3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking part six

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

The formula was not invented, however, by the Risi film. In 1955, Mauro Bolognini (born in 1922), a director who later turned to dramatic films, often of literary origin, had in fact put his signature to an engaging film, GLI INNAMORATI (THE LOVER BIRDS), which presented the amiable portrait of the joes, johns and marys of the working-class neighborhood: Marisa the trouser-maker, in love with Nando, mechanic and matinee idol of the picture story magazines; Franco the soft-drink vendor and Otello the barber, rivals for the attentions of the pretty hair-dresser adultery. The action takes place in a small square, rather in the way of a stage-set, where the rituals of friendship, love and jealousy are acted out. The young actors including Cosetta Greco, Franco Interlenghi, Antonella Lualdi, Sergio Raimondi, Valeria Moriconi and the still virtually unknown Nino Manfredi. That the film paved the way for the POVERI MA BELLI cycle and shared the same spirit is indicated by the presence of the same script-writers, Franciosa and Festa Campanile.

Another story by Franciosa and Festa Campanile was used by Bolognini for his next film comedy, GIOVANI MARITI (YOUNG HUSBANDS), which shows a group of recently-married young boys at the first crucial moment of marriage when they are suspended between the determination to carry on and the nostalgia for the free irresponsibility of before. An intelligent comedy, accurate in its psychological description of the characters and tinged with an indelible streak of bitterness, it won for Franciosa, Festa Campanile, Bolognini, Enzo Currelli, Luciano Martino and Pier Paolo Pasolini the prize for the best script at the 1958 Cannes Festival.

Marisa Allasio, the actress launched by POVERI MA BELLI (POOR BUT GOOD-LOOKING), had a film all to herself in 1957, MARISA LA CIVETTA (MARISA THE FLIRT), directed by Bolognini and written, among others, by Pasolini. In CAMPING (CAMPGROUND: 1958), Franco Zeffirelli's first film, she was the over-enticing girl grappling with jealousies and scoldings from her brother and fiance, respectively Paolo Ferrari and Nino Manfredi, who also helped with the script.

3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking part five

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

SOTTO IL SOLE DI ROMA (UNDER THE SUN OF ROME), as mentioned above, ushered in the subject of the very young, setting them into a specific framework, the popular suburban quarters of Rome. POVERI MA BELLI (POOR BUT GOOD-LOOKING) is a film dating from 1956 and already contains in its title the characteristics of the genre.

Written by Dino Risi (1916) together with two future directors, Massimo Franciosa (1924) and Pasquale Festa Campanile (1927, also a vivid writer), the film recounts, with vivacity and some irony, the little everyday events and the lovers' quarrels of a group of youngsters in the Rome of the '50s, helping to launch a whole bevy of new actors. There was the bully, or "bullo", liar and braggart, pursued by women (Maurizio Arena) and there was the usual girl with the big bust and the sexy curves (Marisa Allasio: it was she who inspired the term, which soon became common usage to describe this particular kind of woman in films, "maggiorata fisica," or "body over-size", something like the American "sweater girl"). Sharing their lot, another couple (Renato Salvatori, Lorella De Luca). Within the limits of a certain superficiality, the image of a lower-class suburban Rome seen through the eyes of the young, emerged with a certain flavor and color, stimulating in Italian audiences an interest in "homegrown" characters and situations, in no way imitative of the well-known models of Hollywood and Paris. It was inevitable that Risi, again with Franciosa and Festa Campanile and the same actors, should follow POVERI MA BELLI (POOR BUT GOOD-LOOKING) with BELLE MA POVERE (GOOD-LOOKING BUT POOR: 1957) and POVERI MILIONARI (POOR MILLIONAIRES: 1959).

3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking part four

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

In the post-war period, and in particular after the proclamation of the Republic in 1946, the unity of the political forces that had fought Fascism came to an end. On one side, the normal democratic dialectics, based on the principal of a majority and an opposition party, was resumed, but on the other, the conflict between the "center" and the "left" was unquestionably fostered and particularly aggravated by the international atmosphere of the "cold war".

