentric behavior in broad daylight, such as Loris exhibits. I'll leave it to you to guess who the monster really is: he's introduced early in the film.

A cut from this press conference to Loris (Benigni) looking crazy at a party would seem to want to plant the idea that Loris could be the title monster. But I don't think I'm spoiling it for anyone when I say Loris is not the title monster. This is not a comedy of unrelated twins, like Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator or Benigni's own Johnny Stecchino. But it is a comedy drawn from "the well of miscommunication" as the plots of so many Frasier episodes are. As with Johnny Stecchino, many jokes are set up in the first act and their punchlines (or payoffs) postponed to the third act.

Loris is a barely employed mannequin-carrier. He tells his boss he needs the work. Not surprisingly, he's months behind on his rent and the landlord wants to kick him out and get a paying tenant in as soon as possible. Loris is actually fairly inventive in figuring out ways to scare off potential replacement tenants so he doesn't get kicked out. Also, he has to avoid making eye contact with the building caretaker, so he walks past his office window crouching down (leading to one of the film's recurring jokes).

Because of his weird behavior, and an accusation by an older lady mistaken by Loris for a nymphomaniac, the police chief becomes convinced that Loris is the elusive serial killer who's perturbed the constable's sleep for several years now. Loris is secretly filmed and the footage is shown to several policewomen.

None want to take the case, save one, Jessica, and even she has her doubts after she sees Loris apparently having rough sex with a mannequin. Jessica tries to rent Loris's apartment but the landlord wants to sell it rather than rent it. Loris makes a secret deal with Jessica to be his roommate. The police chief and Paride, the police doctor, tell Jessica she must provoke Loris to try to rape her, and to be ready with her gun to arrest Loris. As she gets to know Loris, Jessica grows to doubt that Loris really could be the serial killer who's so far eluded the police. On at least two separate occasions Jessica goes to the police station to express her doubts about the identification of the killer. Also, she gradually falls in love with Loris; this we learn in the same way we learn in Chasing Amy that Holden is falling for his lesbian friend Alyssa: through a romantic montage.

After the first time Jessica goes back to the police station to tell Paride she doesn't think Loris is the killer, Paride invites himself to the apartment on the pretext of being a tailor there to fit him for a designer suit. He's really there to perform a whole battery of medical tests, and though Loris finds this weird, he remains perfectly unaware of what's really going on. Jessica puts a stop to this just as Paride is about to perform a prostate exam. Paride brings his wife, Jolanda, along, and by coincidence she sees Loris wielding a meat cleaver on two separate occasions. When Jolanda gets stuck in a window trying to escape, Loris tries to help her get unstuck, but from the terrace it looks like Jolanda is being raped. As soon as Jessica and Paride go into the room, Jessica understands exactly what has happened.

Now, Roger Ebert wonders how the female leads in certain romantic comedies could fall for Adam Sandler's character in movies such as The Water Boy, or Billy Crystal's in The Animal. Here in The Monster I find it slightly easier to believe that Jessica (Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni's wife in real life) could fall for Loris. But instead of seeing Jessica in the background smiling at Loris's antics, for the most part we see her quietly thinking things over: the best example of this is when she's out in the terrace and Paride goes away with Loris to try to give him a testicular exam.

When Loris goes take the Chinese oral exam is when Jessica gets a crucial piece of evidence that will enable her to crack the case wide open, though at the time she doesn't realize its importance. Both Jessica and the Chinese instructor wish Loris luck, but Loris can't even get the very first question right, the one question that should be a no-brainer to anyone taking Chinese lessons: 您的名字是什么?

Since Paride found a lawn ornament of one of the seven Dwarves in Loris's closet, he for some reason becomes convinced that the way to provoke Loris and catch him red-handed is by dressing Jessica up in a Little Red Riding Hood costume, not Snow White. By now Jessica doesn't want to go along with this, but Paride insists that the order comes straight from the police chief. Jessica acquiesces and performs as instructed: she makes sure Loris sees her with the costume and tells him she's leaving. Instead of trying to rape and kill Jessica, Loris just lets her go and records a message telling her their rental agreement is now cancelled.

Jessica is back at the police station to express her doubts on Loris being the killer when the 19th victim is announced and the police release Loris's likeness and identify him as the killer. Jessica goes to the crime scene and finds the clue which leads her to find the real killer. Practically the entire town chases Loris, though many of them have reasons other than Loris being a killer to chase him. Loris also goes to the real killer's apartment, leading to the film's climax in which Jessica confronts Loris and the real killer.

With that straightened out, Loris and Jessica can now express their love for each other, and the first real kiss in the film occurs fairly close to the end. Their weird crouching walk into the sunset mediates (puts a spin on) the final walk at the end of Modern Times, the only Charlie Chaplin comedy in which his Little Tramp character walks into the sunset with a woman and not by himself. Chaplin's Great Dictator concludes with the Jewish barber and his girlfriend (played by his real-life wife at the time, Paulette Goddard, who was also his love interest in Modern Times) spatially separated, together thanks to the radio broadcasting Adenoid Hynkel's unexpectedly pacifist radio address. Chaplin and Goddard divorced with less than a decade together, while Benigni and Braschi are still together. (Rabin, 2007)

Il Mostro did very well in Italy. Here in America, what little reaction there has been to it has been often negative and disappointed by comparison to La Vita è Bella. This film probably wouldn't have been introduced here if it hadn't been for the success of La Vita è Bella: the IMDb's Studio Briefing for 30 March 1999 reported that "Lions Gate wants to see whether an Oscar and critical and audience acclaim can rekindle interest in Roberto Benigni's 1996 movie Monster, The (1994) (Il Mostro). It plans to open the film exclusively in Los Angeles on April 2 and in New York on April 16." They go on to quote Kenneth Turan's review in the Los Angeles Times which calls Benigni "the funniest man on film today." As the film hasn't been theatrically screened in the Midwest, I can't find any reviews in the Detroit Free Press or Detroit News. To get the New York Times review, I'd have to subscribe to their online service, or look through the microfiche at the Detroit Public Library.

