2. The Forties: The Season Of Neo-Realism 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, as has now been made perfectly clear, Italian cinema cannot historically be divided into two neat division: Fascist-period films on the one side, neo-realism on the other. Many elements of the way films were made before were carried over into the post-war period, even in important works, if for no other reason that the artistic and technical personnel had remained pretty much the same. So it is easy to understand how, in an essentially dramatic and, indeed, tragic genre like neo-realism, the ingredients of comedy were not altogether lacking.

Take ROMA, CITTA APERTA [ROME, OPEN CITY], directed in 1945 by Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). The great director manages to create a manifold image of a luminous city suddenly plunged into gloom by the Nazi occupation and the deplorable phenomenon of collaborationism. Rossellini shoots on the street, recreating, where it actually took place, a tragedy experienced barely yesterday, the scars of which are still painfully fresh in people's minds. He takes as a point of reference a parish priest, Don Morosini (the story is true), and the mother of a family who sees her man arrested and then tortured to death. Two characters meant to be the exact opposite of the "heros" of the traditional epic cinema and who could never be played by two "cute and glamorous" matinee idols, according to the rules of the star system. So Rossellini chose Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani, the couple of CAMPO DE' FIORI and L'ULTIMA CARROZZELLA [THE LAST CARRIAGE], and carried their usual roles as popular comedy figures up and up, without a hitch, to the heights of tragedy. ROMA, CITTA APERTA [ROME, OPEN CITY] could not have existed without the triptych of comedies which Fabrizi and Magnani had previously appeared in. It was those films that got audiences used to leading actors who were neither glamorous, nor very young, to films shot outside, in the open, with real people, to the use of Roman dialect instead of the polished Italian of the professional actors. To be sure, ROMA, CITTA APERTA [ROME, OPEN CITY] is a masterpiece and the three films that preceded it were, instead, made for sheer entertainment, but the connecting thread between them is clear. Not only, but the presence among the script-writers of the same Federico Fellini of those films made it certain that the material of ROMA, CITTA APERTA [ROME, OPEN CITY] would be "alleviated" from time to time by a few light, but essential humorous touches.

1. The Thirties: The Age of the "White Telephones" 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

On June 11, 1940, Mussolini, carried away by what English historian F.W. Deakin called the "brutal friendship" with Hitler, declared war on France and England. In a couple of years, the Axis, initially victorious, retreated on all fronts. With the loss already in 1940 of Ethiopia, which had been Mussolini's "imperial dream", the loss of Libya in 1942, the invasion of Russia ending in a ghastly retreat littered with corpses, Italy at the beginning of 1943 was already defeated and preparing to fight on its own soil, as was to be the case in June with the Allied landing in Sicily.

Fascism by now was in a serious crisis, Mussolini's popularity had completely faded. Many young people, who had grown up under Fascism, started to open their eyes and look for new directions.

Between 1941 and 1943, that is in the period when the war took a disastrous turn and the regime was in shambles, the Italian cinema also started looking for new directions. Neo-realism, which was to "explode" in 1945 after the Liberation, got its start in those dark tormented years. On the one hand, there were directors, old and young, who sought refuge in films of literary inspiration, elaborate and refined, exclusively devoted to bringing to the screen, with lavish sets adn costumes: the sources were Alessandro Manzoni, Aleksander Pushkin, Thomas Hardy, Antonio Fogazzaro, Stendhal. On the other hand, beginning directors like Francesco De Robertis and his pupil, Roberto Rossellini, made war films, but devoid of propaganda, interested primarily in showing the pain and suffering caused by the war.

There was one director, however, who with participation and intelligence, made use of comedy to bring audiences into contact with lower-class reality. In 1942, Alessandro Blasetti directed QUATTRO PASSI FRA LE NUVOLE [FOUR STEPS AMONG THE CLOUDS] on a story by Cesare Zavattini. The script by Zavattini, Blasetti himself, Amato the producer and Aldo De Benedetti, whose name could not appear on the credit titles: he was Jewish and the racial laws prohibited him from working. A traveling salesman leaves the big city to follow an unwed mother who has gone to her parents' farm in the country and who lacks the courage to confess her condition. So the man, with all the predictable misunderstandings, passes himself off as her husband, gradually helping the woman to be accepted by her father and mother. Delicate and sentimental, but also full of life, the film gives audiences an insight into the Italian peasant world, till then somewhat neglected by a primarily urban and bourgeois cinema.

1. The Thirties: The Age of the "White Telephones" 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

At the end of the '30s, World War II broke out. In a still neutral Italy (it would enter the war in 1940), the comedy of the absurd was a way of unconsciously rejecting the seriousness of what was happening in Europe. In 1939, ANIMALI PAZZI [CRAZY ANIMALS] appeared, directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia (born in 1894) on a story by Achille Campanile, in which a Neapolitan music-hall comedian, Toto, scored a hit with his puppet-like, wholly unrealistic acting, in the part of an aristocrat forced to get married in order to come into an inheritance. Another film, IMPUTATO, ALZATEVI! [DEFENDANT, STAND UP!], by Mario Mattoli, also appeared, with a script written by the director himself together with one of the most popular contributors to the comic weeklies, Vittorio Metz. The star of the film was another comedian of regional and dialectal origin, Turin-born Erminio Marcario (1920-1980), with a round, innocent, Harry Langdon-like face. At that time he was the most popular star of the music-hall, which he carried to the heights of Parisian elegance, with lavish choreography, a chorus-line of beautiful girls (known on the bills as "Macario's Little Women"), spectacular scenery. Macario was, like Langdon, the innocent who wasn't even capable of realizing the enormous predicaments he kept getting into, the catastrophes he brought about; into the character he introduced a highly personal note of romantic delicacy. IMPUTATO ALZATEVI! [DEFENDANT, STAND UP!] was a take-off on thrillers and trial films, with an attack on the judicial system that was so pungent that, aside from setting the film in France, the producers decided to take precautions and insert this hypocritical statement at the end of the credit titles: "Everything that happens in this film is purely imaginary and seeks to be nothing but the caricature of events and institutions fortunately far removed from our climes".

1. The Thirties: The Age of the "White Telephones" 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

This surreal and "absurd" humor - actually deeply concerned with human values - gave rise to another genre, another variation on the Italian film comedies of the '30s. The credit for discovering this new way of making people laugh again goes to Mario Camerini, who met Cesare Zavanttini at the beginning of his career as a script writer. The film was DARO UN MILIONE [I'LL GIVE A MILLION] and won a prize at the Venice Film Festival of 1935. Vittorio De Sica played the part of a millionaire weary of his wealth, who pretends to be poor and falls in love with a girl from the circus, while Luigi Almirante (the great dramatic actor who starred in the world premiere of Pirandello's "Six Characters In Search Of An Author") is a penniless man in tails who wanders around the world of the rich, making fun of everybody. Fast-moving and exhilirating, the film (set in France for reasons of censorship: poor people couldn't exist in Mussolini's Italy) is a veritable barrage of gags. It was also very successful abroad. Hollywood bought the rights for a remake, I'LL GIVE A MILLION (1938), director: Walter Lang, with Warner Baxter is the De Sica role.