This framework must be kept in mind in order to understand the wide-spread popularity of a group of stories by the humorous writer, Giovanni Guareschi, collected into a volume with the title of "Mondo piccolo" (Little World). The setting was a small farm town, Brescello, in the Po Valley (in Emilia-Romagna). Here lived the two leading characters, sword enemies: the Communist mayor, Peppone, and the parish priest, Don Camillo. In a place like the Romagna district, where there is an ancient tradition of leftist thinking, but also a strong Catholic tradition, Guareschi turns the two characters into the mouthpieces of two contradictory worlds, as experienced however in a small country town where everybody knows everybody else and where no one has ever put their nose out of what is, in fact, a "little world". Guareschi was rightly criticized for having in any case oversimplified the dialectics between the different positions and reduced what was at the time an often inflammed struggle to little more than an opera buffa. Guareschi, however, was a humorist, not an ideologist, nor a politician or historian, and is involved in his world (which was a real town where he lived) more with his heart than with the arms of reason and criticism. He is deeply familiar with Romagna, a land of high passions, and one senses that his characters, from the largest to the smallest, spring from a direct contact with real models.

In 1952, this book, so perfectly Italian, not to say regional, was brought to the screen by a typically French director, Julien Duvivier (who in the '30s had directed several fundamental examples of "film noir" like the romantic and desperate PEPE-LE-MOKO), and a protagonist no less typically French, Fernandel. The film was called DON CAMILLO. Fernandel, with his burly peasant physique, his long, appealingly ugly horseface, was the ideal actor for the rough and impulsive priest. Peppone, the mayor, was played instead by an Italian actor, Gino Cervi, hulky and good-natured, another perfect choice. The contrast between the two men, so distinct in their respective roles, but deep down inside ready to give each other a hand and bound by deeper feelings of friendship and mutual respect than they are prepared to admit, brought back to films the Italian tradition of stock-characters of the "commedia dell'arte". There were two sequels: IL RITORNO DI DON CAMILLO (THE RETURN OF DON CAMILLO) in 1953, directed again by Duvivier (with a first-rate sequence of the flooding of the Po, in which documentary excerpts and reconstructed scenes with the actors were skillfully blended), and DON CAMILLO E L'ONOREVOLE PEPPONE (DON CAMILLO AND THE HONORABLE MR. PEPPONE) in 1955, directed by Carmine Gallone, in which the mayor leaves his job to get himself elected to Parliament (secretly helped by the priest to pass his fifth-grade exams, necessary for running for office). DON CAMILLO MONSIGNORE...MA NON TROPPO (DON CAMILLO MONSIGNOR...SORT OF) picks up the cycle several years later, in 1961, again directed by Gallone. The actors were older: Fernandel was fifty-eight, Cervi sixty. Guareschi, sole author of the story and the script, took advantage of the fact to present them further on in their careers, but weary and full of nostalgia for their youthful bickerings. Don Camillo, like Peppone, is in Rome: the latter has risen from deputy to senator and the priest has been named "monsignor" and is in charge of an important Vatican department. They go back to the village, ready to pick up the old disputes. In 1965, IL COMPAGNO DON CAMILLO (COMRADE DON CAMILLO) appeared, directed this time by Luigi Comencini. The priest, blackmailing Peppone with good intentions, has himself included, disguised as a party leader, in an official delegation of Communists invited to the Soviet Union. The political satire is perhaps a little shallow, but the film is well-concocted and no less amusing than the others.

When the last film of the cycle appeared, DON CAMILLO E I GIOVANI D'OGGI (DON CAMILLO AND THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF TODAY: 1972), directed by Mario Camerini, Fernandel had been dead for a year. the illness that would carry him to the grave struck him on the film set and the producers preferred reshooting everything that had been made so far and to "invent" a new team, replacing Cervi as well. So Gastone Moschin, tall, rugged and impetuous, was Don Camillo, while the American actor Lionel Stander lent his good-natured grit to Peppone.