In the context of Benigni's oeuvre, one scholar finds Il Mostro a step backwards from the social relevance of Johnny Stecchino, and the later La Vita è Bella as a step forward from Il Mostro. Whereas the earlier film "was an effective deterrent against the fascination that the gangster image exerts on young men," Il Mostro shows "a regression to [Benigni's] earlier style of predominantly sexual jokes," while La Vita è Bella is a comedy which treats Holocaust survivors respectfully and "suggest[s] an outlook that tragedy is unequipped to convey." (Viano, 1999) Pinocchio (2002) is considered another flop in Benigni's oeuvre. (Rabin, 2007) While Benigni has been called "the Italian Buster Keaton," (Gehr, 1996) he is found to diverge from Keaton "primarily in terms of the artistic intent of his Chaplinesque sociopolitical ambitions." (Watson, 2008)

As Professoressa Past has said, it's good to have several people at the class viewing of the film. In the case of a comedy, it can be quite instructive to see what gets a laugh and what doesn't. In the case of our class, the following got the most laughs:

The scene in which Loris seems to be having sex with a mannequin;

Loris flunking the Chinese exam;

When Loris sees the severed human hand in his Chinese teacher's jacket and tells him: "I'd give you a hand but you already have one." (from the subtitles);

My classmates will let me know if I missed any big laughs at the moment I stepped out to get a little water.

There are some translation issues: the antique store owner, in recalling the telegraphic notification of Loris's death, calls him a "poveraccio;" this is not at all translated in the English subtitles. Credit is due to the subtitlers, however, for translating "hand in the marmalade" as "red-handed" or "hand in the cookie jar." There's also a word which is a swear word in Spanish and seems to have the same meaning in Italian, and also exhibits the same semantic drift towards generalization.

Technical notes

The Region 1 DVD has two sides: widescreen and fullscreen. To view widescreen, put the side labelled "WIDESCREEN" face up into the player. The fullscreen version has the opening animation sequence letterboxed. However, in some DVD players (such as those made by KLH), to get widescreen on the widescreen side, you might need to go into the set-up menu and select "4:3 Letterboxed" rather than "4:3 Pan Scan."

Also, English subtitles are not on by default on this DVD, you have to turn them on either in the Set Up menu or with your remote control's subtitle key; though in my case this led to the pleasant realization that I could understand a lot of the dialogue without the help of subtitles.

The class reading for this film, the Blackboard article, is a PDF photocopy and not PDF text (one of my pet peeves), but more noticeably for my classmates, it's not right side up. That's easily enough fixed in Adobe Reader 8 with the command View -> Rotate View -> Clockwise (keyboard shortcut Shift-Ctrl-+ on Windows, probably Shift-Apple-+ on Mac OS X).

Citations

Richard Gehr, "The Monster" The Village Voice 41.17 (1996): 69

Maurizio Viano, "Life Is Beautiful: Reception, Allegory, Holocaust Laughter." Film Quarterly 53.1 (1999): 29.

Nathan Rabin, "My Year of Flops Case File #78: Pinocchio (2002)" A. V. Club Blog, October 23, 2007. Accessed October 26, 2007.

Nicholas Schlegel, e-mail message to Pete Bublitz, June 27, 2007.

William Van Watson, "The Italian Buster Keaton? Benigni's The Monster and The Comic Machine" Beyond Life is Beautiful: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of Roberto Benigni Ed. Grace Russo Bullaro. Leicester, England: Troubador (2005): 66

External links

IMDb's entry on Il Mostro. What more is there to say about this one, other than that this is the website of record for most matters pertaining to movies?

Netflix's entry on The Monster (1994). You can get some information on this film there, but you have to be logged in to read Netflix customer's reviews of this film. I rated this film 4 stars ("Really Liked It") while the average of 12,754 ratings as of today is 3.5 stars (3 stars is a plain "Liked It"). Another Netflix customer, (considered 58% similar in tastes to my own, though I don't know how they measure that) gave this film 5 stars ("Loved It") and even goes as far as saying that it is Benigni's best film second to Life Is Beautiful. Another customer, considered 68% similar in tastes to my own, gave this film 1 star ("Hated It") and wrote that "There are a few moments of inspired physical comedy by Benigni, and one excellent breathless monologue by Braschi, but the good bits are few and far between. Most of the film consists of painfully obvious gags, telegraphed long before the punchline, based on situations that don't even make sense within the context of the film."

Note that the plot summary given there as of today is incorrect: Loris does not meet "a woman (Nicoletta Braschi) whom he thinks is "easy" -- only to learn that she's a cop;" for "Wanda la ninfomana" is only seen briefly at the party and there is nothing to indicate that she's a cop, while Loris had never seen Jessica before when later in the film she comes into the apartment to inquire about renting. I would guess that the Netflix employee who wrote this mixed up the plot of this film with that of Tomcats (1999), in which Michael (Jerry O'Connell) is arrested by a policewoman (Shannon Elizabeth) with whom he falls in love. That policewoman also falls in love with the suspect and also visits his apartment, which is for some reason filled with "pleather."

One more thing: Netflix shares were at $24.94 each when I posted this blog entry.

Wikipedia's entry on The Monster (1994). I edited this entry this past Wednesday; that seems to have stirred editing activity on this article, which aside from one edit earlier this month and another back in June, had been fairly dormant since April and worked on only sporadically since the article's creation back in 2005.

"Primo amore"

2007-10-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

Toxic Love

Matteo Garrone’s Primo amore (2004) has been described as “a horror movie about desire,” which seems fitting. Often, the scenes depicted are horrifying and alarming. The director takes an uncomfortably close look at obsessive love, further complicated by the troubled characters’ various psychological issues. When the two protagonists, Vittorio and Sonia, meet for the first time this becomes rather obvious. Some of Vittorio’s first words to Sonia are “I thought you’d be thinner.” Her reaction is troubling; although she seems somewhat stunned by his comment and feigns a desire to leave, she continues to entertain his conversation at the cafe and goes on to take a walk with him. The most obvious disorder of course is Sonia’s developing anorexia nervosa, at Vittorio’s insistence. However, it is important to look at the other factors which contribute to this obsessive, stomach-turning love story. I found it difficult to diagnose each character as having one category of psychological disorder, as they seem to suffer from symptoms of several including but not exclusive to borderline and obsessive compulsive personality disorders, shared psychotic disorder, masochism, and sadism. The extent to which each character is affected by these disorders offers them a chance for more sympathy from the viewer, for perhaps they must give in to their desires and urges without thinking of consequence or how they affect the people around them. For example, Sonia has an emotional outburst at a boutique, and the film depicts the action in medium shots, until the salesgirl attempts to comfort Sonia. The camera then moves into a tight close up of the three characters, and it seems as if the salesgirl gets sucked into the toxic bubble (of obsession, co-dependence, masochism, and sadism) around Vittorio and Sonia. Descriptions of these disorders may be found at www.mentalhealth.com.

Viewer as Voyeur

Several of the techniques employed by the director give the viewer a strong sense of voyeurism. This is a concept usually reserved for those who are aroused by watching other people in sexual acts, according to Wikipedia. However, the word voyeur can describe someone who receives pleasure by witnessing other people’s suffering or misfortune. This definition can describe Vittorio, yet he not only witnesses, he participates in Sonia’s misfortune. Although the film is unpleasant to watch, as the two protagonists have such deeply rooted psychological issues, as a viewer I felt intrigued. There are several reoccurring shot techniques, which allowed me to feel this voyeuristic thrill. First, there are many shots (long, medium, and close-up) in which the action is framed through a hallway or doorway, for example the scene in which Vittorio visits his doctor. As he stands behind a doorway, the viewer may get a sense of being left out somehow and more curious about what is occurring. Second, there are scenes that are shot in high angles, which make the viewer feel above the subject. Next, there are the numerous, often awkward, over-the-shoulder shots. Finally, there are those seemingly hand-held shots, such as those used in the scene where Vittorio searches for Sonia in the woods. These aspects all strongly suggest a voyeur’s perspective for the viewer to assume.

Grates, fences, bars across windows and doors: trapped

As the film develops, the viewer acquires a strong sense of being trapped. Many visual aspects within the mis-en-scene including grates, fences, windowpanes, and walls contribute to this feeling. The apartment Vittorio occupied before he and Sonia move into the house was especially confining. After the couple’s first sexual encounter, Sonia meanders onto Vittorio’s porch where they have a strained conversation; the scene ends with Sonia grabbing onto the metal bars that surround the porch in a manner reminiscent of a prisoner grabbing onto a jail cell’s bars. Through cinematography, Sonia’s skeleton even seems as if it entraps her, her sense of self, and her soul even. As her weight recedes, these parts of her leak out until her bones are surrounding nothingness. In contrast to these confining structures, images of the green forest surrounding the house are used to depict life and freedom. The recurring juxtaposition of shots outside against the foliage, complimented by wildlife sounds, against those of the restrictive indoors led me to the conclusion that the only option for life would be outside. Although Sonia’s mind slipped away with her body, she seems to realize this in the end scene where Vittorio has her backed up against a wall (literally and figuratively). Once she takes the only seemingly viable action, the camera gradually moves out to show Sonia crouched just outside the door in the forest among the trees. Perhaps now she may finally return to join the living, and not the walking dead. Though the scene ends in darkness, there is some comfort to the darkness of the forest. As viewers, we are finally freed.

Many insightful reviews may be found at www.rottentomatoes.com

Emanuele Crialese: Respiro

2007-10-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

With all the beauty and style of a classic painting, Emanuele Crialese's Respiro invites the audience into the stunning landscape and intriguing lives of its inhabitants. Wife and mother, Grazia (Valeria Golino), is a free-spirited woman who cannot abide by the limitations of the structured and tranquil island life. Her uninhibited tendencies are too much for the Lampedusians, particularly Pietro (Vincenzo Amato), her fisherman husband. Pietro tries, much to her frustration, to keep her under control by any means necessary. Although it is never clarified to the audience, the viewers learn that Grazia has a disease (possibly that she is manic depressive). Because of this, or perhaps because Pietro realizes that Grazia's problems are too extreme for him to treat alone, he decides to send her to an institution in Milan. This decision caused Grazia to flee her husband's watchful eye and hide in the caverns near the beach. Her son, Pasquale (Francesco Casisa), is the only family member who knows of her whereabouts. Pietro finds Grazia's dress near the water, and assumes that she has drowned. The knowledge allows Pietro, as well as the rest of the city, to gain a new understanding of Grazia, and perhaps even a new respect for her.