The Don Camillo cycle certainly sprang from that shift to non-Roman peasant settings inauguared by PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA (BREAD, LOVE AND FANTASY), but was possessed of characteristics of its own. The psychological realism of the characters, the minute description of the setting fused in sudden outbursts of surrealism. Particularly effective, the idea of having the prieset converse with Jesus Christ, who speaks to him from the Crucifix in church in a tone of amiable reproach or friendly encouragement. The voice of Christ was given successively to two great stage actors, famous for their warm and musical voices: Ruggero Ruggeri and Renzo Ricci.

3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking part three

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

The optimistic spirit and the discovery of the Southern provinces instead of Rome in DUE SOLDI DI SPERANZA (TWO CENTS OF HOPE) were directly responsible for an enormously successful film made in 1953, the first of a series PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA (BREAD, LOVE AND FANTASY) by Luigi Comencini (born in 1916), written by the director himself in collaboration, by no coincidence, with the Margadonna of the preceding film.

Comencini, a Lombard architect who had worked at the Milan Film Library, had written scripts for Lattuada and Soldati, signed several excellent documentaries and served as film critic on various newspapers, and magazines. A director since 1948 of dramatic films, he found in PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA (BREAD, LOVE AND FANTASY) the important opportunity for a turning point in his career.

In the film, two love stories between people of two different generations are interwoven. On the one hand, there is, in fact, a shapely young girl, proud and rebellious in character, precisely in keeping with the model launched by Carmela in DUE SOLDI DI SPERANZA (TWO CENTS OF HOPE): she is nick-named "la Bersagliera" (from the phrase, "alla bersagliera," which means headfirst, daringly, with dash) and was to launch the long, brilliant career of Gina Lollobrigida. In the careful balancing of the roles, the "Bersagliera's" suitor was a shy, awkward young man, a Veneto carabiniere (Roberto Risso). On the other hand, a middle-aged couple go through the bickerings of love. He is a carabiniere warrant officer with gray hair but an incorrigible woman-chaser, she the attractive midwife of the village. The role of Warrant Officer Carotenuto relaunched, as an actor, Vittorio De Sica, who had never completely given up acting but who in recent years had become one of the most distinguished neo-realistic directors. With PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA (BREAD, LOVE AND FANTASY), the so-called "rosy neo-realism" took root, that is a comedy of character where the Italian (and especially Southern Italian) landscape plays a decisive role in defining characters and situations, portraying in a deliberately optimistic light a certain rustic and provincial reality. The series continued in 1954 with PANE, AMORE E GELOSIA (BREAD, LOVE AND JEALOUSY) by the same director and with the same four actors, in 1955 with PANE, AMORE E... (BREAD, LOVE AND...), directed by Dino Risi and in which the "Bersagliera" of Gina Lollobrigida was replaced by the "Pizzaiola" (pizza-girl) impersonated by Sophia Loren and ended in 1959 with PANE, AMORE A ANDALUSIA (BREAD, LOVE AND ANDALUSIA), directed by the Spanish director, Xavier Seto, and made in Spain, in the vain attempt to preserve the original inspiration in such a different setting, both geographical and in the characters involved (this time De Sica's girl-friend was Carmen Sevilla).

3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking part two

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

Even so the future development of the Italian-style comedy would not have taken place without the extraordinary success, also with critics (Grand Prize "ex-aequo", among other things, at the Cannes Festival), of the third important film comedy of Renato Castellani, DUE SOLDI DI SPERANZA (TWO CENTS OF HOPE), written in collaboration with a highly experienced script-writer like Ettore M. Margadonna and starring a celebrated actress of the Neopolitan theater, Titina De Filippo (the sister of Eduardo and Peppino), but directly inspired by what Castellani had been told by the fisherman, Vincenzo Musolino, who played the lead. The film was shot in the Southern Italian village of Boscotrecase, taking, the other actors - except for the female lead, Maria Fiore, but she too non-professional, like the others - from among the villagers themselves and letting the situations emerge through the spontaneous collaboration of one and all.