There are a variety of subtle images throughout the film that imply deeper meanings than those overtly discussed by the characters. Subtle signs and facial expressions portray inner emotions, a form of poetry (symbolism) which is common in writing, and mastered by this film. One particular use of this device is when Grazia takes her husband's fishing net and wraps herself in it. This perfectly displays for the audience the trapped feeling that Grazia feels simply by following the rules of the island. What I found interesting in this scene is that the director had Grazia try and move in the net. While this particular scene can be amusing (a woman in a fishing net does strike a humorous chord), this image is actually one of the main themes in the film. Grazia, though feeling trapped in her everyday life, tries to fight against the rules (she tries to walk while wearing the net).

This feeling of fighting against the rules leads into another common theme in the film, water. Water serves many purposes in this film, and not simply providing a beautiful backdrop for our characters. Pietro's job (fisherman), a favorite pastime of Grazia and her sons (swimming), and the location of the film (on an island) are all dependent on water. Water, as it does in many films, serves as a motif for rebirth or renewal. Grazia is a character who thrives in the water: we often see her swimming or walking on the beach. There is a scene near the beginning of the film in which Grazia removes her dress and simply floats in the water. Perhaps this is an example of how she lives her life: free (as she floats, without control, in the current). Water is used as renewal most evidently in the final scene in which Pietro finds Grazia in the water. The image of the Lampedusians surrounding Grazia in the water is a very strong image, and one that allows for a deep discussion of the possible meaning behind this. This image acts as a symbol of forgiveness, showing that Grazia's "death" has allowed the townspeople to gain a new understanding for her and the way she lives her life. Previous to her supposed death, she was urged by her husband, as well as many others, to reside in an institution in Milan. Then, after a mere few days in the "afterlife", the people seem to have forgotten the uninhibited nature of Grazia, and instead welcome her back into the community as one of their own. This is where the water motif becomes strong. The underwater shot of the Lampedusians and Grazia swimming reminds me of a spiritual image. There is a soft glow to the water, which adds to the "heavenly" atmosphere. Perhaps this image is used to portray support or rebirth, but it is definitely an image that displays renewal: it is something that allows the audience to believe that Grazia will integrate herself back into a community that will accept her.

Overall I found this film to be a stunning example of what happens when striking cinematography is mixed with a beautiful story: the end product is a film that one wants to watch over and over. The atmosphere in the film is tranquil, even though the main character is not. A film like this, which has countless motifs and images, can be discussed on many different levels: narrative, cinematographic, poetic, psychological, and spiritual.

Links:

More discussion at imdb.com.
A review for Respiro.
A variety of reviews at RottonTomatoes.com.
Movie Trailer for Respiro.

Straps and eyes, fingers and existential nothingness

2007-10-10T11:45:00.001-07:00

“It may be nothing.” – “Yes, it may be nothing.”
...
Nothingness: though scarcely explicitly expressed, it´s one of the issues all of the upper- middle class characters in Michelangelo Antonioni´s La notte are compelled to deal with.
But it´s not by accident that this nothingness is being expressed only near the end of the film in a dialogue between the two female protagonists.
The women (this suspicion is confirmed in the course of the film) seem to be the key to understanding this symbolically laden and challenging film, that tries to delve into the times of the sixties, into the mentality of the industrially booming postwar Italy.

Nothingness, and yet there is so much to say about this film, in which Monica Vitti and Jeanne Moreau play the roles of Valentina and Lidia so convincingly, both intangible and helping to “manifest their strange resistance to meaning of their numerous superabundance of it”, that we remain breathless.
The epicenter of the film are recently successful writer Giovanni Pontano and his on first sight eerie wife Lidia. The film starts with Giovanni and Lidia going to visit their fatally ill friend Tommasso Garano. That the existential ground, on which the protagonists are moving, dealing with life, death and nothingness, is never detached from sexuality – becomes clear, when the first strap falls off the shoulder onto the upper arm – here of the nymphomanic woman in the hospital. That this connection throughout the film will never be trivial becomes clear a moment after that when instead of reacting jealously to Giovanni’s liaison with the woman in the hospital she envies the woman’s inability to control herself, a hint to what Lidia will be struggling with, with her (in)ability to express herself, falling into nothingness instead.

One could write volumes just about the scene that follows:
Lidia – escaping her husband’s book party (and the intellectual middleclass), takes a taxi to San Sesto, walks through the streets, through a strange world which is not her world at all. She observes boys setting off rockets and fighting. The spectator, bewildered, wonders what she might be searching for and why, but we won´t find out. Nothingness again and no frame of reference to cling to, yet so much foreshadowed. The melancholy, the searching for sense, for independence, for own paths, the emptiness, the incapacity to express oneself (and to envy uncontrolled instead), the allusions to the industrial boom, for example in form of the rockets that are fired by the boys, the (only discreetly shown) class society of postwar italy - but we move on, and see Lidia calling her husband in order to get him pick her up, claiming that everything is alright.

Nothingness again in the nightclub and close-ups of Lidia’s fingers moving over the table, seeking Giovanni’s attention in vain.
The spectator is left behind with an eerie awkwardness, maybe feeling the nothingness that Lidia seems to be experiencing - implicitly expressed when Lidia changes her mind again and finally wants to go the party they were invited to “Tanto per fare qualcosa.” (Just to do something).
So we move on to the upper class party of the industrial magnate Gherardini, a paragon of a superficial and hypocritical high society party, composed brilliantly and perfected by the background sounds Antonioni chooses: a jazz band playing smooth jazz music, mixed with womens´ giggling and laughter and people exchanging empty phrases. It´s a party you don´t want to be at: nothingness again.

For the most part Giovanni and Lidia attend the party separately. Once in a while they are shown in shots together, we see the condescending glances Lidia throws at Giovanni or Giovanni asking Lidia, “ma è possibile che tu non ti diverti mai?” Answering that she enjoys herself more alone she points to a woman she saw inside “Anche li c´è una donna che si diverte da sola. È anche una bella ragazza.” It´s not the last time that we will see these two women paralleled.

So Valentina appears. She is playing a game on a huge chessboard, probably marble, childish like and erotically creeping over the floor, when Giovanni joins her. They start a strange flirtation that will last for the whole night. Their dialogues are minimalist, naive, existential, erotic, cynical and superficial at the same time . Astonishingly it´s especially Valentina who is leading the conversation, turning it around and it´s Giovanni following her.
While Giovanni is involved in this flirtatious exchange, Lidia calls the hospital and learns that their friend Tommasso just died. Lidia makes a slight effort to tell her husband but there is no space for death on the party and Giovanni interrupts her in order to follow Valentina. No space for death – yet it is so present.
So the party goes on.
And Lidia leaves the party with some man who asked her to dance.

Meanwhile: the downpour scene. With a sudden rainfall, women are diving childish-orgiastically into the swimming pool completely dressed. One woman is smoothing her body against a statue, kissing it over and over. It´s a strange mixture of uncontrolledness, instinct, and childish-orgiastic-erotic behaviour that is supposedly not by chance being let out in precisely that moment in which nature in form of a strong downpour comes into play. And instead of hearing women giggling or vulgar laughter in the background we get to hear women groaning.

On the other hand, there are women that are reflecting on a high level, for example Lidia and Gherardini’s wife, spitting out the truth and unmasking the hypocrisies of their husbands and the upper class mens’ world in general in an amusingly cynical way.

Back to the triangle comprised of Valentina, Giovanni and Lidia.
When Valentina finds out that Giovanni is married to Lidia, she feels “misery […] creeping back, like a melancholy dog.”
It´s exactly that melancholy, connected closely to the feeling of nothingness and emptiness, that the women in this film are able to feel and to express, unlike the men. At the same time, the “real feelings” seem to be made impossible and outcries become possible only in a hidden or covered way: – in the “immediate” behaviours of the women during the downpour, in the cynical objections of the industrialist’s wife or in the behaviours of the two female protagonists, in feelings of emptiness, in attempts to break out and escape or to distance themselves from the world by cynicism – but they are never as far away from the real world as the men.

So it´s always women to whom Antonioni in La notte leaves the most beautiful, the most depressing and frustrating, the most cynical, the most intelligent but also the most silly remarks.
And what all of these women seem to have in common is that their remarks seem to be the most unadulterated, immediate and therefore closest to truth.

The camera supports this focus on the women. It is permanently searching and observing their bodies, close-ups are shooting their eyes, their movements, their hands and fingers, maybe trying to follow their ways through this world. That these movements are often filmed in a highly sexualized way is only too “natural” – since sexuality is one of the ways the portrayed women try to stay alive, to feel something, desperately. But even this assumption, and here we see Antonioni´s ability to never become simple or bromidic, is breached when Lidia states to have found her real vice: “it´s warm, it´s soft” and it´s got nothing to do with sexuality, it´s alcohol.

She admits her vice in a scene, that might be of high interest approaching the film: Lidia is coming back from her short excursion with the man she was flirting with, wet from the rain, and meets Valentina and Giovanni in the hallway. Valentina asks her to come with her to help her get dry.
Lidia confesses her despair to Valentina with Giovanni standing unnoticed by the two in the background, in the doorframe. She says, “Stasera vorrei solo morire. (Tonight, all I want to do is dying). An end to this agony, something new.” And Valentina answers, “It may be nothing.” “Yes, it may be nothing,” confirms Lidia. And it´s obvious that this agony Lidia is experiencing is her fight against nothingness.

When Giovanni and Lidia turn around to leave the camera is taking a shot of three backs, two of which could easily be mistaken for one another: the same cut of the dress, the same color and cut of hair. We see two backs of women, of whom one is already fighting against her age, against an unloving and failing marriage, drowning her feelings of nothingness in alcohol, cynicism and silence, and the other one, still young, obviating nothingness with cynicism and in a mixture between childish and erotic behaviour. But both of them are still struggling with feelings – or the absence of feelings – and their senses are not yet suffocated by hypocrisy.

Asked about a potential new morality Antonioni distinctly expresses his disregards against morality or religion, claiming “We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean… When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them.”
He opposes the artificiality and superficiality of the upper-middle-class in postwar and industrially booming Italy his search for a way, or way back, to “nature” and “truth”, discovering layers relentlessly, letting the camera go in search of the truth. “We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of that reality, absolute, mysterious, which no one will ever see or perhaps right down to the decomposition of any image, of any reality.” (Encountering Directors, 23).
So is that the womens’ role?
Women as the key to truth? Women as a path to immediacy?
Are women, according to Antonioni ,the way back to nature, a door to the right path? Looking at the way he gives voice to them in La notte it seems a possible interpretation. And one could again quote Antonioni, who claims the female sensibility to be a “much more precise filter than anyone else´s, and because the man, in the area of feelings is almost always incapable of understanding reality, since he tried to dominate.” (Dictionary of films, Georges Sadoul, 250).

It´s a point of view that cannot bear up against a postmodern feminism, but that is performed cinematically so brillantly and intelligent that you are tempted to excuse this point of view.

links:
www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/media/femfilm.htm

www.jstor.org/view/00151386/sp060010/06x02721/0

www.repubblica.it/2007/07/sezioni/spettacoli_e_cultura/morto-antonioni/morto-antonioni.html

http://it.movies.yahoo.com/artisti/v/monica-vitti/biografia-103962.html

Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte

2007-10-09T15:00:00.001-07:00

At first I thought La notte was so boring. There was nothing going on, both characters seemed lifeless. Their world was depressing, with their best friend on his deathbed. It was hard to see the importance of the story and why it was being told. But, as the story progressed the passiveness of the beginning sets up the mood of the entire story. It’s difficult when a story doesn’t necessarily pull its viewer in within the first 10 minutes, but La Notte was set up this way for a reason. The reason was to get the characters on their journey, to realize this life is not working for them.