Once again, Renato Castellani showed a remarkable power of observation in catching the reality and the psychology of a popular world, but on this occasion far from the suburban slums in a Southern rural community in the vicinity of Naples. It is the story of a passionate and happy love affair between two penniless people, full however of determination which helps them overcome every mishap and every difficulty. Jobless, the young man in question works as a driver, then a soft-drink vendor, billposter and sexton. The love and joy of living of the young couple, against the background of a tragic poverty, harks back to the great tradition of the picaresque novel, in an uninterrupted sequence of little episodes, funny gags, perceptive observations of the human condition, in a love story constantly supported by the hope of the title. Maria Fiore as Carmela sketches the profile of a female figure that was long to be the center of attraction of the Italian-style film comedy, the figure of the girl shapely in build, sexy and provocative in manner, but essentially more serious and innocent than she appears.

3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking part one

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

In 1948, SOTTO IL SOLE DI ROMA (UNDER THE SUN OF ROME) inaugurated an important chapter in the new Italian-style film comedy. It was the work of a director who up till then seemed to move in the opposite direction from neo-realism: Renato Castellani (born in 1913). Formerly an assistant and script-writer for Mario Camerino, he made a name for himself during the war as a front-ranking representative of the refined and elegant school of a cinema of literary origins. His film UN COLPO DI PISTOLA (A PISTOL SHOT: 1941), was a delicate transpotion of the beautiful story by Pushkin.

Following the story of three youngsters, Ciro, Geppa and Iris (played by three non-professional actors: Oscar Blando, Francesco Golisano, Liliana Mancini), from the San Giovanni quarter of Rome, through the diary of one of them, Ciro, Castellani moves through the span of time dear to the neo-realists, from 1943, under the German occupation, to 1945, the post-war period. Without question, this film couldn't have come into being without the popular success, starting already with AVANTI, C'E POSTO! (COME ON, THERE'S ROOM!), of films related to the city of Rome and its dialect. But in AVANTI, C'E POSTO! (COME ON, THERE'S ROOM!), CAMPO DE' FIORI, L'ULTIMA CARROZZELLA (THE LAST CARRIAGE) and even in more recent comedies like L'ONOREVOLE ANGELINA (THE HONORABLE ANGELINA), the stories were about grownups, people with jobs, a specific social status. SOTTO IL SOLE DI ROMA (UNDER THE SUN OF ROME), instead, ushers in the subject matter of the very young, that new generation which grew up amidst the physical ruins of the bombardments and the moral ashes of the Fascist myth. Ciro, in the ups and downs of a complicated period, thinks of "making shift," that is of pulling through tough situations without risking too much, and can count on the loyal friendship of Geppa and the love of Liliana. Part "bully", or "bullo", as they say in Rome, that is flashy and overbearing, part hoodlum, with a very elastic, moral code, he ends up on the verge of delinquency by attempting a robbery. In the shoot-out that follows, his father, a night watchman, who gets involved accidentally, is killed. Ciro, faced with the tragedy, finally becomes a man, gets married, finds a regular job as a night watchman like his father. "Then I realized," Ciro says in the closing remark of the film, "who my father was. My father was the one who paid for everybody. Carefree youth was over. Now it's my turn to pay." This bitter conclusion sets the seal on a film that is, instead, full of gaiety. The director gives himself up with joy to the vital force of this instinctive working-class boy, and human sympathy even blurs his judgement. It is that unknown world of poor, uncouth, but cocky and good-looking youngsters, brought up in the ghettos of the suburban slums that would later find their literary and cinematographic muse in Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The film is well constructed, with a script written by, among others, Sergio Amidei, the principal author of ROMA, CITTA APERTA (ROME, OPEN CITY) and PAISA, and Emilio Cecchi, a discriminating man of letters who from 1930 on gave his support to talented young film-makers. While the fondness for exploring the world of the common people, shooting out-of-doors, the use of non-professional actors, are neo-realistic fixtures, Castellani rejected the instinct, the brilliant improvisation of a Rossellini and composed highly elaborate and carefully prepared shots.

In the succeeding E PRIMAVERA (IT'S SPRING) of 1949, written with Suso Cecchi D'Amico and Cesare Zavattini, the director transposed a story of infidelity (with bigamy, couple swapping and all that), typical of the old Parisian vaudeville, from its original bourgeois setting to a popular setting, enlarging moreover the geographic and linguistic framework of the new Italian-style comedy beyond Rome and the Rome dialect: the story in fact moves between Sicily and Milan and the leading character is Tuscan.