The shots at the beginning credits slowly descend the viewer into the world of Lidia and Giovanni. The shots move with ease down a modern-skyscraper building side. Images of the surrounding city are reflected on the building’s glass. Before the characters are shown, the pace and location of the film is established. There also seems to be an analogy relating the beginning to the whole relationship between Giovanni and Lidia. Like the beginning shots, their relationship will slowly go down and this story will reveal the end, the last stop of the descent.

From the first scene with Lidia and Giovanni it’s hard to tell much about their relationship. They come to visit a mutual friend, Tommaso, but each has their own quirk. Lidia lets Tommaso hold and kiss her hand for more then the appropriate amount of time. Giovanni allows himself to be seduced by the nymphomaniac when waiting for the elevator. It’s almost like a political relationship, they are together just so other people can see them together. There is nothing between them, no feeling, no happiness, and no love. The viewer is shown this right off the bat, but it takes Lidia the majority of the film to finally realize that the love is lost.

Throughout the story Lidia and Giovanni experience connections and disconnections. The connections and disconnections are more in the visual sense. Each follows their own path, but the two meet up to reconcile here and there. This series of separations starts off with the pair leaving the hospital at different times. They continue to do this throughout the film. They come together for moments, while not truly connecting, and then continue on their separate ways. It’s like visualizing a DNA strand, it crosses paths, but only for a moment, and each side is completely different.

Lidia and Giovanni just flow through their side of the strand. There is only one point where Lidia wants to break free from the flow, and it happens when everyone is jumping in the pool. Lidia is about to jump in but is stopped in her steps. I think it was Lidia’s one chance to break free from the mundane life she has been living. Giovanni also wants to leave his mundane life. He tries to seduce Valentina throughout the party. Like Lidia, Giovanni is unable to escape.

Ideas of a modern society are conveyed in many ways throughout the film. The first half of the movie takes place in modern Italy. Every shot through a window shows large buildings of the city. Giovanni claims that they don’t get out much except to drive around. The sounds of helicopters, jets, and cars can be heard quite vividly too. When Lidia goes on her walk, she leaves the modern parts of town, to come upon a ravaged, aging world. The buildings are crumbling, a child is left in terror, and guys fight for no apparent reason. It’s as if the modern is taking over, and anything left behind will be forgotten. Giovanni comes and takes Lidia away, which leads the story into the second half.

For many, the second half shows the darkness, or the night, of a certain life. Numerous problematic citations overlap throughout La Notte. Tommaso’s life comes to an end, Lidia and Giovanni’s relationship comes to and end, the old world of Italy is ending, Giovanni believes his ability to write is coming to and end, and Mr. Gherardini is worried that his relationship with his workers is coming to an end. All these endings happen within the darkness of Mr. Gherardini’s modern home. Though Lidia and Giovanni’s end is at the heart of the story, Antonioni shows the night slowly falling on so many, and with a new day, change must come.

Syd Field-Michelangelo Antonioni & La Notte

Lawrence Russell

Senses of Cinema-James Brown

Gene Siskel Film Center

Renegotiating Betrayal and Trust in Le Fate Ignoranti

2007-10-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

Le Fate Ignoranti a 2001 Italian film about a woman, a man, and the man they both love. The story pushes forward the idea that no one chooses who they fall in love with and the ability to enjoy life is the most precious experience we are offered. Although, beautifully set, the beginning of the film does play like a soap opera plot. As a result of Massimo’s (played by Andrea Renzi) untimely death, Antonia (Margherita Buy) realizes that through half of her marriage her husband has had a lover (Stefano Accorsi). In an attempt to reconcile Massimo’s death and adultery Antonia becomes friends with her late husband’s lover Michele.

The opening sequences of the film take us through Antonia and Massimo’s life together. She is a doctor who works in a small clinic, while Massimo works as a businessman. They live in a beautiful home in the suburbs of Rome, where they share everything and everyone has their place. The maid seems to forget this on occasion, and as a result, early in the film we see she and Antonia have an argument.

Through Antonia’s friendship with Michele (her late husband’s boyfriend) we are able to see exactly how Massimo is able to love both people, maintaining a comfortable deceitful relationship with one, and a hidden though more honest relationship with another. Antonia is excellent at maintaining silence and an air of perfection around everyone in her circle, she begins her life by taking the most obvious steps toward leading a "succesful" life, these are not neccesarily the steps that lead to a fulfilling life. As Michele’s group of friends begins to embrace her, Antonia's cloud of quiet perfection lifts from her life, she is able to see the complications involved in choosing a life that is not predicated by only partaking in the activities that are deemed acceptable by mass society. Antonia grows in understanding of herself, and others by sharing in their joys and pains.

The character of Antonia’s mother Veronica (played by Erica Blanc) is a wonderful key to understanding how Antonia and Michele could have a relationship that would develop. Veronica gives sympathy to her daughter but explains the trials of being kept a secret by someone who matters to you. Veronica is able to show Antonia that Michele also suffered in his relationship with Massimo.

Michele’s neighbor Serra (played by Serra Yilmaz) is a symbol of the dichotomy Oztepek is trying to convey in this film. Serra is the embodiment of the understanding that fulfillment for a relationship needs both truth and love in order to be in balance.

The use of color to symbolize repression is a wonderful tool throughout the film. As the film opens we see Antonia in her world of muted colors and neutrals, Michele on the other hand has a Crayola box of colors in his reach. As Michele and Antonia grow closer Antonia’s color palette grows. Initially there are overwhelming greens that coincide with her grief. The true reds emerge with her understanding of Massimo and Michele and the navy of affection permeates through both characters as they get closer and closer to one another.