2. The Forties: The Season Of Neo-Realism part eight

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

Many simple stories of simple folk, recapturing that fondness for the anti-hero which had been typical of Mario Camerini and Alessandro Blasetti in the '30s and '40s, were set against the background of post-war Rome. Alessandro Blasetti in PRIMA COMUNIONE [FIRST COMMUNION: 1950] tells about the hours preceding the religious ceremony of the title, which should be a peaceful family celebration. But the little communion girl's despotic father loses his temper because the white dress ordered for her is not ready and from incident to incident the tension mounts, completely destroying the idyllic atmosphere of the beginning. Written by Cesare Zavattini, the comedy is a ferocious attack on conventions and Aldo Fabrizi plays the lead with rage and authority. Zavattini provided Camerini with the story of MOLTI SOGNI PER LE STRADE [MANY DREAMS ON THE ROAD: 1948], in which a poor devil, assailed by debts, steals a car. But his wife thinks he has rented the car to take her for a ride and goes off with him. The improvised thief is unable to get the car to the "fence" and the deal goes up in smoke, so there's nothing to be done but to take the car back to the garage where it had been stolen. A charming little tale, typical of the pre-war Zavattini more than of the author of LADRI DI BICICLETTE [BICYCLE THIEVES]. It was Zavattini again who gave Gianni Franciolini (1910-1960) the idea for a particular film BUONGIORNO, ELEFANTE! [GOOD MORNING, ELEPHANT!: 1952], in which an Indian prince (played by Sabu), in order to return a favor done him by, a simple grade-school teacher (Vittorio De Sica), sends him a present from India: nothing less than an elephant. With all the imaginable troubles the poor teacher runs into trying to dispose of the cumbersome beast. The film remains one of the finest examples of a light sentimental comedy that succeeds in appealing to audiences without sacrificing a realistic portrayal of characters and setting.

2. The Forties: The Season Of Neo-Realism part seven

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

The most important name among these comedians in the period right after the war was that of Macario, undisputed star of the vaudeville theater and a well-known screen personality as of some ten years. Macario's typical characteristics - his innocence, his romantic tenderness, his incurable optimism - struck two script-writers at the beginning of their career, Steno and Mario Monicelli, as potential material for a new form of "Italian-style" comedy, removing the actor from the facile conventions of the farce and creating for him a more carefully pondered character which could become the symbol of the average Italian male. The result was three fairly good films, produced one after the other in the studios of Turin (the capital of Italian cinema at its birth) and directed by Carlo Borghesio (born in 1905): COME PERSI LA GUERRA [HOW I LOST THE WAR: 1947], L'EROE DELLA STRADA [THE HERO OF THE STREET: 1948], COME SCOPERSI L'AMERICA [HOW I DISCOVERED AMERICA: 1949]. Macario, with his moon face and big eyes, his lilting gait, was the common little man battered by the gales of history. In the first, he is the innocent little soldier at the front of a lost war, in the second a poor devil who tries to scrape a living after the war with jobs of all kinds, in the third he has emigrated to the United States to seek his fortune. Borghesio was not a great director but he knew his job and the three films, while not outstanding, do succeed in expressing a fragment or two of the reality of those days. They were a great success, especially the first. As to Steno and Monicelli, they were to return to the character in the films they later directed, finding their ideal actor for the part in Alberto Sordi.

2. The Forties: The Season Of Neo-Realism part six

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

It was not surprising, therefore, that producers thought of counteracting the influx of Hollywood film revues with Italian film revues linked, to be sure, to the popularity of a given comedian but most of all entrusted to the richness of the cast, the number of chorus girls, the quality of the scenery and choreography. After DOVE STA ZAZA? [WHERE'S ZAZA?: 1948] of Giorgio C. Simonelli, with Nino Taranto, and I POMPIERI DI VIGGIU [THE VIGGIU FIRE-BRIGADE: 1949] of Mario Mattoli, with Toto, the most ambitious attempt was represented by BOTTA E RISPOSTA [QUESTION AND ANSWER], directed in 1950 by highly respected writer and director Mario Soldati, and starring the Italian comics Taranto and Renato Rascel, the Frenchman Fernandel and the American Louis Armstrong, with the sophisticated choreography of Katherine Dunham. The film-revue genre failed, however, to get off the ground and almost immediately died out.

The popularity of the comedians remained so producers got the idea of making low-budget films to order for them, shot in haste and dumped onto the market. Every comedian who met with the slightest success in the music-hall was given his films: the above-mentioned Taranto and Rascel, Carlo Dapporto, Macario, Walter Chiari, Toto.

2. The Forties: The Season Of Neo-Realism part five

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

Meanwhile, certain basic features of neo-realism - shooting out in the open of the streets, working-class milieu, use of dialect - had by now entered the mainstream of Italian film-making. Anna Magnani, for example, returned to her role as an impetuous, aggressive and warm-hearted woman of the people beset by all the problems of post-war Rome in two rather mediocre but engaging films directed by Gennaro Righelli (1886-1949): ABBASSO LA MISERIA! [DOWN WITH POVERTY!: 1945] and ABBASSO LA RICCHEZZA! [DOWN WITH RICHES!: 1946]. Magnani risked, however, letting herself be type-cast had she not met the director of VIVERE IN PACE [LIVE IN PEACH]. For her, Luigi Zampa wrote (with Suso Cecchi D'Amico and Piero Tellini) and directed in 1947 L'ONOREVOLE ANGELINA [THE HONORABLE ANGELINA], the colorful and lively portrait of a woman from the suburban slum areas (these areas, known as borgate, grew up on the outskirts of Rome during Fascism and soon became the symbol of poverty and social ostracism). The wife of a police sergeant, Angelina, driven by the hunger of those difficult times, leads a riotous crowd of women to occupy a foodstore which turns out to be the heart of the black market. The success of the operation makes her the natural leader of the other mothers of the "borgata" in the vindication of a whole series of social claims, and in the end her name is even put up for Parliament. It may be pointed out that the film was made several decades before the feminist movement exploded in Italy.

Meanwhile, the nation's screens were invaded by the products of Hollywood, which returned after the long interruption of the war years. Hollywood presented not only new films but also those made over the last six or seven years. Standing out among the other genres was the musical, with the subdivisions into song-and-dance films (seperate numbers linked together by a vague story line) and musical comedies. At the same time in Italian theaters revues were all the rage, and were becoming more and more lavish and spectacular as well as sexy.

2. The Forties: The Season Of Neo-Realism part four

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Pictures and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy - Edited by CIES Soc. Coop. r.1 (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

But was it possible to introduce authentic comedy into the neo-realistic genre without betraying the spirit of it? That's what Luigi Zampa (born in 1905) succeeded in doing in 1946 with VIVERE IN PACE [LIVE IN PEACE].

Aldo Fabrizi was Uncle Tigna, a peaceful farmer who during the German occupation hid on his farm two Americans who had escaped from a concentration camp; Ronald, a war correspondent, and Joe, a black soldier. The script, written by Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Fabrizi, Piero Tellini and Zampa, follows the usual pattern of the sentimental comedy: there's a love affair between Ronald and Tigna's niece and a whole series of humorous strategems to keep the Germans and Fascists away from the cellar where the two refugees are hiding. But one evening Joe - unversed in Italian wine - gets drunk just when Hans, a German sergeant, appears. Fortunately, Hans gets drunk too and the two men fraternize without realizing the situation. The next day Hans deserts. The Nazis execute him and also kill Uncle Tigna for having sheltered two "enemies". The tragic ending does not prevent the entire film from being played for smiles, in a perfect balance between the basic tone of comedy and the dramatic events, and above all with complete respect for the historical reality and the humanity of the characters. VIVERE IN PACE [LIFE IN PEACE], starring, aside from Fabrizi, the American actors Gary Moore and John Kitzmiller, already seen in PAISA, was an enormous success all over the world and one of the films that opened the doors to international acclaim for Italian cinema. In 1947 the New York film critics named it the best foreign film of the year.