I believe through Le Fate Ignoranti, Ozpetek was trying to create a space of familiarity in which middle/ upper class Italians could feel comfortable. Through Antonia’s eyes the viewer has the experience of being part of a comfortable and safe majority. By using Antonia who is described as being “uninterested in life” as a conduit into another part of Italian life you see Michele and Massimo’s friends the way I believe Ozpetek thinks most Italians see queer life. Antonia however faces her friendship with Michele the same way she experiences the art gallery at the beginning of the film. She looks around admiring some pieces and moving closer to others, but at the end of the day nothing is taken with her except her recollection of the event.

The film does have quite a few disjointing characteristics. For instance the bizarre one-dimensional maid who comes across as a confusing add on. The randomly ethnic maid who listens to no one and has perpetually over the top emotions and a slight tinge of nosiness is a frustrating representation of classism and racism on screen. The relationship she has with Antonia is never clarified, but there is a brief reference to an aunt who never appears.
The many companions in Michele’s crew are incredibly overwhelming and once again the majority of them have the characteristics of cardboard cutouts. The main purpose of the film on the surface seems to be to remove stereotypes attached to people lifestyles and love.

Unfortunately by including so many characters with no explanation for their presence or their motivations stereotypes pervade through the movie. There is the Character of Emir Serra’s brother who presents himself as the tall dark handsome foreigner come to take Antonia away from her life of predictability. The pudgy party kid who is only interested in guys and parties and the older gay man that has no issue with bringing a stranger to lunch with friends because he’s cute are two examples of Ozpetek’s excess, in poor explanation of representation. The worst of all was the conversion scene. Michele has had the same boyfriend for seven years. Suddenly he’s going to fall in love with his boyfriend’s jilted wife? Does that not play into the “he just hasn’t met the right woman” line?

For the most part the film was entertaining but having to stick with a main character that is such a leech does take some of the sweetness from the film. Also Ozpetek’s insistence that Michele and his friends would put up with a woman who denies their presence is disappointing. Antonia’s ability to be friends with Michele, but never want to admit that he is a part of her world, as well as the hiding of her pregnancy from her “friends” does make an Antonia a less than sympathetic character.

A profile for Le Fate Ignoranti at IMDb

A Review of Le Fate Ignoranti in English from Bright Lights

A Review of Le Fate Ignoranti in English at Guardian Unlimited

A Review of Le Fate Ignoranti in English at Time Out New York

A Review of Le Fate Ignoranti in Italian at reVision Cinema

A Review of Le Fate Ignoranti in Italian by Cine File

A Synopsis of Le Fate Ignoranti in Italian from Wikipedia

Beautiful, Introspective, Emtionally Jarring: "Le chiavi di casa" ("The Keys of the House")

2007-09-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

Beautiful, introspective, yet emotionally jarring – all words that can describe Gianni Amelio’s film “Le chiavi di casa.” This challenging yet heart-warming film invites audiences to relate to the difficulties of having a disabled child from both the perspective of the disabled child and that of the parents who raise him. The plot depicts a story of a young boy, Paolo , who meets his father, Gianni, for the first time when he is 15 years old. The twist, however, is that Paolo is physically disabled and seemingly autistic yet at the opening of the film the audience has no idea why the father has waited 15 years to meet his son. The film is an emotional journey that truly lets the audience feel the pain and anxiety parents can face when their children are born with disabilities. The film, containing many interesting situations and symbolism, most interestingly portrays the themes of the quest for “normalcy” and the difficulties of raising a disabled child through the view point of each character.

What is considered to be “normal” in life is almost always subjective; however, in this film we see the father, Gianni, struggle with the desire for a normal relationship with his 15 year old son. When the father first meets Paolo he acts awkward (as if meeting your son for the first time would not have been awkward enough, he has to also deal with a disability that he does not seem to be familiar with). Paolo, comfortable in his “self,” is relaxed as can be and perfectly content to play his game boy; retreating into his own world. The father seems so eager to get to know his son that the audience may at first have difficulty imagining why such a nice man has waited so long to reunite with him. This, in turn, generates great interest in the beginning of the film, leaving the audience anticipating the development of this question. The rest of the film is spent unraveling their unusual father son relationship as Gianni is forced to cope with his son’s difficult situation and make attempts to “make it better.”

Givovanni’s perception of “make it better” is an attempt to “make his son normal” or without a disability. He constantly rejects the notion that his son is not going to be able to lead a normal life. Some pertinent examples of this are when he decides to cease Paolo’s treatment at the hospital and whisk him away to Norway to meet his pen pal “girlfriend” Kristine. On the way to meet her, Gianni throws Paolo’s walking cane over the side of the boat, as if by doing so he can discard the disability. Moreover, Paolo almost fuels his father’s denial throughout the film when he gives glimmers of normal teenage boy behavior. On the boat to Norway, for example, he worries about what clothes he should wear to impress Kristine. His flirtation with “normal” behavior is always short lived, however, when he inevitably reverts to his behavioral difficulties as a result of his autism.

The father’s dream of a “child that could have been” is crushed in the final scene of the film. They are driving together after a very touching scene where Paolo agrees to come live with his father and his new family (again, the father attempting to provide Paolo with a “normal life”). Paolo begins to misbehave in the car, constantly honking the horn and pulling the wheel. Gianni is shaken into reality and grasps to understand why Paolo cannot just “behave normally.” In his frustration Gianni pulls over and leaves the car in tears. Paolo reverts back to his “comfort behavior” of repeating his address and phone number. It is in that moment that Gianni concedes and accepts Paolo for who he is (and how he always will be). Gianni hugs Paolo, who is desperately trying to comfort his father, and says he is alright as the camera fades to black.

Through the difficulty of the father-son relationship the audience truly gets a feeling of anguish felt by a parent who has a child with a disability such as autism. Many people may not realize it is more strenuous on the parent than it is for the “less than perfect” child. Gianni’s struggle is magnified as he is constantly contrasted with Nadine’s mother who is seemingly calm in the face of the day to day difficulties with her daughter. However, Nadine’s mother’s tranquility comes shockingly to a head at the train station talking to Gianni. In this scene, one of the most powerful moments in the film, Nadine’s mother is staring at nothing in the train station, on the verge of tears, after having spoken with Gianni of the difficulty of taking care of her daughter. She summarizes this sentiment in a simple line when she describes how sometimes her daughter just stares at her in desperation and she thinks “perché non muere?” or “why doesn’t she just die?” It is in this moment that the film truly captures the essence of the struggle that parents face of caring for a child with a disability. The scene empathetically allows the audience to feel the parents’ struggles. There is often a grieving period for the parents who must reconcile their notion of the “child they dreamed they would have” with the child they have in actuality. We get a contrasting perspective from the children in the film, however, who show the audience they are almost unaware of their situation. Children such as Paolo tend to be carefree and innocent due to their unawareness of their disability.

The insight of “Le chiavi di casa” is truly inspiring and touching with themes depicted throughout the film that allow the audience to become close to the characters and their difficulties. The film is moving regardless if the audience takes it at face value as a dramatic story of a father and son reuniting or if they read deeper into the subtleties of the symbolism and artistic depth that Amelio so adeptly provides regarding raising a child with autism. Bravo to the director for boldly showing the realistic, yet difficult challenges of this unique father-son relationship.

>More information from IMDB
>Movie Reviews (Italian and English)
>Movie Trailer

Accattone and J.S. Bach

2007-09-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

The key to reading Pier Paolo Pasolini’s first feature film, Accattone (1961), is C minor.

Okay, C minor may be exaggeratedly specific, but there is no denying that one of the most beautiful and perplexing elements of the film is the recurrent sound of the final chorus of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (in Baroque C minor) that accompanies desolate images of the impoverished Roman suburbs.

The rich liturgical soundtrack initially stands out because it doesn’t make sense. Thematically, the choice of a conspicuously religious soundtrack for a social and physical landscape that could easily be described as “godless” seems strange, at the very least. Bach’s liturgical celebration of the passion of the Christ serves as an acoustic backdrop for the story of a pimp (Accattone, played by Franco Citti) whose sole source of income, Maddalena (Silvana Corsini), gets locked up. In order to scrape by, Accattone gradually pawns his gold, hustles his friends, and steals from his young son. This final ignoble act is a means to raise revenue to outfit the young Stella, who is to be the next to sell herself on the streets. Practically the entire cast of the filmic universe—from Accattone’s abandoned wife to the police officers who arrest him to the petty thieves at the local bar—exists in a morally ambiguous space in which few seem innocent, but fewer still are condemned for their shiftless, profiteering lifestyles. In fact many other elements of the film also root it in a Christological context: a citation from Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio follows the opening titles, and immediately after, a long shot of twelve seated men sitting around tables at the local bar invokes representations of the Last Supper. Frequent backlit close-ups of Accattone and his friends, their faces framed in empty, bright skies, recall frescoes by Giotto. References to Dante are also recurrent, and sometimes the poet is even cited in Roman dialect. As critics have often noted, religious iconography helps elevate the story of the ill-fated pimp to mythic proportions. Accattone’s story thus transcends the individual calamity of a neorealist protagonist and becomes a symbol of the collective tragedy of existence of the 1960s subproletariat.

In the midst of all of these references, however, Bach stands out as exceptionally peculiar, aesthetically speaking. The sumptuous Baroque sounds signify order, harmony, deliberateness, and in Pasolini’s film must square off against social disorder, dissonance, chaos. And yet one particular chorus from the St. Matthew Passion recurs, recurs, recurs: it swells in the background when Accattone rolls in a dusty street fight; it is present when thugs from Naples beat Maddalena and abandon her on a hillside; it rises in the final moments of the film, when Accattone, attempting to escape the police, wrecks a motorcycle and lies helpless in the street. The music is part of Pasolini’s artistic strategy of contradictions, echoed visually in the contrast between the darkness of the deserted street corner on which the women prostitute themselves and the almost blinding light of the streets on which Accattone and his friends while away their days.

The final chorus of the St. Matthew Passion does not simply play, however; it loops. On several occasions, the soundtrack cuts from the center of “Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder” (“We Lay Ourselves with Weeping”) back to the beginning, returning to the grave opening chords (played by a double orchestra for a double choir) only to begin again. It thus forms a musical ritual in the film, a ritual that in its very circularity resists the concept of resolution. Returning to the beginning of the final chorus of Christ’s passion, however, is only returning to the beginning of an ending, an ending which, in a world that seems to be forsaken, is inevitably tragic.

And in Pasolini’s world, in fact, there is no resolution, no consolation, no middle ground. There is only repetition: the repetition of injustice. The soundtrack reminds us that Accattone’s personal tragedy is also destined to loop, to continue on its catastrophic ritual course and to encompass countless other “scroungers” like himself.

That Pasolini can render so bleak a message so beautiful makes his film our cross to bear.

Further reading on the Web:

➢ An article on Accattone in Senses of Cinema.
➢ Reviews of Accattone on RottenTomatoes.com.
➢ Excellent articles, in Italian, on Pasolini and Bach.